EDITION 816
4 MAY 2020

As another week of working from home slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. This newsletter is sent to 50,000+ subscribers each Monday at 10am. Please share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can subscribe, learn and engage. I'd be very grateful if you did.

1. How to become a good mentor. Leaders must be good at judging others’ potential and finding and developing more leaders - good at discerning where a person is, knowing where he or she is supposed to go and providing what they will need when they get there. The bottom line in any successful organisation is that no one person can do it alone. If you really want to be an effective leader you must establish an effective team. Here are some guidelines for selecting the right people to mentor and develop. MORE>>

2. How work can change, post-pandemic. The global pandemic has upended working life for vast portions of the professional world, forcing millions of people to quickly adapt to remote work and fresh challenges of all kinds. But despite the dire circumstances, this crisis may help us see how work can change for the better. Employers may embrace the benefits of flexible, remote work. Business leaders may become more adept at quickly shifting strategic gears to adapt to new circumstances. And now that our colleagues have gained a glimpse into our personal lives via video meetings, we may grow more comfortable showing more of our self at work. Editor

3. Britons in lockdown exhibit one of three mental states. The response of Britons in lockdown can be divided into three categories - accepting, suffering or resisting, according to new research by a team at King’s College London. The experts say that 48% of people accept their confinement, 44% suffer because of it, and 9% resist the lockdown. Young people were the most likely be in the resisting group, which was 64% male, while people aged between 55 and 75 were most likely to accept the restrictions. Daily Mail

4. Personal standards slip during lockdown. Suspicion that people are letting some standards slip in lockdown has been confirmed by Unilever: it says worldwide sales of personal grooming products such as shampoo have fallen significantly in the past few weeks, and that it suspects sales of deodorant are going to be lower than normal too. On the other hand, its cleaning products such as Cif and Domestos are flying off the shelves. Financial Times

5. Captain Tom Moore turns 100. The appeal by NHS fundraiser Captain Tom Moore topped £32m as he celebrated his 100th birthday. The war veteran was treated to an RAF fly-past, a letter from the Queen, a recorded message from Boris Johnson, a promotion to honorary colonel, more than 150,000 birthday cards from the public, and a post-mark from the Royal Mail, in honour of his efforts to raise funds for the health service by walking laps of the garden at his Bedfordshire home. The Telegraph

5. The link between COVID-19 and obesity. Government scientists are investigating whether Britain’s high death toll is the result of the obesity crisis after it emerged that the proportion of severely obese patients in intensive care with CV-19 is twice the proportion of servery obese people in the general population. With that in mind, here’s how to work out your BMI. Divide your weight in kilograms by your height (in metres) squared. So if you are 180cm tall and weigh 80kiliograms (like me), your body mass index (BMI) is 80/(1.80²)=24.7. A healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9; between 25 and 29.9 means you are overweight; 30-39.9 is obese; 40+ is morbidly obese. Editor

6. Podcasts to inform and entertain. If you are using podcasts to keep up with the corona-crisis, rather than get away from it, you’re spoiled for choice. The World Service’s Coronavirus Global Update provides an excellent, snappy overview” courtesy of international correspondents. The Coronavirus Newscast is Brexitcast, but coronafied; upbeat and insider-y. LBC’s daily pod, Coronavirus UK, has Nick Ferrari grilling guests. But the pick of the corona pods is The Coronavirus Diaries, weekly from BBC Sounds and 5 Live, in which healthcare workers report from the front line. The Observer

7. Is lower air pollution under lockdown saving lives? Improvements in air quality during coronavirus lockdowns have resulted in 11,000 fewer deaths across Europe over the past month, according to a new study. Researchers at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) say the effects of the significant reduction in air travel and road traffic are comparable to “everyone in Europe stopping smoking for a month”. The Sun

9. All change at number 10.  Boris Johnson, 55, is only the third divorced prime minister since 1721, but the first to be divorced twice. Meanwhile Ms Symonds, 32, is the youngest partner of a PM in 173 years. Whilst they are the first unmarried couple to live in Downing Street, it is not an unusual arrangement elsewhere in the UK with co-habiting unmarried couples now the fastest-growing family type in the UK, according to the ONS. BBC

10. The bottom line. As men are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than women, has anyone considered letting women and children out of lockdown first? We could run the country for a few weeks and see how things go while the men could stay at home baking banana bread and clapping for carers. This was a suggestion received from a female subscriber to this newsletter. Editor