The Gen Mess with Tess

Have you ever watched a talented employee just stop trying? They know what to do. They have the skills. And still, nothing. What you are witnessing is not a character flaw. It is a brain event. And until now, most of us have had no name for it.

Dr. Kyra Bobinet is a public health physician, scientist, and behavioral designer who has spent her career closing what she calls the know-do gap: the space between knowing what you should do and actually doing it. She has identified the specific brain region responsible for killing motivation, generating negative self-talk, and driving everything from procrastination to addiction. It is called the habenula. It is the size of a pea. And it is running more of your team's behavior than you realize.

In this conversation we go deep on the neuroscience of motivation and disengagement, what triggers the habenula (and what that is) to shut people down at work, why GLP-1 medications are actually addiction drugs that work through this same brain region, how Gen Z's particular history with social media and loneliness makes them especially vulnerable to habenula overload, and what managers can actually do about it. Dr. Bobinet also shares the iterative mindset framework she has published in peer-reviewed research, which is available as a free tool at her website.

• What the habenula is and why it is the master control switch for motivation and negative self-talk
• How trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and social media overload create a hypersensitive habenula
• Why 1 in 3 Americans are using alcohol, cannabis, or nicotine during the workday and what that tells us about workplace stress
• The surprising reason GLP-1s like Ozempic reduce cravings for alcohol, nicotine, and nail-biting (not just food)
• Why 67% of Gen Z report loneliness and what that means for their performance at work
• The iterative mindset: why you cannot fail if you are experimenting, and how managers can use this to support struggling employees
• A real workplace ritual that Dr. Bobinet uses to protect motivation and build retention on her team

00:01 Introduction and guest bio: Dr. Kyra Bobinet, public health physician and behavioral designer

01:06 Origin story: patients who swear they'll change and then don't, and the know-do gap

03:04 The habenula: what it is, how it kills motivation, and why it drives negative self-talk

07:00 Habenula vs. amygdala: the prediction machine vs. the fear response

09:10 Trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and the hypersensitive habenula

11:46 Substances at work: the stat, the self-medication cycle, and the habenula's role in addiction and cravings

15:47 GLP-1s and the habenula: why they reduce cravings far beyond weight loss

19:53 Loneliness, belonging, and why 67% of Gen Z report feeling lonely

24:04 What happens in the brain when someone stops making progress at work

29:13 Building small wins into the workday and the iterative mindset framework

37:07 Gen Z, social media overload, and what managers are getting wrong about disengagement

45:10 Workplace rituals that protect motivation, plus the third/third/third hiring rule

49:37 Why 30-day resets backfire and what to do instead: the planner, the doer, and the free tool at drkyrabobinet.com

Subscribe to the podcast for weekly content, and visit tessbrigham.com to learn more.

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

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There is a fear spreading through management right now that nobody is naming out loud. Managers are scared to give feedback to their Gen Z employees. And because it stays unspoken, it is quietly destroying performance culture inside organizations everywhere.

In this episode, I walk through exactly why this is happening, what it's costing you, and what works when it comes to delivering feedback to a younger workforce. This is not a Gen Z problem, and it is not a manager problem. It is a product of a generation raised with a very specific relationship to evaluation, criticism, and their own sense of worth colliding with a management culture that was never trained to work with that reality.

I draw on Carol Dweck's research on fixed vs. growth mindset, Dr. Kristin Neff's work on self-compassion and external performance feedback, organizational researcher Edgar Schein's concept of humble inquiry, and Sheila Heen's research from Thanks for the Feedback to explain what is actually happening in those feedback conversations when they go sideways. Then I give you concrete, specific tools to make them go differently.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why a significant portion of Gen Z was never given direct developmental feedback before they entered your organization
• The neurological leap that turns a comment about a deliverable into an identity threat
• Three specific things that go wrong in most feedback conversations with Gen Z
• A 20-second framing technique that changes the entire dynamic before you say a single word of feedback
• Why Gen Z does not leave managers who give honest feedback, and who they actually leave

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:

00:01 The fear managers won't say out loud

00:40 The millennial manager story: one feedback conversation that went wrong and what happened next

02:01 The deep mismatch in expectations, emotional history, and how Gen Z was wired to receive feedback

