For the Love of Work

When companies began designing hybrid workplaces, they came to an unexpected discovery... managers would now be responsible for two employee experiences — remote and in-office. Both at the same time. From one location to another.In this episode, Sonia explores how best to get hybrid teams on the same page, what it takes to lead from home when your team is in the office, and why it takes extra effort to build trust in a hybrid environment.Betsy Bula, all-remote evangelist at GitLab, explains what proximity bias is and why providing equal access to technology is even more important in a hybrid workplace.Heidi K. Gardner from Harvard Law School teaches us how building a trust staircase fosters both competence trust and interpersonal trust in hybrid teams.Jason McMaster, head equipment manager for the Winnipeg Jets, gives us a behind-the-scenes peek at how he has successfully managed a hybrid workplace during away games for more than a decade.Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think.

Belonging means you feel seen for your unique contributions, connected to your coworkers, and supported in your daily life and career development. Offering a culture of belonging is an increasing priority for companies, and a lot of the responsibility for building it falls to new and middle managers.In this episode, we'll explore the key elements of creating a sense of belonging in your team: how to work against bias, the downsides of being an insider, and how to be an ally.Pooja Jain-Link, Executive Vice President at  Coqual, explains what belonging actually means, the pitfalls we need to be mindful of,  and how it applies to all of us.Stephanie Creary, Professor of Management at the Wharton School, provides step by step examples of things you can do with your own team to foster belonging, including her LEAP system.Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to read emotions in yourself and those around you, then adjust your behaviour accordingly. This is the superpower of listening. But it isn’t something that happens automatically — listening at work takes intention and serious know-how.In this episode, you’ll learn how to hear what people are not saying, how to practice psychological safety, and how to use active listening to draw your team closer together.Helena Seo, Head of Design at Doordash, HelenaSeo, teaches Sonia the Korean art of listening called noon-chi, and how reading between the lines helps her create a level playing field for employees of all kinds, especially in team meetings.Nate Brown, Chief Experience Officer at Officium,  explains how serving customers in call centres taught him how to care for his employees as a manager.HR expert Nora Jenkins Townson teaches you how to check in with team members using the 1-to-10 method and why silence is your best friend during one-on-ones.Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think.

Anyone can create meaningful change at work, even you. Yes, you! You don’t need positional authority to practice leadership. The secret is learning how to wield influence. Spot the difference between authority and power, and learn how to use your new skill set for good, regardless of your job title.In this episode, we’ll show you where to carve out your area of influence, how to make a difference from the bottom up, and why sponsorship is the ultimate win-win situation.Professor Tiziana Casciaro explains what power mapping is and how it will unlock your understanding of influence.Leadership coach Lara Hogan teaches you how to use three tools in the influence toolkit: coaching, mentorship, and sponsorship.Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think. 

Time away from the office during the pandemic has given people a chance to cultivate new interests and consider new career goals. As they return to the office, the question is this: what do you want to pursue? Whether it’s vying for a promotion, or moving into a different department, or just leveling up your management style, now is a great time for a fresh start, or re-start.In this episode, Sonia explores the building blocks of reinvention —  reinvention that can be achieved without leaving your current company.Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing you, and The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, outlines the best in-office strategies for workplace reinventions.Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, describes the different mindsets one must adopt for success.Chris Murphy is a member of the rock band Sloan. When the pandemic put their tour schedule on hold, it gave him time to reinvent one aspect of his performance repertoire.

Congratulations! Getting that first manager role is a huge accomplishment. But wait, do you know how to lead a team? The majority of first time managers don't receive enough training to succeed and lead their team.In this episode, we’ll show you how to overcome imposter syndrome, how to communicate effectively with your team, and how to lead with vulnerability. How often should you check in with your remote team? What do you do if someone doesn’t respect you in your new role? And, one of the scariest things about being a manager...how do you give constructive feedback?Basima Tewfik from MIT’s Sloan School of Management explains how to flip the narrative of doubt in your mind and unleash the benefits of so-called imposter syndrome.Rachel Pacheco at the Wharton School teaches you how to make the implicit explicit in assigning work to team members, how to provide constructive feedback, and how to manage people who are older and more experienced than you. Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think!

