Toxicity, Trust & Technology Integration

[00:00:09] Welcome to Frequency, I'm Chuck Gose And I'm Jenni Field Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture and employee experience beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters Jenni, I'm excited because when this episode is out I'll get to see you in person in real life in Toronto at comms reboot

[00:00:31] so that'll be a ton of fun but I saw you post something recently on Instagram that I was a little troubled by Okay You celebrated your dad's 75th birthday I think that I saw that Yeah Also you said and his 70th Yeah And I'm like I assume this is pandemic related and I'm gonna let you defend yourself and then I'm gonna come back at it So what happened?

[00:01:02] Okay, so my dad turned 70 in on the 8th of March so his birthday is International Women's Day and so it was just before the pandemic really took hold in the UK so we had a big lunch for his 70th with all of the family but as part of his present my sister and I wanted to take him out for a really nice Japanese lunch because that's one of his favorite things to do and so we planned to do that

[00:01:28] It has been five years and I am aware of that but there was a lot that happened during our family during that time which just meant it just kept slipping We always celebrate a birthday but we just couldn't quite get to the Japanese thing and doing that My dad was either away or there was stuff going on with other stuff and so this year because he turned 75 I said to my sister we really need to do this because otherwise the time's just gonna go

[00:01:58] So we managed to find a place and we went up with our husbands and we had a really lovely lunch in London at a really fantastic Japanese restaurant So it was really for his 70th but it sort of was also then his 75th so we just wrapped it all up in both and now you can come at me No, just more point out that sometimes dads get the raw end of the deal sometimes with things like that I know, I know He doesn't, I promise I'm seeing him, I, we talk every day and he's always someone

[00:02:27] I did another post about he's sort of part of the reason why I wrote Nobody Believes You because he really challenges and agitates and does all of that so he's definitely not getting the raw end of the deal I promise I promise Well maybe sometime I will get the chance to meet him and get to hear the real Jenny stories Okay, maybe That would be nice That terrifies me slightly I thought of you meeting my dad but we'll We'll get him on as a guest He'll be great That would be something

[00:02:55] We will get both of our parents on at some point Yeah That would be interesting That would be good Marilyn would love you by the way Marilyn would love you Thank you Also I wanted to point out to our listeners and watchers if they're on YouTube that Is that still the case? Yes Yes The plan, so it's my 10 year wedding anniversary the day after comms reboot

[00:03:23] so my husband's coming out and we're going to go and do a bit of wine tasting hopefully and see Niagara Falls and go down on the boat and do all that stuff That's the plan I wanted to point out to everyone that I actually invited you to join us in Vegas for a real anniversary celebration you still chose Niagara Falls over Las Vegas I did But that's because I put a pin in that Vegas trip like it was that was a rain check that wasn't a no

[00:03:52] Oh, okay Not this time because we've already got plans but yes to Vegas at some point Okay, what do you have up for us this week Jenny? Oh, I've got lots to talk about today I've got some meaty reports that I want to go into into internal comms and bits and pieces and I want to look at the link between AI and cultural intelligence because I think that's really interesting We're also going to chat a bit about how to protect your culture by getting rid of

[00:04:21] I'm going to call them horrible people because I don't think we can use the phrase that's in the article but I'll get to that And I'm also going to chat about the role of content in employee advocacy and where that line is But I want to kick us off with the latest insights from the Institute of Internal Communication so commonly known as the IOIC It's based in the UK and they have done some reports on the future of the IC profession

[00:04:48] Now what the report says is that while more professionals are involved in change digital transformation and advising leaders they still often feel under-equipped, overwhelmed and undervalued and IC is now expected to be humanising organisations building trust, navigating complex change but all of that is coming with sort of the offset of people feeling very burnt out

[00:05:15] there's lots of blurred responsibilities and unclear pathways for people's careers This all sounds like stuff I hear all the time and it probably does for you but there's some stats in the report that I wanted to bring in some good, some not so good but I wanted to share them here in case people haven't had an opportunity to read it So one of the stats is around IC, so internal comms becoming more strategic 56% report more work on change comms 51% on digital transformation

