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Pinaki Kathiari & Chris Lee challenge traditional best practices in the workplace
hello, welcome back everybody to Between the Seasons from Why Does It Feel So Wrong To Be
Human At Work.
I'm Pinaki and of course I'm joined by my amazing host, Chris.
What's good everybody?
and
and our amazing producer, Bree
Hi everyone.
And today we're really excited to introduce our guest, Jen Samuels, our newest senior
account manager at Local Wisdom.
say hi, Jen, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So today we wanted to take a moment to introduce Jen to get to know a little bit more
about her and dive into the conversation of what it's like to be an internal comms team of
one, which is oxymoronic in my opinion, but we're going to get into that a little bit
because, you know, a lot of us are like working solo and, without like help and support
from other teammates and stuff like that.
So that could lead to like burnout and other issues and stuff like that.
And it's just not cool.
to feel alone at work, right?
So that's what we're talking about today.
And between the seasons, why does it feel so wrong to be human at work?
So let's dive right into it.
I thought I'd start with like a little fun fact about Jen that we actually met when she
was a client and we worked together in that aspect.
So you come from an internal comms background, Jen, and I'd love to hear about that
background if you could just share
the internal comms journey that you've.
Absolutely.
I started in internal comms, I hate to say, but over 20 years ago.
So even though don't look my age, but yeah, but yeah, it was, you know,
Bachelor's degree in communications felt that I needed to concentrate a little bit more to
understand what I wanted to do in life.
So it went the public relations route with a master's degree from Syracuse University and
happened to get a job right out of school.
So I started with an airline and I was in the operation.
So I kind of fell into internal comms before, in my opinion, it was a really known niche
within the United States.
So in the early 2000s, I was
embed into operation and really just focus on communicating with the flight attendants and
that's where my passion really started for internal comms.
you know, of course interned prior to that in agency world pre-ipads, let's say that way.
So I was just not into the billable hours.
I was not into cold calling and pitching.
It just didn't seem like a natural fit for my personality.
But starting with
with an airline that was young, hip, had a great culture that were people-centric.
That's where the passion started.
And I just continued my career with an internal just always focusing on where I could
grow.
So I just left organizations just to find new growth.
But I was started there for six years.
And my second role was also six years.
And after that, restructuring led me along the way for hopping around to a couple of
different places.
But for the most part, the first
12 years of my career was a team of one started with a cybersecurity company after that
and that's where I was like wait there's teams then I joined an actual team of internal
communicators because they were in my opinion it was London based so I was the only North
America person so the fact that there was a team in to my understanding in Europe it was
more of a pronounced and kind of really structured niche uh as a profession so that was
where I'm like whoa there's a team we can divide and conquer and after that it was
It's hard to go back to being a team of one after that.
But old paths led me to local wisdom where I was a team of one again, with my last
employer.
uh being a team of one trying to figure out, how can I do a content migration and do an
intranet build on SharePoint as one person?
And I had even just gotten the resources to, after many 20 years of fighting for it, of
Contact Monkey, being able to just have that tool.
came across localism.
And after that, I obviously crossed over.
That's an awesome story.
I kind of go from different places.
Yeah, I was thinking, I really love the idea of this uh team of one and what kind of an
impact it has on the employee experience.
Because I think more and more we're seeing uh teams of one.
And I feel like it's compounded by the fact that so many people work remotely full time.
ah I've always just been curious, Jen, about uh your view and your perspective on uh
how you feel like it's had an impact on mental health and what you've done to
counterbalance some of those impacts.
Yeah, that's a very good question.
I would say earlier in the career because that's all I knew
I felt like I had to just accept it and just deal with it until I realized there are
organizations that have teams.
So especially um when I left the airline, I literally was the internal communications
department for an organization that was growing.
So I had a dotted line to public relations, but I sat in HR.
So it was a weird juggling act of wearing, you what is that?
wear many, master of many things.
uh Jack of all trades, master of none, because you can't really be the best at one thing.
in one moment I'm helping with open enrollment but then there's an IT outage that I have
to stop and do that but then also wait I have a global town hall that we have to work on
with the CEO which is the top priority but then there's other things that are so it was
really juggling a lot so it was a lot of burnout there was a lot of late nights that was
the only way I could get everything done was just working late in offices was all
pre-covid before the remote work world
And so yeah, there was a lot of burnout.
