If you are a newly promoted manager who feels the pressure to have all the answers expected of you from day one, don’t despair. You are not alone. A new role comes with a whole new set of expectations. There is an implicit – and perhaps explicit – social contract with your team to show the way, prove you care, and ensure stability and clarity. Almost all organizations put a premium on competence and expertise. As you are trying to orient yourself to your new role and responsibilities, you might be feeling the pressure to mask those awkward (even if unfounded) feelings of incompetence or inadequacy; to pretend you have the answers, even when you don’t. (Harvard Business Review)

You’ve heard the standard advice about getting through a bad day – breathe deeply, meditate, be mindful. But some days just suck the life out of you, and no amount of cleansing breaths are going to change that. Plus, how can you meditate when you’re ready to run out the door screaming? "It’s a symptom of the happy work culture that we all strive to work in – we feel that on the flip side of that is that any negative emotions are instantly something that needs to go away."

John Davis was a newly minted MBA when he wandered by the Nationwide booth at a job fair, attracted by the banner that said "information technology." After a few minutes of chatting with the human resources executive who greeted him, he spoke with a chief technology officer at the booth, who scheduled him for a formal interview that afternoon. The next day, he received an offer letter for a full-time job at the Columbus-based insurance company. (Fortune)

When Grinnell College senior Ham Serunjogi began his first internship at an environmental technology accelerator in 2013, he was shocked by how much was expected of him in his first days on the job, and how little school had prepared him for entering the workforce. "In my first meeting with the executive director, he was asking me about what classes I had taken, and he asked if I had taken a database class in college, and I did, and he said, 'Okay, good, then you can oversee this project of designing and implementing a new communication database for us," he says. "That was the first time I was ever brought into a project I had little or no knowledge about, and was expected to deliver results." (Fast Company)

Luxury group LVMH and French business school HEC Paris have announced plans to create a teaching and research program dedicated to luxury brand management. The tie-up highlights the growing need for trained talent in luxury, a sector where there is a historical tension between creatives and executives. For LVMH, owner of brands Louis Vuitton, Berluti and Christian Dior, the deal is an opportunity to engage directly with an international pool of potential recruit. (BusinessBecause)

Some people enter a room of strangers and glide along from one lively conversation to another, uncovering golden new business contacts. How do they do it? These people know how to read a room – a capacity that can be partly inborn, but also learned. From the barrage of sights, sounds and behavioral details, they extract clues about which people have the most to offer and which to avoid. (The Wall Street Journal)

Top executives from companies including Facebook Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. on Wednesday evening said much work remains for women to be equal to men in American corporations. Sheryl Sandberg, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent female executives, talked at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal about the deep-seated biases held by men and women that can keep female executives from reaching the same levels as male counterparts. (The Wall Street Journal)

One of our coaching clients, a VP at a consumer products company, was abruptly silenced when she tried to make a point at a recent executive committee meeting. The problem? She was passionate – and it didn’t go over well. Sales at the organization had plummeted, and the group was discussing the efficacy of its newest product. Our executive, Claudia, was convinced that the sales team needed to be examined instead. (Harvard Business Review)

German prosecutors looking into possible criminal fraud in the Volkswagen emissions scandal backtracked from earlier statements and said on Thursday that there was no formal investigation of Martin Winterkorn, who was chief executive of the automaker until his resignation a week ago. The statement on Thursday by state prosecutors in Braunschweig, Germany, a city close to Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, contradicted a news release the prosecutors issued on Monday, when they indicated that Mr. Winterkorn was a focus of the investigation. The prosecutors said they "regretted" the impression conveyed by the earlier statement.

The eight-hour workday hasn't changed much since Henry Ford first experimented with it for factory workers. Now, Americans work slightly longer – an average 8.7 hours – though more time goes into email, meetings, and Facebook than whatever our official job duties actually are. Is it time to rethink how many hours we spend at the office? In Sweden, the six-hour workday is becoming common. (Fast Company)

The founding dean of Florida A&M University's business school has died. Sybil Mobley passed away Tuesday at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. She was 89 years old. Sybil C. Mobley started at Florida A&M in the early 60's, at that time the university did not have a business school. She created FAMU's School of Business and Industry in 1974 and the program has become one of FAMU's biggest and most acclaimed schools. (WFSU)

Traditional business school programs are experiencing the strongest level of interest from U.S. applicants since 2009, a new report shows. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. business schools said applications to full-time, two year MBA programs from Americans increased over last year, as reported in a survey of hundreds of programs conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council, the body that administers the main business school entrance exam. (Bloomberg)

If you wanted to learn about making currency, your best stop might well be the U.S. Mint. If you wanted to learn about taffy trees, lollipop bushes, and Oompa-Loompas, you’d go to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. And if you wanted to learn about the business school case method, you’d look to Harvard Business School, where it all started. But while you could take a tour of the Mint, and read Roald Dahl’s book, HBS is a little trickier: to get in, you generally have to have a GMAT score north of 700 and a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend. (Poets & Quants)

The National Black MBA Association (NMBAA) wrapped up their 37th annual conference last week in Orlando, Florida. MBAs from across the country attended the event to network, attend professional development sessions, sharpen their entrepreneurial skills, and apply their academic excellence to their career. More than 9,000 attendees were expected at this year’s event. (Urban Unity Post)

A team of students from J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University have recently been named winners of the National Black MBA Association Case Competition. The National Black MBA Association, Inc. (NBMBAA) was established in 1970, and is committed to the development of partnerships to foster economic and intellectual growth within the black community. With more than 40 chapters, 9,000 members and 450 corporate partners across the United States, the NBMBAA emphasizes growth through its five channels of engagement: education, entrepreneurship, lifestyle, career and leadership. The 2015 case competition took place in Orlando, Florida on September 25.