02:10 Carol Dweck: growth mindset and the conditions required to develop it

03:20 How self-esteem culture, protective parenting, and social media shaped Gen Z's relationship with evaluation

03:44 Dr. Kristin Neff: self-compassion research and what happens when worth is tied to external feedback

04:08 The leap: how this report missed the mark becomes you are inadequate

04:41 Many Gen Z employees have never received direct developmental feedback before

05:00 Three specific things going wrong in feedback conversations right now

05:00 Problem 1: feedback is about identity, not behavior

05:45 Problem 2: no relational foundation exists before the feedback lands (Edgar Schein, humble inquiry)

06:25 Problem 3: expectations were never set clearly upfront

07:04 One concrete shift: the 20-second framing technique

07:50 Sheila Heen: asking for a smaller piece to give employees agency

08:30 The real truth about what Gen Z actually needs from a manager

Download my FREE Gen Z Playbook: https://www.tessbrigham.com/#retention

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

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Are our educational systems actually built for the people who need them most? For students who are also parents, caregivers, veterans, and full-time workers, the traditional model of higher education was never designed with them in mind. And in the Black community, where those layers of responsibility are often even more pronounced. The gap between who the system was built for and who it needs to serve has real consequences.

In this conversation I sit down with Dr. Alvin McLean, clinical psychologist and dean of psychology at National University, and Cherina Shaw, PhD candidate in psychology, doula, mother of six, and homeschool parent.

We cover a lot of ground in this one, from why psychology training pipelines produce so few Black therapists, to what culturally responsive care actually looks like in practice, to one of the most important insights I have heard about worldview and how it shapes the kind of advice a person can actually receive. We also talk about where integrated physical and mental healthcare is headed and why it matters more than most people realize.

This conversation is for HR leaders, healthcare providers, therapists in training, and anyone thinking about what it means to really see the people they are trying to help.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• What is actually driving the shortage of Black therapists and what flexible institutions like National University are doing about it
• What "culturally responsive care" looks like in daily clinical practice
• Why collective worldview is not the same as personal preference and why missing that distinction derails treatment
• Why humility, not expertise, is the most important thing a healthcare provider or leader can bring to any conversation
• How integrated physical and mental healthcare is already reducing costs and improving outcomes

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:

00:37 Dr. McLean on why he focused his career on Black mental health

04:10 Cherina's path to a psychology PhD

07:50 Why psychology programs produce so few Black therapists and what the system gets wrong

08:09 HBCUs, state-by-state licensing, and the structural gap in the pipeline

11:16 National University's flexible model and why 70% of their students are people of color

13:22 Starting the pipeline earlier: building toward psychology careers at the elementary level

14:36 The problem with taking one multicultural competency class and calling it done

16:00 How the doctoral program at National University structures a full year of multicultural training

17:27 Implicit bias training in hospitals and why it matters for patient outcomes

18:59 Gen Z and therapy: more acceptance, but are they doing the work?

20:44 The Amazon generation and the demand for instant results

21:41 Young Black men being open about emotions on reality TV and what that signals

22:24 The gap between checking the therapy box and real internal change

23:25 The future of integrated physical and mental healthcare

25:38 Why integrated care is gaining momentum: cost data and long-term outcomes

26:11 How technology is reshaping mental health needs across generations

27:14 Intentional technology use and reclaiming mental downtime

30:38 What does culturally responsive care actually look like in practice?

31:03 Preparation, listening, partnership over task completion

33:02 Collective worldview: why prioritizing yourself can feel like betrayal

35:02 How to recognize a collective worldview through observation and conversation

38:13 Humility as the foundation of culturally competent care

39:14 Imposter syndrome, the pressure to have all the answers, and learning to let go of it

41:23 Acknowledging intersecting identities in coaching and clinical work

43:41 Prison reform: rehabilitation, for-profit prisons, and what actually works

44:50 Peer support specialists and preparing people to return to community

51:05 Final takeaways from both guests

51:25 Healing is incremental, ongoing, and that is okay

52:25 Collaborative care and leading with humility

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

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I had no idea anything was wrong. They seemed fine and then they just quit.

This is the most common thing I hear from managers and HR leaders right now. And here is what I need you to understand:

The silence is not the problem. The silence is the symptom.

