The Nine Modes Podcast

Structural Mode is the mental configuration your mind uses to organize information. Find out more in today’s episode.

What is a mode? Is a “type”? Is is a “kind of person”? Is it personality?

No. A mode is none of these.

Listen in to find out more.

Narrative Mode. The Mode the mind uses to organize sequence. From relating your day, to finding out how that product launch failed, Narrative Mode keeps us all on track.

Sometimes a conversation isn’t asking how to get things moving, how to solve a problem. Sometimes it is asking ‘why,’ or ‘how.’ Understanding is the goal.

This episode begins to break out the Nine Modes, starting with “Pragmatic Mode,” the Mode of action.

Recurring forms of organization have names. Weather patterns have names, chess moves have names, musical genres have names.

Conversations have recurring forms of organization. It’s time they had names, too.

We Name the Players. We Rarely Name the Game.

Nine Modes Introduction Pt 2

By the Mercer Journal

When conversations break down, the obvious move is to look at those involved. But if we want to understand conversation better, perhaps we should be looking somewhere else.

Conversations have structure. They have forms. They are organized in different ways. This is the introduction to the Nine Modes, the shapes of conversations.

The Missing Variable

Part 8 of Conversations That Should Have Worked

By the Mercer Journal

This 8 part series has looked at the manifold ways that good conversations fail, and what the common variable between them becomes. Listen to part 8 for the run down of the series, and to find out where it goes from here.

Why Explaining Makes Things Worse

Part 6 of Conversations That Should Have Worked

By The Mercer Journal

In this episode:

-Why explaining feels responsible

-When explanation genuinely works

-Why some conversations quietly “change shape.”

-How clarification becomes escalation