Over 3,000 people came together for Pepsi MBA Live: The Florida Salute Friday, September 25, 2015 at the Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida. Presented by Pepsi and the National Black MBA Association, the annual closing Friday night concert and MBA Live after party featured performances from multi-platinum recording artist T-Pain, super producer and infamous ‘hype man’ DJ Khaled, platinum recording artist, producer and local favorite DJ Nasty of Orlando’s Power 95 FM and DJ Tamera James. The night concluded with a surprise performance from award-winning rapper Uncle Luke. Now, that’s how you salute Florida! (Rhyme Junkie)

To block ads or not to block ads on your mobile device? That’s the philosophical dilemma facing consumers since Apple added support for ad blockers to its iPhone operating system a couple of weeks ago. To help answer the question, we decided to put multiple ad blockers to the test. Over the course of four days, we used several ad-blocking apps on our iPhones and measured how much the programs cut down on web page data sizes and improved loading times, and also how much they increased the smartphone’s battery life. (The New York Times)

When the Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o became Lancôme’s first black spokesperson last year, fashion magazines and blogs welcomed the news as a sign that the legendary makeup brand is embracing women of color – especially those who have traditionally had trouble finding the right shades in drugstore aisles and department stores. On billboards and in magazine ads, the 32-year-old Academy Award winner wore the brand’s newest foundations, in hues that were deeper and darker than anything Lancôme had previously released. (Fast Company)

There are startups that are worth $1 billion, and then there are those that have raised $1 billion. We at Fortune have written a lot about unicorns, which we define as privately-held startups that are valued at $1 billion or more by their investors. So much, in fact, that we did a cover story about them and Hasbro sent a toy unicorn for my amusement (disclaimer: "Ella" was intercepted by my 5 year-old daughter, and now lives on her bed). But there also is a smaller, more exclusive group of billion-dollar companies within the unicorn herd: The companies that have actually raised $1 billion or more in equity funding. (Fortune)

My therapist and I are trying to figure out what drives me, and it's been a rollercoaster. We've discovered an uneasiness with being idle that contributes to my motor, but it's mostly my inner adrenalin-junkie that keeps pushing me forward. I wish the kind of adrenalin I sought involved jumping out of airplanes and could be contained to a single event, but I crave constant challenges. I want to know what I'm really capable of. And I can't help but consider the greater good – what could be –and I want it. I'm fueling a caffeine addiction because taking a rest feels the same as losing the battle. (Inc.)

You might have already noticed the minor change at the register. Instead of swiping credit cards and debit cards, more retailers are asking consumers to dip them into new card readers that are supposed to be more secure. The technology uses cards with chips embedded in them, and is supposed to cut down dramatically on incidents of thieves stealing card information and making fake copies. (The Washington Post)

The Federal Reserve, which regulates the biggest banks in the United States, is starting to turn its eye to some of the smallest and newest lenders on the scene. Startups are partnering with banks both big and small to originate billions of dollars’ worth of consumer loans. That has caught the Fed's eye. "Right now, this type of business is not that large, but it has potential to be disruptive and could be very large going forward," St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President and CEO James Bullard told Business Insider last week. (Slate)

An otherwise thoughtful survey of over 1,000 individuals and interviews with 50 people by the MetLife Mature Markets Institute identifies no fewer than 10 different variations on the grasshopper: There are "Snoozers," "Oversleepers," "Stewers," "Brewers." And then there are "Preemptive Planners," whose radar screens are populated with future risks. If people fit into these neat buckets, the conventional savings wisdom goes, then the solution is to educate the grasshoppers to start behaving more like ants. (The Atlantic)

It's no secret that spending more than you earn is bad for your budget. But there are some not-so-obvious habits that can lead your finances astray. "The easiest way to becoming a millionaire for most people besides discipline is automation, priorities and goal setting," said Cary Carbonaro, a certified financial planner and managing director at United Capital. (CNN/Money)

If you’ve got smart, talented people on your team, chances are they’ll get calls from recruiters. How should you respond when a competitor is wooing one of your employees? How do you know if your team member is really considering the offer or bluffing? Should you make a counteroffer? And what can you do to prevent your people from jumping ship? (Harvard Business Review)

One company who seems to be taking note of the need for greater tech diversity is Apple. Today, the tech-giant announced the appointment of James A. Bell to its board of directors, making him the fifth African American to be appointed to a Fortune 500 tech board since the launch of CBC’s initiative and the first African American to be appointed to Apple’s board since the launch of Black Enterprise’s Registry of Corporate Directors list. (Black Enterprise)

Following the pathway with Bernard Tyson, Chairman and chief executive officer, Kaiser Permanente.

Do you trust the people on your team? It’s an uncomfortable question to ask, because as good leaders, we work hard to create a supportive environment and earn the trust of the people who report to us. But what if you don’t trust them? Again, as a good leader, you’d have to be able to have an open and honest conversation with that direct report, with plenty of constructive feedback, to try to get that person to change their behavior, right? No, not always. The problem could be more about you. (Harvard Business Review)