The Mode/Switch

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 e...

In 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 frau...

Gina 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 challeng...

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...

Worried 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 mor...

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...

"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 unacknowledge...

"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...

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...

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? L...

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...

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 in...

Does 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 E...

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...

Say 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...

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’...

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...

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. A...

Wait, 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 w...

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’...

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...

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 goddam...

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...

The 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/sw...

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/Switche...