Toxic behavior, including bullying, is rampant in the workplace—with nearly 20 percent of U.S. workers experiencing it and 19 % witnessing it.¹  It’s also a major force behind the ongoing Great Resignation.²  A survey by FlexJobs found that people who have resigned over the past six month cited “toxic company culture” as their number one reason for leaving.³

I, too, have experienced toxicity, including downright bullying. After spending 17 years as a marketing exec at Procter & Gamble, where I helped spearhead some of the world’s most iconic marketing campaigns including Always #LikeAGirl thanks to the wonderfully supportive environment, I was confronted with a toxic environment in my next job. My boss was rude, belittling and treated my team and myself as if we did not know how to do our jobs. Nothing we did was ever good enough. He regularly made humiliating, sarcastic comments. When I teared up in a meeting one day, he gave me a tissue box with a sticker that read “Dalia’s tissue box” and later said to my team: “You think Dalia is such a tough cookie, an Israeli ex-platoon commander? Did you know she has a tissue box in my office with her name on it?”

Eventually, after three years of trying to find ways to end the abuse, I decided to leave. I took up a master’s in organizational psychology at INSEAD business school and dedicated my thesis to issues around handling a toxic environment.

The lessons from this research, combined with my experience in both a toxic environment and at a company with sound policies in place to prevent toxicity (P&G) led me to conclude that the only answer to workplace toxicity and bullying is zero tolerance. This applies on the company side as well as on the employee side.

On the company side, there are three steps I have identified that can—and must—be taken:

1. Enforce the use of leadership assessment tools (LATs).

The only people who can determine if a leader is good are their direct reports, so give them a voice by relying heavily on these tools.  They provide valuable input on how a leader’s direct reports view them and what qualities they show up with. Make LATs a top priority. 

2. Assess and promote leaders as much for their people skills as for their business skills.  

If you want good leaders, reward good leadership!  During talent reviews at P&G, leaders would receive a score for their people skills, based on criteria including assessments by direct reports and a score for their business skills based on things such as KPIs.  They were only promoted if they were top rated in both areas, and the tactic worked very well.  

3. Invest in leadership training.

Many managers want to be good, supportive leaders but simply don’t have the know-how or skills.  It’s not their fault: leadership skills such as identifying people’s strengths and coaching your team must be learned. But too often, as managers move up to leadership positions, companies assume they are prepared and have the skills. These skills are not innate, but even the more nuanced skills such as emotional intelligence and creating a psychologically safe environment are teachable.  That’s why every company should invest in leadership training.

As for employees dealing directly with toxicity, my advice is simple: walk out and complain.   Your company and  / or HR department should have policies in place to support this approach.   Some of the successful policies I advocate for are having an anonymous ethics line, where calls trigger investigations.  Anonymity is key, as is having a neutral, well-qualified HR person in place to help mitigate toxic situations.

(1)   https://www.ishn.com/articles/112088-millions-of-us-employees-affected-by-workplace-bullying

(2)   (2) Sull, D., Sull, C., & Zweig, B. (2022). Toxic culture is driving the great resignation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 63(2), 1-9.

(3)   https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/survey-resignation-workers-considering-quitting-jobs/

The topic of security culture is mysterious and confusing to most leaders. But it doesn’t have to be. Perry Carpenter and Kai Roer, two veteran cybersecurity strategists deliver experience-driven, actionable insights into how to transform your organization’s security culture and reduce human risk at every level. 

The security industry has struggled to define security culture for a long time. Security leaders talk about its value, but they tend to do so without precision — which can be incredibly confusing for business leaders.

Here’s our take on security culture, developed over many years at the intersection of two worlds: academia and “in the trenches” practitioners. Security culture can be broken down into seven components, which we refer to as dimensions. These dimensions are interdependent; each one influences the others.

Dimension 1: Attitudes

The attitudes your employees have toward security is a critical factor. When employees take a negative view, they’re much less likely to abide by the rules and act securely. This means that finding ways to foster positive attitudes toward security can be a great strategy to improve employee behavior and, ultimately, your security culture.

Ask yourself: To what extent do employees care about security? Are they positive, neutral, or negative?

Dimension 2: Behaviors

What employees see other employees do impacts their own behavior. Most people are likely to adopt the behaviors they see modeled by others when they’re in a group. We’re also very likely to do what we’re told by someone in authority, suggesting that leadership should be actively involved in security.

