Courtney Ellis joins the Mode/Switch to help managers lead through exhausting change. Listen to learn how your language choices affect your team's trust.

(And how to try birding at work!)

I have to admit, just seeing a goose puts me in control mode.

Hey, who ordered these stupid birds to show up? Also, the shoreline’s covered with poop. This beach needs better management!

If you're leading as a manager in the middle of an organization, you know this bind. Your senior leadership’s calling for big, loud, squawking changes. You didn’t choose them. But here you are, standing in the poop, explaining all the things to your team.

But poop-making and squawk-making, as it turns out, are an unavoidable condition of organizational leadership.

This week's Mode/Switch guest, Courtney Ellis, has spent years studying how birds, and the rest of the natural world, help us handle disruption not by achieving control but by practicing preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience. Those four postures are central to her latest book, Weathering Change, and they shape the conversations of her podcast, The Thing With Feathers, about birds and hope.

Understandably, Gen Z cohost Madeline Witvliet asks in our intro, Why have a bird enthusiast on a work-culture podcast?

It’s a fair question. Courtney joins our intergenerational team to show how the natural world provides metaphors for improving trust at work, especially in seasons of disruptive change. (Her reference to starling flight patterns is worth the pod, btw.)

Courtney’s insights recall Lakoff and Johnson’s point about “the metaphors we live by.” Our metaphors aren’t just decorations for speech. They’re shapers of action.

For me, the surprising move in this episode is that birds suggest behaviors that are indispensable for leaders and their teams in the exhausting and changeful middle spaces of organizations.

For example, if you don’t know what a hummingbird’s torpor has to do with mid-level leadership, I encourage you to give this pod half an hour and find out!

This episode of the Mode/Switch builds on an ancient teaching, “Consider the birds of the air,” so you can cultivate team reliability.

Approximate Episode Timestamps

0:00 – 3:00 — Cold open: we introduce our intergenerational team, name this week’s topic (Changing Our Relation to Change Itself), and situate things in the context of exhausting organizational change.

3:00 – 24:00 — Main discussion with Courtney about what to do when changes mean, “The journey is too much for you.” We discuss why constant change makes us believe in a myth of control. We explore the limits and possibilities of adaptability, discussing change happening to vs. with us. Courtney shows how nature metaphors unify teams, support stasis, build equity, and cope with digital exhaustion.

24:00 – 27:00 — Mode/Switch: Courtney recommends a birding exercise you can do at work with your team.

27:00 – 33:00 — Roundtable wrap-up: LaShone talks about why “getting a grip” is so hard today. Emily waves a white flag at senior leaders. Madeline tells a story about starting her new role. Craig asks for prescriptions for leaders. We conclude with a book recommendation for leaders wanting to build trust in times of change.

What this episode will help you do in times of change:

1. Replace control with curiosity. Instead of trying to hold everything still, you’ll learn how to ask what’s actually going on for your team and for yourself.

2. Normalize rest and micro-recovery as equipment for living, not for indulgence. You’ll learn about the indispensability of torpor and stasis for pacing work well.

3. Build the trust that makes flexibility possible. We discuss concrete moves (floor visits, one-on-ones, self-disclosure about stress) that help you cultivate team trust.

4. Advocate upward and pace change deliberately. Courtney and the Mode/Switchers discuss tactics for middle managers to bring senior leadership into direct contact with affected teams in order to pace change better.