This podcast addresses dead nerve endings between and among managers, employees, and senior leadership. Welcome to a brand new podcast: Mode/Switch: Second Opinion!

This might sound like a bad LinkedIn post with a dubious moral parable. But I think managers need second opinions, too, especially when it comes to insensitivity between senior leadership and employees.

Dayforce Research now reports that “Only 42% of frontline workers say leaders understand their challenges.” That represents a 20% decline in two years. But managers don’t need that research to know that senior leadership has lost a feel for what’s happening on teams and in workflows.

Nobody feels this organizational neuropathy as painfully as managers. But the usual prescriptions are unhelpful: Be candid. Be clear. Be sincere. Be resilient.

But even after managers do all these things, the “Communication Gap Between Leadership and Frontline Employees” continues. And managerial consultancy and coaching basically say, “You’re going to have to live with this.”

Seeking help with a new podcast concept
Feeling the weight of this problem, I reached out to a clinical psychologist, Dr. Irene Kraegel, of Dwell Psychological Services, and asked her if she’d be willing to help me address wicked organizational problems for mid-level managers.

Once a month, we’ll welcome a mid-level manager to the table who’s experiencing a management problem—not a huge crisis, per se, but a puzzling challenge—and then discuss it, moving toward action steps. (Maybe checking back later to see how the action steps worked.)

This spinoff edition of The Mode/Switch would seek to help mid-level leaders make vital “reframes” in their work. We still call these “mode switches” but we’ll resource interdisciplinary expertise instead of the intergenerational wisdom the Mode/Switch Pod usually offers.