You’ve probably heard the term “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” referring to one's ability to pick themselves up, and get to work. But what if we said the whole phrase was actually a joke? There’s no one better to explain this than Alissa Quart, an author, professor at Brown and Columbia Universities, and the Executive Director of the Economic Hardships Reporting Project and the author of the book “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream” and “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America.” We sat down with Alissa to talk about how the great American myth of the ‘self-made’ person, may be just that: a myth, and one that is weaponized to keep support systems and opportunities out of the hands of some of our nation's poorest workers. This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

We’ve had our fair share of coaches on the podcast on how to lead and guide people, but how do you lead and guide other coaches to improve their game? Enter today’s guest, Cody Royle, a coach who’s dedicated his entire focus on improving other coaches through the ‘user experience’ of coaching. Cody’s coaching career has taken him from playing Rugby in his home of Canberra, Australia, all the way to Toronto, Canada where he currently resides. Serving for over 10 years as a Head Coach in Canada’s AFL Aussie Rules, he set out with the goal to transform the league as a national afterthought, to a viable career path for aspiring athletes. During this time, Cody saw the opportunity to help leaders in both the sports world and business world. He met and interviewed hundreds of coaches around the world, and compiled much of his learnings into his first book Where Others Won’t: Taking People Innovation from the Locker Room to the Board Room. The success of the book led to Cody hosting a podcast of the same name, and two other books The Tough Stuff: Seven Hard Truths about Being a Head Coach and Second Set of Eyes: How Great Coaches Become Champions. Cody’s focus on the user experience, a term that’s usually reserved for those developing technology, brings a unique and most importantly, actionable set of guidelines for coaches to improve their craft. This is another one you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

The United States only spends 0.1% of its GDP on job training and reskilling initiatives, putting us in last place for funding towards job reskilling amongst other developed countries.  Now, it may be hard to concretely define the effects of this, but let’s look at what we know: only 15% of workers are currently engaged at their jobs, 44% of workers are in bad jobs, and almost 1-in-2 workers is just $400 away from falling beneath the poverty line. So, that 0.1% GDP spent on job training? It’s probably not helping much. That’s what today’s guest, Harry Holzer, fresh from testifying before the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, joins us on the podcast to talk about. Harry is the former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor under the Clinton Administration, is a senior fellow in Economics at the Brookings Institution, and the LaFarge SJ Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. He’s written extensively on economic inequality, with books such as “Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students” and “Improving Employment and Earnings in Twenty-First Century Labor Markets: An Introduction.” So needless to say, Harry knows a thing or two about this. In this episode, we chatted about the intersection of government, the private sector, and educational institutions, and how they can better cooperate and support each other to develop a high-performing and equitable workforce. This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

Despite mountains of research showing how “helicopter parenting” is incredibly detrimental for kids, it still happens. A University of Michigan study published this year said that while the majority of parents said they encouraged kids to ‘do things for themselves,’ half also felt that unsupervised kids caused trouble, and a third felt that their kids weren’t ready to be left alone. It’s this cognitive dissonance from parents that today’s guest, Hara Estroff Marano, says is not just seriously harming kids, but our society as a whole. Hara is the Editor-at-Large at Psychology Today, where she honed in on the rising epidemic of serious mental health illnesses in college age children. Her research done for the ‘Blues Buster’ newsletter led her to write two books, “Why Doesn’t Anybody Like Me?: A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids” and “A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting” where she puts most of the responsibility on the mental health crisis many young people are experiencing from one source: parents. Hara points out how invasive parenting strips kids of important experiences, and leaves them underdeveloped to deal with many of life's challenges, which she believes not only has underlying consequences for the workforce, but for our very societal institutions. This is another episode that’s essential for leaders everywhere to listen to, so with that…let’s bring it in!

The COVID-19 pandemic brought upon some of the most sweeping changes to benefit the modern workforce…or did it? Returning for a second episode on the Bring It In Podcast, author, professor, and filmmaker Jamie McCallum is back to talk about the findings of his new book, “Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice.” Jamie’s previous book, “Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work is Killing the American Dream,” focused on those most overworked, underpaid, and vulnerable, workers in the country, and how systems are up to almost ensure that low wage workers stay in low wage positions. “Essential” takes many of the points made in his previous book and takes it to a new level, shining a light on how one of the largest made work slightly better for some, and a lot worse for many others. Even with the pandemic being officially over, many companies across the world are still struggling to find ways to engage, and take care of their workforce. A lot of observations from Jamie’s book, while disheartening, are also enlightening and timely, and can show leaders a better path to create good work in a post pandemic world. This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

