Music can add more energy and engagement to your presentations, even if you only use it to pump yourself up before stepping on the stage, writes Nick Morgan, who also suggests using music for your entrance and finding ways to add music to portions of your speech to add drama and excitement. "The neuroscience tells us that music cuts through our conscious awareness and activates emotional centers of the brain rapidly and powerfully," Morgan writes.

Managers may be inadvertently distracting employees and hurting their productivity with constant requests for updates or check-ins that don't account for workers' schedules. Tips to address this problem include ensuring meetings have an agenda and asking employees to share their calendars.

Volunteer work as a team activity can prevent burnout since it encourages time away from the typical workday, HR executive Deb LaMere writes. Whether leaders organize a companywide day of service or provide paid time off for volunteering, these acts demonstrate the company's values, create in-person connections and broaden employee skills, LaMere notes.

CEOs worldwide are expecting a possible recession to be short-lived and are focusing on how to withstand the downturn without sweeping job cuts, according to a survey by The Conference Board. US CEOs are focusing on pricing and on high-growth business and are cutting discretionary spending, while European CEOs are postponing capital investment.

The recently passed SECURE 2.0 legislation includes several provisions meant to bolster financial well-being and retirement preparedness. Under the legislation, defined-contribution plans will be able to include emergency savings accounts with an automatic enrollment feature.

The saga between US men's national soccer team manager Gregg Berhalter, team midfielder Gio Reyna and his parents, who tried to intervene by speaking with team officials when their son wasn't playing much in the World Cup, is an all-too-familiar refrain in youth sports -- especially soccer. Overbearing parents have become "commonplace" and "problematic," says John Hackworth, who is the director of coaching with the Major League Soccer expansion team St. Louis City SC, and, worst of all, their actions are making things harder for their kids and aren't helping them develop as players or people. Jason Sacks, who leads the Positive Coaching Alliance, likens these parents to a snowplow -- i.e., they clear all obstacles from their children's path. "It's the old saying, 'Prepare the child for the path; don't prepare the path for the child,'" Sacks says. 

In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, SmartBrief will not publish Monday, Jan. 16.