What can a TikTok dance tell you about your team member? Less than you think, says this week’s guest, Kylan Rutherford.

Podcasts like The Mode/Switch keep telling managers to try to better understand their team members. Get curious. Build empathy. Cultivate rapport.

What better way to do that than finding them on FB or TikTok?

Scratch that. Social media may be one of the worst places to get to know your team.

Or so says our Mode/Switch Pod guest Dr. Kylan Rutherford. He’s a social scientist who’s done work at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, and he’s now the director of Normsy Labs, which uses AI to “transform toxic online behavior and build pathways to healthier digital conversations.”

The only way you’ll get to know your employee better is if you can access their finsta. Which you probably can’t. If you’re unsure what a finsta is, you’re in good company. Our intergenerational table was split on that one too, and Kylan brings everyone up to speed. Around the table: Gen X insight from David Wilson and me, Millennial tact from Josh DiMarco, and Gen Z skepticism from Alex Johnson.

If as a manager, you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “Well, my employee chose to post it, so why not check it out?” or “Following them online will help build rapport at work,” this conversation will give you pause. What you’re trying to learn on Insta, and what you’ll actually learn, Kylan says, will be widely divergent.

But here’s what you’ll come away from this podcast better able to do:

• Ask what an online signal tells you about a team member

• Grasp why some people disclose so much online while others don’t

• Stop treating an employee’s feed as their “real” self

• Discern when to make space for politics and religion in tricky workspaces

Managers, let me ask: Have you ever learned something about a coworker online that changed how you saw them at work? Let me know in the comments below!

You can learn more about Kylan Rutherford’s research here.

This podcast addresses dead nerve endings between and among managers, employees, and senior leadership. Welcome to a brand new podcast: Mode/Switch: Second Opinion!

This might sound like a bad LinkedIn post with a dubious moral parable. But I think managers need second opinions, too, especially when it comes to insensitivity between senior leadership and employees.

Dayforce Research now reports that “Only 42% of frontline workers say leaders understand their challenges.” That represents a 20% decline in two years. But managers don’t need that research to know that senior leadership has lost a feel for what’s happening on teams and in workflows.

Nobody feels this organizational neuropathy as painfully as managers. But the usual prescriptions are unhelpful: Be candid. Be clear. Be sincere. Be resilient.

But even after managers do all these things, the “Communication Gap Between Leadership and Frontline Employees” continues. And managerial consultancy and coaching basically say, “You’re going to have to live with this.”

Seeking help with a new podcast concept
Feeling the weight of this problem, I reached out to a clinical psychologist, Dr. Irene Kraegel, of Dwell Psychological Services, and asked her if she’d be willing to help me address wicked organizational problems for mid-level managers.

Once a month, we’ll welcome a mid-level manager to the table who’s experiencing a management problem—not a huge crisis, per se, but a puzzling challenge—and then discuss it, moving toward action steps. (Maybe checking back later to see how the action steps worked.)

This spinoff edition of The Mode/Switch would seek to help mid-level leaders make vital “reframes” in their work. We still call these “mode switches” but we’ll resource interdisciplinary expertise instead of the intergenerational wisdom the Mode/Switch Pod usually offers.

Steve Cuss joins the podcast to talk about emotional regulation on work teams.

When your team is sad or exhausted on the clock, you get them off the clock—right?

Do they take a vacation? See a therapist? Get a new job?

Sometimes they just can't. So Steve Cuss makes a better proposal: let's make it possible for people to be well at work!

This week the Mode/Switch team—Ken (Boomer), Craig (Gen X), Josh (Millennial), and Madeline (Gen Z)—works on that question with Steve, author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and host of the Being Human podcast. What does emotional health look like in the pressurized middle of an organization, where you have a lot of responsibility and not much authority?

You'll get four questions that expose your team's emotional patterns, and a script for what to say when someone's sarcasm shuts the room down. You'll hear how Steve accidentally muted his own team, and how four generations handle all the feelings at work. You'll also hear us push back: Steve's advice assumes a boss who can take feedback. What if yours can't?

Mostly, though, you'll get a half hour that helps you do more than cope when work's a lot.

Podcast Table of Contents:

Segment 1 — Intergenerational discussion

02:36 — Dealing with the sponges, the oblivious, and the dangerous.

07:29 — Scripting what to say when someone slices others in a meeting.

12:30 — Asking 4 questions to expose your team’s emotional pattern.

14:53 — Sharing how Steve’s team confronted him about his combativeness.

16:05 — “The only thing worse than talking about it is not talking about it.”

17:24 — Approaching feelings from different intergenerational places.

Segment 2 — This week’s Mode Switch

Segment 3 — The roundtable follow-up

22:12 — The catch: Steve assumes a boss who’ll receive feedback. What if yours won’t?

24:03 — Ken on quitting your job: “It might be an open door, but it leads to an abyss.”

24:16 — Madeline on feelings and Gen Z: “I’d rather name it than hide it.”

24:38 — Josh on Black-and-Brown code-switching: “You probably won’t get all of me.”

26:16 — Can you afford four hours of emotional care for your team each month?

28:14 — We need psychic caffeine.