[00:05:42] and 34% on advising leaders We have some key skills are well recognised so audience understanding, influencing and strategic thinking are top of the list of those core skills for internal comms practitioners but the skills gap is real so only 30% feel fully equipped for their current role citing areas lacking as AI, data and digital fluency

[00:06:10] We've got some major morale issues so 80% 80, 8-0 report negative feelings about their role with only 43% feeling happy and just 31% feeling appreciated There is some positive around leaders paying attention so a third of internal comms professionals are being asked to advise more so not just internal messengers still only a third but I'm trying to do my positive spin after last week and shadow comms is causing chaos

[00:06:39] So we've talked about shadow AI before what this report talks about is shadow comms so 63% are reporting that non-internal comms teams are taking on comms and that's leading to inconsistency and channel overload So the report really shows a mix of those positive and negative but the IOIC, in my opinion, is not really saying anything new the research isn't suggesting that things have dramatically shifted but they suggest the following list of things for people to do

[00:07:09] so fix the shadow comms mess, invest in upskilling, clarify career pathways and advocate for strategic internal comms which is a list I think we've talked about for about the last 10 years but the shadow comms seems to be the one that's maybe a little bit new in this in terms of it being highlighted I don't think it's new in organisations but for it to be coming out in research I think is interesting so what do you think? Any of those stats that are jumping out at you

[00:07:35] or is it just same stuff, different day? It feels a little bit like second verse same as the first to me when you were going through some of that though the one data point that I think is interesting to me is that 63% of non-IC teams taking on comms that's interesting to me because

[00:08:03] to me that could be a good news situation where some may see it as a bad news is it are internal communicators so overburdened that other teams have to take on their own communications or is it that now those teams are more empowered? So I will often talk about the democratisation of communication where you're actually empowering more people to be a part of comms

[00:08:32] so that internal comms isn't this bottleneck it's not that everything needs to flow through this one point in order to get out to communicators so I think that that number depending on your point of view on it it could be very negative or it could actually be very positive now the inconsistency and channel overload that is not good though I think there's probably always inconsistency out there in organisations outside of communication there's inconsistency

[00:09:01] you're never going to defeat that you're never going to overcome that but I don't know that it's necessarily bad that's where I see pun intended I see I see internal communicators taking on more of that advisory role we always think about trusted advisor being at high up in the organisations what if it's more peer to peer what if it's other managers of other teams where you're advising on them and you're empowering them to do their own comms

[00:09:30] but you're actually giving them the how to's and the guides and the structure and maybe a little bit of oversight on it so I don't yes inconsistency and channel overload is bad but I don't know that other teams taking on comms is necessarily a bad thing I don't know that that's shadow to me. Yeah, I think you're right I think there's there's more to this and I I think it's about that depth and going a bit deeper into those results isn't it? So

[00:09:59] to your point how is this showing up? because if I think about clients I work with and my own experience in my own career the clients I work with at the moment are definitely concerned in some places about other departments going out and doing comms especially to frontline that seems to be where the sticking point is for some of the people I'm working with because they don't have oversight of it as comms so they feel that there's things being overwhelmed by sort of pushing all this stuff but if I think about

[00:10:29] my career when I introduced the first intranet into an organisation I was working for and we decentralised the content so people could upload content and tag it to the right places so the people that were subscribed to those tags would get relevant news that's not shadow comms but that is other people communicating because that didn't come through me that was everybody doing their own stuff so I think there's more to that and I think it's worth exploring but I would say if you're experiencing that

[00:10:57] I think you've got to look at why it's happening and if it is happening then what's the root cause? Is it because we're going round internal comms because they're just a blocker? Is it because I don't think they can help me? Is it because I don't know they exist? Is it to your point because they're so overloaded they can't help so I've got to do it myself? Like what's the reason? And I think if you're experiencing that take the time to go and find out. The other data point I want to touch on before we move along is the 30% feel-present

