There’s a part of the working experience that doesn’t get talked about very often, but I think it highlights one of the most important skills that one can learn in a job: managing expectations. Your own, and others. This issue …
Category: Organizational culture
Emotional work at work, still hard.
“Emotional labor” was a Hot Topic a few years ago; the term was originally used to describe the work of managing personal feelings in a work context; then it was coined by a sociologist at Berkeley (why is it always …
On standing still, and moving forward
This post is not about the heartbreaking deaths of George Floyd/Breonna Taylor/Ahmaud Arbery/Philando Castile/Michael Brown/so many other Black people at the hands of police officers and white supremacists, and it’s not about the wave of anguish and rage, that’s being …
Company values: It’s complicated, I guess
At most organizations where I’ve worked, if organizational values were not already a thing, they became a Thing while I worked there. People realized that it’s not enough to have a clear mission; you also need guiding principles on how …
Knowing what you want in a job
In the two years since I left my last full-time organizational job (the two months in May and June of this year at a corporate comms job, I do not count), many, many people have told me that they are …
It’s all in the follow-through
When I was 10 years old, my well-intentioned father came into my room where I was reading a book at the time, I’m sure, because at that age, I was spending approximately every waking minute outside of school and cartoons …
The need for space
There are many ways to define the word “space.” You can think about space as the realm that exists beyond our planet and its atmosphere; you can also think about space in terms of your own body, and the places …
On the compulsion of honesty
I’ve been noodling around with a blog post on speaking in code—and breaking the code—for a while now, and I’m not sure if that piece is ever going to see the light of day. Some insights strike me really powerfully …
Love in the workplace
I recently went through a family crisis. It wasn’t about me directly, it involved one of my parents, so I expediently posted an update on Facebook without too many details, just to let my friends network know and not have …