And like I said, once I found an organization that I joined, that there was a team, that's
where I love the phrase of being human at work.
That's where I learned that, wait, I don't have to take my laptop on vacation.
That was one of those things that in the prior organization, I would be traveling for
work.
or even sadly once to a funeral for personal and I had my laptop and in between gates I'm
sending out a company-wide email and I'm wait let me send out these results before I go to
my grandfather's funeral it was just all these things that the laptop was just normal like
you just carry it with you ah even flight attendants used to make fun of me because
they're like they don't know me but they're like we always see you at the gate with a
laptop
So then once I joined a team and understood that I took my first vacation and I said, but
I'll have my laptop with me.
And my boss at the time was like, why?
And I was like,
He goes, I'm here, could pick up for you so-and-so.
And so having the ability to have a team or just a supportive team, even if it's not an
internal comms team, a team that understands and gives you that balance was huge.
But then just my trajectory put me back as a team of one um throughout my course.
But yeah, it got to the point that I think now that I am older and wiser, I think most
recently before I came to Local Wisdom, I was able to make the choice to step away from my
career.
from a job, not my career, but from a job that no longer served me at a time that I was
going through some personal changes and transitions just in life.
And when corporate changes affect your job as a communicator, know, your job, you know, we
go on autopilot and restructuring, yep, the corporate ambiguity, that's our job.
We have to be comfortable with ambiguity as a communications person.
But when it comes to the point that I can't be strategic anymore,
And then other parts of my life feel like off balance.
It's not oh always financially a good option for people, but because I had the option, I
chose to step away, recalibrate my life.
And then one thing led to another that I landed at local wisdom.
So I know I always joke with Pinaki and Bree, it's very serendipitous how I landed here,
but it's, I'm so happy that I'm at a role that like, I can be human.
I can like say I need to step away to take care of this.
Or life is lifing right now.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Yeah, it's interesting, Jen, you know, as you're talking about this a while back, I just
asked ChatGPT because I remember when I was in school, uh one of my required readings, I
think it was a labor relations course.
ah It was a book called The Tyranny of Work by James Reinhart.
And so I asked ChatGPT can you just give me a quick summary just to remind me what the key
points were of The Tyranny of Work?
And it actually gave me a summary of another book called The Tyranny of Work by a
different author whose name, I'm just looking it up here, is James Bloodworth.
So actually it's two authors named James, both writing this book called The Tyranny of
Work.
But the reason why I was just bringing it up is you triggered something, Jen.
One of the things that Bloodworth, the author of the book that I wasn't intending to ask
about,
One of the things that he was arguing about was this idea that work has expanded past
what's economically required and now shapes identity, self-worth, and morality.
And there's an interesting point that was being made, is being so-called busy is treated
as being virtuous while not working or working less is stigmatized, even when productivity
gains could allow for shorter hours.
uh So the big idea, at least as ChatGPT has summarized it, was that work has become like
this moral uh obligation and this virtuous idea of being busy, not just an economic one.
And I wonder, because there are actual impacts, there's human impacts to this way of
thinking about work.
I just, I'd love to get your thoughts, Jen, on uh is there opportunity overall in...
societally and culturally for organizations to think differently about the nature of work
and our impact that we can have that respects that, you know, continues to respect that
balance.
Definitely, would say, I think the, well, we're all living in the remote or hybrid world.
I had the benefit of being remote prior to COVID with the organization funny enough that I
said there was a team that culture.
I can't say it was the entire organization, but within the communications and marketing
team.
I became remote because they closed the New York office and the rest of my team was in
London.
So I was going to commute to London every day, but they said work from home.
Like it was not a big deal.
And I learned that balance.
So I think that's where I started to realize that you can, no pun intended, be human at
work.
As long as you get your work done, it's okay to take appointments.
It's okay to go to the doctor where I always had to feel like I had to be tethered to my
laptop wherever I was.
And then going back to the point I think you said about just like how it affects you as a
human, think earlier on before the world of remote, where you just felt like you had to be
busy and well, transparency being a minority.
I'm in New York City where there's many minorities, but being a woman, being Hispanic, you
feel like you have to always show up because you'll get overlooked.