Ask yourself: What are considered acceptable behaviors? What do employees see others doing?

Dimension 3: Cognition

What employees know can influence their behavior. However, just because someone is aware doesn’t mean they care! And even caring doesn’t always translate to behavior. This is what Perry calls the “knowledge-intention-behavior gap.” Training is an important part of any security culture program, but it’s not the end-all.

Instead, consider training as only one of many tools in your toolbox. Support it with strong messaging from your executives and leadership teams, and make sure your employees understand why security is paramount.

Further support your training program through behavior design initiatives and by trying to foster other areas of influence, such as reward and reinforcement systems.

Ask yourself: What do employees know? How do they learn? How do they apply that knowledge?

Dimension 4: Communication

One of the skills of great leaders is their ability to communicate. Often, you’ll hear them repeat the same vision many times over, in many different forms and forums.

Great leaders recognize the importance of setting the agenda and repeating the message so that every employee can understand and relate. Security is no different: If you want it to happen, repeat your values often and find ways to make people talk about them.

Ask yourself: How is security communicated throughout the organization? To what extent is leadership involved? Is security considered a core value?

Dimension 5: Compliance

Organizations need rules to ensure employees know what’s allowed and what’s not. Some organizations are very good at implementing policies and incentives, whereas others are not.

If your security policies and procedures aren’t being followed, it may be because employees are unaware of the policies and procedures, or your policies and procedures are too difficult to follow, or because you need other methods and systems to support compliance.

Ask yourself: How well do employees adhere to policies and procedures?

Dimension 6: Norms

Norms are the informal rules, those policies of the group that aren’t written down and formalized. They’re “just the way things are done around here.” Unfortunately, people are more likely to follow norms than comply with your policies due to perceived peer pressure.

What’s the fix? Seek out any disconnects between your norms and your policies. Find ways to influence your norms to better align with policy. This is accomplished through a combination of communication, social pressures, behavior design, and traditional training methods.

Ask yourself: To what extent are security-related beliefs, behaviors, and values embedded in the norms and unwritten rules of the organization?

Dimension 7: Responsibilities

An organization where every employee actively takes part in the security program is a good organization. Empowering employees to make relevant security decisions during their workday is a valuable strategy.

Likewise, making sure employees understand that even a tiny action can make a huge difference is mission critical. Try to focus on the positive change the employee can make instead of dreaded and ineffective fearmongering.

Ask yourself: To what extent do employees feel empowered? To what extent will they help ensure that other employees follow the rules?

Entrepreneurs should stop blaming their problems on The Great Resignation, the pandemic or other disruptions. If they’d look closely into their organizations, they’d realize their issues started long before COVID.

Let’s face it, the modern workplace is a dumpster fire. It’s no wonder a recent report found a whopping 72% of CEOs are worried about losing their jobs due to current disruptions facing their industries. But the truth is, recent events have only exaggerated existing problems leaders have always faced—especially for entrepreneurs growing and scaling a business.

The Myth of The Great Resignation

“The Great Resignation” has been thrown around by executives and pundits ad nauseam to explain why employees across the country are leaving their jobs at seemingly high and unprecedented rates. However, the idea that a tidal wave of workers suddenly want to up and quit in a way they never have before is absurd. A deeper look at the data actually shows the national quit rate is currently at the same level as it would have been pre-pandemic. Put simply, employees always wanted to quit. Businesses have always had a problem when it comes to maintaining top talent—and it’s time to address this problem head-on.

Rise of the Startups

At the same time, an astonishing 5.4 million new business applications were filed in 2021, surpassing the record set in 2020 of 4.4 million. With all of these fledgling entrepreneurs now taking flight, they may soon find themselves at a crossroads when they realize the team they relied on to get them here, isn’t going to take them there. They need to align their talent strategy with their growth trajectory.

Bottom line: you can’t have the same folks in the same seats forever and hope they can rise to mounting challenges. By continually hiring and developing the right people (not just defaulting to the ones who’ve always been there), entrepreneurs can accelerate and sustain their growth.

Hybrid vs. Remote vs. In-Person Workforce

Many leaders are eager to have employees return to the office, citing the need to build company culture. But is working in-person actually what supports company culture? Of course not. People want to feel fulfilled in the workplace—you can’t just force them into the office, slap a slogan on the wall, give them beer on tap and call it company culture. Entrepreneurs must uncover the larger purpose within their organizations and allow their teams to be driven by it. Culture must live, breathe and mean something to your team.

Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? In his new book, Human Frontiers, Michael Bhaskar explains the importance of understanding every aspect of big ideas: their origins, their role in societal progress, and how we can make more of them.

1. Disrupt Peoples’ Worldview

There are such things as big ideas, as opposed to any old, common idea. In general, people are a bit wary of things called “big ideas.” I think the world is somewhat hostile to them. People tend to want to attack a big idea, or think that it’s somehow arrogant, or an imposition, or a myth. People want to say that big ideas break down into lots of little ideas. That is partly true. But the stuff of history is about big ideas — that which I call the “human frontier,” or the limit of what we can do. Maybe it’s our technological frontier, or the knowledge frontier of what we know about the world, or perhaps a cultural or artistic frontier.

A big idea is one that impacts at the frontier. And that’s not speculation, because a whole range of researchers have found ways to work out how much impact an idea has. You can then say, “Well, we can estimate the impact of every patent, and we find the top 5 or 1% that have the most impact. Those are big ideas.”

Then there’s also a psychological aspect. Some ideas just shock us. Darwin’s idea of natural selection was an explosive idea that pulled apart a lot of peoples’ worldviews. Big ideas have this shocking, sensational impact. Human history, human civilization, really doesn’t make much sense unless we have some awareness of those ideas that matter most.

2. Examine History

Examine history for ingredients that shifted cultures. Look around the world, and it feels like everything is going on. We have amazing new technologies launching. We have what seems like a really fast pace of change. How can it be called a Great Stagnation?

The phrase “Great Stagnation” was coined in 2011 by Tyler Cowen, the economist, and quite a few other economists have now backed it up. The first piece of evidence would be that in the frontier countries — the most developed countries on Earth — economic growth has started to slow down on a long-term trend. In the middle of the 20th century, growth was faster than it is today. If we were a society that was accelerating into the future, why wouldn’t growth be accelerating? Even more than that, there is a productivity slowdown. Yet productivity tends to be driven by new technologies, so that suggests that big, new technologies are either not being rolled out as fast as in the past, or that something is not quite catching on about those technologies.

In about the space of a human lifetime, we went from most people walking around and using horses, to humans landing on the moon in a massive rocket. It was an extraordinary transformation, and in each of these, modes of transport was a big idea. Since then, all of those modes have become a lot safer, sleeker, cleaner, more efficient… but we’re not getting new ideas. There have been countless incremental improvements, but the big ideas that would transform transport seem to be stalling. There are lots of proposals for flying cars or drone delivery, but nobody’s actually getting them off the ground.

My idea of the Great Stagnation is broader than just economics and technology. When you look at our cultural world, it is stuck in a similar pattern. For most of the 20th century, you could clearly identify when music was from. Music from the 1980s sounded very different from the 1960s. There were new genres, new kinds of instruments, and whole new subcultures.

Nowadays, there’s a lot of great music, but it’s not that different from 20 years ago. There’s not that kind of wholesale revolution in public taste that used to happen. There was a time in the 20th century when there were huge novelists, great philosophers, and they would dominate their fields. These huge ideas would come in, but it seems like big ideas are out of fashion.

Likewise, we’ve kind of given up on big new ideas about politics. When Francis Fukuyama talked about the end of history, he was talking about the end of massive new challenges to forms of political organization. And he seems to be right. We have a kind of reheated authoritarianism, we have liberal democracies, and we have a bit of a fudge between the two, but nobody has any clear idea what, if anything, might come beyond that. When you start to drill down, it does seem like there’s been a Great Stagnation of sorts. The big exception would be in digital technology, but it doesn’t invalidate the idea entirely.

3. Find Your Circle

Move in circles that are willing to back your big idea. If you look at businesses, they want a safe return. They don’t want to gamble huge amounts of money on something that is unlikely to generate a return. That’s even often true with venture capitalists and others who are supposedly taking all these risks.

Almost nobody can afford to back things that might fail for 20 years before they become good. There are many areas, by contrast, that used to have backing for big ideas. For example, you had a great ecosystem of innovation in mid-20th century corporate America, where in places like Bell Labs there was a huge amount of freedom. A lot of those places have been closed. And although tech giants do a lot of R&D, it doesn’t necessarily replace that real, broad-based ecosystem.

