Each year, we round up the most popular blog posts of the year and see what lessons we can learn. This year, it's slightly different: There's the top 10 most visited posts overall, but also the top 10 posts clicked on by you -- the readers. Take a look, and check out any posts you missed!

Flexible leaders seek to engage their employees in every aspect of the business, including defining acceptable behaviors, treating them as peers instead of subordinates and occasionally letting them choose how to run meetings, writes Kate Nasser. "As you show them it's good to question traditional ways of working, you lift their morale with the possibilities of change," Nasser writes.

A Gartner survey found 8% of employers are requiring employees to get COVID-19 booster shots, and Gartner research chief Brian Kropp says the percentage likely will go up as the Omicron variant spreads. While some states also are starting to require boosters for public employees and many colleges are following suit, the CDC has not yet said the booster is needed for a person to be fully vaccinated.

Wages may appear to have gone up dramatically, but the increases are far less when adjusted for inflation, write ECA Partners' Atta Tarki and TalentCompass' Eli Castle. "It's difficult to predict if these wage increases will make up for the cost of inflation in 2021 or 2022 as both wages and inflation predictions have been a moving target in the past few months," they write.

It turns out talking to strangers can be a positive experience because people find themselves interested in what a stranger has to say and unafraid to reveal things they might withhold from someone they know. "So the next time you share a space with a stranger for a prolonged period of time, ask them about their lives and try not to resort back to your default weather commentary," writes Conor Feehly.

Some of the parallels between the two decades are striking: ABBA is releasing new music, people are still talking about "Saturday Night Fever" and space travel is once again newsworthy. Does this mean bell bottoms will finally come back in style?

In observance of Christmas and New Year's holidays, SmartBrief will not publish Friday, Dec. 24, through Friday, Dec. 31. Publication will resume Monday, Jan. 3.