Forces at Work is the podcast where we answer your burning questions about the workplace and give you advice so you can show up to work smarter tomorrow.

Jake Tuber and Katharine Smith are organizational psychologists, old friends... and at least one of those things is true.

Each episode we tackle topics like sham performance improvement plans, terrible hiring practices, awkward performance reviews, and much more.

Raven is a 36-year-old director of sales operations at a relatively small tech company. She recently got feedback from her CEO in a performance review that she’s crushing it at her job, but that one area of improvement would be to stop wearing t-shirts. This is at a relatively lax company where men in the C-suite dress casually… and frequently rock t-shirts themselves. Kate and Jake discuss the challenges of informal HR at startups, how performance reviews can focus on actual job performance, and the larger leadership dynamics at play when it comes to feedback and organizational culture.

Sarah is a client relations manager at a small branding and marketing agency in Boston. About five months ago, she got a new boss who quickly started giving her negative feedback and sitting in on her meetings. Now, without warning, he put her on a vaguely worded performance improvement plan with an 8-week runway. Yikes! Kate and Jake discuss the challenges of unclear expectations in performance management, the implications of a short timeline in PIPs, and how leadership dynamics and vague feedback can set employees up for failure rather than improvement.

Charlene is the Chief Human Resources Officer at a professional services firm of about 400 employees. But she can't get anyone at her company to make a hiring decision. If she hears, "This person is just the right fit for us" one more time, she's going to tear her hair out. In this episode, Kate and Jake discuss the challenges of the "online dating effect" in hiring, the impact of overstreamlining processes on manager confidence, and the broader implications of organizational indecision and cultural dysfunction.

Brendan is the Director of Product Development at a tech company. He's only three months into the job... but he thinks he made a big mistake. He's been shut out of certain discussions as a result of asking really questions about the product. There's some remote chance the company succeeds, but he doesn't know if he wants to stick around to find out. How soon is too soon to leave a job without it looking like a black mark?

Lisa is CMO at a manufacturing company. She took over a small marketing department about 15 months ago, and was able to hire some new folks, but one of them turned out to be extremely toxic. Eventually he resigned, but after he left, he started a campaign to undermine her. He did weird things like people on her team, telling them to be careful with her. The whole experience drained her and her team is still recovering. How can she restore a more positive culture with her team, and not make the same mistake?

 Edgar is a product manager at a large tech company. For the last six months, he’s essentially been doing his manager's job, in addition to his own.

They’ll be in meetings and the manager will say things to like, “Edgar, I'm so glad you're here because I'm not good at leading this.” The prospect of continuing to carry the team is daunting. How can Edgar change their situation?