The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Digital Overwhelm in the Workplace with Dr. Craig Mattson

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 41

Share episode

The digital workplace isn't just changing how we work—it's fundamentally altering how we communicate, learn, and connect. After spending years interviewing dozens of Millennial and Gen Z professionals, Dr. Craig Mattson uncovered surprising patterns in how people cope with the constant barrage of platforms, tools, and digital expectations.

While popular advice suggests digital minimalism as the solution, Mattson's research reveals a more nuanced reality. For most professionals, simply using fewer tools isn't an option. Instead, developing what he calls "digital flexibility" proves far more effective—the ability to navigate between different communication modes depending on the situation.

Whether you're leading remote teams, designing training programs, or simply trying to stay sane in your own digital workday, this conversation provides practical strategies for turning digital overwhelm into digital flexibility. Check out Dr. Mattson's book "Digital Overwhelm" and connect with him at themodeswitch.com to continue the conversation.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today, I am joined by special guest Dr Craig Mattson. Welcome to the show, craig.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Grateful to be here. I love the whole image of a talent forge. That's a cool metaphor. I like to think of what's being forged in this particular moment.

Jay Johnson:

The most important resource of any organization the people Right. So let's get into this and I'd love to audience to get to know you a little bit. How did you get into teaching? Obviously a university position. What's your experience and background, craig?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Like most Americans. If you ask me who I am, I'll probably tell you my job, what I do. I'm a professor of media production, communication related to marketing and other similar fields at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, michigan. But that's not who I am really. I'm formed by many communities of people through my life who have animated my work, inspired my work and shaped it. I grew up in a family of educators, and so teaching and you might say, talent development and mentoring has always been a part of the households I've been in, and that makes me eager to be in this conversation with you, jay holds I've been in and that makes me eager to be in this conversation with you, Jay.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. Craig, so we are neighbors, being in Battle Creek, about an hour away from you. And Calvin, what a great university. So we also share a little bit of that interest in the communication. So my degrees were actually in communication, public relations and a number of other things. How has your practice, study and sort of background in that space really helped you to become a mentor, or what has that done for your engagement in being able to teach and train other people?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I think the most formative experience of the last few years has been some research I've done, interviewing dozens of Gen Z and millennial professionals and asking them in the early 2020s, how are you dealing Like, how are you coping with the intensities and pressures of the workplace? I think when I was asking those questions I was assuming like it was a brief temporary period of intensity. It hasn't really lightened up, so the workplace continues to be really fraught for many, many professionals today. But talking with these folks from all over the country and lots of different guilds and industries, that has really inspired me to think more carefully about my own mentoring work. In a way, I feel mentored by my research participants, some of whom were students from 20 years ago. But, yeah, what does mentoring, what does leadership, what does talent development look like in workplaces that are hybrid, that are remote, that are often conducted in spaces like the one you and I are in right now? Yeah, so those are questions that really inspire me and I think my research participants have been my teacher in many ways.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So I'm going to dig into that research in a moment. But how did it feel to be having some of these conversations with younger the young generations that are, you know, just emerging into the workspace? What was that like for you?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Well, there were many conversations that were inspiring full stop. I was like, wow, you have figured out workarounds in some crazy work situations, some very difficult organizational settings. You figured it out, go you. And so some of it was just inspiring, but some of it was also disconcerting.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

So I remember an interview which I happened to be able to hold in a coffee shop with a person who worked in marketing in the Chicagoland area, and I remember her telling me over a cup of coffee that, yeah, I don't think my work has any meaning. And I was like, whoa, what are you talking about? Like, work is like, that's what we do, and you know, as a millennial, she had some questions about that. Institutions hadn't served her as well after the great recession of 08 as they had served me before 08. And so I think that was disconcerting. That was surprising to me and something I had to like figure out how to factor that into the ways I would talk about organizational development. And some of the stories were just sad, like they. They they made me feel heavy. Sometimes people are facing pressures and intensities in the workplace that they shouldn't have to it. It should be better, we should be doing better than we are, and so some of the stories were were um sobering to me as well sobering to me as well, I can imagine.

