The Mode/Switch

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 wor...

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 Th...

Post-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...

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...

Heads-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...

What 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 refrige...

I 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...

Using 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 y...

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...

Last 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 profes...

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 El...

Can 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 responsibi...

Getting 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...

A 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...

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 sa...

This 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 takin...

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 me...

Men 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 d...

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...

A 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,...

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...

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, i...

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.

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,...

What 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!