From Hot Job Skills To Fighting Office Bias: This Week’s Top Leadership Stories

This week’s top stories may help you curb those bad work habits, rethink just how marketable your leadership skills might be, and deal tactfully with unintended slights in your workplace.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of March 5:

1. Five Common Habits That Kill Your Career

Most of us think our work habits–like our talents and abilities in general–are above average, but that’s just not possible. According to a recent survey of managers, there are five leading behaviors that prevent people from working well on teams and are difficult to change. This week we learned what they are.

2. Why Your Leadership Skills Won’t Get You Hired (But These Four Other Things Might)

One business school professor recently asked MBA students to rank their most marketable skills, then asked recruiters to rank the traits they look for most. The grads put leadership skills at the top of their lists, while the recruiters shoved it to the bottom. Here’s why.

3. How To Shut Down “Microaggressions” At Work

Your colleagues may have the most unimpeachable intentions yet still leave you feeling slighted. This week we explored a few tactics for navigating the potential minefield of “microaggressions” in the workplace.

4. How I Finally Quit My Job At The Gap To Freelance Full-Time

Marcos Chin earned an impressive award when he graduated from art school, then spent more than two and a half years cobbling together freelance work before quitting his retail job to become an illustrator full time. This week he recounted what he went through before finally getting a call from Rolling Stone.

5. This Is The Mind-Set You’ll Need In Order To Thrive In The Future Of Work

Decades ago, it was believed that we all pretty much reached a certain level of cognitive maturity when we reached adulthood, and that was that. But research on brain plasticity suggests it isn’t that simple, and as automation reshapes the workforce, we may need to develop what two psychologists call “self-transforming minds” in order to stay competitive. Here’s what that means and how to get there.