So, we don’t give the timelines or the money. And secondly, a lot of the people coming up with ideas are at universities and other places where incentives for taking on the risks of a big idea just aren’t there. Scholars have to get citations. What gets cited? Well, it’s generally stuff that is already established. You have to calibrate what you pursue to what’s out there in order to get cited.

If you take a big risk with your career and get it wrong, you won’t get jobs, you won’t get tenure, and you won’t get citations. The entire sector of research and universities has been taken over by an almost bureaucratic box-ticking exercise, rather than what used to be free-blue-skies research. That kind of bureaucratic, safety-first, often intensely regulated atmosphere exists across institutions.

This dovetails with my point about funding. It makes for an incredibly conservative atmosphere for experimenting with big ideas — the ideas that seem ambitious and crazy, and will often fail.

The whole nature of what I’d call a series of populisms (from political populism to the need to get publicity) adds extra pressure. People are chasing eyeballs more than they’re looking for deep thoughts. The political atmosphere is polarizing opinions, such that there aren’t free spaces of investigation.

All in all, when you start looking into how research is done, how it’s funded, and how it’s discussed, you start to get a sense that society doesn’t like big ideas. Society would much rather have things that have somewhat the pattern of a big idea, but ultimately don’t really do much.

4. Work at the Frontier

The Great Stagnation is ending. Work at the frontier of global innovation.  Right now we are building a new tool set that is by far the most powerful set of tools humanity has ever had at its disposal. Artificial intelligence is one example; DeepMind, the AI company, has effectively solved the protein-folding problem, which was one of the longest-standing problems in biology. For 50 years, people have been trying to solve this, and not making much progress, but an approach that deploys cutting-edge machine-learning techniques can solve it. So this is a new tool set of AI, encompassing everything from synthetic biology, CRISPR, nanotechnology, VR, and so on.

 This new tool set is the outside factor that can change the way we see the world. It will change the ways we discover things and the technologies we build. All of those tools are big ideas themselves because if we deliver them, they’re the platform for the next 100 years of huge thinking.

 The world is converging at the frontier for the first time in history. If you look at the frontiers of knowledge or technology, it has always been in a few localized societies or civilizations. A bit of Europe, or perhaps a bit of China or the Arabian Peninsula, but the whole world has almost never been working at the frontier at one time. The extraordinary economic growth around the world, and the nature of the Internet, means that the capacity to work at the frontier is now global. Innovation isn’t going to be coming just from one corner. This has only come to the fore in the last 20 years, and it’s only now that we’re going to start feeling the effects.

If you put together this new set of tools and this great convergence at the frontier, then it creates the ingredients for a Great Acceleration. It provides enough momentum beyond the fact that society is hostile, beyond the fact that ideas are getting harder to generate. It means that we are entering a new phase — and that’s incredibly exciting.

Most people follow at least some ethical rules in their daily lives. (The small percentage of individuals who do not are called psychopaths) The world of business, however, presents some unique issues, which is why they have evolved as a specialized field of ethics.

One of those unique issues is the sheer size and frequency of the ethical challenges that businesspeople must face. It is not unusual for those in business to be presented, almost daily, with opportunities to personally profit by violating the law or by harming or misleading others. The stakes can be enormous, especially when a big transaction or career-making decision is involved. This means people in business often face much larger temptations in the office than on the street. (Although it is usually not very tempting to shoplift a small item, the opportunity to make millions of dollars by insider trading or cheating on a large contract is far more enticing.)

As a result, businesspeople must always remain aware of and sensitive to their ethical obligations. If they do not, they risk joining the long and sad parade of once-virtuous—but now notorious—white-collar criminals like Enron Chair Kenneth Lay, Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, and business maven Martha Stewart.

A second unique aspect of business ethics is that they operate in a social environment—business dealings—in which people, to some extent, often tolerate, expect, or even praise the selfish pursuit of personal gain. This makes the business environment quite different from many other social environments in which we interact with other people. Few of us want to be perceived as selfish at a wedding reception or a bar mitzvah. But when we are negotiating a contract or trying to sell a product, a certain degree of material self-interest is expected.

The key phrase here is the qualifier, “a certain degree of.” Business ethics help to keep us from crossing the line from legitimately self-interested behavior, over to unethical and/or illegal behavior.