In this solo episode, I break down exactly what is happening psychologically when a Gen Z employee goes quiet, why this generation responds to stress by withdrawing rather than speaking up, and what you can do to catch it before it becomes a resignation letter you never saw coming.

I walk through the neuroscience behind this pattern, including neuroscientist Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory and why the nervous system's freeze response gets misread by managers as contentment. I also draw on developmental psychologist Jean Twenge's research on Gen Z's anxiety levels and psychologist Wendy Mogul's work on the parenting patterns that left this generation without the tools to navigate interpersonal friction at work.

And I give you three specific behavioral signals to watch for, plus two questions you can ask in your next one on one that change the entire dynamic.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why silence from a Gen Z employee is data, not contentment
• The neuroscience of the freeze response and why it gets misread as low drama
• How Gen Z's upbringing left many of them without tools for navigating conflict at work
• Three specific behavioral signals that a Gen Z employee is disengaging
• Two questions to ask in your next one on one that actually give permission for honesty

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:

00:01 Opening hook: the resignation that came out of nowhere

00:40 Why silence surprises us: managers are trained to look for the wrong signals

01:45 What Gen Z gives you instead: quiet, gradual withdrawal

02:18 Jean Twenge's research on Gen Z's anxiety and nervous system development

03:20 The heightened threat detection response this generation developed

03:50 Stephen Porges: polyvagal theory and the freeze response

04:42 Wendy Mogul: parenting patterns and the lack of tools for interpersonal friction

05:45 Signal 1: They stop asking questions

06:10 Signal 2: Responses get shorter and more transactional

06:35 Signal 3: They stop bringing problems to you (the most dangerous signal)

07:06 Client story: the 25-year-old who stopped speaking in meetings

07:50 What to do: one concrete thing to try this week

08:30 Two specific questions to ask in your next one on one

09:33 Closing and call to action

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I sit down with Laura McDonald, co-founder of Flora Fertility, the first individually owned insurance solution for fertility and women's health. Laura is a bestselling author, former financial media personality, and the founder of Canada's largest financial media company focused on women and wealth, which she built, scaled, and sold. Now she is tackling one of the most urgent and under-discussed financial crises facing the next generation: the cost of fertility care.

We talk about why 72% of Gen Z women are already thinking about fertility anxiety before they are even trying to conceive, why the current group benefits model is failing most employees, how Flora Fertility is changing that with individually owned coverage starting at $15 a month, and what HR leaders and parents can actually do right now.

If you manage Gen Z employees, have a young adult daughter, or are a young woman thinking about your own options, this conversation will change the way you look at reproductive health as a financial planning issue.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why Gen Z women are thinking about fertility earlier than any generation before them
• The data behind the fertility financial crisis (and why the existing employer model isn't solving it)
• How Flora Fertility works and why individual ownership changes everything
• Why the average Gen Z employee's 12-job career makes employer-tied benefits a broken model
• What HR leaders should be doing right now, and what parents can do too

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Introduction and guest bio

01:04 Laura's origin story: from financial media to fertility insurance

07:20 Why Gen Z women are thinking about fertility by age 23: the data

10:24 Tess's theory on how Gen Z women approach life differently than Gen X

12:41 Laura's own daughters and the reality of Gen Z's mindset around family

14:35 Birth rates, delayed motherhood, and what the data actually shows

16:31 Why women are finally being honest about what parenthood really looks like

19:18 The conversation parents need to be having with their 22-24 year old daughters

20:34 How Flora Fertility works: pricing, coverage, and the set-it-and-forget-it model

23:23 The financial reality: 80% of people pay for IVF on credit cards

25:32 How financial stress directly affects fertility outcomes

26:06 Why Fortune 500 fertility benefits are not the solution most people think they are

31:12 Emotional intelligence, pet insurance, and why Flora resonates differently

33:37 How Flora is earning trust with a generation skeptical of insurance

37:54 Why Flora may be the first financial product Gen Z women ever actually buy

40:25 The gig economy, 12 jobs, and why benefits have to travel with you

41:45 What HR leaders should be doing right now

43:55 Parents as policyholders: gifting coverage to adult children

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

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When a Gen Z employee says they don't feel safe at work, most leaders have one of two reactions. They either panic, thinking they have a legal problem on their hands, or they get quietly frustrated, assuming they're dealing with an overdramatic employee. In this episode, Tess Brigham, licensed therapist and certified coach, breakd down why both of those reactions miss what's actually happening and what to do instead.

