Is remote work more productive? That’s the wrong question. In the ongoing debate around Return to Office mandates, there is one undeniable fact that we aren’t talking about enough: The vast majority of employees want some kind of flexible work arrangement, so the real question is: Why does Corporate America refuse to accommodate them?

Jess Walker was a guest on the Management Detox podcast, and I STILL think about everything we discussed. I worked with Jess in New York at Huge - a large digital agency in Brooklyn. I knew she was special then, but seeing how she has evolved into a leader of leaders is pretty inspiring.

In this episode, UX Leader and Coach Jod Kaftan and I discussed the perils (and temptations) of "falling on every grenade for your team." Meaning, that you have to guide them to make their own decisions, coach them to face off against and collaborate with challenging stakeholders, and stop trying to be everyone’s “hero.”

No matter your title, if you’re in Corporate America, your job is complicated. This isn’t the 90s anymore. It’s not even the early 2000s. Corporate jobs are different now. But most managers haven’t adjusted their approach to help teams thrive within today’s reality.

I’m a writer so I’m biased, but words matter. I know, I know, body language, actions, pictures and all that. But sometimes, in Corporate America, our words give us away.

Old-school management is NOT automatically the same as leadership. Managers can “make” employees perform well under fear, for a limited time at least. But real leadership is based on influence. When a leader creates a vision (or in many cases, co-creates that vision with their team), shows a clear path, models success, and guides employees to do their best work, employees perform because they are bought in to what the leader has envisioned. They are part of something. They are appreciated. They feel safe.

The JPMorgan CEO is unapologetically anti-remote. He believes (without evidence) that it inhibits ideation. But this isn’t a post about remote work or even about Return to Office policies, actually. This is a post about the ingrained and widespread misunderstanding of what makes managers good, successful, and yes, accessible.

• 74% of employees who say they have a toxic boss report feeling anxiety over the weekend when thinking about returning to work on Monday (the "Sunday scaries")

• 53% report having nightmares about their bosses

• 34% say they engage in coping mechanisms like drinking and overeating.

• 82% of employees say their managers are uninspiring.

• Shall I go on?

If you’ve been on Tiktok or Insta lately you’ve seen all the posts of terrible bosses. We’ve all seen the influencers play acting as toxic managers who insist that employees sleep with their phones on their chests to be available for some urgent 2 a.m. phone call, or pretending to be a clueless boomer boss bumbling through basic technology.

The four-day workweek isn't happening anytime soon at Samsung Electronics. After 2023 performance fell short of expectations, the company mandated a six-day workweek for executives

Employees need our help to evolve in their careers. They need someone to help them move through their blind spots. Managers should regularly be engaging with employees and providing their perspective and highlighting growth opportunities. I just think we should call this something other than “feedback.” 

I just finished a month of Monday posts about great 1:1 questions to ask your team. I picked this topic because 1:1s have such a huge impact on team members and their mental health, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, it’s often worse.

Senior leadership needs to stop passing insecurities, fears, and turf wars down to their teams. Intentionally or not, they are instilling the belief that meetings are the only way to safely get things done. Instead, corporations need to promote leaders who aren’t afraid of failures, know how to learn from them, and won’t shame their teams for taking action. 

In 2023, the RTO (Return to Office) mandates started trickling in, getting more and more punitive by the month. CEOs moved from bribes to threats, and they backtracked on their promises of supporting remote work, even gaslighting the workforce by telling us we were less productive at home when we knew the opposite was true. What gives?

The management style Boomers have perpetuated is hierarchical, rule-based, and reliant on in-person or even (ugh) phone communication. They favor loyalty and commitment, but the corporate world doesn't give that back anymore.We can thank old-school Boomer management for strong-arming employees back to the office, instead of treating us with respect and consideration.

Career progress is the language of success in Corporate America. But promotions can be difficult to get, and on top of that, at some companies, the process can be difficult to understand - which I sometimes suspect is intentional.

I admit to falling for the allure of the girlboss aesthetic once upon a time. Thankfully, I never bought one of those mugs at least. Now I see that the supposed celebration of women being in charge was only inclusive of certain types of women (young, white) who followed very specific rules (hustling, consumerism, getting ahead at all costs).

​Can we all breathe a collective sigh of relief that we've started to come to our senses and reject the lie of girlbossing?