 a lot of our audience members in technical backgrounds who come to take our programs, they default to the problem solving, data solution oriented conversation. They're immersed in it daily at work. It leads to compensation and promotion. And then they come to us and they go, well, I'm not picking up on these emotions. You say I have to be more emotive. You say I need emotional intelligence, but I just wanna get to the solution. So what is the solution to finding that emotion? What is the solution to creating that connection? And what you just shared with us in that question does evoke a lot of emotions, right? What does sobriety mean to you? Absolutely. Well, that's gonna be filled with thoughts, beliefs, feelings about that exact state. And it's gonna invite me to either share those or if I'm in a practical mindset, not to. You're exactly right. And the reason why that question is effective is it's what's known as a deep question. You know, in the book, there's a story about the CIA recruiter who is like the worst CIA recruiter in history. He gets sent over to Europe as his first assignment. He can't recruit anyone. People keep on telling him, I'm gonna report you so you get deported because you gotta quit harassing me. And he's about to get fired and he's freaking out. And there's this woman that he's been befriending for like six months who works in the foreign ministry of her country in the Middle East. And he's been trying to recruit her and she just gets freaked out and she cries and runs away. And so they have one final dinner and he just gives up. He's just like, this isn't gonna happen. And he just decides to be authentic with her. He's like, look, I understand why you're disappointed about going home because I'm really disappointed in myself. Like I'm about to get fired from the only job I've ever loved. And instead of trying to cheer her up or instead of trying to like convince her that this is the right thing to do, he just says something real. And that's when she can hear him and she agrees to become an asset and she becomes the best asset in the Middle East for the next 20 years. And the reason why is because he started asking her a certain kind of question, deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks about our values, our beliefs, our experiences. And they're really easy to ask. If you bump into someone and they say, what do you do for a living? I'm a lawyer. Oh yeah, what made you decide to go to law school? Like what's it like being a lawyer? What do you love about your job? Those are super easy questions to ask but they're all deep questions because they ask and invite the other person to tell you something real about themselves. And that's how a conversation starts. And with that, there is a level that we need to then match in that vulnerability. So if you ask just deep questions, one after the other after the other, and I know Brené Brown has this jelly jar metaphor, if you're asking the other person to throw jelly beans into this jar and you're not responding with any vulnerability back, well, you're gonna actually break that trust. You're gonna break that opportunity for connection. And that's not a conversation. That's an interrogation, right? Nobody likes being interrogated for any reason. You're exactly right. So how do we do that? How do we match them instead of just asking questions? There's a couple of things. The first thing is to listen closely to what they're saying and get on the same wavelength with them. I had this experience recently where I was at a meeting and before the meeting started, we were just kind of chatting and I asked some guy, how was your weekend? And he said, oh, it was great. I went to my son's graduation. And it would have been really easy for me just to say, oh, congratulations, that's amazing. Okay, so let's get down to the agenda. But instead I just took a second and I was like, oh, you know, like that must have felt amazing. Like, what did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage? And he told me and then I said, I answered the same question I asked, which is a virtue of deep questions, is that we can answer them ourselves and it doesn't seem weird. I said, you know, like my kids are in middle school and high school and like, I think about them going to college and I'm so excited for them. But I'm also kind of like worried because it means they're gonna leave home and I really like them. Right now we've both shared something about ourselves. It's not an interrogation. It's us sharing who we are and matching each other, matching each other in an emotional conversation about our pride and our children. And at that point, like, we're fast friends. We're gonna be able to hear what each other is trying to say.