The Office Humans – About this Article Series

The Introduction

Every workplace has a cast of characters. These are the characters that you know, you have worked with and some days, you are them.

The Office Humans is an eight-part article series by Grow with Satori LLP that takes an honest, warm and occasionally amused look at the patterns of behaviour that show up in offices. Starting with the person who can't stop explaining, to the one who never speaks up, to the one to the one whose optimism is so relentless that it sometimes gets in the way of what's real.

Right now, it will be good to announce that this series will not help you fix people. Rather, this revolves around understanding them and in doing so, understanding yourself a little better too.

This series was written with a specific set of readers in mind. Though honestly, most of it will land for anyone who has ever had a colleague.

The first-time managers who are figuring it all out. How to lead people they used to work alongside? How to handle the shift from peer to manager, one of the least-prepared-for transitions in professional life. This series helps you understand the behaviour you are now responsible for navigating.
Professionals preparing for senior or leadership roles who want to sharpen their people-reading skills before they are in the deep end. Understanding why people behave the way they do is in fact a core leadership competency, and it's rarely taught explicitly.
People managers who find managing people genuinely hard. This could be because human behaviour is unpredictable and layered, and dealing with this was never covered in your new job description. If you have ever stared at a team dynamic and thought 'I don't even know where to start', this is just for you.
And finally, anyone who manages peers, cross-functional teams or stakeholders, where you have influence but not authority. And getting things done depends almost on how well you read and respond to people.

Each article in this series gives you more than just a description of a workplace human archetype. You'll walk away with:

A clearer lens for understanding why people behave the way they do.
Practical tools to work more effectively with different personalities.
Honest reflection prompts that ask: 'Is any of this you?' Because the best managers are students of themselves first.
Language and frameworks you can use in real conversations, like in feedback sessions, team meetings, one-on-ones and also for those tricky moments when you're not sure what to say.

We spend a significant portion of our awake hours at work and yet most of us receive almost no formal training on how to work with other human beings. We are trained in tools, processes and technical skills. We are rarely trained in people. The result of which is that the talented professionals get stuck because they can't manage up, or sideways or at times even their team. High-potential managers stall because they don't know how to bring out the best in their teams. Leaders make avoidable errors because they misread behaviour or just don't read it at all.

Meanwhile, the workplace keeps getting more complex. Teams are diverse, distributed and constantly under pressure. The behaviours in this series are beyond just personality quirks. They are signals of safety, trust, workload, fear and need. Learning to read these signals is one of the most consequential skills a manager or professional can develop.

Whether you are two months into your first management role or two decades into a career and looking for a fresh perspective - pull up a chair. We are going to talk about the people you work with. And the person looking back at you in the mirror.

A disclaimer on the belief of this series:

This series does not pathologize. No workplace human archetype is broken or bad. Every pattern described here makes complete sense, given the right (or wrong) conditions. The goal is understanding, not labelling. Read with curiosity and apply with care.

Ishita Mukherjee

Ishita (Roy) Mukherjee

Facilitator & POSH Certified Trainer + Brand Strategist + Leadership & Culture Mentor

The Office Humans – About this Article Series

The Introduction

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