Shows
The Mode/SwitchThe Truth We Keep Missing about AI at WorkKaren Sergeant joins the pod to discuss misplaced fears about AI. These new tools can be scary, sure. But they can also make leadership miscommunication utterly visible and surprisingly reparable.A tree falls at work…does it make a sound?The question is partially inspired by a personal story. My family’s front yard Norway Maple fell in a winter storm just before New Year’s. Thankfully, nobody was in the yard when it fell, but we definitely heard the whoooooooouuuumph the tree made as it hit the ground.As we chainsawed it into firewood, piled up t...
2026-01-2733 minThe Mode/SwitchStruggling leaders need better-followers?How do you equip workplace "follower-ship" without turning it into an excuse for toxic leadership? That question gets teased our in this episode's intergenerational conversation on the Mode/Switch with Rabbi Elan Babchuck. He helps you see that, if you’re frustrated with your workplace leaders, you may need to strengthen your follower-ship bysharing brave feedback from other employees on the floor, andconcocting new ideas for needed change (in a process Elan calls Plus-Delta) communicating the org vision in a way that other followers can hear and share...
2025-12-1634 minThe Mode/SwitchStop! In the Name of Like!Jenni Fields joins the pod to show why workplace effectiveness depends on likability, not on being liked. (Our Gen Z and Boomer discuss the the up and downsides of riz.) Some years ago, a manager cautioned me about my performance. I took the warning seriously, because I’d made some mistakes that confirmed what I took to be his poor opinion of me. Maybe he gave me the caution because he was genuinely trying to help me out. Maybe I nodded my head because I was trying to be openminded. But it was clear we didn’t like...
2025-12-0232 minThe Mode/SwitchDismantle silos without increasing emailsWhat if the best way to improve workplace communication is to do less of it, at least for a while? Ross Chapman joins the pod to explain why new rhythms of rest can do what more messaging never will.Workplace miscommunication is expensive. According to one Axios report, “Employees lose over a month each year dealing with ineffective internal communication.” Not hard to imagine, right? You know what it’s like trying to find instructions buried in an email—only to realize the instructions actually came through a Teams message. Or a post on Viva Engage. Or, wait, di...
2025-11-1830 minThe Mode/SwitchCan we survive the next extinction at work?Falon Peters joins the pod to discuss how organizations not only wreak change but design it for flourishing. Our crew is open to her ideas but skeptical as well (and, ok, fatigued).Here's a lead-up to the show:When you jerk people around in a workplace—through layoffs and policy revisions, e.g.—you’re not just reshuffling columns on a spreadsheet. You’re intervening on a biota. Think of a biota as a forest or a piece of farmland, sheltering and relying upon a complex network of interdependent elements. What gives vitality to a bio...
2025-11-0425 minThe Mode/SwitchWould you lie to get a good job?A heckuva lot of Gen Z folks are lying on their resumes these days. But then, 47% of Americans, according to a NORC-AP poll, are “not very” or “not at all” sure they secure a good job. In a job market like this one, lying’s not just a Gen Z thing. The Mode/Switchers—Ken the Boomer, David & Craig the Xers, Emily the Xennial, and Madeline the Z—agree on this at least: fibbing’s an intergenerational phenomenon. So, we ask…What is it about work culture today that makes deception feel indispensable? Our guest, Daniell...
2025-10-2132 minThe Mode/SwitchWhat to Do If Your Job Ends TomorrowKaren Swallow Prior helps us Mode/Switchers engage career shock and organizational change with the wisdom of some permanent things. In the 90s, I thought that a career was a decently stable reality. In the 2020s, I no longer think that way. And I bet you don’t either. That vocational skepticism prompted our intergenerational team to ask Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, author of the new book You Have a Calling, to help us cope with the crazy-fast changeableness of career and life today. We Mode/Switchers want to know: What if we’re not work...
2025-10-0732 minThe Mode/SwitchCan't Get Me StartedAngela Gorrell addresses decision fatigue on the pod this week. Listen to this episode to find your way back to gumption. You don’t have time for this podcast. You have 105 other emails just this morning, and you have 44 minutes till your next thing. (Make that 43 minutes.) But maybe you should skim it? Or maybe you should finalize this afternoon’s agenda? (Why did you schedule that meeting for 3:30?) Or maybe you should just delete a bunch of emails?If you have too many tasks to do before mid-afternoon, you’re eventually going to suffer decisi...
2025-09-2334 minThe Mode/SwitchCan a job in this economy be more than just a job?Hey there, and welcome to the Mode/Switch! This week, we make sense of Gallup’s shockingly low job disengagement numbers. It's tempting to ask, "Are people just lazy?" or "Are jobs just pointless?" But to improve worker engagement, we need better questions.Lee C. Camp of the celebrated No Small Endeavor podcast joins our roundtable this week to transform how we investigate pointlessness and purpose on the job.I learned a lot from Lee’s questions about virtue in the workplace. But I also came away convinced that you can’t understand worker disenga...
2025-09-0934 minThe Mode/SwitchIs workplace AI a manageably rising tide?In the surging currents of generative AI, our work-culture team talks with Olajumoke Fatoki. She says the future of work is human. We have much questions.The world’s most powerful companies are pouring oceans of dollars into large language models and their data centers—and the rest of us tread water and hope for toeholds. I feel giddy, and I’m not alone. A recent BCG report notes that worker’s moods about AI swing wildly: “The share of employees who feel positive about GenAI rises from 15% to 55% with strong leadership support.” Whoa. If the boss fee...
2025-08-1932 minThe Mode/SwitchWorkplace Art as Visual GaslightingThis episode discusses art in the intergenerational workplace. Our team found the topic extra interesting, because three of the four of us had just moved into blank new offices. Our big finding was that the art you hang on your walls can cost your workers cognitive wellbeing, especially if it's visually gaslighting.We learned that term from our guest Dr. Vasu Tolia, a former pediatric gastroenterologist now turned visual artist. Her paintings build resilience, strength, and vibrant organizational community. Ken Heffner, our Boomer, Emily Bosscher, our Xennial, LaShone Manuel, our Millennial, and Madeline...