Third, business ethics emphasize the obligations we owe not only to our friends and family, but also the obligations we owe to people with whom we have only an “arms-length” business relationship, and even obligations owed to total strangers. Indeed, sometimes business ethics go further still, and teach that we have obligations to intangible legal entities like corporations. This aspect of business ethics can raise some practical difficulties. It is relatively easy and natural for a person to remember the interests of friends and family whom she likes, and with whom she interacts on a daily basis.

However, it is often more difficult for us to stay aware of, and respect, duties owed to people whom we don’t know well or even may have never met — much less duties owed to intangible legal entities. Business ethics help us find our way through this minefield.

Finally, a fourth distinguishing characteristic of business ethics is that ethical problems in this context tend to involve unique concepts and rules specific to the business world. Many of these concepts and rules are based on or draw upon, legal rules that apply primarily to business institutions and business dealings. Business ethics and the law are deeply intertwined. 
 

There are benefits to having one big dream and thinking day and night about how to make it come true, but there are also several significant risks. During the Dreamer stage, you are too young to limit yourself to one dream that may or may not work. In your first 18 years, I encourage you to develop several dreams for your future.

When you are in the Explorer stage, though, you might come up with a completely new dream! Life is dynamic and ever-changing, and you might learn or experience something that changes your entire worldview. However, the work you’ll need to do as an Explorer will force you to think long and hard about what it takes to realize a particular dream. What are the specific steps? Who can help you along the way? Which challenges will you face?

All these elements are part of the dream-creation process. Even if you ditch all or some of your dreams as you grow older, the work you invest in thinking about your original dreams will come in handy: you’ll already have a proven process. And who knows? Maybe you’ll get a chance to live out your early dreams at a later stage in life when you have the means, time, or experience that you lacked when you were younger!

Your dreams don’t have to be completely different from each other. If you love horses above everything else, one of your dreams could be riding competitively; another might be learning how to become a breeder; and yet another could be learning how to use horses for therapeutic reasons, such as working with children who have emotional issues. The love of horses unites all these dreams, even though each one would take you on a different path.

You will often have different visions for your future. Imagine wanting to pursue these distinct dreams:

•          Becoming a science fiction author

•          Becoming a professional surfer

•          Becoming a trader on Wall Street

These are vastly different dreams. Each one would take you on a different path, and each one would take years to pursue. If you want to become a writer, you could go to college and get a degree in literature, philosophy, or history while you continue writing and practicing your trade. You could instead skip college and take a creative writing class. Or you could just start writing with no formal training. Either way, it will take time—even years—before you can see whether your dream of becoming a writer will work out for you. The path to publishing is a treacherous road that requires a unique set of skills, from finding an agent to marketing your books, and you’ll learn them the hard way, with massive effort at each step.

If you want to become a pro surfer, you’ll have to compete with the most talented surfers in the world, just as any elite athlete does. Assuming you’re a talented surfer to begin with, the road to becoming a pro is a tremendously difficult endeavor that requires intense training, focus, and dedication. It will take years to see whether this plan pans out. 

You might ask yourself why you can’t pursue both dreams at the same time by surfing every morning and writing in the evenings. I wish you could, but things don’t usually work that way.

A good example of the need to focus on one dream at a time can be found in the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. In his twenties, right after college, he started a small jazz club in Tokyo. His friends and family predicted that he would fail miserably since he had no business experience, but he took out a sizable loan, opened the jazz club, and ran it successfully. This was his first dream, and he stayed with it for ten years, until he was thirty. Then he paused and took stock of his path up to that moment in time. His other dream was to become a novelist, and he realized that if he wanted to take a serious stab at it, this was the time to do it. He convinced his wife to sell the jazz club and pay back the loan so he could dedicate himself to writing.

Quite surprisingly for someone as young as he was, Murakami realized that he needed to give himself full permission to pursue his dream. He did not try to run the jazz club at night and write in the morning. A halfhearted effort simply would not do; he’d have to give it all he had. Murakami pursued two dreams in his Explorer stage, and he struck gold the second time. He went for it and immersed himself in trying to make it work. Only after you have done the same will you know whether you’ve gone far enough.

How many dreams should you cultivate for your future as a Dreamer? My recommendation is three—no more and no less. When you move on to the next phase, the Explorer, you will have enough time to explore all three.

