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 how proving the value of your work somehow becomes the imperative to prove the value of yourself. We offer practical advice for times when you find yourself—as one professional report notes, our digitalized workplaces have replaced “cultures of trust” with “cultures of proof.”

So, yeah, here’s the surprise. Your boss might not be the only culprit in a professional culture of proof. This week, the Mode/Switchers ask what digital platforms have to do with digital babysitting in the workplace.

Ultimately, our goal is to help you start building trust in the workplace.

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, is everybody really and truly so overwhelmed that the nonstop sorry-train really and truly needs every single stop?

We don’t think so.

This conversation features a not-very-sorry sortie of apologizers, Emily, Hannah, and Craig. And we tell some stories about dealing with communication overwhelm with the misplaced strategy of saying, “Sorry to bother you.”

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, and Craig give you a twenty minutes of good words about getting hired—or not—when you’re over-qualified, under-qualified, or pert near petrified.

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!

There you are at work being amazing like you do. Doing the thing. Every metric says you rock. But you feel sad.

Question: when there’s a gap between how work feels and how you feel, should you get rid of the gap? Should integrate or compartmentalize?

This week, the Mode/Switchers tell stories about times when work feels one way and your soul feels another.

We’re talking about the strange loneliness that comes when sadness and success happen at the same time.

This has to be the frankest episode of the Mode Switch Pod so far. We’re a pretty hopeful bunch. But, as David warns us in this episode, not everything has a redemptive arc. Sometimes things just suck.

So this week, Emily, LaShone, David, Craig, and our Gen Z guest, Alex D’Agostino cuss and discuss experiences of professional failure.

But then, because we can’t help ourselves, we also look for small but significant shifts you can make when you “lose.” We thought about putting a mic at our table for the voice in our heads that’s always prosecuting our failures.

But we pulled the plug on that one.

What happens when you don’t love your work any more?

What happens when you love your work too much?

There’s no quick answer to those questions. Different generations have different histories, so Emily, LaShone, Kendrick, David, and Ken—each speaking from a different age group—talk about the line between caring and not-caring at work.

Every week, this podcast runs

the numbers on workplace life. We tell stories. We offer ways to switch your mode at work. This week, our stories center on honest confusions and painful disillusionments and profound motivations.

Somewhere in the mix, you’ll hear your own experience, too.

In any case, we’d love to hear from you! Send us a note about the role that passion has played in your work ([email protected]).

Please note that the Mode/Switch Pod and Newsletter will be off next week for Thanksgiving.

Everyday life and work require a lot of emotional labor, especially when it comes to the contagiousness of feelings on the job.

How do you cope under layers of burnout—yours and others’ as well?

This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, Emily, Ken, Andrea, Craig, and our Gen Z guest, Kendrick Satterfield, tell our own burnout stories. You’ll notice that our intergenerational bunch copes in very different ways. But, hey, we also sneak in some Frasier-styled therapy around the Mode/Switch table.

I’ve worked most of my life in communities where anger’s unacceptable. But sometimes anger is indispensable at work—especially when it’s settled opposition to inequity in the late modern American workplace.

Regular Mode/Switchers Emily, Ken, and I are joined by millennial guest Shaq Anthony and Gen Z guest Olivia Winkowitsch to address questions like, Is the exhaustion you’re feeling actually anger? How can anger make you inquisitive? How can anger empower resistance?

But what do you do when you realize that your anger is not enough to change your industry?

That question troubles this week’s intergenerational conversation at the Mode/Switch table. You’ll hear painful stories. You’ll revisit labor history. And you’ll learn moves you can make to catalyze anger for the sake of change.

Strange as it sounds, this podcast is here for your anger and for your workplace’s good.

-craig