2025-08-1226 minThe Mode/SwitchCan you bust a gut at work? Can you cry?If not, you need more psych safety. Tom Geraghty joins our roundtable to show you how to create workplace conditions where interpersonal risk, bold laughter, and a good cry are all fully possible.Tom Geraghty spent the first four years of his life in silence. That experience of speaking disability led him to his now international work helping companies cultivate psychological safety, which is, as PsychSafety.com explains, “the belief, in a group, that we are safe to take interpersonal risks.”Our intergenerational crew—Sheila the Gen Z, LaShone the Millennial, Emily the Xennial, and I the...
2025-07-2231 min
Adyen Presents: Embedded FinanceGetting Embedded Payments Right with Wix & Emily BartelsEmbedded payments are transforming how software platforms serve their customers, moving beyond basic functionality to become comprehensive business operating systems.In this episode of Adyen Presents: Embedded Finance Podcast, host Hemmo Bosscher explores the evolution of embedded payments through conversations with Emily Bartels, former payments leader at Mindbody, and Wix payments co-heads Amit Sagiv and Volodymyr Tsukur, who oversee payments for a platform serving over 250 million users across 190 countries.Episode Highlights:[00:00] Intro[01:05] Mindbody's Early Journey into Embedded Payments [04:17] Starting with Customer Workflows Before Technology[09:49] Strategic Pricing for Embedded Payment Solutions[11:15] Navigating Business Through C...
2025-07-1653 minAdyen Presents: Embedded FinanceGetting Embedded Payments Right with Wix & Emily BartelsEmbedded payments are transforming how software platforms serve their customers, moving beyond basic functionality to become comprehensive business operating systems.In this episode of Adyen Presents: Embedded Finance Podcast, host Hemmo Bosscher explores the evolution of embedded payments through conversations with Emily Bartels, former payments leader at Mindbody, and Wix payments co-heads Amit Sagiv and Volodymyr Tsukur, who oversee payments for a platform serving over 250 million users across 190 countries.Episode Highlights:[00:00] Intro[01:05] Mindbody's Early Journey into Embedded Payments [04:17] Starting with Customer Workflows Before Technology[09:49] Strategic Pricing for Embedded Payment Solutions[11:15] Navigating Business Through C...
2025-07-1653 minThe Mode/SwitchShould you hide your limp from 9 to 5?This week, executive coach Allison K. Williams joins the Mode/Switch Pod to help you discern how much of your private stuff it's okay to disclose at work.Can I start with a slightly boozy story?Yesterday I skipped lunch for a day too full of meetings to stick a fork in a salad. And then, at the day’s end, I joined my wife and a couple of friends for Detroit-styled cocktails. I can’t hold much liquor on a good day. Those drinks hit yesterday’s stomach so hard I had to hide a stag...
2025-07-0835 minThe Mode/SwitchDo good fences make good coworkers?Psychotherapist Dana Skaggs joins our intergenerational pod to discuss the wisdom of boundaries in the workplace.Well hello there—and happy Tuesday! Welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod, a biweekly roundtable on work-culture questions. Our intergenerational team equips you to do more than cope when work’s a lot! This episode asks why boundary-setting’s so tricky, especially in the workplace. Do you wish you could assert yourself at work—without creating more passive aggression? This conversation’s for you! We are all two kinds of humans at once--those who want closeness and those who need their...
2025-06-2432 minThe Mode/SwitchMillennial Wine, Gen X WineskinsSusan Collins joins the pod to find subtle cracks in leadership styles in today's intergenerational workplace. There’s a reason our podcast team’s intergenerational. Without multiple perspectives, you can’t make sense of the subtle patterns in today’s dynamic workplace. But sometimes the subtlest patterns are your own.Welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod, which comes out every other Tuesday to make sense of American work culture and help you do more than cope when work’s a lot. Susan Collins joins the roundtable as an ICF-certified coach—The Network Conc...
2025-06-1031 minThe Mode/SwitchPerimenopause in Your WorkplaceWhat happens before the "change" isn't just a women's issue. Welcome to an intergenerational roundtable where we help you do more than cope when work’s a lot. If you’d rather not listen to this conversation in your email inbox, no problem: just whip out your phone and hit follow on The Mode/Switch Pod on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And by “we,” this week I’m introducing….Emily Bosscher, our Xennial, Ken Heffner, our Boomer, Delaney Kemp, our Gen Z co-host,David Wilstermann, our Gen Xer. I’m in the...
2025-05-1335 minThe Mode/SwitchIs it cold in here--or is just your coworkers?Geoff & Cyd Holsclaw join our intergenerational roundtable to discuss attachment strategies for your next frigid (or white-hot) workplace meeting.Lately, Nashville’s been feeling more like January than May. I’m attending a conference here, and the seasonal weirdness has totally messed with the HVAC brain of the meeting space. The result’s been uncomfortable. The thermostat, thinking we were enduring a hot and soggy summer day, has poured down frigid air on our heads.Some people were sorta okay with the cold. Not me. I zipped up my jacket, pulled my hood, and felt homesi...
2025-05-0640 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Art Helps You Shake It Off at WorkIn this week’s episode, Susan Hensley, author of Art for Your Sanity invites you out onto the dance floor at work. She joins our intergenerational roundtable to share advice for play, creativity, and even cutting the rug on the job. That might sound irresponsible. And, yes, our intergenerational co-hosts—David, Josh, Betty, Craig—push back on Susan’s advice here and there. The workplace feels fraught today. Accusations of wokeness. Worries about deported coworkers. Surging tariffs. So, why creative expression in the workplace? Susan’s advice finds career wisdom in listening closely to your em...
2025-04-2225 minThe Mode/SwitchKeeping Your Footing in Career TransitionGina Riley joins our intergenerational Mode/Switch team to show you ways to survive career shock, helping you become your next organization's "candidate of choice."I remember one day being on a treadmill in our university fitness center, squinting and panting towards a sunlit window. My pace felt good. My heart and lungs felt okay. Sure, my legs felt rubbery, but this was a challenge workout—so I hit the speed-up button to a sprinting pace.Then came a twitch in the tread. A momentary slippage between the rubber track and the machinery beneath. It wa...
