Strong Feelings

Strong Feelings is ending—but we’re excited to bring you the first episode of our new show, “Per My Last Email.” If you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts—or visit the show at PMLEshow.com.—You deserve an equitable, actionable, and thoughtful performance review. So how do you move forward when you get…something else entirely? That’s what we’re tackling in our very first episode. Listen in as Jen and Sara coach people through big dilemmas—and even bigger feelings—about the wild and weird world of performance reviews. You’ll leave with new tools to help you rebound after unfair or unexpected feedback…or at least some good stories for the group chat.    Links:Common cognitive distortions at workThe 40 Best Questions to Ask in an InterviewGot a work situation eating away at you? Send it to us! Submit your dilemma at PMLEshow.com.

Hey, Strong Feelings fans! We’ve decided to retire the show…so we can focus on a brand-new one! It’s called Per My Last Email, and we cannot wait for you to hear it. The first episode comes out April 13, so if you like this trailer, make sure to subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Stitcher—or visit PMLEshow.com to get the details. Here’s what it’s all about! Enjoy! —Sara –How can I get my boss to advocate for me and have my back? Should I disclose my disability? Why can’t I juggle all of this work? Work raises a lot of questions—and too many of them get stuck in our heads, rattling around until we feel overwhelmed and unqualified. No more. Join hosts Sara Wachter-Boettcher and Jen Dionisio for this brand-new podcast designed to help you work through all the big feelings and confusing situations that come up at work. Each episode, they’ll share real-life dilemmas listeners are struggling with—from how to respond to passive-aggressive emails to what to do when your boss gives you truly terrible feedback

We’ve spent the past few months deep in a series on pandemic clarity—hearing intimate stories about people whose relationships to work have changed dramatically over the past two years. But the more we listened to others’ stories, the more we realized…it was time to tell our own.In today’s episode, Sara is joined by Active Voice operations manager and Strong Feelings producer, Emily Duncan, to talk about their own reckonings with work. From the founding of Active Voice during the pandemic to confronting exploitation in the music industry, they offer glimpses into the reality of being leadership works-in-progress.What we do is really tech and UX and UI focused. But I do think that there's a ton of overlap in multiple industries. And I see myself as having the ability to take some of what I've been learning here and bring it back, take that fire from the Greek gods and bring it back down and share it. If I can come and help educate even just one person on their rights and what they deserve, I think that it will

What would you do if you found out you were being paid $25,000 less than your peers, and that while they were allowed to work from home, you were expected to show up in person? Kate Rotondo had both happen while working at one of the largest and best-known tech companies in the world, and the experience profoundly changed her relationship to work. Kate joins Sara to tell her story of institutional betrayal—and how it took her from working in code to working in clay.I had to let go of the responsibility of providing for my family. I had to let myself become expensive. I also had to shift my sense of what's important to me from getting my career back and earning that money to reclaiming my time—to becoming rich in something else, if it wasn't going to be career accolades, and it wasn't going to be respect at my job, and it wasn't going to be the money that came from that. I kind of had to shift and think, 'What I'm asking for here at work is to have the same lifestyle as my colleagues.' My colleagues wake up in

Joann Lee Wagner used to feel pretty guilty for taking breaks—until her organization decided to experiment with a new way of working: the four-day workweek. In the process, Joann had to do more than change her calendar. She had to rethink how she thought about work itself.Today we share the story of one person’s, and one organization's, experience trying out a four-day week: Joann Lee Wagner, the VP of people operations at Common Future. They tested a four-day week in 2020, and have since made it permanent. Listen in as Joann walks through how their experiment came together, what they learned in the process, and how it changed Joann forever. I think of my grandmother who was an entrepreneur in San Francisco in Fisherman's Wharf, selling her candles and working so hard to make a living for her family and the health challenges that came after that. I think about how she wouldn't want me to be in a place of such constant stress and hardship, where I'm working myself to the bone just to live now. I think that she

A year into the pandemic, Julie Threlkeld met with a leadership coach to talk about building her confidence in stakeholder meetings. And she left deciding what she actually needed was to retire early. Today on the show, Julie shares her story of leaving the tech workforce at age 56—and how keeping Future Julie in mind helped her get there. Sara also chats with Eugenié George, a financial wellness specialist and educator who specializes in helping women of color understand their money and their ancestry. She shares tips on how to manage your money to align with your values and financial goals.When I started working for myself, I had this vision of myself that I always called Future Julie, and Future Julie is the older version of myself…the person who's probably not going to get hired as a freelancer after a certain age, because that's just the reality. Or because she's too sick of trying to keep up with technology, or she's literally sick with something, or she just has other things to do with her life than me

Who are you beyond the bio on your LinkedIn profile? In today’s episode, we tell the story of Alison Taylor—a designer and strategist who went to great lengths to find that out.After being hospitalized due to extreme burnout and a toxic workplace, Alison knew that she needed a change. So she started a journey of healing and self-discovery spanning five years and three countries. And that’s just the beginning.I just want to be me. I don't want to be "Alison: business designer/strategist, helping creative freelancers, early-stage startups, and folks design sustainable, unique products and systems that scale sustainably." I don't want to just be that. I'm so much more than that. And I felt like I was losing who I was….And then I realized, "Yo, you can unsubscribe from all of this.” Who's making up these rules? Everything is made up. And you don't have to subscribe to any of this. You can decide to be the person that you are, you can decide to use your voice.—Alison Taylor, founder, AugurLinks:Alison TaylorAugurC

