Want to compare notes on this year at work?

When I was 23, I made a wish list for my next boss. I wanted someone who trusted me and gave me feedback I could actually use. Past that, I mostly wanted to be left alone to do my work.

That list has barely changed. I'd hand you the same one today.

What has changed is how hard work makes it to get even that much.

Last month, a woman posted on Mumsnet that her appraisal rating had been lowered. Her work was excellent, they told her, but she had "a bad attitude" and her "behaviours are not aligning." She's been working for 30 years, and this was the first time anyone had ever called her attitude a problem. Her company has been through so many restructures that it's changed completely.

What gets me is that nobody asked what changed around her. They just renamed it as something wrong with her.

And I don't think she's the only one feeling it. Gallup found in the first half of 2026 that only 49% of U.S. employees strongly agree they know what's expected of them at work. That's a little better than last year and still well below the 61% peak back in 2015.

So about half of us show up every day and guess at what counts as doing a good job.

And that guessing wears you down. You do the work, and then you do a second, invisible job of figuring out whether it was the right work.

Naturally, when the answer keeps moving, it gets really easy to decide the problem is you because you appear to be the common denominator.

So here's one small thing to try this week. Write down what you think your job actually is right now, in two or three sentences. Use the real version, based on what you get thanked for and what gets you a "quick question" on Slack. Then hold it next to the job you were hired to do.

If the two match, good. That's useful to know. If they don't, you've got something you can bring to your manager as a question:

You might get a clear answer. And if you can't get one, that tells you something too.

This is a big part of why I’m co-hosting something a little different this month with a colleague of mine.

On Thursday, October 29, from 12:00-1:00 p.m. ET, Alison Campbell and I are co-hosting Off the Record. It's a free hour on Zoom about what changed at work this year and what could shape 2027.

Alison and I first connected when I asked her to join me on The Balanced Badass Podcast®. She founded unBurnt, where she works with companies on the conditions at work that drive burnout.

Before that, she spent nearly 20 years in corporate, most recently as Chief of Staff at Workhuman. Her research with Bentley University, a study of 544 full-time professionals, found that AI uncertainty and unclear role expectations were among the top risk factors for high burnout.

That's the guessing I was talking about. I work with people who want to pivot, and she works inside the companies they're pivoting from, so I think we'll see this year from two pretty different sides.

We'll share what we've each seen this year, and then we want to hear what's showing up in your job and your industry. It won't be recorded, so what's shared in the room stays in the room. Bring the thing you haven't been able to say out loud at work, and we’ll process it together.

We’re capping this at 40 seats to respect the intention of the conversation.

But write your two or three sentences first, okay? Then come tell us what you found.

Take care,

Tara

P.S. If you want a head start before Oct 29, the free Burnout Drivers Assessment walks you through the five things that most often drive burnout and shows you which ones are loudest for you right now.