2025-04-0430 minThe Mode/SwitchCan an Organization Be Empathetic?This week, the Mode/Switchers discuss conflict resolution in and around the office with the help of Tanner Smith from The Colossian Forum, who urges organizations—and not just individuals—to practice empathy, humility, courage, and hope. Do Gen Zs engage an organization’s mission differently from their Gen X managers? (Tanner has a take on zombie institutions that he learned from his younger team members.) Why has organized faith so often been, shall we say, unfaithful in organizational life? (Emily swats a bee in her bonnet about the sometimes terrible HR of faith-based institutions.) H...
2025-03-2135 minThe Mode/SwitchYour Body Wants a Word with YouWorried about occupational burnout or bore-out? Press play on this conversation with Emma Lloyd and start listening to your body, too.“No matter how or why we get there,” writes Hilary McBride in the The Wisdom of the Body, “no matter how well it may have served us, forgetting the body also costs us something—individually and collectively.” And there’s no place we feel those collective costs more fully than in the workplace.This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, Emily, David, LaShone, and Ken talk with Emma Lloyd about the possibilities that open up...
2025-03-1435 minThe Mode/SwitchAll in Favor of Making Meetings Better?Do you ever weep for boredom in eight-person meetings where only two people talk? Do you die a little inside when your day is 80% full of committees? Do you wish your staffers would pay better attention to the agenda and stop emailing?Do you ever want to throw your laptop against the wall to end a remote meeting?Meetings are essential for making sense and making decisions and making headway. No organization can thrive without them. So why are meetings so often the saddest, clumsiest, and most irksome hours of our...
2025-03-0734 minThe Mode/SwitchLet's stop age-based hazing"We all had go through it." No doubt. But does that mean that, by some workplace statute, the next generation has to as well?This week, the Mode/Switch team welcomes Gen Z author and TEDx speaker Sophie Riegel to help us map the maze of American working community. The maze of unspoken but rigid rules. The maze of what it means to be “normal” and “professional.” The maze of unacknowledged organizational trauma and intergenerational contempt.Our question is, who builds the maze? Actually, that was Ken’s question. He’s our Boomer a...
2025-02-2829 minThe Mode/SwitchHow to speak for the worth of your work"Quite honestly, corporations aren't fair,"—so says Google chief of staff, Sally Ivester in this week’s episode. Still, here’s the thing. The workplace might not be fair, but Sally quite obviously loves it all the same. Sally’s our first guest from Big Tech. Sure, we’re always talking about that sector—but it was good to converse with a Wharton-trained millennial mom who’s, quite literally, Googling her career so the rest of us don’t have to.The Mode/Switch’s intergenerational conversation plays out interestingly this week. Our Gen Z host (Haley) and our...
2025-02-2132 minThe Mode/SwitchIs workplace stress driving you a little mad?Do you keep asking questions like, “Is it supposed to be this hard?” I wonder the same thing. I wonder if it was this hard for my parents. I wonder how hard it must be for my kids. What is up with the intensity of work in the mid-2020s?Here's a podcast to turn job pressure into a sustainable way to be at work. But in order to achieve that, our conversation's a little out of pocket.Every week, on the Mode/Switch Pod you hear this intergenerational team of career coaches and organizational rese...
2025-02-1429 min
The Mode/SwitchGot anger issues at work?It’s 10 AM, and your heart’s pumping like a jacked-up gym rat. Your face flushes. Your lips quiver. Your eyes smart. And there’s nothing happening. Seemingly. I mean, there is that email your manager just sent.
But why are you seething? What do you do with the outrage?
Well, that depends. Your feelings are your brain’s best guess about what’s going on. Was that email a threat or a mean joke? Like any hypothesis, you want to test it out.
But when you run experiments on your own feelings, it’s best to...
2025-02-0739 min
Speaking and Communicating PodcastDigital Overwhelm and Workplace Communication Culture w/ Dr. Craig MattsonWhat do you do when work feels terriblre and you feel powerless?Dr. Craig Mattson is an Organizational Researcher and Communications Professor at Calvin University.He is the Author of a recent book Digital Overwhelm (2024) and Host of The Mode/Switch Substack Podcast.We’re tackling burnout, salary issues, workplace pettiness, working when the world is on fire, generational workplace divides & more. Dr. Mattson doesn’t offer decluttering tips or radical solutions. Instead, he shows how to navigate digital overwhelm by "mode-switching"—changing how you communicate where tech and stress collide...
2025-02-0537 minThe Mode/SwitchIs an Office Glow-Up What Workers Want?Hey there, Happy Friday, and welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod. Gotta joke for ya.
So, a Boomer, Xer, Millennial, and Gen Z walk into an office, where they find a Tiki Coffee Lounge, pink ergonomic keyboards, a conference room decorated like the OK Corral, and—
Wait, this joke has no punchline, because this joke has no end. It just goes on and on and on, as organizational leaders keep trying to make employees happy to be back.
Good thing we Mode/Switchers are joined this week by organizational communication scholar, Dr. Elizabeth La...
2025-01-3132 minThe Mode/SwitchWe traced the call. It's coming from inside your head...Join the the Mode/Switchers as they chat with Mario Wissa, the author of Empowering Communication Unleashed. Mario’s a kind human being whose gift as a public communicator is helping you to notice and then to change the stories in your head.
Every week, the Mode/Switch Pod conducts an intergenerational conversation to help you do more than cope when work’s a lot. This week, the pod’s engaging intrusive thoughts and negative self-talk.
Sometimes when work’s excessively difficult, the trouble isn’t the fault of your coworkers. It’s not a matter—in ot...
2025-01-2425 minThe Mode/SwitchYou Are Wired to Mentor at WorkDoes your company, like so many corporations today, dismiss mentoring by saying, “It just doesn’t work”?
They’re wrong, and this podcast shows how mentorship can transform your org.
Every week, our intergenerational team of Mode/Switchers assembles to make sense of American work culture. Our newest guest, psychologist Deborah Heiser, lays out five styles of mentoring from her book The Mentorship Edge.