[00:11:27] that's the only thing that's going to be I think it's like AI data digital fluency all that I think this is an opportunity if you feel unequipped and your company isn't going to equip you I'm going to keep using that word you feel unequipped the company isn't going to equip you equip yourself invest in yourself like if you feel like you're not fully equipped for your role and your company is not going to help you you need to own that yourself

[00:11:55] Yeah. And what I would say about that is that sometimes it's hard to know where to go I got a DM on LinkedIn this week from someone saying you know, we work in this organization we don't have very much budget for all sorts of reasons what are the best resources out there for some masterclasses to help? and I was able to point them to the series of masterclasses that I did with the team at Work Vivo which is six different ones they could go to that's all free but how would you know that's there unless you're connected or you know and I think I would say to anyone listening to this

[00:12:24] if you feel that if you feel like you're in that 30% and you don't feel equipped and you don't know where to go then message us, message Chuck, message me and we'll point you in the right direction for stuff because we will know places where there's stuff to help and I don't know, maybe places like Ecology maybe, maybe maybe there's places like that right, the next article is from Business Insider and it's all about firing a-holes

[00:12:53] that's what we'll say here to protect the culture now this is interesting so the JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimmon basically advised leaders to fire the a-holes before they poison meetings or demoralise teams even if those a-holes aren't even employees so he's saying you've got to protect that culture from the inside and from the outside and you should take action there so he talked about removing toxic individuals

[00:13:21] mutual respect, allowing employees to contribute fully he also reiterated things around scepticism towards remote work arguing that in-person interactions enable more honest and focused conversations and I do agree with that but it really underscored a current topic for leaders around protecting your culture the hybrid, remote work how do you balance it all but really the thing that stood out for me was protecting your people from this disruptive culture

[00:13:49] because I know a lot of places that have people employed in them that maybe fit into this category and the challenge that some of my clients have around navigating that from a cultural alignment to values behaviour perspective so my question for you Chuck is this is a common issue so what can leaders do to get it right because it's all well and good standing up there and saying this at a summit but I'm not sure people are really willing to take the action

[00:14:19] that's needed here to protect that culture what do you think? Yeah, recently I was on an episode of Why Does It Feel So Wrong To Be Human At Work? or Feel Human At Work? I was honored that the theme of the podcast that they asked me to join them on was Why Does It Feel So Wrong To Be An A-hole At Work? We talked specifically about this and as the conversation alluded

[00:14:46] what we realized is that it's complete point of view we have offline talked about this Jenny that I was first called the Taylor Swift of internal comms and then later someone else mistakenly referred to you as the Taylor Swift of internal comms just so we get that out there and we talked about how Taylor Swift has been called an a-hole before

[00:15:14] there are people that do not like the way she goes about things meanwhile there are also millions if no, probably not billions millions of other people who subscribe to the way she does things so it's point of view so we talked about then sometimes you need a-holes at work but it's like what's the motivation behind it? if the a-hole you're thinking of is actually really pushing people to be better yeah are they having those difficult conversations

[00:15:43] because they want the good to come out and sometimes you have to create that friction that's different than the a-hole who is violating policy is talking bad about people is talking you know like you have to look at the motivations behind it because sometimes you need that a-hole to step up to take the conversation where it needs to be taken because others won't have either the the courage or the motivation to do so

[00:16:11] versus the ones who are talking about people behind their back or tearing projects down like those I'm hoping those are the the a-holes that Jamie Dimon is talking about but that term can be used pretty loosely I'm sure there have been times I have been called an a-hole for valid reasons but my motivations are always out there too we can be better we can be different

[00:16:40] we can stand out not tearing things down yeah so I think the takeaway then from this is to define what you mean by an a-hole and make sure that you're not getting rid of people that are agitating and challenging but with positive intent and I think that's the I think that's the balance but I think when you see behaviors that don't align to your values they have to be called out like I don't I don't care whether that's got positive intent I think if there's people that are doing things that

[00:17:09] are making other people kind of shrink and not show up then I think that that needs a conversation it doesn't need mean they have to go away but I think it needs a conversation about is this really how we want to behave here and and and call that out the a-holes with a good intent don't realize they might be being a holes yes reflecting back on my own behavior yes yes I I too couldn't can fit into that bucket

