She wasn't disorganized. She wasn't rude. She wasn't even wrong. She just didn't talk like everyone else in the room — and that was enough to get her written off.

Jessica, Coralyn, and Jamie unpack the assumption that quietly wrecks more work relationships than actual conflict does: mistaking a different communication style for a personality problem. Jamie sits through a 40-minute interview where the interviewer never asks her a single question — and doesn't stop it, then spends the rest of the episode figuring out why. Coralyn admits she wrote off a coworker as standoffish for weeks before realizing he just needed time to think before he spoke. Jessica confesses the bias she still has to catch herself in: she gravitates toward hiring people who think exactly like her.

Then it gets sharper. What happens when you're the only person in the room who sees it differently — and everyone else is staring at you like you grew a second head? Jamie tells the story of raising her hand when no one else would, and what her manager told her afterward that changed how she shows up in every meeting since.

And the line that reframes the whole conversation: personality explains behavior. It does not excuse bad behavior. Because knowing someone processes differently doesn't mean you have to accept being talked down to — and this episode gets into exactly how to call it out without blowing up the relationship.

If you've ever left a meeting wondering whether you're the problem, or spent months resenting a coworker before realizing you just never learned how they actually communicate, this is the conversation you didn't know you needed.

This is the first of three episodes in the Networking series — the ones that get into what actually builds (or quietly destroys) professional relationships.

Send this to the friend who vented to you about a coworker last week. She needs to hear this.

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