This Working Life

Have you had to endure a bad boss?  

What makes them so difficult, how can you spot them a mile off, and how can you avoid hiring them in the first place?  

New research argues that it's far more important to avoid bad leaders than try and find the best ones. The damage they do can be terrible and they tend to encourage bad leadership traits in others as well. 

Lisa sits down in the boardroom with two experts in toxic leadership to work out how to avoid horrible bosses and what to you can do if you're stuck with one. 

Guests: 

• Dr Jay Van Bavel, Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University, Professor at the Norwegian School of Economics and Director of the Center for Conflict & Cooperation.
• Dr Bob Sutton, Organisational psychologist, Emeritus Professor at Stanford University and Author of many books including The No Asshole Rule which is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary 

Links: 

• The study that Jay co-authored can be read here
• Lisa's interview with Dacher Keltner about power can be heard here 

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

How is your grey matter doing? Are you digitally overloaded? Spinning out even thinking about another notification?  

Our brains weren't designed to operate in the modern workplace and it is showing.  

Lisa dives into the cranial folds to figure out what your workplace is doing to your brain, and what you can do about it.   

Guest:

• Professor Selena Bartlett, Group Leader for Neuroscience at Queensland University of Technology and the author of multiple books. Her most recent is Thriving Minds in the Age of AI – the Brain Science of Thinking Clearly and Living Well  

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

What are you like with conflict? Do you relish it or shy away?  

Being uncomfortable with the fray may be holding us back at work and stifling our ability to work creatively.  

Lisa laces up her boxing gloves to enter the ring of confrontation and disagreement at work! 

Guest:

Tim Duggan,  Chair of the Digital Publisher's Alliance and the author of Work Backwards, Cult Status and Clear In Tension 

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

Believe it or not, it's almost summer!  

A lot of universities are finishing up and high schools only have a few weeks until exams. All of a sudden people need employment until March, it happens quickly!   

But the rise in casualisation and the cost of living mean there's more competition for temporary work and employers may not be as keen anymore on staff who depart with the leaves of autumn.  

Are you or someone in your life looking for a summer job? Do they still exist the way they used to? If not, what can we do about it?   

Lisa rolls up her sleeves and gets ready for the summer rush! 

Guests: 

• Dr Blair Chapman, Chief Economist at employment service Seek
• Dr Irma Mooi-Reci, Professor in sociology at the University of Melbourne and and the founder and CEO of JobSciences
• Ryan Craig, Managing Director at Achieve Partners and author of Apprentice Nation and College Disrupted 

Links:

• Irma Mooi-Reci's new employment data tool can be found at Jobography
• Ryan Craig's article about summer jobs in the United States can be read on Forbes 

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

How's your neck feeling? Tight? Falling forward? 

You aren't alone.  

In the first edition of our occasional series Workplace Physio we look forward, with our heads held high, at the impact of 'tech neck'. 

Lisa steps on the wobbleboard and does her exercises to figure out what work is doing to our necks and how we can go about fixing it. 

Guest:

• Jennifer Callaghan, Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist and the Director of Callaghan Physiotherapy

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

Is AI coming for your job?  

Well, maybe not yet. But there are early warning signs that entry level jobs are getting squeezed and traditional career pathways are closing up. 

Research from Stanford Digital Labs in the US has shone a light on what actual impact artificial intelligence is having on employment, and it's not necessarily what the big tech bosses have been telling us! 

Lisa scales the corporate coalface to find out what's coming. 

Guests:

• Dr Bharat Chandar, Research Fellow and Labor Economist at Stanford Digital Labs
• Dr Michael Legg, Future of Law Professor at the University of NSW

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

Are you burnt out ... again?!  

How does it keep coming round like clockwork?   

We're entering burnout season, and author Karl Treacher agues in his new book Built to Burn that you burning out is a feature of the system, not a bug.  

Are we facing an epidemic of burnout? What can we do about it? 

Lisa's picked up her hose and is running towards the burning building. 

Guests

• Karl Treacher, CEO of The Culture Institute, Executive in Residence at Griffith Business School and author of Built To Burn

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

Are you drowning in digital?  

Are the company sponsored mental health tools helping you at all? They've become the norm as they're cheaper and easier to apply than traditional methods.  

But research is showing that these applications and online tools aren't always cutting the mustard when it comes to improving our mental wellbeing at work; especially when they're applied as a catch all. 

What makes you go ommmm? Lisa investigates. 

And the Radio National Top 100 Australian Books countdown is underway - make your vote count!  Our Work Book guest this week is Dr Stefan Volk! His pick for our This Working Life bookshelf is Outlive by Peter Attia. 

Guests:

• Dr Julieta Galante, Medical Doctor, Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Contemplative Studies Centre at the University of Melbourne
• Dr Stefan Volk, Professor of Management and the Co-Director of the Body, Heart and Mind in Business Research Group at the University of Sydney

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

It feels like we’re constantly being asked to know things, to be rock solid in our information.  

But is this desire for control and certainty stopping us from making better decisions both at work, and about our working lives?  

Journalist and author Simone Stolzoff has a lot of ideas about our brains and how we go to work! 

He’s  been circling the globe hunting out people who trying to understand doubt and uncertainty for his new book How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers. 

So, what don't you know? 

Guest:

• Simone Stolzoff, journalist and author of How to Not Know  and The Good Enough Job

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you! 

Do you measure up?

Digital and AI tools coupled with an increased desire for productivity means we’re being marked more closely than ever before. 

New research shows that when we know how we're being measured we stop prioritising the work that isn't measured, especially if we think the systems aren't transparent or fair. 

Lisa gets stuck into the modern map of "metricisation" to see how to defend soft skills from a passion for measurement! 

The Radio National Top 100 Australian Books countdown is underway - make your vote count!  Our Work Book guest is ABC Business reporter Daniel Ziffer and his pick for the This Working Life book club is Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. 

Guests: 

• Dr Martin Edwards, Organisational psychologist and Professor in Management in the University of Queensland Business School
• Daniel Ziffer, ABC Business Reporter and author of A Wunch of Bankers: A Year in the Hayne Royal Commission

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You can binge more episodes of the This Working Life podcast with your on the job correspondent Lisa Leong on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to get in touch, we read them all and love hearing from you!