We’ve all heard about pandemic burnout. But that’s not the whole story. This season on Strong Feelings, we’re focusing on pandemic clarity: how the past two years have changed people’s relationships to work…for good. In February, we gathered detailed survey responses from 236 people working in tech and design. Our central question: How has your relationship to work changed in the past two years? The results of our research were just released in a new report called “Work needs to stay in its place”—available for download now at activevoicehq.com/research. We found that the pandemic didn’t just upend people’s daily routines. For many, it triggered a dramatic rethinking of their priorities and values at work. So that’s what we’re talking about this season. To kick things, Sara sits down with researcher Dr. Urszula Pruchniewska, who worked on the report, to discuss some of their findings.I think the pandemic set the stage for us being able to talk about stuff that we might have been feeling for a really long time

Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, equity, and respect at work. The best way to do that? Unionize! Tech worker and organizer Nora Keller tells us how to get started. Nora Keller is a product manager at the New York Times and an organizer for the Times Tech Guild. The unit was formed earlier this year and is one in a growing movement of new tech-worker unions fighting for equity, transparency, and a seat at the table. Every worker, no matter where they work, or what they do, deserves an equitable, accountable, and transparent workplace. The working class is going to find its power through solidarity. It's not going to find it through division. And the truth is that the average tech worker has a lot more in common with a healthcare worker or a teacher than they do with the Jeff Bezoses of the world. —Nora Keller, organizer, Times Tech GuildWe talk about:How Nora got involved in the unionizing effortWhat the members of the Times Tech Guild are fighting to change in their workplaceHow a union is formed

Design and tech events need more diverse lineups. But getting on stage? That's a big hurdle. Women Talk Design CEO Danielle Barnes joins us to talk about how to get over it by giving yourself “a soft place to practice.” Women Talk Design is on a mission to see a more diverse group of speakers onstage, and a more diverse group of leaders thriving in their workplaces. CEO Danielle Barnes shares her story of joining and building the organization from a speaker directory to a set of flagship programs and events designed to build a safe, welcoming community and  elevate the voices of women and non-binary people.One of the things that drives me to do this work is that I truly believe everyone should be able to see someone onstage—or leading a meeting, or in the books that they're reading—that looks like them, that has similar experiences to them, and think that that can be them as well.—Danielle Barnes, CEO, Women Talk DesignWe talk about:The evolution of Women Talk Design and how Danielle transitioned from volunte

The pandemic broke our understanding of the world. How do we put the pieces together again? Samira Rajabi joins us to point the way—and it all starts with getting comfortable “sitting in the shit” with each other.Samira Rajabi is a researcher, writer, and assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado. Her work focuses on the intersection of trauma, social media, disability studies, and feminist theory, and her book, All My Friends Live in My Computer: Tactical Media, Trauma and Meaning Making, came out earlier this year.I think this impulse to compare comes from this sense that what you're going through is not legible to other people. So we often sort of demean our own suffering because we don't think that it's worthy in the eyes of society, or culture, or our peer group. I think the way to cope with that is to listen better. So rather than being in a space, where it's like, "Oh, you say you're suffering? Well, listen to my suffering," it's, "How might I hear what you're saying with a rec

Take a moment to check in with your body—yeah, right now! Do you feel tension in your shoulders? A clench in your jaw? A heaviness in your chest? Those feelings have something to tell us—and it’s time we tuned into them at work, says Alla Weinberg. Alla Weinberg is a work relationship expert and culture designer who coaches teams and leaders to build relationship intelligence skills, create cultures of safety and trust, and move past toxic work environments. She's also the author of A Culture of Safety: Building Environments Where People Can Think, Collaborate, and Innovate.What needs to change: we have to shift from this mechanistic mindset around work that people are cogs in a machine, or resources, or capital, and understand that we are biological creatures that get sick, that have chemical hormonal changes in our bodies, that have emotions, that are messy, honestly, in a lot of ways we're very messy, and design around that piece. That we have differences in ability in how we think, in how we function and

When do white folks learn they’re white? And how do they start to understand the scope of benefits that whiteness affords them? For Jessie Daniels, these uncomfortable questions are only the beginning.Jessie Daniels is a Faculty Associate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, and a professor of Sociology, Critical Social Psychology, and Africana Studies at Hunter College and The Graduate Center at CUNY. She is a world-renowned expert on Internet manifestations of racism, and her latest book Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It is available now from Seal Press.I imagine there are people who are going to read this book and throw it against the wall. And that's okay. But I would just encourage you to pick it up again, after you've thrown it against the wall the first time, and keep reading and sit with the discomfort and also ask yourself, why are you uncomfortable? I would argue that, to the ext

