Roundup: 20+ Podcasts to Listen to, Gen Z and The Problem with Media and Nuance, and Trends In Talent and Learning
Links, resources, and Gen Z gets Gaslit
Welcome to this week’s edition of the newsletter. In this edition, we’ll cover:
A curated list of 20 podcasts
New Talent and Learning Trends I’m watching
Nuance in the Hybrid Work/Generation Debate
1) Podcasts Podcasts Podcasts
I started my first podcast back in 2014, and barely made it to 10 episodes. Despite this, my love for audio listening never dissipated. Over the years, I’ve listened to countless podcasts and find them as a valuable tool to help me think, distill insights, and spur ideas and creativity.
One of my favorite parts of podcasts is that you get a chance to get to know the host or guest. Blogs are great, but hearing someone over the course of 20-30 minutes (consistently) gives you a real live look into their personality and thought process.
This is also why I encourage anyone who is thinking about building a business or brand where you need to directly engage with a user or customer (ex: B2B companies, service-based businesses, solo/entreprenuers) to at least consider a podcast.
One of the things about podcasting that I don’t love is that discovering podcasts and curating episodes is really hard and difficult. There is an arms race between the providers right now to fix this, but we have a long way to go. If you’re interested in the state of podcasting, definitely check out these stats.
In the meantime, I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a list of about 50 or so podcasts that I listen to that I enjoy and like, and want to share them with you. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to meet a handful of these podcasters, and will share some personal anecdotes whenever I can.
Also, since I’m a former marketer, I’m constantly thinking about 1) what problem does this solve and 2) for whom, so I've divided up the categories based on the types of problems I’m solving and people who I think are engaging in this newsletter.
🎦For People Looking to Level Up Their Career🎦
These are podcasts that provide career development guidance to help you advance your career and do your job better
Squiggly Careers with Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper - Helen and Sarah tackle different career development topics each week, like how to increase your freedom at work, and whether to switch into a new role. If you like their podcast, check out their book and TED talk (Same name)
Coaching For Leaders with Dave Stachowiak - Dave is one of the OG podcast hosts and has a back catalog of hundreds of podcasts on everything related to leadership development. He is one of the most prepared, but thoughtful/inquisitive hosts out there, and has a great podcast voice.
Pete Mockatis How to Be Awesome at Your Job - Pete’s an ex-Bain consultant turned podcaster, trainer and productivity expert. He also has a backlog of hundreds of episodes ranging from productivity, influence, building relationships and anything else you can learn to be better at your job
Disrupt Yourself with Whitney Johnson - Whitney is an author, speaker, and consultant/advisor. She’s written numerous books and worked/studied under the Late/Great Clayton Christesen. Whitney (like Dave) asks some of the most thoughtful and intelligent questions of her guests. She is also very good, at relating what her guests say, to her own framework and work (the “S-Curve”)
Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel - Jessi is a Linkedin Editor and former technology reporter at Fortune and Wired. She interviews experts, thought leaders and executives around their ideas about work, career and leadership. She’s a great facilitator and conversation partner.
🔎For People Who Want to Evaluate Their Relationship with Work and Their Career🔎
If you’re thinking about topics like work-life balance, work-life fit, your relationship with work, burnout, or climbing the corporate ladder, these are some great podcasts for you
Brave New Work with Aaron Dingman and Rodney Evans - Aaron and Rodney are co-hosts on this podcast that tackles humans and the workplace and new ideas and ways of working, designing work, and connecting people together. Their episodes and takes on remote, hybrid and COVID are excellent and insightful
The Inside Job with Nayla Bahri and Eric Johnson - Nayla and Eric are Executive Coaches who tackle workplace and career related topics, and use their coaching backgrounds+tools to help listeners better understand their relationship with work. Both are well esteemed in the MBA circles I run with, and their collaboration back and forth is spot on.
Sustainable Ambition Kathy Oneto - Kathy is a former marketing executive turned entrepreneur, consultant, and coach. She focuses on helping people achieve their goals without burning out and hurting themselves. I’ve recently gotten to know Kathy through an entrepreneur community, and appreciate her thoughts and perspective
Work Life with Adam Grant - Not much to say here other than a professionally produced podcast with a foremost expert on the workplace yields good results. His episode on workplace culture is a must listen
In the Arena with Leah Smart - Leah is a LinkedIn employee and coach who runs a podcast about human potential. Most topics involve deep introspection and reflection on the intersection of work, and personal development.
💿For Job Seekers and Career Changers💿
Looking to make a job change or need advice on how to navigate the job search? These are the podcasts for you
Pivot with Jenny Blake - As a longtime fan of Jenny Blake, I can’t recommend her work enough. This is a podcast based off of her 2016 book, Pivot. If you are intentionally (or unintentionally) going through a change or pivot in your work or life, this is a podcast for you
Mac’s List with Mac Prichard - Mac is another OG podcaster (since 2008!) and runs the popular Mac’s List website. His back catalog literally covers everything related to a job search that you can imagine.