Don’t believe the jobs reports: it’s a tough labor market out there, and not in the way you’re thinking. 44% of workers have what’s considered a bad job, which is defined as a high risk, low wage position. The majority of these jobs are frontline, hourly positions, with little to no consistency or benefits. These organizations have some of the highest turnover rates, costing the U.S. economy 1 Trillion dollars per year.  This is where today’s guest Zeynep Ton has set her sights on fixing. Zeynep is a professor of the practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management and president of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute, whose mission is to help companies thrive by creating good jobs and to redefine what it means to run a successful business. Her organization has advised the likes of Quest Diagnostics, Mud Bay, and many more. Zeynep’s work and research on the benefits of supporting good jobs has been featured in publications like The Atlantic, the New York Times, and more, culminating in her book, “The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits”. We wanted to catch up with Zeynep to hear first hand about why it’s important to design good jobs for workers, and how it benefits everyone from the top to bottom of an organization. This is another one you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

There's a learning problem in America's workforce. Opportunities for workers to develop skills that can lead them down successful career paths are scarce, and often ineffective. 83 cents of every dollar goes towards training for people who already have received some form of higher education, and even then, 59% of workers claim they had no proper training, and simply acquired skills "on the job." With massive turnover rates and somehow so-called "talent shortages," the current playbook companies are using needs to be shaken up, and that's what today's guest has set out to do. William B. Bonvillian is a lecturer at MIT in the Science Technology and Society and Political Science Departments, as well as Senior Director of Special Projects, at MIT's Office of Digital Learning. He also served for seventeen years as a senior policy advisor in the U.S. Senate. His legislative efforts included science and technology policy, helping create the Department of Homeland Security, and legislation regarding Intelligence Reform, climate change, and national defense and life science R&D. He's also the co-author of Workforce Education: A New Roadmap alongside our previous Bring It In guest, Sanjay Sarma. In the book, William dives into the disconnect between the public, private, and education systems that's led to many of the struggles facing our workforce, and what steps we can take at the legislative, educational, and business levels to fix it. In today's episode of the podcast we got to take a deep dive into William's strategies and hopes for the future of work. This is another one you're not going to want to miss, so with that…let's bring it in!

Subminimum wage workers make about 10% of the American workforce. That means, of all working Americans, 13 million people make about $2.13. These workers are in an incredibly vulnerable position, as they’re often reliant on tips, receive little to no benefits, and lack consistent hours, to make ends meet. It’s a massive problem that's become endemic to our workforce, especially in areas like the hospitality and restaurant industry. This is what today's guest, Saru Jarayaman, is fighting against as she strives to ensure every worker across America gets a fair chance at a liveable wage. A graduate from Yale Law, Saru is the co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which she founded with displaced World Trade Center workers after 9/11. Eventually, it grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. This led her to also found, and become president of One Fair Wage, a national organization of nearly 300,000 service workers, over 2,000 restaurant employers, and dozens of organizations nationwide all working together to end all subminimum wages in the United States and improve wages and working conditions in the service industry. For her work she was recognized in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014. In 2015, she received the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and many, many other awards. Her latest book “One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America” uplifts the stories of subminimum wage workers across many sectors — including tipped restaurants, workers with disabilities, incarcerated workers, and more. The book not just highlights the massive inequalities and injustices these people face, but also offers insights, and solutions, into how fixing these systems makes everyone winners. This is an especially important episode of the podcast, one that’s essential for those who are managing frontline workers! Lucky for you, this is a shorter episode, so with that…let’s bring it in.

Leaders across the world are struggling to motivate their people to get fired up for the task at hand. A recent Gallup study found that only 1-in-3 of the entirety of the United States workforce is considered engaged. This issue has managers everywhere grasping for straws on how to motivate their people, using everything from the classic underwhelming pizza party, to forcing employees to ‘have fun’ with disastrous results. But the great coaches in the world know that the most powerful motivation comes from within someone, not from external stimuli. It’s something that our guest today, Jonathan Fader specializes in teaching others. Jonathan is an NYC based coach, performance psychologist, speaker and author and founder of SportsStrata, a Mental Performance Coaching group who has worked with organizations ranging from elite athletes like the NY Mets and NY Giants, to first responders and the military.  In his book “Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sports” Johnathan details the ins and outs of the technique called Conversational Motivation, which harnesses the power of conversation and active listening to unlock the psychology of success. At a time when engagement is at an almost all-time low and managers are struggling to do more with less, being able to keep your people fired up, goal oriented, and receptive to correct feedback is an essential skill for managers. Jonathan’s Motivational Interviewing techniques can be a guaranteed way for managers to acquire these skills. This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!

Water Polo is a very tough sport, demanding straight swimming for 30 plus minutes, grappling with opposing players, and the mental acuity to be able to remember strategies and positions. It’s also one of the oldest sports in the world, with the first game being played in 1888 in America, and quickly spread across the collegiate athletic circle. Our guest today is Kirk Everist, a 2x Olympian, head coach of men’s water polo at U Cal Berkeley, 5x National Champion, 4x ACWPC Coach of the Year, USA Water Polo Hall of Fame Inductee, Cal Athletics Hall of Fame Inductee...well, you get the idea. Not only does Kirk coach young athletes in one of the toughest sports in the world, but also has to rebuild a new team year after year, to add onto a hundred plus year legacy of excellence at U Cal Berkeley. In today’s episode, he shares some of his secrets, beliefs, and strategies for continuously improving at being a coach, and how to balance tradition, with the need to evolve. This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!