“Lateral mentoring,” Heiser explains, “enhances the purpose for the giver and receiver. It creates a new kind of ‘community’ in a world that has tended toward being hyper-individualized…. Lateral mentoring expands our v...
2025-01-1631 minThe Mode/SwitchFeeling Meh about Lunch Today?Here's a work-culture convo w/ Matthew Halteman on lunching beautifully & imperfectly. We think it's ok to eat your feelings at work, if those feelings are as fun & hopeful as this podcast turned out to be! This week, the Mode/Switch menu features vegan tiramisu, thanks to our a wise and mischievous guest, Matthew Halteman, the author of Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan.
Say, what? Joyful and vegan? Those words don’t seem to know each other. But after this pod, we think you’ll agree, the both/and there is a mode/switch worth m...
2024-12-1342 minThe Mode/SwitchJust in Case: A Workplace Legal EpisodeSay you're harassed at work. Who do you talk to first--your HR manager or a workplace attorney? Press play on this week's podcast to find out.
You already know what this podcast does: we heal intergenerational divides in the American workplace. But when you press play this week, you’ll hear us bridging the divide between you and your workplace rights. It’s our first ever legal episode, featuring a guest, Taylor Crabill, a New York attorney who specializes in employment law.
Here are some questions that compelled us to get legal advice:
Your...
2024-12-0626 minThe Mode/SwitchShould You Bring Your Sh#t to Work?Hey there, welcome to a conversation that helps you cope when work’s a lot—and I mean, when work’s a lot because life’s a lot.
when your personal stuff keeps busting into your work stuff
when your meth-addicted cousin keeps texting—and your boss keeps saying, “No phones”
when your body mass index or your chronic illness doesn’t let you “look professional”
when you gotta quit the job and everybody’s saying, “Be smart—don’t do it!”
This week, Andrea Munday and I sit down to the mics to say, You a...
2024-11-2232 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Can't You Stop Scrolling on the Job?What a mercy, the election’s over, right? But its effects on workplace wellbeing are just getting started—especially when it comes to media consumption on the job.
If you’re like most of your coworkers, you spend a lot of time on socials, skimming the news. Look, the Mode/Switch Team’s not here to condemn. We’re here to make sense of media compulsions—and to help you deal with the information overload on the job better and more wisely.
Especially in times of rupture. You know, like now.
Besides our Boomer, Xer, and...
2024-11-1528 minThe Mode/SwitchDo the Kids Have a Work Ethic?It’s everybody’s favorite on-the-job trope: Kids these days? Yeah, they don’t know how to work. We’ve been saying this a long time. Our workplace tribalism dramatizes the polarization in the broader society.
But hey, good news! The Mode/Switch Pod is not a political podcast. It’s a workplace culture podcast, focused on helping you (and your workplace) heal from the intensities of work today. As usual, we feature an intergenerational crew of Mode/Switchers: Emily, Ken, LaShone, and—this week as a Gen Z guest—Sheila Witvliet.
You’ll won’t hear a single...
2024-11-0130 minThe Mode/SwitchUm, Employers? The Zs Would Like a WordWait, what’s up with the report that “6 in 10 companies fired a recent college graduate they hired this year”? This is an alarming trend, and it might not just be the rising generation that needs to make a mode switch.
If spymaster Robert Ludlum were writing about the recent Gen Z firings, what would he call it?
The Dismissal Protocol? The Employment Gambit? The Initiative Factor?
Be careful which title you choose. It’ll say something about whether you think all the dismissals are due to a poor work ethic or inadequate onboarding.
This w...
2024-10-1834 minThe Mode/SwitchI Know I Shouldn't Be Saying This, But...This week’s Mode/Switch Pod eavesdrops on, ya know, that office we’re all supposed to be returning to. And what we’re hearin’ is good ole-fashioned gossip.
Boomer Ken, Xers David & Craig, Xillennial Emily, and Gen Z guest Gabe Mayes tell stories, share research, and swap advice about workplace whispers.
(TLDR? We discuss what gossip means and what it does on the job.)
So, if your coffee’s gone cold today, we got you! Press play on some audio caffeine and get something good to share around the office.
Stay for our Spe...
2024-10-1130 minThe Mode/SwitchIs Your Workplace a Pandemic Prequel?This week, the Mode/Switchers straw-poll each other on this question: how many days do you want to work in office?
Let’s just say that our Millennial, our Boomer, & our Xers aren’t in perfect alignment.
But here’s what we are clear on on: despite the massive push for Returning to Office, workplaces cannot give way to nostalgia for pre-2020 conditions.
(Look, CEO, the office before COVID wasn’t as awesome as you seem to think in 2024!)
The fact that something like 79% of CEOs expect an RTO within 3 yrs raises a...
2024-10-0432 minThe Mode/SwitchWhat Would an Exclusively Gen Z Work Culture Look Like?If twenty-somethings managed your company, what would your work culture be like?
Thanks to a leaked memo from YouTuber MrBeast, we now have a glimpse:
Crystal Fierce Metrics: “There is only room in this company for A-Players. A-Players are obsessive, learn from mistakes, coachable, intelligent, don’t make excuses, believe in Youtube, see the value of this company, and are the best in the goddamn world at their job.”
Steroidal Growth Mindset: “Mistakes are okay!…Every veteran here has cost me a million dollars at one point or another, and you can go ask them yours...
2024-09-2732 minThe Mode/SwitchIs Virtue Signaling Inevitable at Work?What do you--45 days before the election--think about the Politics-over-Business claim that "Customers want excellence not activism"?
This week, our intergenerational team discusses whether political neutrality is practicable in the workplace.
When does political conviction become virtue signaling?
Is it professional to be politically neutral?
Should corporations have opinions?
Is talking about politics at work badly better than not doing it all?
Maybe the three best words in this week's conversation:
“I would disagree…”
2024-09-2026 minThe Mode/SwitchLonely's Where We WorkThe writer Henri Nouwen made an important distinction between solitude and loneliness. The former's good. The latter's hard to bear, especially at work.
