I have a fond memory from a Monday a month or so after my mum died. My friend Deb’s son, then three years old, was playing hide and seek with my daughter of the same age. He picked a delightfully impressive hiding place, wedging himself into the bottom of my floor-to-ceiling shelves. He was wearing camouflage print and against the usual domestic detritus on our shelves proved genuinely difficult to find. Quite a feat. I properly laughed, for which I was truly grateful. It had been quite a while since I had laughed like that. Deb was there to deliver…

People are losing the cognitive and social skills they need for a thriving personal and professional life, says organizational psychologist Richard Davis. "We are at risk of losing this essential capability that I call receptivity," says Davis, the managing director of Toronto-based leadership consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates. "It's the ability to have good judgment, to have insight about people, and it's a major concern." Technology, social media and artificial intelligence are to blame, Davis adds: People rely so much on their their phones that they're increasingly unable to make judgment calls on their own. "It's a cognitive ability that…