It's Your Vocation, It's Not Guitar Hero
How to match your work to the world you actually live in
Hi there, Mode/Switch people! This weekend, my family moved from one house to another in Grand Rapids. I’m grateful for David Wilstermann who wrote a piece for this newsletter on what proved to be a fun but chaotic weekend. You’ve heard David on our Friday Mode/Switch Pod, but you’ve never read him in this newsletter—so buckle up for some Gen Xer realism. Instead of exaggerating how our work changes the world, he suggests opening ourselves to how the world is transforming us.
So, here’s me signing off this week and doing the toss to David. - craig
Lately, we Mode/Switchers have been using our Friday podcast to talk a lot about vocation, which is basically how your unique self has a place in, and interacts with, the world around you. But our conversations—and others like them—feel like they’re missing something.
We talk a lot about what you can do for the world…
…what you should do for the world…
what the world needs from you.
But that sort of talk, although it makes you feel briefly powerful, can also give you tunnel vision—to the annoyance of your coworkers and to the exhaustion of your soul.
For some reason—probably because def Leppard’s Photograph recently graced my random playlist—I’m thinking about the 80s these days, thinking about all the big hair and all the big stereo systems. Back then, it was the graphic equalizer that signaled you were really serious about music. Even my car stereo had a hidden equalizer amplifier in my glovebox. Wireless is great, but I kind of miss that 1/8” cable snaking out from behind the dash for my fake Walkman – totally Iron Eagle inspired. And in your home system, the more sliders, the greater the respect. You could boost the bass, crank the treble, cut the mid, make your precise curve a unique signature.
Like the rockstar you wish you were.
But something I learned from being in a band myself is that you can have all the racks of guitars, locks of hair, tube amps, fat synths, par cans and still be nothing but a noisemaker—which is why our band needed sound engineers to adjust our sound to the space we were performing in. There was always this moment before every concert, when we had to match the PA system to the auditorium. I remember we had to blast a loud, sustained white noise, moving the equalizer frequency sliders so the sound curve matched the room’s shape based on what was being seen on the spectrum analyzer. By reading what was coming back to it, they would boost or cut frequencies to reduce feedback and make the PA (and us) sound better. These tweaks continued throughout the show as the audience’s bodies altered the room’s environment.
Nothing would sound right if we didn’t match our sound system to the room we were playing in. Something like that dynamic happens in life and work, too.
If you have parents, you know what I’m talking about
You recognize something like this interaction between your work and your world when you think about how your background and upbringing affects the way you do your job today. Anne Helen Peterson, in digesting Adrie Kusserow’s American Individualism: Child Rearing and Social Class in Three Neighborhoods, talks about the various shaping elements that parents have. We put on our show, make our noise, and our parents, in turn, shape our behavior. Later, our colleagues impact us as well. All of these interactions help generate our successes, our failures, even our mehs.
These formative experiences are easier to notice, maybe, in early career. But when our talk about life and work drumbeats on on your personal choice-making, it's easy to forget to keep listening to the room. That forgetfulness comes, perhaps, because we feel this pressure to be the ones making an impact in every meeting, every project, every initiative—and we forget that we ourselves are always being impacted too. Which is another way of saying we’re being changed, sometimes in small ways (maybe by learning a new skill, for example), sometimes in big ways (maybe by learning how to empathize with someone you once disliked).
For Mode/Switch readers doubting my credentials, here’s a pic from my musician days.
So, what does this mode/shift look like in the workplace?
The mindset shift I’m recommending is from making some noise to matching the room.
Noisemakers forget that not every space requires Taylor Swift’s earthquake-causing line array. So they send out thousand-word emails, or they talk too much at committee meetings. But maybe, the best sound in these spaces doesn’t come from cranking everything up to eleven.
Noisemakers forget the power of a simple bluetooth speaker or a little battery-powered radio. So when they make a complaint to the higher-ups, they turn a focused and reasonable observation into a sprawling manifesto about “everything wrong with this company.” (It’s not all about that bass, right?)
Noisemakers forget that sometimes you don’t need a massive PA with big equalizers—or a subwoofer with a full-range cabinet. You might just need noise-cancelling headphones. Sometimes, you just have to let other people say things, accepting their criticisms and disregarding the noisy, useless stuff.
Should I keep going with the audio metaphor?
In contrast with noise-making, matching the room cultivates contextual awareness in life and work. Note that I’m saying something more than “Get good at reading the room,” because you can read the room and not do anything about what you’re hearing. But matching the room means adapting yourself, making adjustments, allowing yourself to change in surprising ways.
Matching the room might entail learning to do something you’ve always avoided figuring out—creating formulae in Excel, for example—so you can fill in a gap on your team. Spotting what’s missing is a bit part of adapting to your context.
Matching the room might mean giving yourself six months, rather than six minutes, to change your boss’s mind about a project. It takes contextual awareness to know when to push forward and when to play the long game.
Matching the room might require mastering a complex attitude like cheerfully resisting group think on a team project. It takes tact and grace to know how to offer your team both challenge and support.
So here’s what I’m proposing, not just for the Mode/Switch Pod conversation you’ll hear later this week, but for everyone talking about vocation: it’s okay to acknowledge that each of us impacts the situation. But don’t forget the situation acts back on us, affecting our work and, sometimes, bringing us transformation.
Three benefits this mode/switch gives you and your coworkers
Making this mode/switch helps you feel comfortable with who you actually are and what you actually can do. Instead of pretending to be a Swift-sized sound-producer, you should be ok with the kind of sound system you are, as well as with the kind of adjustments available to you. (And I’m looking at you, blown out 3” woofer with just a volume knob.) Input and Maximizer are two of my Clifton Strengths. Knowing that I bring those strengths helps me see where I can be useful.
Making this mode/switch also relieves you from the pressure of having to be the lead singer for every song. Instead, you can be alert to your coworkers’ capacities, abilities, and aspirations. Do what you can to help them make the best sound possible in the places they fit best. When author, podcaster, and org researcher Adam Grant discussed teamwork on a WorkLife podcast episode, he talked about the writer’s room of The Daily Show and a concept called burstiness. It’s similar to the improv notion of Yes-And. You take others’ ideas and build on them rather than analyzing and criticizing them. Jazz and bluegrass musicians do this too. Leaving space for others to shine, and even looking for ways to provide others a platform. We need all kinds and that includes your coworkers.
Making this mode/switch helps you make small moves—rather than grand ones—to create change in yourself. Thinking of your work as a collaborative interaction with your context and your community reminds you that your job isn’t just about making noise in the world. Even if you’re not making city-altering earthquakes, the adjustments that your lived environments ask of you make you a better human. Is the auditorium (or club) sized such that you need to adjust your volume? Does your work need you to amp it up or dial it back? Is the audience encouraging you to crowd surf? Does your work translate or are people just not getting it?
Sure, it can be a downer to realize that the sound of your job barely registers in the massive noisiness of the world. But there’s some consolation in recognizing how your work provides opportunities for growth, for becoming something you could never have predicted. Expect to be surprised by how the world in which you do your work transforms you. That expectancy provides some purpose for you, even if that purpose isn’t likely to change the world any time soon.
- david
Listen While You Work
Hannah Sherbrooke’s the Mode/Switch communications coordinator, and she does the graphic design for this newsletter. I’ve also found her weekly playlist curations are good not just for the workday but for the workout. If you can’t stop yourself from checking your email one last time before you step on the treadmill, open this newsletter, and hit play while you run…
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