So this week, the Mode/Switchers cuss-and-discuss workplace loneliness from intergenerational perspectives.
Listen while you work to our research-based conversation, sharing stories (don’t miss Emily’s “cyclone of crazy” tale) and mode/switches in mindset and behavior. And we “spell it out” when it comes to that loneliest of contemporary phenomena: hotel-ing.
2024-09-1330 minThe Mode/SwitchShould Your Job Ask You to Be Resilient?You’re a lucky person, maybe, if your job doesn’t ask a lot of you. But on top of all the reporting, meeting, messaging, measuring, marketing, and advocating, should your job also ask you to be resilient?
Wrong question. At least, that’s a conclusion we came to in this week’s podcast. The prior question is what does it mean to be resilient?
Spoiler: our intergenerational team of Mode/Switchers identifies multiple ways to be resilient at work.
This week, David, LaShone, and I are joined by two Gen Z guests: Kate Witvliet a...
2024-08-3032 minThe Mode/SwitchLove Your Team, Hate Your Company?Nobody’s crazier than your company. Nothing’s better than your team.
In the endless weirdness of institutions, you will find amazing teammates. But you’ll also see companies act like zombies seeking nothing but their own survival.
Good thing that, even when you hate your company, you can still love your team—right? Well, we Mode/Switchers feel that tension with special intensity. Google our workplace, Calvin University, and look at the last half a year of history. You’ll see why.
The question is, how do you find a good relationship between the tea...
2024-08-2335 minThe Mode/SwitchCan We Please Do Meetings Better?Recent social science says we’re holding roughly three times the meetings we used to. Derek Thompson writes that “The meeting-industrial complex has grown to the point that communications has eclipsed creativity as the central skill of modern work.”
But wait whut? We’re being too communicative at work? Too relational? Too connected? Too interactive?
Does that track?
We Mode/Switchers take Thompson’s point. Cal Newport’s made similar arguments in the world of email, calling it “communication overload.” But these minimalist approaches to human interaction—Slash the meetings, burn the inboxes!—neglect the ways that meet...
2024-08-1630 minThe Mode/SwitchThe Devil Wears ProfessionalPost-pandemic, is there an office dress code?
A funny thing happens on the way through this week’s podcast on workplace fashion.
Our chatty little intergenerational convo makes it sound like we’re agreeing with each other. But you’ll notice our proposed mode/switches are in definite tension.
What else would you expect when intergenerational Mode/Switchers sit down to chat about dressing for the day you have and the matching sock you don’t?
Do you think it’s okay to tell a coworker they look fabulous?
Are you sick...
2024-08-0323 minThe Mode/SwitchIs Equity Leaving the Building?This week, we discuss big news from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)—their decision to focus on diversity and inclusion but not to talk about equity.
We Mode/Switchers—David, LaShone, Ken, Emily, and I—are not on the same page on this one.
Some are willing to ask whether this move to keep equity off the label but in the ingredients might be effective in workplace training.
Others are critical: erasing the word equity will diminish the value of justice in the workplace.
If you’re anxious about how the larg...
2024-07-2628 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Swearing's on the Rise at WorkHeads-up: we use explicit language in this episode.
But more importantly, we discuss what “bad words” do at work and why…
…the C word is proliferating among Gen Z employees workers
…the difference between slurs and swears matters
…“the language rules” change depending on who’s speaking and who’s listening
…shows like The Bear use extreme language extremely
…60 uses of F word in a given workday is 1 too many
…your workplace needs a Cussing Tree
Boomer, Xer, Millennial, and Gen Zer have their place around our table...
2024-07-1230 minThe Mode/SwitchMagical Thinking about Where You WorkWhat in the world could change the Cocaine Bear Status of your break room fridge? Throwing everything out? Scrubbing the shelves with acid? That won’t help. The shelves will fill right back up in a week or two.
No, you’ll have to address people’s choices about where they go for lunch, how much they eat, how they package leftovers—and why a stack of Wendy’s napkins does not actually require refrigeration.
This little parable has a widespread application: what’s happening within is nearly always related to what’s happening beyond.
This wee...
2024-07-0542 minThe Mode/SwitchOne Way to Re-humanize the WorkplaceI have a good friend who’s a hazmat responder in a UPS warehouse. He inspects the weird and dangerous things people ship to each other:
Dead cats. Draino. Deer heads. White powder of indefinite origins. That sort of thing.
Working at UPS gives him a clear view of the invisible processes that move or constrict the global economy. Working at UPS also shows the double-binds that choke many workplaces today—like when his managers yell, Hurry the eff up! and then add desperately, And—be safe!
So it might seem strange for us Mode/S...
2024-06-1839 minThe Mode/SwitchUse Your WordsUsing words well in the workplace is hard. It’s easy to gaslight. It’s easy to lie. It’s easy to exclude. It’s easy to forget what you’re trying to say or who you’re saying it to.
This week, the Mode/Switchers engage two poets, Jane Zwart and Lew Klatt, who have thought a lot about the role of language in labor. They have advice to share about inattention, bullshit, power, and joy. (They’ll make you laugh, too.)
The podcast, you’ll notice, is longer than usual. There’s bonus content at the end...
2024-05-3152 minThe Mode/SwitchShould You Say What You Really Think at Work?A podcast convo about practicing authenticity and restraint--and what both have to do with happiness in working community.
Arthur Brooks’s recent article, “Why a Bit of Restraint Can Do You a Lot of Good,” argues, Don’t let it all hang out—you’ll be happier longer. In other words, practice a little self control about what you say, what you wear, how you behave, what tats you get, how you do your hair, and you’re likelier to experience long-term happiness than if you’re only goal is to just “keep it real.”
The Mode/Switchers—La...
2024-05-1721 minThe Mode/SwitchYou Can Count on Disability at WorkLast year, a friend of mine dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool and very nearly drowned. Today, he navigates his job in a wheelchair and relies on a coworker to chauffeur him from job site to job site.
That story invites reflection on the turns that life takes. But is that all the story invites?