Jay Johnson:

Can you give me an example of maybe one of the stories that landed you?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

know in any of those categories for you so inspiring? I'll start there because that's encouraging. I'm thinking about a person who was working in health care in COVID, which, as you can imagine, was a particularly intense time. She was working in intake in, I think, an emergency room, so it's got to be one of the most difficult spots on the planet at that moment, and she talked about ways that she tried to show compassion towards the people who were coming in. That was hard and it took a lot of moral effort on her part. She also had to deal with some of the limits of the physicians that she was working under, so she was kind of mediating. She was working between physicians who were stressed out and patients who were scared or angry. And that story of like showing compassion, I you know I can imagine her like looking at somebody's cracked phone screen like is my baby? And she just takes a moment to like talk with that person. You know, somehow she figured that out and I found that really inspiring.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I heard those stories repeatedly about people who, yeah, were in situations where they wonder like what's the point of this, like what's the meaning in this? But the last category was those stories that sobered me and I think some of those were stories. This is going to sound like I'm sort of ratcheting this up to 11 really fast, but like sexual harassment stories, people who are dealing with unethical bosses or supervisors and, yeah, the situations that they as young professionals I mean there were terrible situations for any age group of women, professionals in particular I'm thinking of but yeah, especially for someone you know, just sort of out of college facing this kind of inequity and aggression and disrespect, so that that was certainly in that last category of like whoa this is. This is hard, hard stuff people are dealing with.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I definitely want to get to having some conversations about how that research might inform us as HR people, as trainers and coaches. I want to go back to the inspirational story, because I've done a lot of work in that healthcare space and actually was asked to develop a behavioral science focused approach to managing burnout and situations and it's interesting to me that that communication, that compassion, that sort of came through, because a lot of people look at that and say, okay, maybe it's compassion fatigue, but that's actually not what the science teaches us. Can you share with us a little bit more about how did she or he maybe demonstrate in that space, right, how did they demonstrate that resilience to kind of keep coming back to the wheel? Did you have any conversations that revolved around that?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Well, what I could glean from, you know, talking with professionals like this, this woman professional in a ED during COVID. It's not complicated stuff. It's, in a way, what a friend of mine calls kindergarten ethics. It's being responsive to another human being. It involves listening, it involves speaking carefully and slowly and without losing your control in situations that maybe push you to lose your control. So it wasn't anything super sophisticated, it's just that it was being practiced consistently, at least by these reports. It was being practiced consistently in situations that, wow, it would have been hard to do even that sort of basic moral work of listening to people, speaking kindly to people, trying to see what their actual need is.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

But I did encounter people who are experiencing burnout.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I remember a research participant who I had known for a long time and I kind of circled back and said, hey, I'm doing this study, would you be willing to talk with me?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

This guy worked in health insurance and he began, you know, I had always thought of him as this sort of charismatic, you know, really quick-witted, genuinely funny and talented guy, and when he, you know, when we got into this interview, he had a hat on with a large bill and he kind of kept that bill, sometimes between his gaze and mine, like I couldn't figure it. I couldn't read it, I couldn't figure out what was going on there, but he was experiencing burnout, he was exhausted. And he was exhausted as a mid-level manager, top down and bottom up, which is a really hard space to be in. His administrators, he said, were regularly gaslighting and he said the gaslighting is rampant at his company. And then, yeah, as the team he was leading, he was feeling burned out on their incomprehension of what he was saying. He was like why do I have to repeat this so often? What's going on? So that's one instance of burnout that I remember pretty clearly and it had marked physical, you know, signs um in in this guy's demeanor.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and it's interesting that you bring that up, um, actually one of the coaches that I work with, she does a lot of work in burnout, her name's Francesca Amante, and one of the things that she has related is how burnout can often feel like a concept of betrayal when somebody feels, betrayed.

Jay Johnson:

You know, when we feel that sort of aspect of betrayal and I'm thinking about the inspirational story as it compares to this example here where maybe that person in the inspirational story feels like they were working towards that higher purpose helping other people they knew the why, which means that they were able to make the what and the how actually function, Whereas, you know, this individual might have felt that sense of betrayal from up or that sense of betrayal from down, which then all of a sudden creates the conditions that our emotions. You know, we start to protect ourselves, we start to turn inward rather than outward, and turning outward, as it happens, is one of the powerful antidotes that we have for burnout. It's getting away from internal. So I just found it really interesting, as you were talking through that and you know and thinking about it, because the other thing that I think about is you know whether you're in the middle of covid or whether you're in the middle of some kind of a health crisis.

