The Waveform Issue 20 — Are You Feeling Safe?
The Waveform is a newsletter from Red Cup Agency about the next edge in podcasting. In each issue, I’ll stay on top of things for you. When we launch a new show or post an episode that stands out, I’ll drop that into the newsletter.
I’m Lee Schneider, founder and lead producer at Red Cup Agency. Did someone forward this to you, or are you reading it on the web? You can subscribe for free.
Boundless Leadership
Do you feel safe at work to express your opinions? To challenge the boss? Boundless Leadership is a new book coming out next week from Shambhala Publications. This week, we have interviews with the co-authors, Joe Loizzo and Elazar Aslan, on The Glo Podcast.
Both interviews offer a vision of how people want to experience work. They want work to feel safe. Safe to speak out when they are being overworked. Safe enough to challenge the status quo or ask for a raise. Safe to be themselves.
The number one thing, the most powerful thing you can do as a leader, is to create a sense of safety in your organization. If you can create the condition of safety, then everything else will naturally flow towards what is possible.
— Elazar Aslan
Maintaining emotional safety in the workplace is not a new idea. Consultants and authors have been building on it in books like The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. That one is by Professor Amy Edmondson. She’ll be a guest on The Glo Podcast in the spring.
You’ve probably heard about the “great resignation.” Folks were sent home at the start of the pandemic with a directive to set up a home office. Then people quit. Turns out that if you take away the everyday grind of going into work, suddenly going into work at all didn’t look so great. Companies had to make changes or risk more people leaving. So now, Twitter employees can work at home “forever.” Dell, Intuit, Hilton, Humana, ADP, and IBM all have work-at-home-friendly policies.
For managers, this is a new paradigm. They’ve lost power. A distributed workforce means a manager can’t oversee their employees’ at every moment. Jobseekers aren’t limited by their location. They can take work in cities far from home. Rather than weakening an employee’s negotiating power, work-at-home has strengthened it. Listen to Joe and Elazar talk through all of this on The Glo Podcast
Podcasts are Becoming Harder to Pin Down — That’s Good
What is a podcast? The answer isn’t just “something you listen to,” because the medium is changing. I’m getting more requests to do video podcasts, remotely, on platforms like riverside.fm and Squadcast.fm, and in studios. After a pandemic break, I’m back to speaking with my old studio production friends about video and audio production. And, in the podcast working group I’m forming I am hearing producers open up the boundaries of what a podcast could to be.
What’s going on?
The medium is going through its next cycle of growth. Pacific Content writes up an annual look into the future of the medium. Here’s what they said.
Indeed the term podcast is becoming confusing. Is it podcasting or audio storytelling? Audio storytelling can be interactive, in different formats and lengths, and appear in non-traditional spaces. Think past creating a podcast and ask yourself: where does the story you want to tell live? Before you branch out to other formats, focus on your story, what you want to communicate, and the people you want to reach. Be wary of experimenting with other formats for the sake of it.
I like this thinking: Let’s shape the medium to fit the message.
Sloooow Down
As we’re slowing down for the holidays, consider the case for listening to your podcasts at .8x. Galen Beebe suggests that we can find a deeper appreciation for a podcast by savoring it in a bit of slow motion. Since I listen to some podcasts at 2x, this might make sense. Podcasts done right are an immersive medium. They take you to a new frontier inside your head. I’m looking forward over the holiday break to appreciating a few. Maybe not at .8x but certainly at normal speed.
Have a good holiday and an outstanding 2022.
Lee
Red Cup Agency. Podcast Production and Marketing.
Working with teams large and small, I take podcasts from the glimmer of an idea into production and distribution. We make trailers, ad spots and promos for your podcast, and we find new audiences for you work with cross promotion.
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