[00:17:36] so yeah all very relatable for us we're having a little mini therapy session now well it goes back I think it's attributed the guy Kawasaki where he says the quote and again I'm doing my Jenny rubbish paraphrasing of a quote here that if you're not pissing someone off then you're not doing enough yes like if you're not agitating someone then you're you're just status quo which is not going to help anybody anywhere

[00:18:05] yeah yeah depending on your goals and what you're trying to do yeah so the next topic is employee advocacy which I feel like is something that we talk about for years

[00:18:17] like it's like it's up here and we're never going to kind of get there but it's all about why employee advocacy starts with culture and not content and it's a Forbes council piece which is talking about the fact that successful employee advocacy programs hinge on an authentic culture so employees share stories when they truly believe in organizational values and feel safe but tokenistic campaigns or slick content isn't going to really stick without that fact

[00:18:46] it's going to be a foundation of trust inclusion and meaningful engagement so if we're looking at that cultivation of culture it's going to require the ongoing internal comms stuff that's going on but it also needs transparent leadership and channels and spaces for genuine voices because that's what's going to shift it

[00:19:05] because when employees feel empowered and valued advocacy is that sort of organic thing that happens next it amplifies the brand it helps with recruitment so the takeaway from the article is investing in that culture building is really important but it got me thinking about the challenge for communication professionals and I've seen a few things online recently about making sure you're not trying to do too much as a comms person being clear about where your boundary is where your influence ends and starts and what you can and can't do

[00:19:35] and if we're looking at what you can't control and if we're looking at employee advocacy as an end goal and that's really about culture what role does content play in that like how tokenistic is the stuff that's happening and is there an opportunity maybe to reflect on that so my question to you is really how do comms pros help with this if it's much more about the culture and the bigger things when they may be more focused on that content creation

[00:20:04] I love having conversations and discussions around advocacy for two reasons one of them is we've gotten lost in this conversation much like we have with employee engagement we've created this singular mindset of what advocacy looks like and then if it's not that then it doesn't count

[00:20:27] I'll explain that a little bit more and apologies I've shared this story before if I have and you're listening just hit the fast forward button a little bit my favorite advocacy story comes from my father he was a diehard General Motors employee very proud General Motors employee used to joke if you cut him blue would come out like he bled General Motors and if we were at a gas station

[00:20:54] and we obviously drove GM cars and someone in a non-GM car pulled up on the other side of the gas station my dad would start a conversation with them and ultimately would hand them a card that would give them a discount on a brand new GM vehicle that's advocacy that's driving the business I compare that to Amazon's goal which

[00:21:26] Amazon is far from Amazon is far from Amazon is far from perfect as we know but I do like their approach to advocacy which is winning the dinner table conversation so if you're at an environment they say dinner table wherever it is and somebody's like oh my gosh I heard Amazon did this you can be like actually so it's about being informed and knowing the right story to me we've we've misnamed it it's not employee advocacy now I'm getting on my rant

[00:21:56] so patient advocacy is not patients advocating it's people advocating for patients child advocacy is not child's children advocating it's people advocating for children so employee advocacy somehow we've put that burden on employees so it's not it doesn't follow the same nomenclature the other advocacy things do so that being said I get what people are saying

[00:22:20] advocacy to me, it's a byproduct. It's if you do all the right things, you will build advocates. If your goal is to build advocates and then hopefully that fixes all the other things wrong, that's the wrong approach. You have to do all the right things and then advocates will emerge. I think that is where communicators start to own this conversation is inform people,

[00:22:46] give them what they need to know, make them feel empowered. Are they at the gas station talking about where they work? That's an advocate. Are they correcting information that a neighbor says to them about what they heard? Maybe they work for utility company. Oh my gosh, I heard they're going to know. Actually, let me tell you the real story around it. That's advocacy. It's not Twitter shares or

[00:23:10] LinkedIn shares or comments on things. That's where we've gotten lost. It's truly employees feeling empowered like they also own the story of the company. That's what communicators should be after. I love that. I loved your rant then, actually. I was listening to it thinking I don't have anything to add here, which is so unusual. But I like the how has it become the employee's burden,