Kevin Timpe doesn’t think so. This heavy-coffee-drinkin’ Calvin University philosophy professor makes disability central to his research and advocacy, and he believes disability is not so much an occasion for sporadic reflection as it is an integr...
2024-05-1025 minThe Mode/Switch"Everybody Loves Working Here, Right?"What it’s it feel like to do your job these days?
Vital question, maybe, but the tougher question is, how does your company talk about what it feels like to do your job these days? What’s the HR department saying about your company’s vibe? What are the stories your company leader tells?
That’s a question about employer branding, a term we’re learning how to use this week with the help of James Ellis. We’re engaging his article on “The Three- Dimensional Brand.”
There are so many unhelpful ways to describe...
2024-05-0339 minThe Mode/SwitchJemar Tisby on Fighting for a Better, Fairer WorkplaceCan We Fight Exclusion at Work?
It depends. That’s one good answer to the question above—especially after this week’s podcast with Jemar Tisby of Simmons College and the New York Bestseller author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism.
Jemar suggests that, yes, workplaces should create more fairness and more belonging. But not all of us in the workplace carry the same responsibility for that good work.
If you’re a white manager, you can do a great deal to help your coworkers of color thrive. And this podca...
2024-04-2628 minThe Mode/SwitchWhat Gets You to the Top Vanishes When You Get ThereGetting to the top of the chain of command’s a pain in the arse. Especially if it’s a pyramid. Very not comfy, right? So pointy.
This week’s podcast engages Elan Babchuck on how chains of command destabilize our workplaces.
The appeal’s understandable, but the delusion’s deep.
You’ve seen Elan in the Atlantic, the Guardian, and on the TEDx stage. He’s recently co-authored the book Picking up the Pieces: Leadership after Empire. He’s an experienced organizational leader (Executive Vice President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadersh...
2024-04-1934 minThe Mode/SwitchQuestioning Your Craving to Belong at WorkA few years back, my family went white-water rafting, a venture that we were pretty sure would entail risk and peril. But we got lost on the way to the river, and so, to make up time, my partner drove us 90 miles an hour, swerving in and out of lanes of traffic, just to get to the surprisingly calming white water rapids.
This Mode/Switch Pod meditates on institutional white water. It proposes that it might not be such a bad idea to start seeing your job as a raft rather than a scenic overlook.
...
2024-04-1311 minThe Mode/SwitchMaybe You Need More Tunnel Vision at Work?This Pod did not end where I thought it would. I thought we would seek an alternative to tunnel vision. I thought we'd mode/switch from tunnel vision to vista vision. “Expand your awareness,” I was thinking. “Take in the context. Read the room, people!”
But because job descriptions keep expanding, because skillsets keep specializing—a weird double movement that yanks and squeezes us at the same time—our vocations don’t allow us to pay out just one kind of attention at work.
So, in the first twenty minutes of your workday, as you’re trying to bra...
2024-04-0518 minThe Mode/SwitchWhen Life & Work CollideThis week, Emily, David, LaShone, and Craig discuss how one role you play (parent or a friend, say) obstructs another role (team lead or clerk, say). You’ll hear us sharing stories and proposing shifts in thinking and habit that will help you do more than cope when work’s a lot.
Let’s say the loud part quietly: everyday life is theatre. We are always playing roles and following scripts and taking cues. At any given moment, e.g., your a partner, parent, manager, team member, instructor, exerciser.
All this role-play means, that in any mome...
2024-03-3022 minThe Mode/SwitchDid I Just Step in It Again? (Working on Multiracial Teams)You work with well-intentioned people. You are well-intentioned people. Right?
But if you work on a multiracial team, you know good intentions aren’t enough.
Even if you’re a white coworker who really and truly wants to support your coworkers of color, you might have an uneasy sense that it feels so easy to mess up.
On the other hand, if you’re silent and unsupportive because you’re afraid of messing up—well, that’s just another mode of messing up!
Is there a mode switch here?
Yes! More than...
2024-03-2420 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Title IX Isn't EnoughMen and women feel different things about their jobs. But they also feel different things during their jobs.
This week’s guest is Andrea Munday, a Chicago-based business owner with a millennial’s deep experience of gendered & generational lines. This week, she schools me on what’s been missing in workplace fairness since Title IX came out in 1972.
One takeaway? Gender equity’s got a lot to do with monthly cycles.
Here’s our central question: how do we create fairness when people feel radically different things at work?So press play while you work, Mod...
2024-03-1518 minThe Mode/SwitchWho's the Healer in your Workplace?Everybody’s got days when they don’t feel like doing their job.
But some days, it flat-out hurts to do your job. Your shoulders stiffen. Your neck tightens. Your head aches. Your back kills.
And that list doesn’t include menstrual pain or chronic fatigue, much less the physical pressures of racial and gender norms.
Even in a knowledge economy that seems to make bodies insignificant (everybody’s just emailin’ and shit, right?), we need to talk about physical pain in the workplace.
In this week’s podcast, LaShone, Emily, David, and Craig...
2024-03-0818 minThe Mode/SwitchGet in Losers, Workaholics, & CynicsA convo about friendship's power to heal workaholism & professional exhaustion...
This week’s conversation centers on two questions:
How do you know if you’re a work addict or a work cynic?
Should you find your friends and community at work?
These don’t seem like related questions. But nothing affects your mental health around your job like your circle of friends.
Lashone, Emily, Ken, and Craig don’t exactly agree about how to answer these two questions. But agreement’s not the point. Sharing the ride is.
So, get o...
2024-02-2320 minThe Mode/SwitchIs Your Boss At You These Days?Can’t wait to get to work today! I’m getting things done, I’m exceeding expectations, I’m at the top of my game—and my managers know it and love it! (Says no one ever, listening to this podcast.)
The reality is, all too often the work you do is looked upon with suspicion. All too often, the management’s posture is, “Prove it. Show me the money!”
This week, Emily, David, LaShone, and Craig discuss how proving the value of your work somehow becomes the imperative to prove the value of yourself. We offer practic...
