Communication

“What brings a leader down is their reluctance to communicate,” says UVA Darden Professor June West. “Research shows that in the absence of communication, employees create it, and the grapevine becomes very active.”

Iceberg lettuce is not your everyday villain, but this week the leafy green emerged as the primary suspect in an explosive case. It also put fast-food chain Taco Bell on the front lines of responding to one of the biggest food-safety crises in the chain’s history.

A new two-part case from UVA Darden Professor Allison Elias explores track and field Olympic champion Allyson Felix’s contract negotiations with Nike — and the lessons that apply in the world of work.

Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and other streaming giants are pouring billions into high-profile series. But is a handful of megahits really enough to attract new subscribers while keeping existing audiences engaged? The answer, it turns out, is more complicated than the industry tends to assume.

Ideas don’t matter if leaders can’t communicate them effectively. In the latest episode of Office Hours, Professors June West and Steve Soltis explain why leadership communication isn’t a “soft skill,” but a core driver of strategy and performance.

Listening is one of the most powerful tools a negotiator can bring to the table, says UVA Darden Assistant Professor Allison Elias. It’s also a skill anyone can learn with the help of her new three-phase listening framework.

We all want to make better decisions, but what does it actually mean to think well? A new technical note co-authored by UVA Darden professor Lillien Ellis says effective thinking requires balancing analysis, imagination and judgment, and provides a practical framework for doing just that.

Newsrooms are embracing AI for everything from fact-finding to writing first drafts. But research from UVA Darden professor Luca Cian and colleagues suggests caution: the more openly outlets disclose AI, the less readers trust them.

What if television studios could tell whether a TV show would hold its audience before it ever aired — just by analyzing the script? New research from Professor Anthony Palomba suggests that could be the case. Dialogue isn’t just entertainment; it’s data.

The secret to driving innovation might not be creating more novelty — but knowing when to strategically scale back. Research from UVA Darden’s Lillien M. Ellis that examines the development of “Avatar,” the biggest box office success in film history, shows that reducing novelty in some areas leads to greater creative and commercial success.