[00:23:37] which I think is really fair considering every other, you know, use of that terminology. But I also think the story about your dad is that he had something tangible to to give somebody to to demonstrate that like there was there was there's been some sort of campaign or something where there was a link there. It's a bit like Pretz, I think, in the UK for a while people were empowered in the stores to give a free coffee a few times a week or month to whoever they wanted. Like

[00:24:07] that's you know, you're kind of empowered to do stuff that's going to impact the brand and the reputation. And you've got that. So there's something there about that link to the organizational impacts. And I think that's the bit that's missing from a lot of the conversations is it just becomes the shares on LinkedIn and stuff like that. I think that's a really good, really, really good call out on it. And it's making me reflect on some of the stuff I've seen on advocacy quite a lot. So I love this goes back. This was the 80s and 90s. This was there were no QR codes to scan. There were

[00:24:37] no websites to visit. So there was no tracking. It wasn't like they're producing gamification report of like, OK, here's all our employees and here's the ones that referred them, bought the most vehicles and handed out the most car. No, it was just the people that wanted to be part of that solution opted in. Yeah, they felt like they had ownership. They felt like they were a part of the story because he then got to tell a story. Yeah. Around it. So it's not giving them the story. It's internalizing

[00:25:05] that and turning it into their story. And I think your point there about there was no measurement of that. Like people were doing it because they wanted to. And I wonder if our our huge need to measure everything. It's like every time you go anywhere or you buy anything, you get so many emails about rating your experience and how it was. And it's just exhausting. I wonder if there's an element of that stopping people doing it. Like I don't want to be tracked and measured and I don't want that. I want to do it. It's got to be real. I've got to want to do it

[00:25:33] because I want to do it and believe in it. And that's harder, deeper work that organizations and leaders need to do. And I think that's the bit we're missing. So or we could do a whole episode. Because they all they all have to do the right things for an employee to want to then do that thing. Right. I'm going to move us on to cultural intelligence as your compass in the world of AI. Now, there's been we've talked about AI a lot and we will continue to talk about AI, I think, throughout the podcast. But there's been a lot

[00:26:02] of growth recently. So Gallup produced a I think was a press release in the last sort of few weeks saying that AI has doubled in the last two years. So the percentage of US employees who say they've used AI in their role a few times a year or more is what's doubled from 21% to 40% nearly doubled. Frequent AI use, so a few times a week or more has also nearly doubled gone from 11 to 19%.

[00:26:28] Since the first measure in 2023, daily use has also doubled in the past 12 months from four to 8%. So this discussion around AI, the growth, how do we keep up? How do we balance human and technology is something that has been going on forever, but it's something that's really being talked about at the moment. And Sarah Black, who I've mentioned on the podcast before, she's an expert in cultural

[00:26:54] intelligence. And she mentioned to me a little while ago that she was doing a paper on AI and cultural intelligence, which is called CQ. And I asked her for a sneaky pre-read for frequency. And here we are. So she gave me a read of the paper, which we put in the show notes as we do for all of these, but it explores the CQ framework and how it can help us live and work successfully in a world

[00:27:17] that's now blended between human and AI. And I love this because CQ is all about understanding different cultures, different ways of interacting with other people. And AI is a digital version of that. It's a different culture. It's a different thing. So CQ is based on these four capabilities of drive, knowledge, strategy, and action. And I'm not going to go into everything about CQ because

[00:27:44] that's not what we're here to do. But these were some of my takeaways from the paper. And I'd recommend having a read. So it talks about the differences in how we respond to AI as human beings in teams and organizations and how that can cause friction. So you've got people who are real enthusiasts, and then you've got people who will reject it and you've got stuff in the middle. But these two extremes are causing feelings of kind of unfairness between those groups, which is causing

[00:28:10] some friction. There will be some people that have a real low drive towards adopting AI. And I think we perceive that as being very negative. And Sarah's report says it's not negative. Like, it's really good to take the time to identify risks. We need people to be doing that so that there's balance and equally having a high drive to want to do it without strategy or action is really ineffective. So we've got to

