Richard Osibanjo outlines a five-part framework as a strategic roadmap for leaders facing the challenges of 2025. Leaders are urged to transform chaos into clarity by creating values-based visions, prioritizing impactful actions, inspiring bold decisions, investing in employee development and leveraging crises for tangible results.

To improve chances of promotion in 2025, employees should focus on strategies such as not becoming indispensable and volunteering for new responsibilities. "If you're too indispensable doing one specific thing, you're never going to get the opportunity to do anything else, because people are scared to move you off of that," says Amy Garefis, ZipRecruiter's chief people officer.

Your team will appreciate your feedback when it lays out clear expectations for them, praises specific behaviors that lead to success and creates "moments of genuine connection and growth," writes executive leadership coach Lolly Daskal. "Leaders who master this critical skill create measurable improvement in both individual performance and organizational effectiveness," Daskal notes.

Simon & Garfunkel's classic song, "The Sound of Silence," holds relevant leadership lessons, writes Shani Magosky, founder of The LeaderShift Project, who notes how the song's themes of communication and apathy mirror challenges such as leaders not walking the talk and tolerating -- or engaging in -- passive-aggressive behavior. "The most fruitful work you can do is to communicate early and often in ways that engender trust, mutual respect and commitment," Magosky writes.

A focus on sustainability will be among five prominent workplace trends in 2025, according to a Top Employers Institute report. Others include encouraging employees to network more broadly, blending blue collar and white collar job skills (creating "new collar jobs"), the influence of AI on leadership and a more inclusive environment for neurodivergent people, says the report.

A new survey conducted by Talker Research for Bissell revealed that 24% of Americans find maintaining a clean home more challenging than their full-time jobs, with many scrambling to tidy up before having guests. Parents spend the most time on cleaning chores -- up to four hours a week.