This week, executive coach Allison K. Williams joins the Mode/Switch Pod to help you discern how much of your private stuff it's okay to disclose at work.

Can I start with a slightly boozy story?

Yesterday I skipped lunch for a day too full of meetings to stick a fork in a salad. And then, at the day’s end, I joined my wife and a couple of friends for Detroit-styled cocktails. I can’t hold much liquor on a good day. Those drinks hit yesterday’s stomach so hard I had to hide a stagger on the way out to the car.

Now that I think about it, hard liquor on an empty stomach is a pretty good metaphor for swallowing what your job pushes at you everyday—and pretending you’re good to go.

Most days, you’ve got what it takes to toss the job back. But there are other days, too.

For me, the question is, how much do you let your manager know when your gut’s as empty as a drum? Do you tell your coworkers about the test results you’re waiting on? Do you talk about your quarrel with your teenager? Do you explain the plantar fasciitis that makes it hard to get up from your office chair?

Or do you just hide your limp between 9 and 5?

It’s just the kind of subtly complex question this intergenerational roundtable loves to take on as we seek shifts in mindset or behavior that makes a difference. This week, Ken our Boomer, Emily our Xennial, LaShone our Millennial, and yours truly the Gen Xer engage our guest Allison K. Williams to better sort out all the selves we are in work and life.

Allison pulls up a chair to our podcast table with a pretty wild story about what she learned on the hardest night of her life. That night launched her on a career of executive coaching, where she helps people understand more fully what it actually means to “bring your full self to work.”

Before you bring your self to work, Allison says, make sure you actually know that self. Doing that, on an empty stomach, may take more grace than you think.

Glad you’re here! Would you hit reply and let us know about at time when you felt like you wondered if you should hide your stagger at work? Did you disclose what was going on? Keep it to yourself? Let us know!

Psychotherapist Dana Skaggs joins our intergenerational pod to discuss the wisdom of boundaries in the workplace.

Well hello there—and happy Tuesday! Welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod, a biweekly roundtable on work-culture questions. Our intergenerational team equips you to do more than cope when work’s a lot! This episode asks why boundary-setting’s so tricky, especially in the workplace. Do you wish you could assert yourself at work—without creating more passive aggression? This conversation’s for you!

We are all two kinds of humans at once--those who want closeness and those who need their space. But being both kinds of selves gets tricky at work. We feel the need to assert our rights. We feel the need to get along with others. How do we do both?

Does self-care require fences? Does working community require eliminating fences?

This week, our intergenerational crew—LaShone, Emily, Ken, David, and I—talk with psychotherapist Dana Skaggs about how to create strong but open boundaries at work. It’s not about building a fortress, or even a fence. It’s more like—well, you’ll have to listen to find out!

Dana’s good at finding the laughter in difficult conversations. She’s an easy-going communicator with a gift for vivid analogies. And we should know! We pushed her pretty hard, probing her concept of boundary-setting on the job, asking questions like:

• Don’t boundaries become some people’s excuse for getting out of work?

• Won’t boundary-setting make us all lonelier?

• Aren’t boundaries easier for people who like conflict?

Our workplace-focused conversation today focuses on interpersonal conflicts at work: How do we assert our rights on the job and show up to collaborate generously with others?

But the question of boundaries today quickly raises urgent, widely felt questions about society and culture in our divisive times. My wife and I felt this keenly in Northern Ireland recently, when we did some dark tourism and wrote prayers on the Peace Wall (see below). Our tour guide’s father was murdered in The Troubles, and hearing stories like that made it feel urgent to keep boundaries from becoming barricades.

I produce the Mode/Switch because I think the workplace is a space where we can seek ways to be human together. I believe this episode equips you for that good work!

-craig

Susan Collins joins the pod to find subtle cracks in leadership styles in today's intergenerational workplace.

There’s a reason our podcast team’s intergenerational. Without multiple perspectives, you can’t make sense of the subtle patterns in today’s dynamic workplace.

But sometimes the subtlest patterns are your own.

Welcome to the Mode/Switch Pod, which comes out every other Tuesday to make sense of American work culture and help you do more than cope when work’s a lot.

Susan Collins joins the roundtable as an ICF-certified coach—The Network Concierge—to discuss the hidden patterns in our own vocational formation. Especially for Gen X managers, the things you take for granted about what it means to do the job need to shift in today’s workplace.

This week, Ken our Boomer, David our Xer, Emily our Xennial, and LaShone our Millennial discuss how to spot hidden, sometimes detrimental patterns in your own practice of leadership. But we’re not playing gotcha! If you can find the hidden patterns in how you work, you can find the courage to do more than cope in a changeful workplace.

A long time ago, a rabbi warned about putting new booze in old bottles. We’re trying to keep up with that wisdom right alongside you. So pour something good and pull up to our roundtable.

-craig