This season we’re back with six brand new episodes that explore the changing nature of leadership in a post pandemic world. Against the backdrop of the modern employee experience, host Dr. Sonia Kang uncovers how practicing vulnerability, trust building, setting clear expectations, modeling psychological safety, and designing inclusive approaches in a hybrid environment can help managers of any level, with an emphasis on the value of these strategies for first time managers and aspiring leaders. Made Possible by Rogers, For the Love of Work launches on Monday, September 20. Check out fortheloveofwork.ca for more.

Great news! The team at For The Love Of Work has started production on a second season. Host Sonia Kang has all of the details plus a special call out to listeners in this short but exciting announcement.

How do you find meaning at work? Is it about loving the tasks you have to do each day, or is it more about your outlook? Is it about following your dreams and making your work your life...or following the dollar signs and living for the weekend? This was the decision facing freelance writer Allison Hope who was working at a non-profit when she received an offer to work on Wall Street.Jacob Hirsh, a personality psychologist, says meaning and purpose are directly tied to one’s personal values. He explains why millennials are more likely to take a pay cut in order to work for a company that aligns with those values.Julie Lee, co-creator of The Values Project, says you first must know what your values are, and offers a way to find out. Sharon Arieli, a professor who studies values, explains how and where to enact those values. Dave Mayer, at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, describes how to compare our personal values with our company’s stated values. Emily Esfanahani Smith, author of The Power of Meaning, tells us practical ways we can rethink our relationship to finding meaning and happiness at work.Learn more about the podcast at Rogers. Or rate or review the show here. We’d love to know what you think.

Career and the opportunity to grow is the number one reason why people join a company. It’s also the number one reason they leave a company if they’re not getting opportunities.Professional development is a major priority for employees — new and older. But it can be a difficult maze to navigate when you’re new at a company. In this episode, we teach you how get taught.Clark Quinn, Director of Quinnovation, teaches us about our biases and misconceptions about learning, what helps us to retain new information, and provides practical advice to improve our capacity to learn. Tsedel Neely, from Harvard Business School, emphasizes the need for never-ending learning. HR expert Avery Francis describes how to create a development plan with your supervisor.HR exec Gina Jeneroux, gives us the rundown on the massive proliferation of learning modalities, offered by employee-focused companies. Jeanne Meister, a workplace futurist, explains the shift to coaching and AI learning.Learn more about the podcast at Rogers. Or rate or review the show here. We’d love to know what you think.

Psychological safety is the belief that you can bring your whole self to work, and speak up with ideas and feedback—as well as make mistakes—without fear of punishment. But, how do you do that if you don’t trust your boss or your coworkers? In this episode we are exploring what makes some work environments open and collaborative, and others closed-off and fear-inducing. And how to deal with either scenario.Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson explains what is ‘psychological safety’, the term she coined, and explains how organizations, and we, can become fear-free in our work. Former Google executive Geoff Ho, and Chris Clearfield, author of Meltdown, discuss how sharing mistakes at work can be the difference between success and failure. Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, gives us the tools to start having hard conversations with our colleagues and bosses, so we can cultivate more trusting and strong working relationships. Scott, along with Benjamin Granger, explain the importance of giving and receiving feedback, and how we can get better at doing both.For the Love of Work is an original podcast made possible by Rogers. Learn more about the podcast at Rogers . Or rate or review the show here. We’d love to know what you think.

The number one concern of new employees we spoke to, those entering their first or second jobs, was knowing how to stand out, in order to advance in their career. But this is not just a challenge for young workers. Mid to senior career employees can experience the same issue, feeling stuck at work, due to anxiety, introversion or lack of confidence.May Busch, a former finance exec, recounts her experience with exactly this frustration, and how she overcame it. Laura Huang, author of Edge, explains how hard work isn’t always enough to stand out. It’s about influencing people’s underlying perceptions of you.HR experts Avery Francis and Jennifer L’Heureux outline what traits and behaviours — alongside qualifications — progressive companies are looking for in employees they promote, and keep. Olga Khazan, author of Weird talks about how to stand out as an introvert. And Ron Heifetz discusses how practicing adaptive leadership can help you stand out.For the Love of Work is an original podcast made possible by Rogers. Learn more about the podcast at Rogers. Or rate or review the show here. We’d love to know what you think.

