The Mode/Switch

Heads-up: we use explicit language in this episode.

But more importantly, we discuss what “bad words” do at work and why…

Boomer, Xer, Millennial, and Gen Zer have their place around our table: Ken, David, Craig, Emily, LaShone, and Hannah. We don’t have representatives from the Silent Generation. (Still, we’re pretty sure they used explicit language at work, too, but—silently?)

This week, we’re exploring what today’s intensifications of swearing might say about “stuckness” in our workplaces.

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 refrigeration.

This little parable has a widespread application: what’s happening within is nearly always related to what’s happening beyond.

This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, special guest Debra Rienstra, a climate writer and activist, talks about what’s happening within and beyond your company. It’s a conversation, in other words, about businesses and their neighborhoods.

For us Mode/Switchers—David, LaShone, Emily, Craig, and Haley—the biggest surprise was this insight:

If you want to care for your company’s culture, you gotta care for your company’s place.

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 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/Switchers to talk with a couple of supply chain experts, Professors Phil Johnson (Calvin University) and Hannah Stolze (Baylor University). But the processes they analyze help the rest of us analyze what’s going wrong in workplace culture today.

Call these processes logistics. Call them fulfillment services. Call them supply chains. Whatever you call them, they’re integral to doing workplaces better.

In order to rehumanize organizations, we have to rethink our relationship with the more-than-human. That means developing a richer attention to systems, technology, infrastructure—not to mention a lot of planes, ships, and trucks.

This podcast conversation seeks openings in the stuck places of organizational culture.Better attention to supply chains creates more generous attention to, and care for, working communities.

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 you laugh, too.)

The podcast, you’ll notice, is longer than usual. There’s bonus content at the end from Jane and Lew’s life stories.

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—LaShone, Emily, David, & I—think this claim has some problems in the workplace, so we discuss a tricky set of questions: 

And, maybe most importantly, how you can practice authenticity without shutting down other people’s wellbeing?

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 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 integral element of the human condition.

Talking with Professor Timpe about able-ism in the workplace—that is, the belief that certain ways of being a body are normal and superior—pressed me to see realities that matter but that are hard to talk about.

Here’s my advice about this podcast’s deep dive into workplace disability: Don’t listen to rejuvenate your compassion. Don’t press “play” to pay out sympathy for the unfortunates on the edge of your life.

But do listen if you want to attend better to the latent capital that’s circulating right next to you, all around you, thanks to the differently abled people in your workplace.

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 the life and spirit of an organization.

Dishonest ways. Impractical ways. Distracting ways. Maybe even stupid ways.

But how should an organization talk about what it’s like to work there?

So, here’s an invitation to spend time with the Mode/Switchers this week and figure out how to narrow the gap between “stories lived” and “stories told” at your job.

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 responsibility for that good work.

I know “it depends” can be a frustrating answer to any question. But that answer recalls a basic truth: you can’t find wisdom in the workplace alone.

So, press play on this pod while you work today and let the Mode/Switchers (David, LaShone, Emily, and I) join you in search of deeper awareness, greater justice, and richer belonging in your work culture.

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 the Pieces: Leadership after Empire. He’s an experienced organizational leader (Executive Vice President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership), and he’s a good and very funny human.

The Mode/Switchers--David, Emily, Ken, and Craig--loved Elan’s stories. But we’re not gonna lie: he’s going to trouble you with a paradox of leadership.

The gifts that get you to the top of the pyramid vanish when you get there.

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 it might not be such a bad idea to start seeing your job as a raft rather than a scenic overlook.

There are some consolations in acknowledging the institutional perils of our time. Let’s think through them together.