Changing your career can take nearly a year so in the meantime focus on boosting your skills by adding a leadership role in a professional group or joining a board, writes career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine. "If a leadership role seems too much of a stretch, teaching or mentoring are interim steps you can take right away," she writes.

Political differences -- like racial and gender differences -- are important to understand as they can affect an organization's culture, according to Johnny C. Taylor, CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management. Taylor says employers should treat politics like an area of diversity and inclusion and bring in experts who can teach leaders how to manage tricky situations properly.

Ashley Merrill was inexperienced with hiring when she started Lunya sleepwear, so she second-guessed every decision. Now, she has a rigorous hiring process, and she stresses the importance of trusting her instincts.

More employers are choosing to offer employees benefits for fertility treatments, adoption, surrogacy, support for new mothers and gender transitioning. These family- and diversity-friendly benefits "lets people bring their full selves to work," says benefits consultant Liz Spath.

One reason for slow wage growth is that workers are switching jobs less frequently, even though workers who take a new job see 4% more pay, according to a recent study. "Job switchers also improve the bargaining position of workers who stay in their jobs, by encouraging employers to pay more to retain them," writes Tom Fairless.

Tech CEO Ben Crudo reevaluated his smartphone dependence in hopes of becoming a better leader and found that it isn't a matter of cutting out his smartphone use but managing when and how he uses it. "There are no apps, no browsers, and all notifications are disabled -- nothing buzzes, pings, or rings unless I allow it to," he writes.

Have you found a balance to using your smartphone? Poll results on Friday.

Dogs reach sexual maturity and old age faster than humans, but the popular idea that one year in a dog's life equates to seven for people has little basis in reality. To gain a clearer understanding of dog ages, a University of California, San Diego-led team looked at DNA methylation as a kind of epigenetic clock in Labrador retrievers, and when they matched it to human data, they were able to create a formula for comparing dog and human ages.