The Final Round with AJ Eckstein - AJ is a consultant by day and entrepreneur by night, where he runs a career coaching business. This podcast is where AJ interviews recruiters from top companies to learn how people can navigate to successful job search outcomes
How to Happen To Your Career with Scott Anthony Barlow - Scott’s run a career coaching company for years, and has covered everything related to a career change you can possibly imagine on his podcast
Career Therapy with Martin McGovern - Martin is a career coach, and brings on guests to talk about how to navigate certain aspects of the job and career search
2)What I’m Exploring in Learning and Talent
The future of how people learn (The Times)
There are lots of ways we can and should improve the way people learn, and one company that is trying to do that is a new startup called The Garden, a B2C learning platform that is a mixture of TED Talks, University Lectures and a learning community.
The Garden wants to allow anyone to access the great knowledge and insights from University professors and lecturers and open them up to the masses. This is not unlike what Cousera, Udacity and MOOCs did a decade ago, but through modern technology and updated consumer features it represents a new way that people could learn from universities. It offers a monthly membership and instead of whole courses it offers shorter talks, both live and on demand.
The future of how people get coaching (Business Insider)
Coaching, both in personal and business settings continues to gain prominence and interest. Skye, a marketplace to find life and executive coaches, closed a $1.6M pre-seed round of funding last week to scale their product. The Coaching platform space is crowded right now as VC and PE have deemed it a compelling business market to go after, this is a double edged sword. On one side, with so many competitors, it validates the market problem/willingness to pay. On the other hand, it speaks to the competitive nature of the market, and how tough the competition will be. Despite that, there’s a strong belief that the “size of the pie” will continue to grow, which could mean that everyone wins. In the case of Skye, it appears they for now are targeting a specific demographic and assuming their data is accurate it looks like there is a ton of opportunity.
The future of fractional talent (Continuum)
Continuum, a fractional executive talent platform closed a Series A round of $12m. Continuum started as a platform to connect tech HR executives with startups for part-time and fractional work. In addition to this, Continuum also launched a product to help tech companies manage layoffs. Depending on how challenging the market gets over the next few months, this product could be valuable to a portion of struggling companies. However, the longer term trend of fractional work is something I am watching and am curious about.
For a long time in knowledge work, full-time employment was seen as the preferred method of employment. Companies like Google started bucking the trend, but one of my bets on the future of work is that we’re fundamentally going to change our definition of the who, what, and how of work. We see this already, with gig platforms, contract workers, and internal talent marketplaces, but I think companies like Continuum are what could represent the future of work, where a highly skilled employee, takes on a handful of fractional executive gigs, instead of working full-time. Right now, Continuum really focuses on the HR Tech market, but imagine what that could be like across other industries and functions.
3)There is No Nuance in The Gen Z and Remote Work Debate
Depending on who you ask, Gen Z either hates working from home, hates returning to the office, or has such unreasonable demands for jobs that they are the reason why recruiters are burning out. And depending on who you ask, millennials should either skip the avocado toast or stop spending because they are the cause of inflation.
Most articles have a similar playbook:
A premise and big bold statement
1-2 anecdotal stories from people that confirm the statement
1-2 data points from a survey that confirm that statement
Aki Ito’s article about Gen Z hating working from home, this is a classic example of this. Big bold headline, 1-2 quotes from people that confirm her point of view, and 1-2 data points taken from a study. To be sure, some of this is just how journalism works - you start with a premise and POV, and find the sources to supplant it.
Furthermore, many journalists don’t have control over the actual headlines that are used, so there is reason to believe that she may not have come up with the headline. But what happens, when you actually read into the study Ito cited and it comes to a conclusion that seems to contract the headline (The title of the study is literally called “Why Working From Home Will Stick”) there is plenty of other evidence like SHRM’s study as well as Megan Loyst’s study that directly contradicts this?
The reality of these issues is that they are more gray than black and white. Furthermore, classifying a generation based on a few data points from a study is a tough leap to make. The challenge, primarily with our brains as well as with social media platforms is that there is little room for dialogue and discourse, which is troublesome, because that is exactly what we need to get to the bottom of these policies.
If people could have nuanced dialogue and discourse on the topic, we’d be able to get to a better place collectively around what actually makes sense from a workplace policy perspective. And given things like confirmation bias and the influence of the media, it’s not hard to see a leader picking up an article like this and ordering everyone back to the office.
My goal here isn’t to pick a side, but rather, to encourage anyone who reads anything with data to:
Examine the source of the qualitative data
Examine the source of the quantitative data
Ask themselves if there is more to this than a binary viewpoint?
The world is more gray than black and white, and generations are not monolithic things nor are most workplace policies. Leaders who make these decisions have to wade through the gray to determine what is going to work, which is why articles like these can feel so frustrating. If we want to actually create a better workplace for more people, we need to actually get to a thoughtfulness of discourse to suss out some of these issues.
If you have podcast suggestions you’d like to add, let me know. I’d love to also hear what you think about generational articles and the hybrid work debate!
Have a great week,
Al
Adam Grant's Work Life is one of my favorite podcasts. What a great list you have shared. Thank you!