Oh, my friends, it’s the most wonderful time of the year – it’s Shark Week 2014. In case you don’t already know, Shark Week is a magical seven-day spectacle each year when the Discovery Channel shows nothing but shark-themed programming – everything from a program delving into the mystery of the submarine shark, a legendary 30-foot great white that terrorized the South African coast in the 1970s (so much for overcoming my irrational fear of the ocean) to an episode of “Sharks After Dark” where the LA Beast attempted to eat a shark cactus. Yes, that does sound terrible. No, I didn’t make it up. But I digress.

In the spirit of this seven-day salute to Selachimorpha (science!), we thought we’d take a moment to talk about a different species of shark – the type you find in the corner office. Everyone has worked with (or, worse, for) a shark – a ruthless individual set on self-advancement at any cost. In a survey of more than 700 people we conducted last year, more than 81% of people said they had been lied to, stolen from, cheated, or betrayed by a boss or coworker.

How do so cutthroat people make it to the top? Unfortunately, the corporate structure at most large organizations are tailored to reward the type of personality characteristics typical of sharks – charisma, self-absorption, ruthless ambition, self-deception, and a driving need for external validation. To learn more about how to identify and protect yourself from a shark (the kind at work – you’re on your own when it comes to the other kind), check out our free ebooks, “Trust and Betrayal” and “6 Ways to Keep Your Managers Honest”.

Are you being taken in by innovation myths? Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic debunks three falsehoods about being innovative within an organization in a recent Fast Company article.

1. The Personality Cult: While it’s true that some individuals are more innovative than others, it’s the side-kick and/or creative team that turn the vision into a concrete product. The qualities that make an individual innovative are more likely related to certain personality traits like “a hungry mind, openness to new experiences, and problems with authority,” says Chamorro-Premuzic. But we should remember that “innovation is always the product of teams, rather than the heroic effort of isolated individuals,” he continues.

2. The Glorification of Risk: “It is popular opinion that risk and innovation go hand in hand…The fact is that innovation requires a very small dose of risk,” says Chamorro-Premuzic. “Of course,” he continues, “there are risks associated with any innovation–as Jeff Bezos noted, if you know it’s going to work, then it’s not an experiment. But that’s precisely why a cautionary approach to innovation is more likely to pay off.”

3. The Confidence Delusion: “Most people overestimate how creative they really are,” says Chamorro-Premuzic. “This positive self-delusion creates three major problems,” he continues. First, self-deluded individuals are less likely to continually better themselves since they think they’re already creative enough. Second, it is easy to mistake confidence for competence. Third, when the confidence outshines competence, individuals are likely to be seen as entitled and narcissistic by their peers – not a healthy way to inspire creativity.

“Crucially, innovation requires a series of coordinated management efforts and effective leadership. People will always differ in their creative potential, but with the right culture in place every employee will feel compelled to unleash their creative potential,” concludes Chamorro-Premuzic.

Or, more accurately, is your boss killing you? A study by Everest College showed that more than 80% of Americans are stressed about their jobs, and 75% of people said the most stressful aspect of their job is their immediate boss.

Although most people accept bad bosses as an inevitable part of work, the chronic stress they cause costs companies 105 million lost working days and $300 billion annually. Why do bad bosses stress their employees out so badly, what is the human cost of that stress, and what can we do about it?

Find out in our ebook Stress is Killing You.

As the World Cup kicks off the summer, it also brings out patriotism across the globe. After all, victory at the international level defines the competitiveness of a national sports team. The same rule applies to organizations. In an increasingly globalized business environment, a company’s capacity for global expansion and its performance in local markets define its competitive advantage.

Speaking of entrance into a foreign country, cultural immersion is always the top concern. As an international professional who has spent five years in the U.S., I learned from personal experience what it takes to overcome the cultural barriers.

Growing up in the most globalized city in China where English was taught at the earliest age across the nation, I did not anticipate much challenge living abroad. After all, if I had been a big fan of McDonald’s growing up, had been up-to-date with American TV shows, songs and movies, and most importantly, had proved my ‘language skills’ through the toughest language test in my world – TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), what obstacles should I expect?

With that naïve mindset, my first reality shock occurred right after boarding my first international flight, when I could barely understand the safety instructions in English and realized I would be doomed in case of emergency. The anxiety continued after I landed, when I was starved at the airport because I could hardly make myself understood or understand the cashier at McDonald’s (which is also why I still feel proud now every time I order at McDonald’s). To date, I can still remember my first summer class, where I had problem following any group discussions. What about my impeccable TOEFL score? If only my classmates talked like the recorded conversations in TOEFL tests. Besides language barriers, it turned out that the TV shows, songs, and movies imported into China were tailored to the interests of the local audience, whereas there were tons of American culture icons I was unaware of. Life in the U.S. was nothing like I expected.