And even that, the harder you work, I still got overlooked because maybe not because of
those parameters, but just the role of internal comps also not being respected.
And so that's why I left other organizations because it was your team of one, you need to
get the work done, figure it out.
um And it just was so disheartening.
So now that I'm older and wiser, I'm like, yep, nope, I don't need that.
And I did see, I noticed, I don't know if this is my opinion, but during COVID, 2019, I
went through a nine month gap of not being full-time employed.
I was a contractor and it was really hard to find a role.
I landed a role month before the pandemic kicked off.
And then,
Throughout that season, my LinkedIn was just full of all these internal common roles
because everyone was saying, oh, we need to talk to our employees now that there's a world
pandemic.
And you saw the need, just like we saw with DEI And then in that transition, I noticed now
it's going down where there are more roles out there than I've seen in the last 20 years.
But when you look at the job description, it's one person doing a lot of things that are
not realistic.
And so I think it's, I'm not sure if that answers the question, but it's just that, I
think it's just being able to defend how strategic internal comms is and being as a team
of one.
One of the things I struggled with was being able to prove myself strategically.
would get feedback that it's like, well, we want you to be a strategic advisor to us, to
our C-suite.
And I could.
if I wasn't also updating the web pages.
So now that I see like our clients, then I'm like, wow, they, we help them.
Like we're running their newsletter.
We're posting their, um their intranet articles.
But I'm, doing that at the same time that I'm trying to do a town hall, but you want me to
advise you, but you're not telling me about the change with time.
So how can I plan a communications plan?
So it, I felt like it became a knock most recently to my ability, but then,
I love that I'm at Local Wisdom because that was hard for me.
And I'm like, oh, OK, you think I can do this?
There's so much thought back there, something like that.
yeah, because yeah, team of one, like first of all, I gotta just kind of keep saying the
catchphrase, team of one is not a team by definition, right?
And it does think because there's so much that goes into communicating from the beginning
to the end and to expect one person to do that for an organization is not feasible.
It's just like the math does not add up unless you are working like,
uh ungodly hours and things like that.
And also you do need like a time for like break and mental rest because if we're in a
constant adrenaline fight or flight mode, we're not thinking in our best creative
strategic ways, right?
We're just trying to find the fastest quickest way out of the situation.
And so I don't think it's a good idea for companies to have like internal comms teams of
one, especially if
this is the group that is providing communication and clarity to the entire organization.
So it always kind of like boggles me.
it is one of the reasons behind local wisdom is to support this group of people.
And that's kind of why we kind of started having a soft spot in our hearts for internal
communicators, because uh all communicators have a bit of a rough time, but public
relations has been more established and known.
So yeah.
uh
I just got on a soapbox for a second there.
I apologize for that.
uh But it's kind of one of the things that, uh Jen, before even you joined Local Wisdom
and to kind of start capturing uh or mitigating this kind of loneliness, one of the things
that you did was join communities, uh internal comms communities.
Tell me about that, that experience of like what kind of got you in there and what you
found out of it.
And even what are some of the communities, because I know like we were talking about
Joanna Parsons and
and like Chuck Gose and things like that.
Absolutely.
think for the many years of being a team of one, I didn't have the time to really explore
LinkedIn.
To me, LinkedIn was really just to look for jobs when you needed it.
Or I would post something related to the company that had nothing to do with my group.
Like if it was warranty programs, hey, we did this.
um So I didn't have the time.
Or I would have a professional development budget, join IABC, PRSA, and then never have
the actual time to join these webinars.
And then I forget what prompted me to become a little bit more active about two years ago
on LinkedIn.
I think it was because I was in the branding and marketing department at my previous
organization, Internal Comms.
So I became more active and I came across Joanna's Parsons posts before she even started
the Curious Tribe that we're part of.
And I felt seen.
I was like, someone understands what it's like she would post things about being a team of
one or some of the frustrations of being order takers.
That was one thing that really resonated with me because I've always been that, the order
taker.
You can't really say no.
I mean, you could push back, but sometimes in certain organizations or cultures, I
couldn't say no.
So being that postmaster and order taker, that resonated with me.
And then she put a post of like, hey, I'm thinking about starting a group.
Would you be interested?
And I just said yes.
