EDITION 787
14 OCTOBER 2019

As another week 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. 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 give difficult feedback. It’s helpful to start a meeting by agreeing on procedural rules, like “start on time and end on time” and “put phones on silent.” But ground rules that focus on behaviour, not just logistics, can help your meeting be even more successful. These rules describe specific actions that team members should take to act effectively. Here are a few to consider: [MORE] 
    
2. Slow walking at 45 ‘a sign of faster ageing’. How fast people walk in their 40s is a sign of how much their brains, as well as their bodies, are ageing, scientists have suggested. Using a simple test of gait speed, researchers were able to measure the ageing process. Not only were slower walkers' bodies ageing more quickly - their faces looked older and they had smaller brains. The international team said the findings were an "amazing surprise". BBC
    
3. What it takes to be a good leader. Asked by Britain Thinks to name the key attributes needed in a good leader, voters put "having integrity" top (47 per cent), followed by "being decisive" (42 per cent) and being a "great communicator" (41 per cent). Interestingly, Remainers favour integrity, while Leavers put a higher price on decisiveness. Our own annual survey on the most-valued leadership characteristics put integrity first, followed by being self-aware, visionary, competent and inspiring. For more details, ask William [see below].
    
4. Liverpool is home to the chattiest mobile phone users. People in Liverpool have longer mobile phone calls than the residents of nine other major British cities, an Ofcom survey has suggested. Liverpudlians spend six minutes and 51 seconds on a single call, on average. That's more than 40% longer than Londoners, who came second in the survey results. People in Bradford had the shortest conversations on average, at three minutes and 15 seconds. BBC
    
5. MPs to sit in Parliament on Saturday. Parliament will meet on 19 October after this week’s crunch EU summit - seen as the last chance for the UK and EU to agree a deal ahead of 31 October deadline. The House of Commons has only sat on four Saturdays since 1939, including on 2 September that year, due to the outbreak of World War Two. The last time there was a Saturday sitting was 3 April 1982, due to the invasion of the Falkland Islands. The Guardian
    
6. The key to a better-performing company? More female executives. That’s according to researchers from Credit Suisse, who found that at firms where more than 20% of top managers were female, share prices rose more over the past decade compared with other companies. The same applied to family-owned businesses, where companies with at least one female executive outperformed those without. The question, however, is this: “Does greater diversity lead to a better business model, or is it the other way around?” The Independent
    
7. The kind of thinking we all need to avoid. Many of us are prone to giving previous results way too much importance when we’re thinking about our next moves. This kind of thinking is called “outcome bias” and it’s been responsible for all sorts of disasters, from Brexit to corporate scandals. Such thinking is especially treacherous in cases of “near misses,” when we avert crisis by the skin of our teeth. In those instances, we’re liable to confuse luck for skill. We can avoid future catastrophes by thinking about the context of our previous actions, and by examining how things could have gone wrong. BBC
    
8. The most important talent? Self-control. Recruiters often prize qualities like curiosity and drive when they talk about the kind of workers they desire. But the ability companies should desire most - the trait that makes all the other coveted qualities that much more powerful - is self-control. Such restraint increases our focus, our ability to learn new things and our resilience. And it’s also a good indicator that an employee will have enough discipline to steer clear of ethical lapses in high-stress situations. Fast Company
    
9. Kipchoge breaks two-hour marathon mark by 20 seconds. Eliud Kipchoge, 34, covered the 26.2 miles (42.2km) in one hour 59 minutes 40 seconds in the Ineos 1:59 Challenge in Vienna, Austria on Saturday. With a leading pace car beaming green lasers on to the road to indicate the required pace of 2:50 per kilometre, Kipchoge never went slower than 2:52 for any. To break the mark, he had to run 100m in 17.08 seconds 422 times in a row at a speed of 21.1kph (13.1 mph). BBC
    
10. The bottom line. Around the world, more than a quarter of a billion children will be obese by 2030, according to a damning new forecast, up from 150 million now. The World Obesity Federation predicts that in 11 years, 12% of UK children aged five to nine will be obese, and 10% of ten- to 19-year olds. Of 196 countries studied, China is expected to have the largest number of obese children, followed by India and the US. The UK is 37th on the list, with a predicted 1.3 million youngsters living with obesity by 2030. Daily Mail