Now that I have overcome the initial frustrations and have managed to live a life and start a career abroad, the number one lesson I learned is that when it comes to cultural immersion, it is wiser to learn than unlearn. Coming into a new culture with pre-existing biases always costs additional time and efforts because we need to un-bias the false impressions before getting to know the truth. To me, there are still a lot of things I do not know about American culture. But once I learned not to view my overseas experience through colored lenses, I started to appreciate the novelties and challenges I encountered each and every day.

Likewise, the key to an organization’s sustainable global presence is true cultural awareness through humble learning. Having a history of partnership with global distributors in over 56 countries, Hogan demonstrates true cultural awareness by adopting a learner’s mindset. Not only do we build trusting relationships with local distributors who are familiar with our assessment tools and experienced with the local business environment, but also we invite translators who are fluent in English and the target language, have a psychological background (e.g., experience working with personality characteristics and measurement), and are well acquainted with both American culture and the target culture to translate our assessments and reports based on both literal meanings and cultural adaptations. Most importantly, Hogan develops global and local norms and regularly updates those based on industry standards to ensure accurate interpretation of our assessment results in each cultural context. Through these evidence-based solutions, we are able to learn the cultural nuances and be mindful of those differences when working with international or multi-national clients.

With the emergence of a borderless economic world, organizations face the new challenge of going global or going home. Those that are willing to invest in continuous learning will be better prepared to truly understand the local market and win the global competition.

Well it’s officially summer – purveyor of fun in the sun, snow cones, and vacation. Oh, and the summer workday slump. Have you found yourself perusing more pop news sites, taking more Buzzfeed quizzes, and streaming the World Cup behind your Excel spreadsheets?

Turns out, you’re not the only one. In his Management Today blog, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic sites some pretty interesting statistics about online leisure activity and work: “A recent survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research asked people a very simple question: ‘What are you not doing when you are online?’ The most common answer, by far, was ‘working’ – 35%, compared with 15% for ‘watching TV’, 12% for ‘sleeping’, and 4% for ‘relaxing and thinking’.”

“If this is true,” he continues, regarding the 35% who would be working, “there are two potential implications. The first is that people are a lot less productive than they could be…The second – alternative – explanation is that most employees are spending more time at work than needed.”

So we get to choose between the possibilities that work suffers – imagine the benefits of a 35% increase in productivity – or leisure time suffers.

“Indeed, if online leisure time does not harm productivity, then why pay people to spend that time at work?” says Chamorro-Premuzic.

Unfortunately, there may be a more serious issue underlying our online leisure habits. “Online leisure time makes work – or at least being at work – less boring. So, ironically, the very activity that serves as a coping mechanism for the underlying boringness of work keeps them at the job for longer than needed,” says Chamorro-Premuzic.

So maybe we should start asking ourselves, is our newly acquired Facebook addiction a result of a summer slump or a bored cry for help?

“A great man once said, everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.” –Frank Underwood, House of Cards, #1.9

In modern socioanalytic theory, we like to focus on how we depart from Freud in our thinking. To Freud, everything was motivated by sex. To us, everything is motivated by status and power. Although we have to agree to disagree with the ghost of Freud on that one, lately I’ve been thinking he was onto something.

We face the constant over-sexualization of women in every aspect of modern life, from the media’s obsession with women’s appearances, to sexism in the workplace, to blatant rape culture. The vortex of attention on women’s appearances, bodies, and sexuality is so consuming and so seductive that even women talk about other women like they’re animals. Can we stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s hair? Seriously.

The oversexualization of women is rampant, and it’s hard to believe it’s not linked to women’s anemic presence at the executive levels.

Oh, Freud, late have I loved you.

You were right, Freud, it is all about sex, because sex is a proxy.
An excuse.
A distraction.
A Trojan horse.

Sex is a proxy for power. If we denigrate women sexually in the workplace, we aim to take away their power. It’s a diversion for the real issue: the crisis of power being in the hands of women.

Fascinatingly, when we look at women’s leadership derailers against men’s, we see two major trends. Women are much more dutiful, which means they defer to authority more and assert their opinions less. Women are also much less mischievous, the Machiavellian tendency, which means they don’t go pushing their own agendas. Women are conditioned to relinquish power, instead of taking it when deserved. Our constant belittling, sexualizing, and demeaning goes so far as to impact women’s personalities on a mass scale.

So think before you talk about one of your female colleagues, before you criticize someone’s appearance in front of your daughter (or, more importantly, your son), and before you click on an article about celebrity bikini bodies and give Us Weekly some ad revenue.