The Mode/Switch

Emily Bosscher, LaShone Manuel, Craig Mattson, David Wilstermann
  • 4.9(17개의 평가)
  • 직업
  • 매주 업데이트

We make sense of the craziness of American work culture. This podcast's intergenerational roundtable helps you do more than cope when work's a lot.

  1. 1일 전

    Got a person who triggers you at work?

    Jay Johnson joins the roundtable to help you cope with difficult people on the job. He's used to working with corporate execs who have lost their way. (You can connect with him here, btw.) But in our conversation, he’s talking to people in the middle of organizations, people triggered by their higher-ups as well as by their direct reports. Here are some of the things the team asked him about. Emily asks if she has to talk to a Mean Girl at work. Isn’t avoidance the better part of valor in this situation? Madeline’s wondering, as a Gen Z, what you do when the difficult person you have to deal with is your boss. David worries that, as a skeptical Xer, he’s got a reputation as the curmudgeon in the office. What do you do when you’re the difficult person? Ken guesses he needs therapy for times when he’s obnoxious to others who hate it when he keeps bring up the organizational mission all the time. Craig’s got a coworker who tends to say, “Not to be cynical, but”—and then proceeds to be very cynical. We came away from the conversation impressed by the power of everyday language for helping mid-level leaders survive people difficulties. Difficult people can make you feel closed off to the world. Difficult people can make you feel myopic and compulsive. Difficult people make you feel disconnected from what you actually care about. But healing comes, often enough, by changing the language you use to frame things. It helps to use words simply to name that such and such a person triggers you. It helps to notice that these feelings of annoyance are happening to you—and then simply to state what’s happening in order to deprive of it some of its power in your head. It helps to recommit to what matters to you.

    34분

  2. 2월 10일

    How to Really Know Your Immigrant Employees

    Dr. Lola Adeyemo joins the pod to help you, as a mid-level leader, re‑engage employees whose life experience beyond the workplace is radically different from your own. A tough fact of organizational leadership. You’re a caring mid-level leader, but your immigrant employees might still feel uneasy about you. If that suggestion pokes you a little bit, I invite you to be curious about the irritation for a moment. Ask your soul what might be going on. And then hit play on this roundtable conversation with Dr. Lola Adeyemo and Ken the Boomer, Craig the Xer, Emily the Xennial, LaShone the Millennial and Madeleine the Gen Z.

    30분

  3. 1월 27일

    The Truth We Keep Missing about AI at Work

    Karen 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 the brambles, and ground the stump, I kept wondering: Was there anything we could have done to keep this tree from falling? This sad tree story is also a parable for struggling workplace leadership. The winds at work today are gale-force. We’re enduring political storms (who can stop thinking about Alex Pretti and Renee Good?). We’re blown about by digital overwhelm: so many shiny new tools, so few trust-building encounters. And to make things gustier, there’s Hurricane AI. These storms are real. But today’s Mode/Switch guest, Karen Sergeant, redirects focus from external forces to root problems. Last summer, I started reading her Substack Human in the Loop to benefit from her indispensably fresh takes on AI and work culture. Now, I’m so pleased to have her join the Mode/Switch to show how the windstorm of generative AI could transform the workplace for the better if it’s a “forcing function for better leadership.” But (you ask), how could all those sycophantic chatbots force leaders to recognize patterns of mis-communication? Our 30-minutes podcast will show you how. So, pull up to the roundtable! I confess my opening question above was a little misleading. I’m not suggesting that you’re about to fall like that tree in my front yard. I’m more worried that, if you don’t communicate clearly, your team will.But improve your internal comms, and you’ll improve the whole ecology.

    34분

  4. 2025. 12. 16.