2024-02-1615 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Do You Say Sorry So Much?Have you seen that meme, “Get in, losers, we’re going to therapy,” or whatever? That’s what I want to say to you about this episode of the Mode/Switch Pod. Get in losers, we’re going to STOP SAYING SORRY so much at work.
Look, you’re partly right to apologize: you want to say sorry to bother you because everybody’s getting too many emails, too many voicemails, too many Teams messages. But, okay, is everybody really and truly so overwhelmed that the nonstop sorry-train really and truly needs every single stop?
We don’t think...
2024-02-0923 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Performance Reviews Are Broken (And How They Could Go Better)This is a fantasy edition of the Mode/Switch Pod. We do some utopian dreaming about quite possibly the least dreamy part of American workplace culture: the performance review.
After talking about what’s wrong with the review process, we dream up new ways to give and receive workplace feedback.
2024-02-0226 minThe Mode/Switch"We Decided to Go in a Different Direction"And other phrases we NEVER want to hear again in the American hiring process.
Nate Bergatze has admitted he never reads books. “I don’t do it,” he says, “because every book is just the most words.”
That’s how we feel about the American hiring process. Every job interview is Just the Most Words—and so few of those words say anything.
So, this week on the Mode/Switch Pod, Emily, David, LaShone, and Craig give you a twenty minutes of good words about getting hired—or not—when you’re over-qualified, under-qualified, or pe...
2024-01-2619 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy We're Petty at WorkWhat is going on with pettiness in the workplace? Where’s all the hypersensitivity coming from?
This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, we confess our own pettiness and passive aggression. But we also talk about why pettiness is, a little paradoxically, important. Petty behavior is no small thing. It’s big data.
So get in, haters, we’re going to figure this petty thing out!
2024-01-1920 minThe Mode/SwitchDoing Work with Tears Running Down Your FaceThere you are at work being amazing like you do. Doing the thing. Every metric says you rock. But you feel sad.
Question: when there’s a gap between how work feels and how you feel, should you get rid of the gap? Should integrate or compartmentalize?
This week, the Mode/Switchers tell stories about times when work feels one way and your soul feels another.
We’re talking about the strange loneliness that comes when sadness and success happen at the same time.
2023-12-0828 minThe Mode/SwitchThe Epic Fail EditionThis has to be the frankest episode of the Mode Switch Pod so far. We’re a pretty hopeful bunch. But, as David warns us in this episode, not everything has a redemptive arc. Sometimes things just suck.
So this week, Emily, LaShone, David, Craig, and our Gen Z guest, Alex D’Agostino cuss and discuss experiences of professional failure.
But then, because we can’t help ourselves, we also look for small but significant shifts you can make when you “lose.” We thought about putting a mic at our table for the voice in our heads...
2023-12-0129 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Do You Really Feel about Your Job?What happens when you don’t love your work any more?
What happens when you love your work too much?
There’s no quick answer to those questions. Different generations have different histories, so Emily, LaShone, Kendrick, David, and Ken—each speaking from a different age group—talk about the line between caring and not-caring at work.
Every week, this podcast runs
the numbers on workplace life. We tell stories. We offer ways to switch your mode at work. This week, our stories center on honest confusions and painful disillusionments and prof...
2023-11-1727 minThe Mode/SwitchAre You Absorbing Your Coworkers' Feelings?Everyday life and work require a lot of emotional labor, especially when it comes to the contagiousness of feelings on the job.
How do you cope under layers of burnout—yours and others’ as well?
This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, Emily, Ken, Andrea, Craig, and our Gen Z guest, Kendrick Satterfield, tell our own burnout stories. You’ll notice that our intergenerational bunch copes in very different ways. But, hey, we also sneak in some Frasier-styled therapy around the Mode/Switch table.
2023-11-1032 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Anger Energizes Your WorkI’ve worked most of my life in communities where anger’s unacceptable. But sometimes anger is indispensable at work—especially when it’s settled opposition to inequity in the late modern American workplace.
Regular Mode/Switchers Emily, Ken, and I are joined by millennial guest Shaq Anthony and Gen Z guest Olivia Winkowitsch to address questions like, Is the exhaustion you’re feeling actually anger? How can anger make you inquisitive? How can anger empower resistance?
But what do you do when you realize that your anger is not enough to change your industry?
That...
2023-11-0339 minThe Mode/SwitchDo You Feel Misunderstood at Work?The bridge is out in the workplace today. Communication that’s supposed to cross the chasms between genders, between races, and between generations often feels incompetent for the job.
What do you say when you feel deeply, deeply misunderstood?
This week’s team of intergenerational Mode/Switchers—Emily, Andrea, LaShone, David, and Craig joined by Gen Z guest Alex D'Agostino—offer practical suggestions for what to say when saying doesn’t seem to make things better.
As LaShone says, we recommend a mode/switch from competence to humility, and we share statistics and stories for ho...
2023-10-2732 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Do You Speak When You're Muted?You’ve heard, maybe, about the Babble Hypothesis, that explains why extroverts get assigned leadership roles in social groups. But this week’s Mode/Switch Pod explores how power and babble make a hot mess in the workplace.
If you’ve been wondering how to draw boundaries and assert the value of what you have to say, this podcast conversation is for you.
Our usual Mode/Switchers are joined by Ken Heffner, who as a Boomer joins us Millennial-Xers to talk about race and gender with our guest Lexi Delk.
Welcome to an interge...
2023-10-1324 minThe Mode/SwitchWhen Should You Go, When Should You Grow?How to Respond to Red Flag Moments at Work
That was weird, you think to yourself. Did that just happen? You’re not crazy. You’re having a red flag moment. But the harder question is, what do you do now? Maybe you need to find another job. Or maybe there’s a mode/switch worth making. That’s what this pod’s for.
Because red flag experiences vary by generation, Gen Z rising professional Hannah Sherbrooke joins the conversation as David runs the numbers, Emily spills the tea, and we discuss oh s...
