Hey there! Welcome to this week’s Mode/Switch, helping you do more than cope when work’s a lot. This week, it’s a podcast for mid-level leaders about invisible labor.

As I type this (it’s 6:43 AM), you may be stuffing your laptop into your backpack, wondering whether your yoghurt cup will survive the drive to work.

You flick your phone screen, checking the time for your first one-on-one.

Should I tell my director (you ask yourself for the sixteenth time) that it’s the wrong time to tell my team about our new RTO policy?

You stand next to the car and try to breathe before the day begins. You tick off a driveway checklist: work ID? water bottle? (Oh wait! The UPS package.)

How many texts will it take to smooth things over with my new hire? We’re not meeting KPIs!

I wish you and I could chat a bit about the day ahead. Here, I think, is what I’d ask:

How are you a stabilizer in your company, keeping things steady in chaotic conditions?
How’s it going being your team’s “glue player,” holding all the things together?
What’s the invisible labor you’re bracing yourself for as you enter this day of work?

These questions didn’t spring from my brain fully formed. I learned to ask them while engaging this week’s guest on The Mode/Switch Pod, Rebecca Johnson. She’s a Denver-based executive advisor, ICF-certified coach, and the founder of Story Solutions. Rebecca’s practice focuses on equipping leaders to keep the story of their vocations clear, especially by systems thinking.

Rebecca’s newsletter Leadership Field Notes on Substack is so wise and deft that, if you’re a leader at any organizational level, you’d do yourself a solid by subscribing.

My favorite insight from her work pertains to what she calls “borrowed stability.” Lots of companies, nonprofits, churches, and colleges project an image of calm strength and productivity. But many of these same organizations are up to their eye-teeth in debt—not financially necessarily, but relationally and infrastructurally.

They have, in short, borrowed heavily against the capacities of their own people. Especially their mid-level leaders.

Whether you’re the debtor or the creditor in this situation, you’re taking on serious risk. Sometimes the org borrows against you, sometimes you borrow against your team. Either way, the collateral expenses of dysfunction and burnout can rise quickly.

The good news is that you and your team can rebalance the books if you make invisible work visible. And that’s what this week’s intergenerational conversation with David, Emily, LaShone, Madeline, and me helps you do: you and your team can learn to see and to speak about the often unnamed labors of mid-level management.

It’s not easy! There are so many incentives to just keep right on doing the stabilizing work that’s burning you out. When should you let your higher-ups know what you or your team are doing without anybody noticing? And when do you keep quiet, because (as David notes), every organization needs people to go the extra mile at some point.

But as Rebecca notes: We sometimes need to stub our toe on the invisible support that's happening. Tripping over invisible labor can clarify things for you, especially if the stubbed toe makes you determined to build better structures for getting things done without overextending yourself or your teams.

Unless you’re in Grand Rapids this morning, you and I probably can’t chat in your driveway. But what we can do is converse in the comments below. Here’s something I’d really like to know: What’s the invisible labor you carry in your own job? Hit reply to this email or comment below.

Podcast Table of Contents

0:00 — Why we’re talking about invisible labor this week.
2:00 — Rebecca enters the studio: we discuss bridges and define invisible work,
4:00 — Naming the phenomenon: visible vs. invisible work, emotional labor, identity-based labor.
7:00 — Exploring the concept of organizational citizenship.
9:00 — Why even “good guys” can become “bad guys” in poorly designed systems.
13:00 — Fresh eyes and the Golden Rule: a junior employee's role, and why asking Black and Brown employees endless questions can create invisible labor.
19:00 — Should we keep doing invisible work?
23:45 — Mode/Switch! Rebecca offers us a fresh approach to invisible labor.
25:00 — Roundtable: Is naming invisible work a Gen Z thing, a Millennial thing, or a symptom of a fraying employer-employee contract? We cuss/discuss AI — whether it's creating new invisible labor or making relational work more seeable.

Has social media become your invisible labor?

I invite you to visit a new Substack Jill Risner and I are launching for marketing and communication professionals who hate and need social media. Digital marketers, content creators, strategic communicators—heck, anybody who feels all the cog diss that socials tend to create: this faith-forward publication called Making Peace with Social Media is for you. Subscribe here.

Emily notes this week that hearing about others’ invisible labor helps her know she’s not going crazy. Spread the sanity by sharing this post with a manager near you!

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