BetterUp

Brené Brown speaks directly to the transformative power of BetterUp in yesterday’s WSJ Leadership Institute Presents: Leaders podcast — pointing to how 2,500 hours of senior executive coaching helped spark a radical culture shift at Lumen Technologies. She puts the impact in stark terms: when leaders build real capacity for tough conversations, everything changes. As Brown explains, “I think there is an absolute lack of capacity to have difficult conversations.” And that gap is exactly what Lumen chose to confront head-on. Through the BetterUp Center for Daring Leadership — a groundbreaking partnership that brings Brené Brown’s empirically based, courage-building curriculum exclusively to BetterUp — Brown worked with Lumen to scale this shift across the company’s top 200 leaders. In just a few months, leaders generated more than 2,500 hours of senior executive coaching. They said “hell yes” to unlimited support, and the data made the growth priorities unmistakable: 🔸 Communication 🔸 Conflict and tough conversations 🔸 Productive, actionable feedback The leaders thriving today aren’t the ones with the answers — they’re the ones willing to learn, to ask better questions, and to stay grounded amid uncertainty. That’s why BetterUp exists: to help leaders build the self-awareness, resilience, and conversational courage required to lead through complexity. The work is hard, and the outcomes are real. If you’re exploring how to strengthen leadership capacity across your organization — not in theory, but in practice — this conversation is worth your time. 🎧 WSJ Leadership Institute Presents: Leaders Episode: How Brené Brown and Lumen CEO Kate Johnson Rebuilt a Telecom Company https://lnkd.in/gUaSvVbW

🚨 The headlines are in: Creativity is becoming the rarest of skills. At BetterUp Labs we partnered with the Stanford Social Media Lab to uncover a troubling trend: original thinking is declining across generations, just as we’re entering an era where human creativity must do the heavy lifting. 📌 Just last week at the Axios Web Summit, execs at Hootsuite and Bluesky Social said that while AI can amplify human creativity, it cannot replace it. “Authentic human expression . . . is what makes platforms successful,” they argued. 🔸 That insight aligns with and heightens the urgency of our findings: 🔸 Across children and adults, Creativity Quotient (CQ), measuring originality, flexibility, and elaboration, is dropping significantly. 🔸 Too many organizations are treating creativity as a nice-to-have instead of the critical advantage it’s becoming. Many industries are turning to AI for efficiency, but when they do without rethinking how people can contribute what machines can’t, innovation stalls. Here are the critical take-aways: 🔸Creativity is far more than art, it’s divergent thinking, problem-solving, connecting the unconnected. And that kind of thinking is in decline.  🔸AI, used without care, risks reducing the variety of ideas and flattening the mental landscape of teams. 🔸The future reward won’t go to the most efficient alone, it will go to the most creatively equipped. ✅ What to do now: 1. Encourage “productive struggle” in your teams. Create space for uncertainty, exploration, and curiosity. 2. Shift from task-based learning to open-ended challenge: ask “What if?” not just “How soon can we finish?” 3. Use AI as an amplifier of human creativity, not a replacement. Blend machine speed with human insight. 4. Re-introduce play, imagination and cross-disciplinary mixing: those are the soil from which original ideas grow. 👉 If you’re ready to stop watching creativity erode and start nurturing it, our new blog is for you. Read it here: https://hubs.ly/Q03VHMW00

Damian Vaughn, PhD Vaughn, BetterUp's Chief Programs Officer, just wrote a new article for EdSurge that cuts right to the heart of the teacher shortage crisis. K-12 teachers have the highest burnout rate in America. Across all industries. The recruitment game won't fix this, Vaughn argues. Districts chase metrics—applicants, pipelines, signing bonuses—while retention crumbles. Teachers leave because they're stuck on their back foot instead of in their zone. The key isn't more hires. It's finding flow. Flow is that sweet spot where challenge meets skill. When teachers find it, something contagious happens; their focus spreads. Research shows a teacher's mood shapes the entire classroom climate. Just as stress spreads, so does curiosity. Districts that invest in coaching see the difference: teachers learn to redesign workflows, protect energy, and sustain engagement. New hires get onboarding that builds flow from day one, and burnout gets spotted early. The result is better retention, stronger recruiting, and classrooms that hum. Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/gNQVudzc

