I'll try again next week

Ramadan Mubarak to all who celebrate!

I have a writing routine. Every Saturday morning I write because Jordan gets up with the kids.

But this morning I didn’t write. I slept.

(If you want my number one tip for reclaiming your sanity once you have kids, it’s to trade off weekend mornings. Give your partner the morning to do whatever the heck they want and re-emerge a refreshed, more present parent).

And now it’s 10pm on Saturday night and day one of my wife’s seven day business trip. Which means I’m in survival mode until next Saturday.

Normally, I’d stay up until I had something to send out, or work on the newsletter throughout the day tomorrow and send it a bit later.

But tomorrow is daylight savings time (💀) and the best thing I can do for myself and my kids right now is sleep.

I’ll try again next week. Thanks for understanding ❤️ 

In the meantime, here are a few topics I entertained and ultimately tabled for this week’s newsletter:

• How being a working parent is teaching me to be a better leader

• Employee confidence falls to lowest levels since 2016

• There are more women in the global workforce now than pre-COVID

• What does being a trad wife have to do with HR?

• The return of workplace etiquette training 

Those break downs are all swirling in my head, but not concretely enough for this weekend. Any topics you want to see me write about next week?

In the world of Talent

🤑 The sorry jar: I can’t get enough of this initiative that Marissa Dahlson started at adidas: a Sorry Jar for unnecessary apologies.

🤯 Psychology that’s still blowing my mind: my sister has a masters degree in Organizational Psychology and regularly schools me on the data behind people decisions. Last week, she told me something wild about “written affect” (in psychology, affect is how we experience emotions). We experience emails two affects down from the writer’s intended affect. E.g., you send a neutral Slack message, it’s interpreted as negative. You send a Slack that is happy, the receiver interprets it as neutral.

👀 International women’s day: the irony of international women’s day wasn’t lost on many this year. Most of the posts I saw were women saying, “today is cool, but really pay me + show up every other day, too.” The resounding theme is we are over performative words in 2024. Show us action and let us be.

1️⃣ Top advice for working parents: make time for your kids. It can feel impossible with the endless push and pull of competing priorities, but as Alexis Rivera Scott reminds us, life is short and time is precious. Use it wisely ❤️ 

Kat’s corner

🏀 The Break Room March Madness bracket: the NCAA March Madness tournament is just around the corner and I’m hosting a men and women’s bracket this year! Interested in joining? Reply and I’ll send you a link to join my groups! It’s free and there will be prizes for the winners!

🫶 Special shout-out: this week’s shout-out goes to my friend and HR leader, Eden McFadden. One of the hardest workers in the room and an all-time great. Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover it!