Worklife with Molly Graham

Once you know what you want from your job, the next step is to ask for it. In this episode of How to Get What You Want at Work, Molly is joined by Wendy Chow, a general counsel at Cityblock Health and a master negotiator for her company and friends alike. Wendy believes that advocating for yourself and asking for what you need is a skill that everyone can learn, and she offers practical tips and tricks for negotiating better pay, more support, or healthier working conditions for you and your teammates. She and Molly break down the types of fear many people struggle with when negotiating, dig deeper into how your identity can shape your experience of self-advocacy, and offer advice on how to identify the North Star that you’re working toward in your career. Wendy also shares her pre-negotiation rituals, and why being prepared for a conversation can make a real difference.

Connect with the team
Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDPods
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For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We spend more time at work than we do on just about anything else, so how you spend your time at work matters. In this first episode of the How to Get What You Want at Work series, Molly sits down with journalist Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job and How to Not Know, to unpack the first fundamental question of finding the right job for you: what do you actually want? Simone breaks down the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations that drive us to show up for work, and offers guidance on how to tell the difference between what you really want and what you think you should. He also shares practical tips for clarifying your values, crafting your current job to be more like the one you want, and interrogating your choices before you make them.

Connect with the team
Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDPods
Follow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you’re tasked with a big project at work, your first instinct is probably to put your head down, be as productive as possible, and nail it on the first try. But while this approach is often rewarded, it can get in the way of real creativity and innovation. Astro Teller is the head of the X team at Alphabet, a company that creates radical technologies to help solve some of the world’s largest problems. His official title is Captain of Moonshots, and he frequently leads a “bad ideas brainstorm” session to produce radical innovation in his team. In this episode, Molly attends one of these sessions and sits down with Astro to learn more about his “innovation machine” at X’s Moonshot Factory. Astro emphasizes the importance of taking real risks and celebrating failure, and shares 5 principles any organization can use to help drive innovation. He also points out things around X’s office that encourage creativity, and explains why employees there have to break a simple rule to get into the building.

Connect with the team
Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDPods
Follow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If a team isn’t working well, everybody feels it. But when problems arise in your team, the issue usually runs deeper than the people experiencing it. In this episode, Molly breaks down the Waterline Model, a framework developed by organizational psychologist Roger Harrison to help diagnose workplace problems by looking beneath the surface at the systems and dynamics that shape the way an organization functions. She explains the 4 layers of dysfunction that are often the root cause of workplace issues and how to address them, emphasises the importance of clear communication and definition of goals and roles, and shares how the Waterline Model has helped her throughout her career, including as a wilderness instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School.

Connect with the team
Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDPods
Follow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whether you’re working on Wall Street or bussing tables, every job has something to teach you—and no job is more full of learning opportunities than your first. In this new Storytime segment, Molly invites Ashley Murphy back to swap stories about their first experiences in the working world and share advice for people navigating a new position. They break down how to set yourself up for success on day one, emphasise the importance of listening and asking dumb questions early on, and reflect on a story from past guest Claire Hughes Johnson about her very first job and how it shaped her mindset for the rest of her career.

Featured guest
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Learn more about Glue Club

Connect with the team
Follow Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at glueclub.com/
Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson
Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDPods
Follow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok
For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.