EAs: The Invisible Glue

Quite literally holding things together

We’re the invisible glue that holds it all together. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

Culture isn’t created in an all-hands meeting or scribbled in a deck with five values and a stock photo of people high-fiving. Culture is the lived experience—the vibes, the unspoken norms, the “how we do things here” that trickles down from the top.

Thinking about your own company or companies where you have worked, consider how your executives approach things and how people tend to copy. If the CEO is always late to meetings, do people eventually stop even trying to be on time?

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1. We’re the Culture Custodians, Even if It’s Not in the Job Description

Ask any of us if “culture” appears on our job description and most of us will laugh. It’s not formalised, but we’re waist-deep in it every single day.

Think about it—we’re plugged into everything. We’re in the know about what’s happening at the top. We hear the watercooler chatter (assuming there is some left in our world of hybrid working and 4000 Teams calls a day). We plan the events. We help onboard new hires. We manage the rhythm of the business, from Monday morning stand-ups to quarterly town halls. Whether we mean to or not, we shape the environment people show up to every day.

We’re the ones reminding our execs to give shout-outs to team members who crushed it this quarter, or gently nudging them when someone’s birthday is coming up and they might want to do more than just a Slack emoji reaction. It’s subtle, it’s behind-the-scenes, but it matters. These are the small acts that build a culture people actually want to be part of.

Very often we are the difference between the office being a happy, buzzy place, to a dreary hole where no-one wants to be.

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2. We See (and Hear) Everything

There’s a reason we are often called the eyes and ears of the organisation. We’re uniquely positioned to observe patterns that others might miss.

We see the dynamics in meetings—who’s included, who’s talked over, who always volunteers to take notes (spoiler: usually the women 🙄). We notice when someone who’s usually bubbly and chatty has gone quiet, or when a team seems unusually tense. And because we’re trusted confidants to leadership, we’re often in a position to raise those red flags.