Jay Johnson:

There's still things that a lot of our organizations or HR people have to think about, like continuing education units, which I know are rampant in healthcare and even in health insurance or real estate or CPAs or whatever else, and I was thinking about that aspect of like. Okay, when we know this and from your research, when we know what these experiences exist, how can we motivate somebody to say, yeah, I want to learn more, I want to dig in, I want to be better tomorrow? In this space where I'm feeling miserable or I'm feeling betrayed or I'm feeling whatever, can you speak to that at all?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Craig, it's interesting. As I said, I teach at Calvin University and we were just talking yesterday a small cohort of us of trying to develop some better continuing education for professors who need to teach adult learners, which might be a different demographic than what they've mostly taught with what we call undergraduate learners. They are also our adults, to be clear. But yeah so, and motivation was the thing that came up, like we can design these beautiful, you know modules. We can design asynchronous classes, we can design materials that are like well-produced and really contain practical, uh, strategies, but at the same time, like people are doing a lot, people are, they have more to do than they know what to do with, and so to say, hey, here's this amazing resource that will take seven weeks. That sounds daunting. And so, yeah, I think, frankly, one of the means that came up to motivate people. We were just talking about money, like how does offering a stipend support people in an organization?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

And somebody in the cohort and the table brought up the point that sometimes stipends just sort of disappear into your paycheck and you don't feel like you got any fun money out of it. It's just like somehow on workday somewhere. So he was like, could we give out a specific kind of gift card. You know that might be like oh, I get to do this. You know it might be even less money, but so I think sometimes extrinsic motivators are important.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

But, frankly, when people experience something like exhaustion or their own sense of how do I handle this, their own sense of I don't feel competent for what is in front of me, that provides some intrinsic motivation, and so I think some kind of mixture of the two is probably where we need to go. There are always people who want to grow, so you can like find those folks, but then there are people who are like no, I'm good, I'm where I am and that's all I got. You know life for right now. But, and for those people you might need to do the more extrinsic kind of motivation. How's that sound to you, jay? Like, how does that resonate with your study and research?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, it's actually really interesting. We did a test at an organization where we did a B testing. One of the things that we had was an incentive based program where it was essentially they could earn gift cards or they could earn some kind of financial value for every course that they took or for everything that they went into the LMS or for every hour. So we had to split up like that, where it was like, okay, we're tracking the number of hours, but what we actually found to be more effective and I can share more about this with you, this is one of the big areas that I'm focused on is learner motivation.

Jay Johnson:

What we actually found was random dispersal of rewards. Think of it almost like casinos, where they weren't expecting it. It wasn't an incentive based, but they would get a random gift card because, hey, you know, you participated and and you've won this X, y and Z gift card to continue forward. So it was almost like that sort of pull the slot machine lever and eventually something's going to come out. That seemed to actually have a higher impact when it was incentivized Exactly what you said it was. Well, now this is part of my job.

Jay Johnson:

I'm incentivized to just do my job and it just became something of like okay, well, I can earn more money, but they weren't really there for the learning. Whereas the others were engaged in the learning and that random reward came back. That was sort of the dopaminergic you know. So, thank you, jay, know so, yeah, well, thank you Jay.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

That's super helpful. I'll take that back to my group and suggest that we use, you know, more of a slot machine approach to this and see what comes out of it.

Jay Johnson:

Hey, learning gambling is, you know, probably a positive reinforcer. So well you know, craig, I'd love to dig in a little deeper too and start thinking what has this research taught you in terms of some of these different aspects? You know, obviously we've started to dig into some of that motivation piece, but what are some of the insights that you'd be able to share from having these conversations that would really benefit those HR people, those trainers, those coaches out there that are looking to elevate their talent development options.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