Tracing the psychological and generational roots of Gen Z's emotional vocabulary through the work of Dan Siegel on interpersonal neurobiology and the yes brain concept, John Bowlby's attachment theory as extended to the workplace by Cindy Hazen and Philip Shaver, and Stanford researcher Jeff Cohen's research on belonging uncertainty, you'll also hear three real examples from Tess's practice that demonstrate exactly what this looks like in day-to-day workplace moments.

If you manage Gen Z employees or lead teams that do, this episode will change the way you hear this phrase and give you one concrete, immediately usable response.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why "I don't feel safe" means something completely different to Gen Z than it does to leaders over 45
• The psychological and generational roots of Gen Z's emotional vocabulary
• Three real client examples that show what this phrase actually looks like at work
• Why belonging uncertainty is not a soft concern, it is a performance issue
• The one question that shifts everything when a Gen Z employee brings this to you

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS:

00:01 Introduction and opening hook

01:10 Why this phrase creates so much confusion across generations

02:28 Where Gen Z's emotional language comes from: Dan Siegel and the yes brain

04:44 Attachment theory at work: Bowlby, Hazan, and Shaver

05:30 Three real client examples from Tess's practice

07:04 Why belonging is non-negotiable: Jeff Cohen's belonging uncertainty research

09:18 The single most important shift: get curious instead of defensive

10:20 Carl Rogers and the power of being genuinely heard

Follow The Gen Mess for weekly content on generational workplace dynamics, and visit tessbrigham.com to learn more.

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most managers walk into their first role thinking the job is to tell people what to do and hold them accountable when they don't do it. Jon Dario spent 30 years in retail leadership (Macy's, Gap, Travelex, and Bank of America) learning why that instinct is exactly wrong. Out of that experience came AIM: Action Item Management. This system gives frontline managers the structure, follow-through, and daily accountability that actually gets results. He has written it all down in his new book, AIM: How Managers Get Radically Reliable Results.

Jon and Tess get into what great management actually looks like, how to lead Gen Z specifically, and the one thing every first-time manager should understand before they ever give a single direction.

• What retail teaches about people skills and prioritization that most industries simply do not
• The origin story of AIM: one sporting goods store, six department supervisors, and a woman named Regina
• The three types of action items every manager needs to track: routines, tasks, and projects
• Why progress meetings work best when the employee owns the agenda
• What Gen Z actually wants from a manager (and why it is not that different from everyone else)
• The GPS analogy: why giving a precise destination and flexible routes is the key to managing younger workers
• The Gallup statistic that should stop every manager in their tracks: 70% of employee engagement is directly driven by the manager
• Why influence cannot be faked, and why character matters more than the authority box on an org chart

Jon's book AIM: How Managers Get Radically Reliable Results is available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, audio, and ebook. Find Jon at jondario.com.

Follow The Gen Mess with Tess for more weekly episodes about fixing the generational mess and learning how to live in it.

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every generation has faced a broken world. Wars, poverty, injustice, economic collapse. None of that is new. So why does this generation feel more hopeless than any that came before?

In this episode, Tess makes the case that it is not the world that got worse. It is the exposure. And for the first time in history, there is nowhere to look that is not the world.

Tess walks through what the research actually says about why this is happening, why it hits Gen Z harder than any other generation, and one reframe that genuinely changes how you relate to all of it in this psychologically grounded episode.

• Why the generation that grew up with everything at their fingertips also grew up with no off switch
• What a magazine had 50 years ago that a smartphone still cannot offer
• Martin Seligman's learned helplessness research and how it maps directly onto the Gen Z experience
• Why 79% of Gen Zers believe their lives will be harder than their parents, and why they are not wrong to think so
• The difference between learned helplessness and learned hopefulness, and how to move from one to the other
• What leaders and managers often misread as apathy or laziness in their Gen Z employees
• The one thing organizations can do that functions as a direct psychological antidote

Follow The Gen Mess with Tess, and find free resources at tessbrigham.com

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Never before have so many generations shared a workplace at the same time. And never before has the opportunity for both collaboration and conflict been this high.