    Struggling 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 by sharing brave feedback from other employees on the floor, and concocting 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 Being a good follower’s a discerning art. And a risky one. Your leader may be plunging forward toward places you don’t think the org should go! But in any case, there’s a close, close relation between a leader’s ability to forge footsteps and a follower’s ability to speak up and name reality. Riley Johnston, our Mode/Switch audio and video editor, helps make this podcast a tight half-hour convo. But this week, she had her work cut out for her, because our recording session with Elan was nearly an hour long. Here’s a story he told that, unfortunately, fell to the editing floor. The morning of our recording session, Elan had been trying to get his three kids out the door for school. His plan for an on-time arrival was working until his daughter sat down on the floor and announced she was going to tie her own shoes. Elan’s fingers were twitching to do it for her. All he could think was, Must. Get. Child. To. School. But instead of snatching the laces from his daughter, Elan pulled himself up short and asked which was better: being on-time to school or empowering his daughter. He went with option B. That’s just one of the stories he tells to show how good leadership (what he was trying to do as a dad) and active follower-ship (what his self-directed daughter sought to be) are integrally bound up in each other. And as a social entrepreneur, innovator, nonprofit leader, and CEO (not to mention a rabbi), Elan’s done a lot of leading, as you can see here. He’s also been widely published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Religion News Service. He’s spoken here at Calvin at the Festival of Faith & Writing about insights from his co-authored book Picking Up the Pieces: Leadership After Empire (2023, Fortress Press). This week’s team includes Ken the Boomer, David the Xer, Emily the Xennial, and LaShone the millennial. We were delighted to speak with Elan, who’s our first return guest. Check out his earlier appearance ⁠here⁠. The Mode/Switch Team’s on vacation till mid-January. If you celebrate this holiday, we wish you a Merry Christmas. And given that this week’s guest was a rabbi, I’d be especially remiss if I failed to say Happy Hanukkah!

    34분

  5. 2025. 12. 02.

    Stop! 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 each other very much. Although we smiled a heckuva lot, the room was thick with mistrust. The discomfort was so distracting in fact that I didn’t notice the backhanded compliment in his cautionary word: “You know, well-liked people,” he said, nodding in my direction, “have to be careful.” I wish now that I’d held up my hand like Diana Ross of The Supremes, “Stop! In the name of like!” I wish I’d said, “Boss, it’s time for a mode/switch!” I wish I’d said that the real question wasn’t, ‘Am I well-liked at work?’ but ‘Am I likable?’” But I couldn’t have said those things back then, because I hadn’t yet read Jenni Field’s excellent new book Nobody Believes You. This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, it’s time to rewrite work-culture communication! Jenni helps correct the confusion between the Michael Scott Syndrome (I Need to Be Liked) and the quality of credible leadership that Jenni calls likability (I need to be warm and competent). If you’re wondering what the difference is, you’re in good company. Our team—Ken the Boomer, David the Xer, Emily the Xennial, and Madeline the Gen Z—had quite a time “unpicking” (as Jenni would say, in her British idiom) all sorts of complex emotional qualities like charisma and competence and lightheartedness. Jenni’s great laugh is contagious, and her flexible thinking will help you find flow in the trickiest dynamics of working community. She's also an authentic work-culture sage. Wait, scratch that! She dislikes the word authentic and prefers the word credible, a term she’s thoroughly discussed in Nobody Believes You, a book that helps you (as her subtitle puts it) “Become a leader people will follow.” (She’s also written the resourceful text Influential Internal Communication: Streamline Your Corporate Communication to Drive Efficiency and Engagement, which is sitting at my elbow as I write this podcast description.) This is our 93rd episode. I think it may be our very best. The conversation moves fast, but goes deep. It allows for difference but shares good humor and good will. Jenni has a way of pouring wisdom into people around her and then pulling it out of them as well. So, if you’ve been reading these podcast descriptions over the past few months and thinking that, sometime in here, you really oughta listen. This is your sometime.

    33분

  6. 2025. 11. 18.