[00:28:35] balance that. But I liked this take that it's not good or bad, depending on where you sit on this sort of drive to be using it. She also calls out the fact we need to be clear about what we mean by AI. So a lot of people think about chat GPT and Crawd, but AI is so much more than that. So if you're talking about it in your organization, get a shared understanding of what that means, across teams and across organizations, really important. She shares a really great quote from

[00:29:04] someone called Tom Wilson in the paper, who says you can't layer AI on top of a business with broken or inconsistent processes and expect it to work. You'll only create more problems. Loved that, because I think that's happening in a lot of places. She also talks about the trust in AI companies declining since 2019. And that's linked to unease about ethical use and how innovation is introduced.

[00:29:31] I think that's interesting and important for us to think about. She talks about prompts and making sure the prompts you're using consider different cultures and contexts for the organizations that you're in, and knowing things like the legislation in each of the countries, because that's quite different. She also encourages us to be quite reflective. So when we consider our own thinking, we're very aware of our own biases and values. I know I'm often going, why do I think this? Or where's this coming from?

[00:29:59] But when it's AI doing that, our awareness of that bias or unalignment is a lot less. So we're losing that. And it's that critical thinking that's going to be the skill that we need most along AI. And CQ will help us challenge some of those assumptions that are coming out. She finishes the paper by saying, be flexible, don't bend and don't break. Culturally intelligent action should not force you to become

[00:30:27] someone you're not, or to compromise your values personally or as an organization. Again, loved that. The paper's got loads of resources in it. Like I said, we'll put a link in the show notes to it. But there's a lot in here. And I just wanted to get your take on this quite different approach to tackling AI. So, you know, what do we think about in terms of CQ and AI and that overlay? And do you

[00:30:52] think the quote from Tom really stands up in terms of what companies need to do first, before they really start adopting AI? What do you think? Yeah, so I we have another Q term because of when our previous episode, we talked about like IQ and EQ and then it was AQ and I came up with GQ. Yeah. And then now we've got CQ. Yeah. So we'll have to do a little map of all of our keywords here.

[00:31:16] I I'm going to try to internalize this Tom Wilson quote, because I think that is as simple and obvious as it is. I don't think companies and I'll put myself in that thought about it in that way, because I want to repeat it again for people. You can't layer AI on top of a business with broken or inconsistent processes and expect it to work. You'll only create more problems. I think that's

[00:31:45] now what we're seeing. I think so many leaders think AI is going to fix things. It's not. I think again, this quote from Tom, I think sums up so well the issue. I think pointing out even having the internal conversation about what is AI to us. It's not, it's not just JGPT or Cloud or Copilot or

[00:32:11] any of the tools out there. It's, it's all of these other things. I'm also intrigued by some of the usage of it that about, it is increasing, but I think not at the rate or the amount that what we hear makes us sound like when you say things that like use AI in the role a few times a year or more,

[00:32:34] 21% to 40%. So only 40% of people are using it a few times a year. And then frequent use is described as a few times a week. I'm using it several times a day. Like, am I an addict? Like what, what, what, what is the, am I, am I an AI junkie? Like what's, what's that term? We're going to have to go to like AI anonymous, like AIA. That's going to be something because,

[00:33:01] but I think the point is really good around, you've got people like me who are probably agitators, maybe a-holes about people using AI to the other side of where people are not as excited. And I'm not saying like they might be restricting their use for the wrong reason. So I'm not saying either side is right or wrong here. I think the more organizations can have

[00:33:28] conversations around it and setting expectations and encouraging things instead of restricting, though I know there needs to be guidelines in place. There's so much here that we could do an entire episode, probably solely focused on this report, but I want to come back again, repeating for repetition sake from Tom Wilson. You can't layer AI. I want to get this printed on a

[00:33:53] t-shirt. You can't layer AI on top of a business with broken or inconsistent processes and expect it to work. You'll only create more problems. That's all people need to know. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. What a great list of articles this week, Jenny. Well done. I like these. And I'm going to share here that I used AI to help me find different articles outside

[00:34:20] of my kind of normal space because I was a bit mindful that it could be easy for us to just see things in our feed that are coming up for us based on the algorithm. And I want to expand that. So I'm using AI to help with that so that we go broader than just the things that are popping up for us, which I think is really important. So very grateful for it, for doing that. And I would say too, for the listeners, if you are reading things that you think we should know about, or you would like our take on, message them to us, send them to us. Yeah.