Finding the job that ticks all the right boxes can seem like an impossible task. But what if you’re not looking for the right things?Well, there is a big shift occuring in the workplace as progressive companies start focusing on something called the “employee experience” — a holistic relationship between a company and its staff. Host Sonia Kang takes a deep dive into the employee experience to uncover the criteria for the right company, the right tools, and the right people...for you.Jacob Morgan, author of Future Leader, outlines the three pillars of the employee experience, and tells us how you can identify if a company offers them. Katy Milkman explains how our cognitive biases inform the decisions we make about where to work, and how to avoid making wrong decisions. Shopify’s culture team design lead, Mandira Midha, and social scientist Pete Bacevice share their insights on how our physical space— whether that’s an office, or our home — and digital worksplaces influence our productivity, behaviour, and even our ability to succesfully collaborate. Joe Berger tells us how technology shapes our relationship to work, and how the modern employee experience promotes a seamless integration of devices and tools into our everyday workflows.For the Love of Work is an original podcast made possible by Rogers. Learn more about the podcast at Rogers. Or rate or review the show here. We’d love to know what you think.

In the middle of a pandemic, the issue of police brutality bubbled to the surface, again. As protests broke out all over the world, they led to a broader conversation about Black lives, Indigenous lives, and the experiences of people of colour. It finally feels like diversity and inclusion for members of historically underrepresented groups is gaining momentum...but it's just a start. There's so much more work to be done as workplaces become more and more diverse. In this episode, we explore how you can contribute to a welcoming environment of diversity, inclusion and belonging. How to identify systemic racism. How to tell if a progressive company is addressing it properly. How to recognize and confront one's own unconscious biases. And how to be an ally to colleagues from underrepresented groups. Dantley Davis, Chief Design Officer at Twitter, describes his approach to inclusive recruiting; Tina Opie, Professor of Management at Babson College, outlines how colleagues at all levels can listen to and learn from each other. Aneeta Rattan, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School, shares her research on the impact of a growth mindset on D&I. Jason Murray, Head of BIPOC Executive Search, provides insight into microagressions against colleagues from undererpresented groups. Krystal Abotossaway, a Senior Diversity Inclusion Sourcing Parter at TD, reveals how companies can provide a more culturally aware environment for employees. And Dolly Chugh, Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, author of The Person You Mean To Be and writer of the Dear Good People newsletter, teaches us about unconscious bias and its influence on systemic racism as well as how to be a "good-ish person" and ally. For the Love of Work is an original podcast made possible by Rogers. Learn more about the podcast at Roger, or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think.

Resilience is the ability to rebound, recover and learn from unexpected challenges and uncomfortable change.  But how do you just magically become resilient? Host Sonia Kang explores new approaches to gaining resilience within the employee experience, amid a global pandemic and massive workplace disruption.Psychologist Raphael Rose, describes how people in high pressure jobs handle stress. HR consultant Bill Howatt explains how to train for resilience on a daily basis with help from your employer. Neuroscience researcher and executive coach Srini Pillay shares his recipe for resilience. And Professor Kathleen Sutcliffe  at Johns Hopkins University, studies how people and organizations can and should make sense of change, and even transform the narrative and understanding of their experiences. For the Love of Work is an original podcast made possible by Rogers. Learn more about the podcast at fortheloveofwork.ca. Or rate or review the show here. We'd love to know what you think.

This is a playbook for the modern employee experience, and it’s more relevant than ever as we redefine the way we work in the wake of a pandemic. You’ll hear inspirational and practical advice from experts in the industry, and lessons to help you be your best self at work and beyond. We explore key themes in the workplace, like diversity and inclusion, how to be resilient through massive change, how to stand out at work even virtually, how to ensure the company you work for aligns with your personal values, how to develop in your career, and how to foster a psychologically safe workplace. Because as it’s been said, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.Host Dr. Sonia Kang, a professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto, will present solutions to these evolving workplace challenges, and share holistic approaches to work that prioritize what the employee needs – and expectations – in the modern employee experience.Made Possible by Rogers, For the Love of Work launches on Monday, September 21. Check out fortheloveofwork.ca for more information.