And then thankfully my organization at the time, they helped me finance it.
But I was, so I'm proud to say I was an inaugural member of Joanna Parsons Curious Tribe.
But it became really just a space where it's like the biggest thing was feeling seen.
was like the same frustrations that I've had and the joys, but the frustrations other
people got it.
And we had a safe space to say.
doesn't this annoy you when this happened?
Or also strategically, I'm faced with this, I don't know where to start.
And you have people within that group that we were able to vent to.
And then just also just learn from Joanna's experience, which was not much different than
my own to be fair.
I saw her as like, whoa, and untouchable.
But when I got to know her on a one-on-one level, her career trajectory was pretty much
similar to mine.
always find it interesting whenever I talk to internal communications folks, how often
they use the phrase small but mighty to describe their team.
So whether it's a team of one or it's just in a very large organization, you have a very
small team to support.
And one the things that I always feel like, especially with a team of one, is that no one
ever really talks about scope creep.
because it's only the one person.
And so all arrows point to that one person whenever there's internal communications needs.
I don't, one of the, just to close off the conversation, Jen, I'd love to hear your
perspective on what do you find different about working at Local Wisdom that gives you a
voice to be able to put your hand up and say, ah need some additional support here and
your ability to have some more
flexibility in terms of uh finding that balance.
And I could put on earmuffs too, if you'd like to.
Pinaki, you could just step out for a moment.
No, no, in all honesty, and I know I, it might sound very like I'm just because Pinaki's
here, but in all honesty, it is in reflecting back and think of making about the time of
this recording three months in, but.
I truly feel like I can be human at work.
there was like, I've referenced other organizations that yes, I had that opportunity as
well, but I feel that I can be me.
ah I think because of the team of one and all that history, there is ah imposter syndrome
that can come up because of like, well, you're not strategic enough and you're not this.
and lot of imposter syndrome, and I know it's very serendipitous and not everyone might
have this luxury of how I was found to join Local Wisdom.
My now boss had already written a recommendation for me on LinkedIn, which was funny.
So Rich had already uh complimented me, and now he's my boss.
But the fact that I was...
matched with the position where Rich says, think you would be a good fit just based on
working for a project with me.
Obviously there were interviews and things that went along, but just the idea that someone
saw something in me and I was just being me.
think oh back in May, Pinaki had invited me to a conference and that was just through
LinkedIn Connection.
It wasn't a job interview, but I joined the conference and in a lot of say I was
unemployed.
I had just quit my job like three weeks before and I said,
How am gonna go to this conference?
And like the first question is always, where do you work?
I don't work anywhere.
And I reached out to Joanna, I said, what do I do?
I'm supposed to be networking.
She gave me some advice, just be yourself.
And I was, and I had nothing to lose because it wasn't a job interview.
So I just was myself and everything serendipitously turned around where now I'm on the
local wisdom team.
And it's just an honor that.
They saw something in me as a communicator.
I say I'm not in sales, I am on the books, but I'm not a sales person.
I'm internal comms at heart, but me being me was good enough.
And that is a huge relief now at this stage in life and being on the local wisdom side
that I'm learning a lot, but I'm just.
also being what's instinctive and natural to me and how I communicate with clients, how I
build a spreadsheet to keep up, how I do my not so good math calculations, but learning
because I'm a words person.
um I'm enough.
And I think that's a lot of thing that I think a lot of people have to, you know,
encourage themselves in life.
But I am enough.
I am enough.
And it's like, well, Rich saw it.
Pinaki saw it.
Like even Julia, who I met, you know, saw something in me and I was like, oh, I can do
this.
The world of work likes to put us into nice little neat boxes and there's so much more to
humans than that, I think.
uh So much to unpack there.
think for organizations, leadership and whatnot, I'll just make a call out to you.
A team of one is not a team of one and it's really not fair.
I've seen what that does to organizations.
uh And there's so much more we can unpack there.
I'm thinking that's like a second, uh a part two episode for this and maybe Jen,
You could help us convince Joanna to join us for that one or something like that.
And if you're on the other side, an internal communicator, who is a team of one, we're
very sorry.
But what you can do is think about what Jen just said, community.
uh Being alone is not fun and it doesn't feel good.
So find peers, find others.