[00:34:50] We're happy to take those types of recommendations because again, we want things, we only see what we see. You're probably seeing and reading different things. Let us know about it. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So what are you freaking out about this week? So my freak out is, is a positive one. And if you're, this is one of the things that you're not celebrating your friends, what, what are you doing? What are you doing? And so very casually,

[00:35:18] a friend of mine named Jason Etter shared that he had created this very thoughtful, very creative YouTube channel called the family vibes. And we'll link it in the show notes to the YouTube channel. It's really, really talk about on the high EQ side of things. It's a series of thoughtful videos

[00:35:43] and meditations that are timed in like five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, specifically for families, specifically for children or moms or dads. And it's just very thoughtful. If you just need to, like, I need to dial it back for five minutes. There's a resource there. So I just wanted to think, call out Jason Etter and that work. He's not doing this to make money. There's it's, it's,

[00:36:09] it's clearly something that he's passionate about. So thank you, Jason, for creating this. We'll link it in the show notes. I just thought it was a very thoughtful, creative exercise to create these resources for people, especially now with all the craziness going on. People have someplace, simple place to go to take that time away. Love that. Love it. I shall have a, I shall have a watch. Um, so mine is not, not so positive,

[00:36:35] but also not necessarily negative. Um, but I, I have a little freak out about the interchangeable use of consultant, freelancer, and contractor. Uh, and I I've been watching this, I'd say for the last six months, and I've asked a few questions in the industry of, can you define a freelancer? Can you

[00:37:00] define a consultant? And can you define a contractor to other people who have networks in these spaces? And we're not getting anything back. So if anyone's listening to this and has got some wisdom around, this is how we would define them. I'd love to hear it. Cause I feel quite strongly that they are different things. Uh, and I feel that way because I'm a, I'm a consultant. I don't see myself as a freelancer and I think they are distinct things. I think they have different

[00:37:28] roles for organizations. I think they have different pay scales. I think they have different things that they offer that provide support and equally a contractor is different. If you're doing interim work or you're going into an organization for a short time, do you still call yourself a consultant, even though you're going to be in an organization three, four, five days a week? It just feels like it's messy for the industry. And I don't know how helpful that is for people

[00:37:53] that are looking for support in terms of what that clarity is around what those different things are and how they can help. Yeah. I realized as you were going through those words, one, I've never really thought about it. And also you put a, an emphasis on a different syllable than I do on one of the words, which one, well, I realize it's not consistent. Cause I will say

[00:38:17] consultant, but contractor and you say contractor or contractor or something like that. Anyway, I was just, I hadn't really thought about it. I feel like I know the difference, but I don't know that I could put it in the words. That's, that's, it's tricky. Do you think it matters? Like, am I just, am I just having a ramp for ramp sake? Cause I can, I can be that person that overthinks something. I'm aware of that. And people might be listening to

[00:38:44] this going, Jenny, no one cares. It doesn't matter. But I do. But if you care that it does matter to you. So yeah, I would be curious what, what other people think or if they care. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know if you care and what you think, and then I'll, and then I'll, I'll, I'll feel better now. I feel better now I've talked about it. So thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for joining us this week. As we've said,

[00:39:10] all the articles that have inspired this conversation are in the show notes. So don't forget to rate and review after you've listened and subscribe and follow so that you don't miss another episode. And if you want to pass this along to someone you think would enjoy or listening, we would really appreciate that. And also don't forget you can find Frequency on YouTube. Thank you to Poet Ali for contributing the music to the show. And we will be back next week with more news, insights,

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