🚀 As the global conversation around AI accelerates, one headline is ringing clear: organizations are being tested not just on what AI can do, but how they integrate it into work in ways that keep people at the center. Take this week’s Financial Times coverage of how many employers are still struggling with inconsistent, unclear rules around AI use, in its article entitled: Celebrated or penalized? Employers confuse staff over AI rules This isn’t just a tech challenge, it’s really a leadership imperative. Adam Grant, Lila Ibrahim, and Alexi Robichaux weighed in on these topics at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, where they explored how leaders must reframe their role in an AI-driven world: - Leaders are shifting from subject-matter experts to orchestrators of connection and purpose. - AI is no longer simply an augmentation tool — it’s a foundation for designing work and then deciding where humans add most value. - The ethical and relational layers of AI are non-negotiable: technology that doesn’t center people will struggle to scale in trust. - And of course, while machines automate “no-joy work,” human brilliance still shows up in innovation, empathy, and crisis leadership. If you’re navigating the messy, accelerating intersection of AI + people, this blog recap is for you. 👉 Read it here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Tm6wz0

Congratulations to Hilton, once again named the No. 1 World’s Best Workplace by Fortune and Great Place To Work . It’s not just another award. It’s really proof of a powerful truth: when you invest in people, performance follows. Hilton’s latest research shows that nearly 80% of consumers believe companies that take great care of employees deliver better products and services. The message is clear: thriving team members create loyal guests. When your people flourish, so does your business. We’re proud that Hilton’s people leaders are building that thriving culture with support from BetterUp, helping every team member grow, lead, and perform at their best. https://lnkd.in/ezhf7CDW

When Michael Phelps' goggles filled with water at the Beijing Olympics, he didn't panic. He'd trained for chaos. His coach had literally sabotaged practice sessions so he'd learn to swim blind. That's the mindset organizations need right now. Business conditions are shifting faster than ever. Markets move. Technology evolves overnight. The job you were hired to do can look completely different six months later. The old playbook — annual training cycles, episodic workshops, hoping people figure it out — can't keep up. Our new Human + AI Coaching for All release solves for what matters most: building a workforce that adapts in real time. Not just executives. Everyone. Here's what makes it different: → Personalized coaching that meets people in the flow of work → AI + human coaching that work together, not separately → Daily practice and feedback, not one-and-done learning → Organizational context built into every interaction The results? 36% boost in performance. 26% increase in adaptability. $29M ROI per 1,000 employees. Competitive advantage doesn't come from strategy alone. It comes from people who can execute any strategy with precision and adapt when conditions change. Allison Yost, Ph.D. breaks down how we're making deep transformation possible at scale. Read the full story ↓ https://hubs.ly/Q03PYzn70

Transformation fails when it only reaches the top 5% of your org. True performance doesn’t come from a few elite programs for HiPos. It comes from a workforce that evolves together. BetterUp delivers precision development for everyone — from the frontline to the C-suite. Powered by AI. Delivered in the flow of work. And designed for sustainable behavior change. Real change doesn’t happen in workshops; it happens every day. 🧠 Companies using BetterUp see up to a 26% increase in promotion rates among highly engaged users. That’s upward mobility at scale. https://hubs.ly/Q03MNVQl0 

In this short clip, BetterUp’s Chief AI Scientist, Andrew Reece, PhD, gets to the heart of what AI can’t do: replace the deep human focus, adaptability, and insight required to solve real problems.

We’re incredibly proud to see our co-founder and CEO, Alexi Robichaux , named to the 2025 H2O AI 100 — recognizing the leaders turning AI from promise into real, measurable progress. At BetterUp, we believe AI should make work more human, not less. Alexi’s vision for Human + AI Coaching for All embodies that belief, combining AI intelligence with human insight to help people adapt faster, perform better, and thrive through change. Congratulations to Alexi and all the innovators on this year’s list who are doing the hard work to make AI trustworthy, resilient, and useful at scale. And thank you to H2O.ai for recognizing those shaping the future of enterprise and AI for good. 🔗 See the full list → https://lnkd.in/dPcv7_YF #H2OAI100 #AILeaders #AIInnovation #ResponsibleAI #AgenticAI