Using phrases such as "it's not hard" or "you have no choice" can undermine your message as a leader, writes Bill Murphy Jr. "People almost always have choices," Murphy notes. "You might not like all of the choices they could make, and some choices might objectively be much better or healthier than others, but they do have choices."

Shore up your leadership pipeline by giving new projects and responsibilities to reports who seek more challenges and providing more opportunities for people to work across teams and departments, writes David Kinley, the CEO of Bluenose & Company. "When we show commitment to our most promising, they're far more likely to return the favor," Kinley writes.

Remote teams that communicate with each other in synchronous bursts tend to show a higher collective intelligence, according to research by Anita Williams Woolley, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. Leaders of remote and hybrid organizations should establish "your systems and your communication and your methods of meeting in such a way that it doesn't matter where [people] are located," Woolley says.

Embracing franchising as a mid-career change can be reinvigorating, franchise consultant Mark Schnurman writes. In addition, mid-career professionals tend to have deeper financial resources, skills and other advantages to access as they make the move into franchising, Schnurman notes.

This is a fascinating article about a nuance of a sport more and more people find not-so-fascinating. Major League Baseball Umpire Pat Hoberg called a 'Perfect Game' during Game 2 of the World Series. (Don't worry. You're not the only person who didn't know umps could have a perfect game). More performances like Hoberg's -- and continued talk about robot umpires -- could end up costing a select group of individuals quite a bit of money. Who? Elite MLB catchers.

You see, certain catchers are prized for their ability to "frame" pitches. Framing a pitch is when a catcher -- usually with a quick flick of their glove after the catch -- makes a borderline pitch (or an outright ball) look like a strike in hopes of inducing a strike call from the ump. If umpires are perfect or robotic, the sleight of hand those catchers employ will become worthless.