A dentist joins Amy Gallo to ask a behavioral scientist about the fundamentals of sound decision making: when to use a process, how to handle resistance to a call you’ve made, and making peace with a tough call.

The Essentials: Making Sound Decisions

We need actionable, useful feedback to grow and advance professionally. But our guest, an aerospace engineer, hasn’t received any of that for years, and she feels like she’s missing out on information that would clarify her standing at her company and secure her future success there. We bring in Ella Bell, an expert on interpersonal communication and organizational behavior, to offer advice, including suggestions on how to respond to, make sense of, and act on feedback you receive.

The Essentials: Getting the Feedback You Need

What’s a project charter? Why does this one person keep trying to derail our progress? Are our planning meetings effective? How do I actually get people to follow through? Figuring out how to successfully manage a project can make any professional’s head spin. One woman, new to this type of work, shares the challenges she’s already facing, including uncertainty, interpersonal conflict, and lack of responsiveness from the team. And an experienced project manager shares tips for motivating and influencing others, communicating effectively, and solving problems.

The Essentials: Managing Projects

Everyone at work has their own priorities, concerns, and agendas, and knowing what those are allows us to navigate meetings and projects more deliberately and successfully. Organizational psychologist Madeleine Wyatt explains the interrelated skills that enable us to influence others, in conversation with  a transportation planner who’s trying to figure out how to maneuver her way up in an often-exclusionary, male-dominated industry.

The Essentials: Playing Office Politics

Former co-hosts Sarah, Nicole, and Emily reunite with the Amys to talk through the insights and advice that most resonated with them from this season, from how they gained their team’s trust as a first-time manager to how they’re now thinking about retirement. They also share how they’ve been doing since they left the show and HBR.

Season 8 Highlights — and a Host Reunion!

Want to modernize a program or enact a policy that would benefit women in your workplace, but don’t know where to begin? Learn how to build a grassroots initiative, no matter your job title. Two experts in systemic, organizational change explain the many different roles critical to sustaining a movement. They also share tried-and-true ways to keep everyone invested in the cause, aligned, and on track.

How to Push for Policy Changes at Your Company

Tending to a child’s mental health challenge is a critical job that deserves support from employers. Many parents, however, aren’t getting the understanding, flexibility, and paid time off they need. What can we do to make work more manageable for parents struggling to keep their children safe and well while trying to keep up at work? The executive director of a children’s mental health advocacy group shares ideas and advice.

Working While Managing Your Child’s Mental Health

The people we love have a great influence on our professional success. But when’s the last time you and your partner checked in about each other’s priorities and needs? Jennifer Petriglieri, an expert on dual-career couples, advises one woman on how to get out of the relationship traps she and her husband have fallen into as the parents of young children, and offers practical tips for how she can have more productive conversations with her partner to realize her career ambitions.

When Your Partner Isn’t Giving You the Support You Need

Two women who have studied weight bias at work help us understand the ways larger-bodied employees are stigmatized, as well as our role in reducing the stigma and creating a positive body culture.

Respect for Any Body Size

Once you’re ready to retire, you’ll need a plan for how to spend your time. And once your job title is gone, you’ll need to figure out who you are now, not to mention what brings you joy. Finding purpose and a new identity are key to living a healthy, happy post-work life. Women who have very recently retired describe what they’ve been up to (it sounds rewarding!), as well as the unexpected emotions that the transition has brought up. They also reflect on the questions they asked themselves (or wished they had) before leaving their careers behind.

Have You Started Thinking About Retirement?

When managing other people for the first time, what should we expect, and how can we prepare? Three new managers describe their growing pains, reflect on what they find most rewarding, and talk through their latest challenges  — with an assist from Amy B’s managerial wisdom. You’ll come away with a better idea of what becoming a boss means and confident that you can do it too.

The Ups and Downs of Being a First-Time Manager

To cap off our Getting Along series, Amy Gallo shares advice, in front of a live audience, on how to deal with all different types of “difficult” coworkers — from the tormentor to the know-it-all.

Getting Along (Live in Boston)

How do you bring about positive change — or just keep a workplace functional — when the person in charge won’t listen? Amy Gallo recommends tactics to try and phrases to use.

Getting Along with an Insecure, Know-It-All Pessimist

How do you interact with a senior person who should be mentoring you but is instead giving you every reason not to trust them? Amy G recommends tactics to try and phrases to use.

Getting Along with a Biased Tormentor

How do you stay in the loop when someone keeps kicking you out? Amy G recommends tactics to try and phrases to use.

Getting Along with a Political Operator

How do you work with someone who’s encroaching on your job, bad-mouthing you, and refusing to acknowledge there’s any tension or problem? Amy G recommends tactics to try and phrases to use.

Getting Along with a Passive-Aggressive Gossip

Our free-spirited, entrepreneurial co-host is applying advice from all our episodes on side gigs, freelancing, starting a small business — and quitting — to her own life. Emily reflects on her decision to leave her design job at HBR to fully focus on a long-time creative passion, as well as how she's thinking about her career going forward.

Emily’s Taking a Break from Nine-to-Five

How do you address a falling-out with a teammate when they either won’t acknowledge you or just lash out? Amy Gallo brings her conflict management expertise to a coaching session for a woman whose project manager and former work friend went from helpful to hostile. The approaches that come out of the conversation are ones that anyone facing tension in a work relationship can use to find a way forward.

When a Relationship with a Colleague Goes Sour

Let’s be real: You can’t do everything yourself. Delegating to others helps you manage your workload and helps your colleagues who take on the tasks, decisions, and responsibilities to learn and grow. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to do though. A leadership coach shares practices that will ensure the work gets done and will leave you and the person you delegated to feeling good about the experience.

The Essentials: Delegating Effectively

Having a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship with your boss doesn’t require accommodating their every quirk, demand, and weakness. We discuss respectful, constructive ways to meet in the middle, set boundaries, and help them achieve their goals while making your competence known.

Women at Work

Women at Work

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