The Mode/Switch

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 do that with a team of researchers. And that’s where the Mode/Switchers come in, an intergenerational crew of figure-things-outers: David, LaShone, Emily, Jake, Craig.

This week, the team sits down to the roundtable to talk with David Beckemeyer of Outrage Overload to learn how to feel our workplace feelings better.

David Beckemeyer’s a public learner who, in the early 2020s, decided to grok the science on public outrage. What he’s learned from interviewing scientists, psychologists, and technologists has helped him make sense of his own online indignation as well as the crazy intensities the rest of us are feeling all too often.

So, hit play on the pod and find some breathing room in the tight quarters of workplace wrath.

I follow David Beckemeyer on Substack, and if you want to figure out how to keep your sanity and your soul in these politically exhausting times, maybe you should, too! You can hear his podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As you’ll hear in the conversation today, David’s a good listener with a good feel for what’s most troubling so many ordinary folks today.

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 Larson (Auburn University), who shares her published research about what Gen Z workers in particular seek when it comes to aesthetics and functionality in the workplace.

Ken, Emily, Craig, LaShone, and Gabe chime in from all available generational angles on the question of what workers want in their workplaces.

And it’s not just putting lipstick on a cubicle.

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 other words— of poor interpersonal communication. Instead, the trouble comes from intra-personal communication, or the conversations you hold and the stories you tell in your own thoughts.

Mario puts his core insight this way: “The most powerful voice you will ever hear is your own.” (It’s a powerful instance of conveying wisdom through hyperbole.)

If you’re like me, it can be hard to notice when your brain starts spinning tales—mostly because those stories sound a lot like you without actually being you. So, here’s my advice: when your mind’s not being kind to you today, find some fresh voices to listen to. May I suggest Emily’s, David’s, Ken’s, Haley’s, and Mario’s?

Hit play above and let the Mode/Switch talk you into some better, wiser self-talk.

-craig

P.S. To learn more about Mario’s work, click here.

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 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 vision to include parallel support and guidance.”

The Mode/Switch Pod used to come out on Fridays. It’s now up on Thursdays. So, take a listen and learn about how to find and, more importantly, be a mentor.

Emily, LaShone, Deborah, and I swap mentoring tales and chat up practical recs for your org culture.

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 making!

Look, we’re not here to incriminate you for pulled-pork leftovers in the break room. We are here to inspire you to do your work lunch more beautifully if still imperfectly.

Whether you’re a Boomer or an Xer making better food choices for health’s sake—or a Millennial or a Z making food choices to ease the earth—this is not a podcast about making you feel guilty and self-reproachful.

It is instead a convo about making you feel human again. Or, to borrow a phrase from Matt’s book, it’s about staying “as close as you can to who you already are.”

Grab a Christmas cookie, pour some coffee, and pop in your earbuds. Come for the food wisdom and stay for this week’s Spell It Out feature, when David, Emily, Ken, and Gen Z guest Haley ask why communal dining’s on the rise in the American workplace.

Couldn’t be happier you’re joining us at the Mode/Switch table!

-craig

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 a guest, Taylor Crabill, a New York attorney who specializes in employment law.

Here are some questions that compelled us to get legal advice:

The answer to these questions is mostly Nope. But we Mode/Switchers—Emily, David, LaShone, Ken, and I—pursuant to the aforementioned inquiries, conduct a thorough investigation to ascertain the veracity of the matter at hand, leaving no affidavit unturned.

In other words, we ask Taylor questions, and he provides answers.

So, come for the torts and retorts, but stay for discussion of issues like this:

Wage theft. Sexual harassment. Whistleblowing.

We also “Spell It Out,” addressing what happens when you get hurt on the job in the Metaverse. (Whut?)

And after hearing our reasonable doubts and unreasonable jokes, you’ll know who to go to first—your HR manager or your nearest workplace attorney.

Want a free consultation with Taylor Crabill?

You can connect with Taylor on his firm’s website or learn more about workplace rights on his YouTube channel. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

What’s Coming up in Mode/Switch, Season 3?

Our podcast’s getting noticed! No kidding, every week, thought leaders email us, requesting to join the conversation. So, in the coming year, you’ll notice we’re putting out an extra seat at the Mode/Switch table.

Our focus won’t change—intergenerational divides at work—but our guest roster will most definitely expand!

Next week’s our last episode for 2024, but when we start back up on January 17, you’ll hear exclusive content from thought leaders, published authors, and workplace consultants helping you cope when when work’s a lot.

We believe these guests will help you become the kind of humans we all want to be at work—even when facing burnout, imposter syndrome, felt inefficacy, and relational breakdown. So join us in 2025 as we seek to respond in richly human ways to the craziness that is the American workplace.

Tune into a conversation that's helping to shape the future of 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.

This week, Andrea Munday and I sit down to the mics to say, You are not alone. Andrea drove from her Chicago-based company, Xeno Media to Calvin University in Grand Rapids for a book launch party for my newly published Digital Overwhelm put on by Calvin’s Center for Faith and Writing.

She made sure to come early enough so we could do mode/switch therapy in-studio.

This week, a millennial (that’s her) and an Xer (that’s me) swap their own stories of occupational disruption that span from the Great Recession to the Great Resignation.

Come for the tales of personal chaos in professional spaces—and stay for mode/switches to create psychological safety for yourself and others.

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 Millennial perspectives on work culture, you’ll also catch our Spell It Out feature, where we explore "white-fonting," a shrewd but risky practice in an era of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

True confession: Emily, David, LaShone, Ken, and I all sat down to the mics feeling exhausted by the intensity of the times. But we found our mojo, like we so often do, in the crazy joy of good talk.

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 mention of the electoral college this week. No hot air, no high winds. But even so, we are talking about American dividedness—in the intergenerational workplace.

Few of us can fix national politics, at least not any time soon. But workplace differences? Yeah, that’s something you and I can get to work on right now.

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 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 week, the Mode/Switchers—with the help of Gen Z guest Alex D’Agostino— unpack this latest intergenerational reckoning. 

This week’s Spell It Out feature addresses the trend of “Quiet Cutting.”