I have uh other uh stories even in my career where I faced the same thing and I needed to
go places.
which I had other peers where I could learn from, commiserate with and things like that.
Even as an agency owner, I meet with other agency owners quite often and whatnot.
you know, before we close out too, know, Bree, I feel like you haven't got much air time.
I'm wondering what's going on in your mind before we close out.
Yeah, I was just I'm really glad, Chris, that you asked about um Jen now at Local Wisdom,
because I was going to if you didn't, um because because, yes, we both know Pinaki was not
going to um but it.
You know, I started last June.
I haven't been with Local Wisdom for even a year yet.
And I personally have felt a huge difference uh to.
local wisdom compared to some of my previous environments.
I also like we had a marketing department last job.
I was one of three, but I often described it as we were all on our own islands and we
didn't even have like cans on a string to talk to each other.
Like we weren't encouraged to talk to each other.
We all had our own projects, kept our head down.
Like I would have full work days in office where I didn't talk to anyone because that's
just like no one talked to anyone at that place.
um And so coming here and having a team and having, you know, people check in with you and
like wanting to make sure you're not carrying everything.
Like it was a huge shift in, you know, how I saw work, how I showed up for work.
Like I no longer, like I had to work from home job once where I sat down at my desk every
morning and cried.
Like, you know.
uh
That's not great.
So to come into an environment where I could be like, hey, Pinaki, I'm having a really bad
pain day.
Can I take the afternoon off?
He's like, of course.
I don't have that anxiety anymore of even mentioning it.
At my other job, that wouldn't even be something I'd bring up.
I would just suffer through the day because it wasn't an environment that was supportive
and that you felt like you could turn to your team and open up to.
And that really surprised me when I joined Local Wisdom.
it really does.
It makes a difference when a company actually takes the time to create a supportive
environment that is actually there for their team.
like leadership really should be listening to these conversations because it's not just
like,
an advertisement for how local wisdom is so great.
It's two people who have really discovered how important internal communications and
employee experience really is.
and I, you know, I love the opportunity to talk about great organizations that are just so
supportive of the individual as a human and just respecting that space.
ah I don't talk about this really nearly often enough, but ah I work at Gallagher, which
is a large publicly traded company.
a large corporation.
But my favorite thing about working
at Gallagher is very similar and resonates a lot with what I'm hearing about local wisdom
in that at Gallagher, you might actually be a team of one.
We've got lots of different pockets where you have individual contributors that are
responsible for one thing, that sort of thing.
ah But even so, my favorite thing about the culture here is that you just put your hand up
and say, I need some support.
And culturally, every single person in the organization
And we're talking tens of thousands of people in a heartbeat.
They will take a call with you.
They will.
They'll figure out how can I support you?
What can I do?
And it's something that I've been very, very appreciative of because it's very hard to get
that sort of thing with a larger organization.
And so it's clearly in the DNA and the fiber at local wisdom.
But it is a unique feature of working uh at a larger corporation like Gallagher, which I
haven't really seen as much in other larger corporate structures.
So
Just to close off, Jen, thank you so, so much for joining us and being so open about your
experience.
It's never easy.
And I just wanted to share my appreciation and welcome you to Local Wisdom there.
And I wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you all too.
uh See, like, for just as I close out for everybody, like, just want everybody to know
that like, uh Jen and Bree are not coming to Local Wisdom from small companies, they're
coming from really big companies.
And uh I've worked, you know, as a consultant, right, worked with a lot of companies, oh
just like Chris and Gallagher, good employee experience and, you know, human centric uh
environments, I have seen them
created at large organizations.
So it's not like the size of the organization that really kind of deems it or anything
like that.
So it is doable in both sides, small and large, because I've seen toxic and bad
environments in both sides of organizations as well.
So once you're all think about that and just carry on and try to uplift that experience.
So again, thank you, Bree and Jen for saying those great words.
And uh Chris, thank you for joining us here.
And thank you for our listeners to tuning into this week's Between the Seasons.
uh We're here at Why Does It Feel So Wrong to be Human at Work and asking that question
over and over again until we could pick it all apart and then make it right.
So thank you all.
Yep.
Join us again next week.
Of course, we're to have another short and honest conversation about the human side of
work.
And don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Be well everybody.