This week, Tess sits down with Meagan Johnson, generational keynote speaker and co-author of the bestselling book Generations, Inc.: Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work, written with her father Larry Johnson. Meagan has spent over 30 years helping organizations from Harley-Davidson to Boeing to the CIA navigate the very conflicts most leaders are still trying to figure out.

The conversation covers every generation in the workforce right now, what leaders keep getting wrong about each one, why the same story keeps repeating, and where we might actually be headed.

In this episode:

• The single biggest myth about Baby Boomers and technology
• Why Gen X deserves far more credit than it gets, including being the original remote work pioneers
• What Millennial managers are actually getting right that nobody is talking about
• Why Gen Z is not just a younger Millennial (and why that assumption creates real problems)
• The corporate ladder versus the corporate lattice, and why Gen Z plays by entirely different rules
• The root of almost every generational conflict at work
• The seat belt analogy: what Meagan tells resistant managers who refuse to adapt
• Why Gen Z's approach to mental health at work may become the new standard, just like mentorship did
• Where five generations, AI, and a changing economy are taking the workplace next

Find Meagan at meaganjohnson.com. Generations, Inc. is available now. Meagan's podcast launches this summer.

00:00: Welcome and Meagan Johnson introduction

01:15: How Meagan became a generational speaker, starting at Quaker Oats in 1993

03:40: The story that repeats every generation: why 20-somethings have always been "too difficult"

05:45: How the work evolved from Gen X-focused to covering all five generations

07:00: Writing Generations, Inc. with her father, and planning a wedding at the same time

09:10: The biggest myth about Baby Boomers and technology

11:10: Gen X: the forgotten generation that pioneered working from home

13:00: Millennial managers: turning into exactly what was said about them

15:10: What Millennials got right that previous generations missed: championing mentorship

17:30: The most common Gen Z misconception (hint: they are not just a younger Millennial)

19:00: Gen Z as true digital natives: no dial-up, no cursive, no idea how to sign a lease

21:00: AI in the workplace and why blocking it is exactly like blocking Facebook in 2008

23:30: The root of almost every generational conflict: "when I was that age..."

26:00: Technical skills versus personal skills: what has changed with new graduates

28:30: Why managers resist giving the next generation advantages they never had

30:00: The questions every manager should be asking about their own expectations

32:00: The seat belt analogy for resistant leaders: new information, better results

34:00: The Gen Z office myth: they do want to come in, just with the option not to

35:30: Gen Z sees Zoom as face-to-face contact (and why that matters)

37:00: Corporate ladder versus corporate lattice: the Gen Z employee who called the CEO for lunch

39:30: Why we dim Gen Z's lights when they are just trying to figure it out

40:30: Where we are headed: five generations, AI, and the future of the workplace

43:00: Mental health at work becoming the new standard, just like mentorship did

44:30: Emotional intelligence as the new baseline requirement for leadership

46:00: Where to find Meagan and her upcoming podcast

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

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Last episode, Tess told you why the toxic workplace pattern repeats, and identified each of the patterns: avoidance, disconnection, and measuring the environment instead of looking inward. This follow up episode provide 3 exercises to disrupt those patterns.

These exercises are designed to go to the root of where you actually get stuck.

If you haven't listened to Episode 60 yet, start there first. This episode will make a lot more sense once you've identified which pattern is yours.

In this episode:

• Why avoidance is an anxiety problem, not a communication problem, and why that distinction changes everything
• Stephen Hayes's avoidance trap from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: why avoidance works in the short term and costs you everything long term
• The exposure therapy approach that actually rewires the pattern, starting with one small moment this week
• Why disconnection from your own feelings is a survival strategy, not a character flaw
• Antonio Damasio's research on how the body sends signals your brain needs to hear, and how to start listening again
• The one question to ask yourself at the end of each day that rebuilds your internal compass
• Why most people measure opportunities by the wrong things not because they weren't taught better, but because the right questions are scarier to answer
• Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion and the fear of honest self-assessment
• Three questions to ask before your next interview, your next career decision, or your current job right now

Researcher credits:

Stephen Hayes, developer of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist, research on somatic signals and decision-making

Kristin Neff, self-compassion researcher, University of Texas Austin

Follow The Gen Mess with Tess for weekly episodes. Visit tessbrigham.com to learn more.

Follow for weekly episodes, and be sure to visit tessbrigham.com to learn more about Tess's work as a licensed therapist and certified coach.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.