Matching Your Mode To The Moment - PeopleStorming

Every professional conversation falls into one of four modes - telling, teaching, mentoring, or coaching. By stating the mode at the start you make the invisible structure visible and stop silent friction that wastes time in remote teams. The article shows how a senior engineer on a Zoom call can shut down when asked open-ended questions because the manager is unintentionally in coaching mode while the engineer needs a direct answer. It also walks through the frustrated expert who wants a coach but gets premature solutions, and the stranded junior who needs a map but receives only questions.

The fix is deceptively simple: explicitly declare the conversation mode and get consent. A manager can ask, "I'm coming to you for mentoring on stakeholder communication, does that work?" or "I'll be in teaching mode for ten minutes, then we discuss adaptation." This habit lets teams shift modes when needed, reduces unnecessary ping-pong, and makes 1:1s feel like real conversations instead of status updates.

Ask yourself whether the situation is urgent, knowledge-based, perspective-seeking, or judgment-building and choose tell, teach, mentor, or coach accordingly. When teams adopt this practice they spend less time being pinged for decisions, hoard less information, and turn meetings into productive, consent-driven dialogues.