2023-10-0624 minThe Mode/SwitchDo Part-Time Jobs Warp Full-Time Work?It’s pricey being a person these days, so nobody’s got just one job. You, your coworkers, your Boomer grandparents, and your friggin’ golden retriever—everybody’s doing gigs, driving Uber, and crafting earrings. How do extra jobs reshape the workplace? How do they reshape YOU? This week, Andrea, David, LaShone, and Craig, along with Gen Z guest Kayla Harkema, talk about how to cope with the (unsustainable?) culture of side hustling.This Mode/Switch Pod responds to last week’s newsletter.
2023-09-2925 minThe Mode/SwitchThe How's That Workin' for Ya EditionThis week’s Mode/Switch Pod highlights disagreement on the team: how should managers address mental health troubles. Some of us think direct intervention is the most important approach; others are hoping for indirect intervention. But we all agree that managers can change conditions in the workplace for the better mental health of their team. Emily, LaShone, Craig, and David are joined by Gen Z rising professional Kennidie Streed to better integrate therapeutic care and managerial responsibility. It’s a painful topic, but we found room for laughter, too.
2023-09-2224 minThe Mode/SwitchThe Ron Swanson EditionAre you a millennial manager? Then, you probably deal with a confusingly moveable boundary. At one and the same time, your Gen Z employees tend to sharpen the line between work and personal life while at the same time blurring the line between work and politics. Each week, the Mode/Switch Team gathers around a table of mics to talk in deeply personal terms about work and culture. This week, Emily, Craig, LaShone, David, and Andrea are joined by Malena, a rising professional who helps the rest of us touch grass about politics in the workplace.
2023-09-1527 minThe Mode/SwitchThe Benjamins EditionHey, managers! What do your workers want more—thanks or a raise? Probably a raise, right? Right. But even so, that question’s more complicated than it sounds.This week’s Mode/Switch Pod takes that question in multiple directions with deeply personal stories and researched insights. Emily, Annee, Andrea, and Craig discuss how money and power, as well as thanks and respect, make managing a team a tricky business.Hope you’ll listen to this pod while you drive to work!
2023-09-0828 minThe Mode/SwitchWhat Your Boss Doesn't Know about Your JobFor good and ill—but mostly for good—salary transparency is a rising trend in corporate culture across the U.S. But is it possible that “making things transparent” is actually obscuring elements of your work that make your work worth doing? What do you do when your work remains hidden even in the midst of corporate transparency? LaShone Manuel, David Wilstermann, and I discuss.
2023-08-3113 minThe Mode/SwitchBeing Your Body at WorkWhat's it cost you to try to match the gender expectations for your body in professional spaces? This week's Mode/Switch Pod involves a small nation-state of participants. I mean, there's the usuals: Emily, David, Craig. But then, there's also Bethany Keeley-Jonker, Jennifer VanAntwerp, and Nicole St. Victor, each bring researched and lived experience to bear on the questions of the "economics of thinness."
2023-08-2625 minThe Mode/SwitchThe Lazy Girl Job EditionThis week’s pod takes on hustle culture and “the lazy girl job” phenomenon. This trend traces to social media influencer Gabrielle Judge, the designer of the Anti Work GirlBoss brand. The trend encourages Gen Zs to seek a job that makes $60k-80k and makes space for nice things like, you know, personal sanity. Ms. Judges has achieved a kind of omnipresence on the internet; and everywhere she arrives, she’s saying a firm no to corporate hustle culture. The four of us--Emily, LaShone, David, and Craig--take four positions on this trend. What's yours?
2023-08-1818 minThe Mode/SwitchHow to Be a Great ResignerLast Saturday morning, a newsletter flitted into your mailbox about the Great Resignation. Here’s a quarter-hour podcast about being Gen Zs and quitting work.
2023-08-1717 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Long Do I Have to Pay My DuesA follow-up podcast, in which LaShone, Emily, David, and Craig all converse with Ben about the insight behind his last two pieces for the Mode/Switch: "How Long Do I Have to Pay My Dues?" and "No One Is Coming to Save Us"
2023-08-1728 minThe Mode/SwitchHow to Quit Obsessing On Your FlawsIt turns out not obsessing on your flaws can also be—a flaw. Or that’s one conclusion we come to about the mode switch recommended in the newsletter. Re-describing your flaws as capabilities can be a valuable corrective. But org culture needs other correctives, too! So, LaShone, Emily, and Craig untangle some of the issues in how to do the work our flaws present us with in the workplace.
2023-08-1719 minThe Mode/SwitchWhat to Do about Digital OverwhelmRising professionals need digital presence. But connecting that virtual presence with in-person interaction can be tricky. This week, the Mode/Switch podcasters—Emily, LaShone, David, & Craig—engage Min Ki Kim’s story about digital overwhelm from the November 12, 2022 issue.
2023-08-1728 minThe Mode/SwitchHow Can You Work When the World Is CrumblingA 14-minute podcast on what your history gives you (besides trauma!) to survive your work and life. Need some resilience today? Press play soon.
2023-08-1713 minThe Mode/SwitchAre You Stuck in the Theatre of ProductivityOur pod team picks up what Emily’s putting down in the latest issue of the M/S, discussing the ‘theatre of productivity,’ in which your every movement is surveilled as a measure of your workplace usefulness.
2023-08-1718 minThe Mode/SwitchIs Your Career Soul Mate Out ThereHumans are notoriously bad at predicting their own happiness. But is there such a thing as finding your One True Love in a job? Is there a way to find The One when it comes to your occupation?
2023-08-1714 minThe Mode/SwitchDo You Feel Unmotivated at WorkEmily Bosscher’s guest post this week calls Gen Z and millennial professionals to “push past the awkwardness” to seek the mentoring they need and to learn the weirdness of a workplace’s culture.
2023-08-1714 minThe Mode/SwitchWhy Indirect Communication Matters at WorkIn this episode, LaShone Manuel, Emily Bosscher, and Craig Mattson talk about when playing a role makes you fake at work—and when it makes you exactly what your coworkers need.
2023-08-1716 minThe Mode/SwitchIs It OK to Be a Job-HopperThis episode responds to an argument in the Mode/Switch newsletter issue, discussing the rich and complex stories of four early-to-mid-career professionals: Andrea Munday, Bre Rodgriguez, Eric Freeman, and Julia Belcher.
2023-08-1737 min