What if spending a few minutes each day touching a plant or staring into space could change your life? Paloma Medina has seen it happen—and tells us why it’s the first step toward radical, equitable change. Paloma Medina is a management trainer, public speaker, coach, and entrepreneur who uses neuropsychology to help leaders develop more inclusive and equitable practices. She joins us to talk about trading cortisol addiction for life-affirming productivity, the power of tracking equity metrics on your team, and why she recommends everyone spend 5 minutes a day doing nothing.Inclusion is a sense of belonging. It is how we pick up signals from others that we are valued, liked, that we belong. That we have friends, that we've got people on our side. A ton of the work that I did in the beginning in researching equity and inclusion and how it intersected with the kind of manager trainer I could be was realizing there is all this neuropsychological research that shows that belonging is this absolute core need. Huma

Why do so many people mention Brock Turner’s promising swim career, or the many Oscars Harvey Weinstein won—instead of focusing on the stories of their survivors? Why do women often feel guilty telling a mansplainer to stop? For Kate Manne, the answer to both comes down to a single concept: entitlement.Kate Manne is a professor, writer, and moral philosopher whose research aims to more closely define and combat various forms of misogyny. In her newest book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, Kate offers a bold new perspective on the ways in which men’s entitlement to sex, power, knowledge, leisure, and bodily autonomy are used to police and disenfranchise women and other marginalized populations.It can really change the course of your life to say, "I do not have to feel bad for certain people, and I do not have to feel guilty for my refusal to prioritize the emotional needs of the most privileged people.” Rather, I can actually look toward people who are more marginalized, who are genuinely in need of

We’ve all heard about unethical tech products that track and surveil users. But there’s another kind of harm happening in tech: abusers co-opting apps and other digital products to control and hurt their victims. Eva PenzeyMoog explains this growing problem—and shows us how to fight back. Content warning: This episode features discussions and specific anecdotes of tech-enabled abuse and interpersonal harm, including domestic violence. Eva PenzeyMoog is the founder of The Inclusive Safety Project and author of the new book Design for Safety. Through her work as a tech safety consultant and designer, Eva helps people in tech design products with the safety of our most vulnerable populations in mind.In terms of trying to talk about this stuff at work, or just with other people who work in tech, it was honestly kind of awkward because this isn't a topic that people like to think about. I talk a lot about domestic violence, there are other ways that this happens. There's issues of child abuse, and elder abuse, and

Strong Feelings returns September 9th, but in the meantime, we wanted to share something with you: the Courageous Leadership Program, Sara's six-week group coaching program. It's all about stepping out of self-doubt and into your power as a leader, and it's designed specifically for people in design and tech who want to be bold, inclusive, confident leaders—but maybe need a little bit of help shaking off some of the societal messages they've absorbed that keep them playing small. If this sounds like you, head over to https://www.activevoicehq.com/group-coaching. Groups run Tuesdays starting September 21, or Wednesdays starting September 22, and enrollment is open now.

Most of us think of trauma as the  capital “T” kind: war, natural disasters, serious abuse. But day-to-day life is full of smaller traumas, and those need to be processed, too: bullying, work stress, the aftermath of the pandemic. Rachael Dietkus of Social Workers Who Design is on a mission to help us do just that.Rachael Dietkus is a writer, author, and social worker focused on the ways trauma shapes how and why we design. Through her organization Social Workers Who Design, Rachael and her team work to normalize and codify trauma-informed practices in design workplaces.We've demonstrated a certain kind of toughness and unplanned resilience that has really been built on this collective trauma of living through a pandemic. And so there can be some power and some comfort in that. I think that with all of the adaptability and need to be adaptable throughout the past several months, what it has really shown us is that we now need flexibility. So is there flexibility in scheduling? Is there flexibility in how and

Most work environments prioritize profits over people. But there are other ways businesses can look—if we’re willing to imagine them.Rachel and Travis Gertz are the founders of Louder Than Ten, a cooperative company on a mission to democratize the workplace through project management. Through their training and apprenticeship programs, they show digital organizations how to give power back to the people leading their projects. When some people talk about this, it seems like such a radical idea, but it's actually so practical. It's just a very common-sense way to make sure that you're more sustainable. Worker cooperatives last longer, people stay longer, they ride out through the rough times. Because the first thing that a capitalist framework company is going to do is they're going to cut their workers, right? And then they're going to retain all the earnings up at the top. But if you're a worker-owned cooperative, everybody has to support and pitch in. So I just think it's just a very practical system.—Rache

Even before the pandemic, Americans were experiencing a devastating loneliness epidemic. We talk to UX designer-turned-connection coach Kat Vellos about the longing for deep and meaningful friendships that so many of us experience, and how we can  build deeper, more substantial connections in our adult lives.   Kat Vellos is a connection coach, speaker, facilitator, and author on a mission to transform loneliness and “platonic longing” into authentic human connection. She is the author of two books: We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, and Connected From Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away. When we think about connection, we often turn our lens outward, and it's really important first to look inside and say, what is it that you really need right now? And what is missing? If you can wave a magic wand and have the kind of connection you want, what would that look like, and how would it be integrated into your life? And the way you answer that question helps you