Why not explore ten or twenty, you might be wondering. You’ll find the following sentence incredibly hard to believe, but even with the generous allowance of 18 years dedicated to exploration, you will run out of time. Exploring takes time, dedication, effort, and the ability to immerse yourself in your dream. Nothing worthwhile is easily achieved, but your unique combination of talents, passion, and personality will take you as far as you are willing to go.

You have nothing to prove as a Dreamer or Explorer—that’s part of the beauty of those stages. When you become a Builder in your mid-thirties, that’s when things get serious; that is when you have 18 years to build whatever you need to build. 

This is an excerpt from Eyal Danon’s new book “The Principle of 18: Getting the Most Out of Every Stage of Your Life.” www.eyaldanon.com

Everywhere we look, we find evidence that our country is becoming less emotionally intelligent. Log onto any social media site or watch the news to witness this degradation.

The attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, as well as the yearlong unrest by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, are prime demonstrations of how far our country has fallen, how people are giving in to their impulses, and how emotions are allowed to run our lives as if we were children. Emotions have overtaken common decency, common sense, and personal values.  

First, let’s define emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence encompasses two key aspects: the emotional intelligence we have over ourselves and others. We must be aware of our own emotional state. We must recognize and categorize the emotions we feel, including the ability to manage our own emotions. This means being accountable for our actions at all times, including emotionally charged actions, and controlling our impulses.  

Our emotional intelligence also applies to how we respond to others and society. Those who are emotionally intelligent in this regard can easily read the emotions of others and pick up on social and emotional cues. This includes the ability to understand what others need when they’re feeling emotional. This ties together with empathy, which is the ability to connect with and understand others’ emotional states and then communicate or demonstrate that understanding. This aspect of emotional intelligence enables us to recognize when emotions are at play, categorize those emotions, and work to alleviate them if they’re negative.  

Yet, today emotions are often left unchecked and allowed to run rampant —online, in our nation’s Capitol, and any number of face-to-face encounters.   

The source of this degradation is hard to pinpoint but is likely a result of several factors — one of the most prominent being the introduction of social media into our daily lives. Additionally, the partisan-oriented news media uses emotion against us to stoke our outrage around politics, race, the pandemic response, or other controversial issues.  

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be emotionally intelligent while still coexisting with social media or the news. Quite the contrary. Despite all of these factors undermining our emotional intelligence, we can help each other better interpret our emotional impulses and express them appropriately. 

So, how do we reverse this degradation of emotional intelligence in our country? How do we become more aware of and in control of our emotions as individuals? Consider these approaches: 

1. Conduct research on a topic before chiming in. Before formulating a response or opinion, it’s prudent to look further into a matter. Without information, we’re more likely to respond in emotional ways that don’t lend themselves to positive or constructive discussion. Make it a habit to research at least three credible opinions, both partisan and, if possible, objective views. Stop relying on third parties to fact-check for you; if an issue makes you emotional, it deserves your attention. 

No matter our stance on any issue, reading the opposing stance can be difficult to swallow or even comprehend. It may be an affront to our personal beliefs and values and can be emotionally challenging. This is where building emotional intelligence comes in. We can recognize the emotion and categorize it. By forcing ourselves to learn how others perceive an issue, we better understand how others’ emotions are triggered. We may not come away agreeing with others’ views, but we’ll know that much more about the diverse viewpoints in the world. 

2. Practice facing fears and emotionally charged situations. In psychology, a strategy called “exposure therapy” involves exposing oneself to fears or dislikes in small increments to become less adverse towards them. Our desire to surround ourselves with ideas that solely feed our confirmation bias — or information that supports our own beliefs — only polarizes us further. Exposing ourselves to opposing opinions may be the best way we have for turning our country around. At any rate, America offers all sorts of opportunities for exposure therapy!   

We need to start talking about this aversion towards understanding and acknowledging that which opposes us, and that begins with employing emotional intelligence. We need to call it out and start working to influence people to question themselves and others, to fact-check and learn, and to recognize that we’re all human beings deserving of respect for our opinions.  

Emotions are always going to play a role in our values and opinions; that’s life. We don’t need to abolish emotions; we all need to become emotionally intelligent. 

