One in five people are neurodivergent. Which means right now, roughly 20% of your organization's brains are working differently than the systems around them were designed for. And most of those people are just quietly struggling — wondering what's wrong with them — while the organization wonders what's wrong with them right back.

In this Between the Seasons episode of Why Does It Feel So Wrong to Be Human at Work?, Pinaki Kathiari and Chris Lee sit down with Dr. Matt Zakreski, clinical psychologist at the Neurodiversity Collective and author of The Neurodiversity Playbook, for a conversation about what it actually looks like to build workplaces where different kinds of brains can do their best work.

Dr. Matt brings the research, the analogies, and a lot of really good pizza metaphors. Bree admits she can't send emails without a dopamine boost. Chris shares his ADHD diagnosis. Pinaki wonders, out loud, if he's on a spectrum of something. And everyone agrees: the world was built by neurotypical people, and that's a problem worth fixing.

In this episode, they discuss:

• What neurodivergence actually is — and why it is not a choice

• The pizza dinner party analogy: inclusion isn't about throwing away what works, it's about making sure there's something for everyone at the table

• Steve, the guy who holds the office together but isn't hitting his sales numbers — and what organizations get wrong about him

• Body doubling, expense report happy hour, and free solutions to executive functioning challenges

• Be curious, not furious: why asking why before assuming intent changes everything

• The difference between intention and impact, and why owning that gap matters

• What to do when someone is truly not a fit — and how to do the warmest possible handoff

• Dr. Matt's book, The Neurodiversity Playbook, and why he wrote it as a play-by-play guide, not a cover-to-cover read

If you've ever felt like you were playing the game on hard mode without knowing why, this one's for you.

Check out Dr. Matt and his work:

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4t4056a
Buy his book, Neurodiversity Playbook: https://amzn.to/4n0sKrp
The Neurodiversity Collective: https://bit.ly/4eS4vd1
https://www.drmattzakreski.com/
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Connect with Us

Pinaki Kathiari – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Chris Lee – LinkedIn | Gallagher Communication

Bree Bartos – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Special thanks to digital communication agency Local Wisdom (www.localwisdom.com) for really believing in our mission and making this podcast possible.

If this episode made you think differently, laugh, or even yell out loud, we want to hear about it! Connect with us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to rate, review, and share – maybe with your work bestie… or even your boss if you're feeling bold.

We also bring these important conversations to conferences and private workshops, creating space for real, meaningful change. Take the first step at www.whydoesitfeelsowrong.com.

You're training new hires, flying out to meet clients, handling escalations, and you just finished a three-month certification on your own time. Your title hasn't changed. Your pay hasn't changed. And your manager keeps giving you vague answers about what growth even looks like.

That's the Reddit post at the center of this Between the Seasons episode. And every single person at the table has lived a version of it.

In this Reacting to Reddit at Work episode of Why Does It Feel So Wrong to Be Human at Work?, hosts Pinaki Kathiari and Chris Lee are joined by producer Bree Bartos and Senior Account Manager Jen Samuel, who's back for round two with another round of stories that hit uncomfortably close to home.

The conversation covers scope creep, why managers avoid hard conversations, what it actually takes to advocate for yourself, rejection therapy, and the phantom laptop problem — the deeply relatable experience of going on vacation and not knowing what to do with your hands because you didn't bring your work computer for the first time in years.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why managers avoid giving straight answers about raises and career growth

• The difference between complaining about workload and making a direct business case for yourself

• Pinaki's advice: ask for the no — and why rejection therapy is actually a skill worth building

• Jen on writing talking points for herself like she'd write them for someone else

• Chris on Never Split the Difference and what FBI hostage negotiation tactics have to do with your next performance review

• Why organizations are always caught by surprise when great people leave — and who that's really on

• Bree applied to 200+ jobs after her layoff. Local Wisdom was the only company where a human reached out.

• Jen's phantom laptop problem, and the boss who told her to leave it at home

If you've ever been asked to do more without being offered more in return, this one's going to feel very familiar.

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Connect with Us

Pinaki Kathiari – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Chris Lee – LinkedIn | Gallagher Communication

Bree Bartos – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Special thanks to digital communication agency Local Wisdom (www.localwisdom.com) for really believing in our mission and making this podcast possible.

If this episode made you think differently, laugh, or even yell out loud, we want to hear about it! Connect with us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to rate, review, and share – maybe with your work bestie… or even your boss if you're feeling bold.

We also bring these important conversations to conferences and private workshops, creating space for real, meaningful change. Take the first step at www.whydoesitfeelsowrong.com.

What does it actually cost to be a team of one — not just in productivity, but in your mental health, your sense of self, and your ability to do the work you were hired to do?

Jen Samuel knows that cost intimately. With over 20 years in internal communications — starting at a young, people-centric airline and spending most of that time as the only person in the room doing her job — she's lived through the burnout, the scope creep, the "be strategic but also update the website" contradiction, and the quiet weight of feeling like no one really understands what you do or what it takes.

In this episode, Pinaki and Chris welcome Jen to Between the Seasons (and to the Local Wisdom team) for a conversation about what it's really like to work alone in a field that exists to connect everyone else. They talk about how being a team of one shapes your identity over time, why the busyness-as-virtue culture makes it so hard to step back, and what it means to finally land somewhere that lets you just be human.

Bree joins in too — and her perspective as a fellow recent Local Wisdom addition brings the conversation home.

In this episode, they discuss:

• What 20+ years as a team of one in internal comms actually looks like
• How burnout builds when there's no one to hand things off to — even at a funeral
• Chris on The Tyranny of Work and the idea that busyness has become morally virtuous
• Why internal comms teams of one are being asked to be strategic advisors and postmasters at the same time — and why that math doesn't work
• The moment Jen realized other communicators felt exactly the same way (and the community that changed everything)
• Bree on what it felt like to go from isolation to a team that actually checks in
• What good looks like — at Local Wisdom, at Gallagher, and everywhere in between
• Pinaki's call to action: if you're a team of one, find your people

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Connect with Us

Pinaki Kathiari – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Chris Lee – LinkedIn | Gallagher Communication

Bree Bartos – LinkedIn | Local Wisdom

Special thanks to digital communication agency Local Wisdom (www.localwisdom.com) for really believing in our mission and making this podcast possible.

If this episode made you think differently, laugh, or even yell out loud, we want to hear about it! Connect with us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to rate, review, and share – maybe with your work bestie… or even your boss if you're feeling bold.

We also bring these important conversations to conferences and private workshops, creating space for real, meaningful change. Take the first step at www.whydoesitfeelsowrong.com.