So I think you often learn what you should have written in your book after it's published, and that's certainly been the case for me. Something I wish I'd said just like right up front like this is the thing people here's why you should buy this book. Just like right up front, like this is the thing people here's why you should buy this book. The book is called Digital Overwhelm a mid-career guide for coping at work, and what I wished I'd said and I kind of say it, but you know you don't like emphasize it enough ever it seems to me is that a lot of guidance that we're offered today in regards to digital overwhelm tends to be get rid of tech, get rid of tools, simplify, go analog and basically digital minimalism, and I have a lot of respect for this position. It's put out by people like Cal Newport and others like that. I think it's good stuff. Like simply asking ourselves what tools do I need for the goals I have is wise, like go for it. But you know, many people don't have a choice about the platforms or the number of platforms that they're asked to use at work. They might be required to use devices, maybe in excess of what they actually want to use to use devices may be in excess of what they actually want to use. So my book really recommends, instead of digital minimalism, it recommends digital flexibility.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I noticed that as people were dealing with digital overwhelm, they tended to use six different coping mechanisms, and because I'm a communication scholar, I tended to see these through a communicational lens and so I described them as modes of communication. A really quick example of this would be when you're feeling digitally overwhelmed say you're doing a team project, some people have an impulse to deal with that overwhelm by sending stuff. So they like create a massive 1900 word email and they send it out to the team. That'll fix everything and they feel a lot better. But the team doesn't always necessarily feel better Right.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Other people, when they're faced with digital overwhelm, may use a mode of conversation. So let's talk, let's get together in person or let's get on a Zoom call, like you and I are doing right now, jay. Let's figure this out, just you and me. That's also like it's got a lot going for it, but it doesn't always work super well in a kind of collective or organizational fashion. Still, other people use a mode that I'll just call signaling, kind of a less is more approach. They will say like organizational communication is kind of exhausting to me. Right now I'm just going to send very brief communications, or maybe no communications at all. It's kind of like the camera off approach to being in a Zoom room. So those are a few of the modes and I think being able to shift among the modes they all have strengths, they all have things they're really good for, but recognizing what's the gift and then maybe also what's the burden of each of the modes is something I felt like I learned from talking to these 47 rising professionals.

Jay Johnson:

Okay, Now that's interesting. So let me back up for just a moment and maybe we can get clear on what would it mean for me to feel sort of like digitally exhausted, Like how do we define that? How do we know if we've maybe fallen into that? It's almost like digital burnout to an extent. Yeah, how would I know what would be my symptoms, what would be the things? Because I think a lot of a lot of the look, a lot of the trainers, a lot of the coaches here are using digital platforms, whether it's Teams, the fact that I've had to learn Teams, WebEx, Google Meets, Zoom and a number of other platforms for any of the keynotes and things I've done. I'm exhausted just trying to manage some of that knowledge, let alone the tools that I would use every day. So I'm thinking about it like what would be the markers to say, hey, watch out, If you experience this, you might be seeing your teams, your people, your audience experiencing a little of that sort of like digital exhaustion. What does that seem like?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Well, let me try to offer my definition of digital overwhelm and then I'll talk about a few markers that I've seen. So I use Lake Michigan to think about digital overwhelm. So in a lake, like a really big lake, you have surface currents and some of these can be quite dangerous riptides. Some of them are just long shore currents that you can ride your kayak with. But in any case, those surface currents for me are like technological developments, like you said, all those platforms that show up like suddenly you have to be conversant in six different video chat platforms. People keep showing up with more of these things and you're like, okay, I guess, like this person is using that. So I got to learn it and it kind of sometimes takes you in a place you don't necessarily want to go, but you got to go there because it's strong and AI right now is is a riptide for all of us. It's carrying us along and we just kind of got to swim with it, keep our head above water as much as we can and figure out how to ride this thing out. But we also have in a lake you also have upwelling currents, and these I think of as like our emotional responses to the tech development and the accelerated digital innovations that are constantly showing up, and some people respond in ways that are they're just enthusiastic about it.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

They love tech development, they love new tools, they love the innovation and what this is going to enable me to do is so cool. Other people do feel kind of meh about it, like, oh great, another tool, another platform, another set of passwords I got to remember. And then some people, you know, they get sad, like they get tired, exhausted, burned out, and I think that's where maybe your question is sort of taking us. What are the indicators of that? I would say that the indicators are very similar to conventional burnout. So, a, you have a sense of exhaustion. That's the most common. I don't want to look at a screen again for the rest of my life.