3. Avoid an emotional domino effect. In our pursuit to become more emotionally intelligent, we need to hold others accountable — especially those that try to wield emotions against us in support of their agendas. Unfortunately, facts are being replaced by emotion, creating a perpetual tumble of emotional reaction from person to person reading or listening to this “news” or political rhetoric. As part of our emotional intelligence, we must recognize that other people are feeling emotions, and we must distinguish our own emotional reactions from that person’s emotions. 

There is, or should be, room for all our opinions to have a chance to be heard and discussed. By exposing ourselves to new ideas and diversifying our thought pool — as well as studying the evidence on all sides of the issue — we not only solidify our own opinions and values but may even replace them with something new.   

We need to challenge ourselves to take charge of our emotions. We’re becoming intellectually lazy and allowing our emotions to control our thoughts, plunging us further and further into primitive times where we used violence as a means of expressing emotion instead of words. By working to become more emotionally intelligent, we may find that our influence and the influence of others become more positive. Emotional intelligence will allow us to discuss deeper issues facing our country, including poverty and race. As a more emotionally intelligent nation, we may begin to work together with respect, even through disagreement, to resolve the challenges we face as a nation and human race. 

Oxfam’s annual updates on wealth concentration have become more and more concerning. In 2019, it was revealed that the 26 richest billionaires own as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population.

This information is so unbelievable it can only lead to more questions. What will these statistics be like in, say, 2025? How long before one lucky person owns more wealth than the entire bottom half of the world’s population?

Concentration of wealth also means concentration of power, both political and social. The reverse is also true: Poverty means no power, no privileges, no opportunities. The bottom 50 percent of the world’s population, who own only a tiny fraction (one percent) of global wealth, belong to this category.

But the richest people aren’t necessarily bad people, engineering the ever-expanding concentration of wealth with misguided intentions. Wealth concentration is an ongoing process that thrives under the present economic system. Think of wealth like a magnet: The bigger the magnet the greater its pulling force. People with no magnet find it difficult to attract anything to themselves. If they manage to own some tiny magnets, retaining them becomes difficult, as bigger magnets will attract them.

Clearly, we need to reclaim power for the people, but jobs are not the answer — that’s just an old-fashioned idea that’s driving us mad. We’re born as human beings: go-getters, problem-solvers, hunters and gatherers — not job seekers. In the very fiber of our beings, we are entrepreneurs.

My mission in life is to create jobs through entrepreneurism, and I do that by establishing social business funds. Young people come to me with a business idea. In return for funding, they have to give back by creating more jobs. Every day we tell Bangladeshi entrepreneurs to repeat, “I’m not a job seeker. I’m a job creator.”
The unemployed and the impoverished often say, “The financial system isn’t built for me, it’s built for the rich,” so I created a social business hub to alleviate the issue of start-up money. We also connect our business owners to contacts and offer them advice. It’s important not to abandon our investees.

The current education system is geared to producing workers. Instead of the children being taught “know thyself,” they’re being taught “know thy boss.” They worry about things like: “What company am I going to work for? How will I please them? How will I apply to them?” But suppose, instead of a mere certificate, students graduate as entrepreneurs with a business plan, ready to utilize their creative power to get things done?

Social entrepreneurship can solve unemployment. Take five unemployed young people and turn them into employers. Social businesses recycle money; they don’t use it up. Entrepreneurs create the demand, and in the process, they become job creators. This is where we can bring the Golden Rule of compassion into the world of wealth and entrepreneurship: If you want to have opportunities for yourself, create opportunities for others.

Many of the rich are depleting our resources with abandon because they’re too busy making money. We have to change the idea that the economy must be driven by self-interest. Human beings are not robots. The system should give them a choice: Should you run a selfish business or a selfless business? I believe in selfless capitalism — a combination of selfishness and selflessness. The present system restricts people because it only allows selfishness, and that’s why it’s unstable.

Business schools are barely discussing compassion. They should be teaching both schools — of selflessness and selfishness — so a pupil can decide which one to feed more. It seems religion talks about compassion, but business doesn’t want to talk about it. Why? Why do you divide it? Why are you one person in the office and then another person out of it? Why can’t we be the same everywhere?

Wealth inequality could lead to mass extinction, unless we change the system. It’s this generation that will decide this world’s fate; there’s no more time. They must choose the Golden Rule of entrepreneurism — which is rooted in compassion — to ensure that wealth can be filtered downward as well as upward.