    Dismantle silos without increasing emails

    What 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, did the boss text us the protocols? Workplace miscommunication is so expensive, in fact, that it’s tempting to give into the desperate maxim that better communication must mean more communication. But this week’s guest, Ross Chapman of the Denver Institute, suggests counter-intuitively that some silos in the workplace can’t be dismantled by more and more messaging. Intergenerational silos, in particular. His organization has, in fact, innovated a provocative practice that improves workplace community by creating new rhythms of rest. Wait, sabbaticals for every employee, not just the CEO? Whut? How? I know, I know, but Ross shows us how it’s done. I gotta say, too, that, as a workaholic Gen Xer, I love what happens to my consciousness every time I sit down with my Mode/Switch cohosts: Madeline (Gen Z), Ken (Boomer), Emily (Xennial), and LaShone (Millennial). If you’re asking, “Am I crazy? Is work supposed to be this pressurized?” These amazing coaches validate the widespread sense that workplaces too often feel like stuck places. I’m an infernal optimist. But their realism keeps me grounded—without letting go hope for renewal. Big shout out, too, to Riley Johnston, our Mode/Switch audio editor, who helps keep our conversations tight and on point.

    30분

  7. 2025. 11. 04.

    Can 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 biota is the energy that flows from seemingly unimportant parts of the place (like the soil) to more conspicuous elements (like the crops and insects and birds) to the most obvious participants (like hunters and farmers). In organizations, too, vitality fountains up from nonobvious to more obvious participants. But American workplaces tend to drive organizational change not by attuning to the complexity of their biotas but by the urgencies of monetary efficiency. Think of Amazon’s plan to eliminate 14,000 middle managers, announced last week. Heck, I wouldn’t want to be a middle manager at Amazon. Maybe it’s a good thing that machines do all that managerial work, drafting memos, tying down lists, assigning shifts, monitoring production reports. But Amazon’s decision will affect more than middle managers. It will affect the whole ecology of early-to-mid-career professionals, redirecting their career pathways and obstructing the energy flowing upwards that Amazon’s own biota relies on. Years ago, Elizabeth Kolbert warned of a coming “Sixth Extinction” in the history of our planet. We can’t address such large-scale crises at the Mode/Switch roundtable. But here’s what our intergenerational crew—Emily, LaShone, Ken, and I—can do. We can help prevent the next workplace extinction by sharing the wisdom of people like our guest this week, Falon Peters of the Grand-Rapids-based Crowe X-Design Lab. She’s got ideas (and we have questions) about how organizations can do more than wreak change. They can also design it for everybody’s wellbeing. You’ll want to stick around for our roundtable wrap-up. Things get dark for us in this conversation. But then, we’re trying to pay attention to death and resurrection in the American workplace. -craig P.S. Can you spot my dependence on Aldo Leopold’s work in what I wrote above? See his essay “⁠The Land Ethic⁠“ for more on the mutuality of biotas.

    25분

  8. 2025. 10. 21.

    Would 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, Danielle Droitsch, is an Executive & Professional Growth Coach with a law degree from the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law and a background in environmental consulting. Recently, she’s written “What Sets Apart Great Managers.” Our takeaway from talking with Danielle? Good managers need to listen better so the rest of us can see and say the truth. Telling the truth on the job’s not just about speaking what you hate to admit. It’s about seeing and speaking the strengths that too few people, including you, can see.

    32분
모두 보기(97개)

4.9
최고 5점
17개의 평가

소개

We make sense of the craziness of American work culture. This podcast's intergenerational roundtable helps you do more than cope when work's a lot.

정보

  • 제작진
    Emily Bosscher, LaShone Manuel, Craig Mattson, David Wilstermann
  • 방송 연도
    2024년 - 2026년
  • 에피소드
    97
  • 등급
    무삭제판
  • 저작권
    © Emily Bosscher, LaShone Manuel, Craig Mattson, David Wilstermann
  • 웹사이트 보기
    The Mode/Switch