Jay Johnson:

B you've been there before.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Yeah, you've got a lot of episodes of the Talent Forge out there, so you've done your share of screen time for sure. But another indicator might be something like I just don't feel up for this. Like I don't feel like I have the talent or the skill that I need to do this. I feel inept or even incompetent. And sometimes boomers feel that in these or Xers like me, they feel that in these new digital spaces, like I don't know if I can keep up and I don't know if I want to. And then sometimes there's a kind of cynicism that sets in, where people are just like they get nasty with each other. We see a lot of this online and I think a great deal of that. I mean, it's really repulsive when somebody hates on somebody else online, but I think it's probably traceable to some kind of digital exhaustion at some level. So those are a few.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I like that because you know, and even to what you said about traceable being, you know some of that cynicism being traceable to exhaustion. I think that that's one of the things that we see is, when people are face to face, they tend to not have that same type of vitriol and there's a different level of connection. And I'm thinking about it in terms of you know when I think about, when I think about digital training, digital coaching, and you know whether or not you know somebody is comfortable being on the screen, or if this is their 37th meeting in a day on a little box where they're not seeing feet or anything else. Really, how much are they going to learn, how much are they going to actually be engaged or anything else? They may experience that overwhelm because they've spent their entire day looking at a screen size that you know roughly, put your fingers together and that's about it, amongst a box of human beings all being portrayed on TV.

Jay Johnson:

So, when we think about this digital overwhelm and we recognize that there's some different modes of communication that are coming out, or you know, different patterns of communication that we may see because of it, what can we take away, as you know, sort of those HR, those trainers, those coaches what can we take away from this and how can we maybe shift some of the things that we're doing to help our audiences, to help our teams, make sure that they're addressing this or even overcoming it, or at least that we're not adding to the digital overwhelm?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

A couple of ideas come to mind. Every other chapter in my book is called a mode switch workshop. So it's like a half chapter of attempting to work through some of these kind of tactical approaches that help you to, you know, cope with digital communication and its weird pressures. But I think for HR professionals, for people doing training and development in organizations, one thing is to practice compassion for the people who are in these spaces. They're constantly weird, like right now, as I talk to you, I'm not looking in your eyes. In order to appear like I'm looking in your eyes, I have to look at my little green dot on my webcam, right, and that's just a strange kind of alienating. I get used to it, right, but it's sort of alienating to be communicating with another human in that sort of detached way.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

That's only one example. There are lots of examples of ways that it's a little bit, it could be depersonalizing. So just showing compassion towards people and recognizing that it's a lot, I think that will get HR folks a long ways. I'll stop there for a moment. What's that making you think of?

Jay Johnson:

You know when I think of it. Well, and it's even funny because, as you were talking about, like, the advent of different platforms or different aspects, I started to think about all the platforms that I've just been like, okay, I'm not going to be an early adopter. I used to be an early adopter on most things and I'm like I'm not going to be an early adopter because I don't know if this is going to be around. And one of the tech pieces that I found that I actually really like is it is a dropdown camera that actually situates right where the person's face is and it's just this little dot.

Jay Johnson:

So looking at the camera is actually right on your face and you can move your screen around and everything else, because I want I am a body language person Like that was one of my first trainings, craig is nonverbal communication. So the tone that being able to hear the different tonal inflections, being able to see facial expressions, eyes light up, the way people move forward or backwards that was really, really important for me when we got into this digital space. So the very fact that, yeah, you know, and there's, there's a lot of great there's. Unfortunately, I am on a lot of the different platforms for business purposes, but you know, there's a great Instagram reel of people like, as they're looking at themselves as opposed to looking at their person that they're communicating with, or they're looking at a screen that's their email and it's not.

Jay Johnson:

You know all of those different jokes. But yeah, I mean it really lands with me to think about. All right, let's be compassionate about what is this person doing? How is this? How are their eyes doing? Are they? Are they losing ocular vision from, you know, staring at screens or whatever else? Having some of that compassion is important at screens or whatever else.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Having some of that compassion is important. I think, too, to have organizationally, to have some meta talk about the tools we're using is really helpful. So my book is kind of like doing meta talk. It's like about the talk, so thinking about the tools we're using in a meeting and asking the people who are participating at how is this, what is this enabling you to do, what does it keep you from doing, what is it disabling you from doing? And just that kind of.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I think people need media literacy today just to become more conversant and not just treat tools like a means of transferring messages, like a tin can with a thread between and then another tin can. There's a lot of stuff to think through and so I think, as teams, doing that collectively is good. And then I also think it's important to agree on some norms. You know that might pertain to what you do with your camera. It might pertain to what you're doing with other devices, to what you do with your camera. It might pertain to what you're doing with other devices.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Or is it okay, for instance, to in a meeting, a remote meeting, say to say, am I needed right now? And Jurian Kammer he wrote a book called Unblocked and he talks about just kind of being transparent and accountable with the people running the meeting. Like, am I needed right now? If I'm not needed right now, I might go and shift over to this task. I'll be easily accessible but I do need to respond to this email right now. So I think that kind of norm-setting expectation, accountability, transparency about what we're doing, so people aren't capturing us like going cross-eyed because we're looking at so many different platforms at the same time.

Jay Johnson:

Or completely tuning out, you know, to your point, is what's the value of keeping somebody in a meeting? That's maybe the meeting's not relevant, maybe it's not. This is actually something that I've spent a lot of energy and time on is like how can we create the conditions of effective meetings? And what I'm hearing you say if I might be able to infer this that's even more important to have conversations about that. I think so In the digital space. So I love that you said having conversations about the conversations, and I really liked that takeaway about like, hey, what is working for you, what's not working for you? Where is this accelerating you? Where is this disabling you? You know, in those types of conversations, what should we be listening for?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Oh, I like that question. I think emotional attention is really important when we're asking those questions. So you know an HR manager or a talent developer in an organization or just a mid-level manager working with her team. I think you want to pay attention to the feelings, even the feelings in the Zoom room. We can usually feel the feelings when we're in a physical space pretty well if we're a little astute, but it takes more work to attend to feelings in digital spaces.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

I remember at the beginning of COVID when I and my colleagues would be like doing classes online, maybe for more or less the first time in our professional experience. I remember hearing people offices away from me, how loudly they spoke and it struck me that, wow, it takes a lot of energy to be in a digital space. It takes like an extra 37% or something of energy to be in that space and that energy brings with it a lot of feelings and so like trying to decode those feelings, attend to them. That's probably what I would be paying attention to the most in these conversations about like, about the conversations, like you said.

Jay Johnson:

And I think it's such a great takeaway too, because we sometimes forget to stop and pause and ask we get to the tactical, we get to the practical, we get to the strategic, and we do tend to shy away from the things of like okay, but how does this make you feel? What are you, what is your energy level at the end of this meeting, versus you know what is the energy level before there? And I think that there's some really great applications of thinking about how we design our Zoom trainings, how we design, or you know, our online trainings, or even some of our LMS, where it's one way, or synchronous or asynchronous, etc. Like in that design aspect, it can be really important to be thinking about what's the emotional content that the participant is going to be experiencing at each different intersection of a training or of a meeting or of whatever the digital interaction is. So I think that's really powerful.

Jay Johnson:

Craig, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, first of all, can you share the name of the book? Where is it available? How could they get access to that? And then also, if they wanted to get in touch with you, how might they be able to do so?

Dr. Craig Mattson:

Yes, the book is called Digital Overwhelm and my name again is Craig Mattson, so if you search for that on any online bookstore, you'll find it there. I'm from Grand Rapids, so I'll plug Schuller Books, as they have a nice online portal and you could connect with it there. And then there's this little company, amazon. They're doing pretty well these days and they can also probably find it in their stacks. If people want to connect with me, I'd be so pleased to do so at themodeswitchcom. So that's three words all scrunched together themodeswitchcom, and there's a place to connect with me by email there or to find the yeah, the sort of writing that I do. I do a bi-weekly newsletter about work culture and I'd love to have your listeners check that out.

Jay Johnson:

Awesome. Yeah, Thank you, Craig, for sharing that and thank you for the research on this. You know, it's really important that we have sort of that informed understanding of where people are at and it. You obviously did the legwork and put the energy and attention into that space to really kind of create something that's meaningful and valuable in our working time. So I want to say thank you for that and thank you for being on the show.

Dr. Craig Mattson:

And I'll say keep doing good work, Jay. This is a great podcast space for people in talent development.

Jay Johnson:

Well, thank you, craig, and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where, together, we are shaping the future of training and development.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

Host