 Oh, yeah. There we go. Hi, everyone. So this talk is called Communication or Communicating with Empathy. And the only way that I can talk about this is by telling you something pretty personal about myself. And that's that I stutter, as you can tell. And because of stuttering, I have a very different perspective on how we can communicate with other people. And so this is me. I'm around three years old. I know. I'm painfully adorable. And this is around the age that I began to show some signs of stuttering. But that's actually pretty, pretty typical. A lot of kids who are around the age of three or four have some sort of speech impediment. It's generally stuttering. And it kind of just goes away. By the time they hit first grade or so. And stuttering is also genetic. So my parents both stuttered until they were in their teens. My brother stuttered until he was around 12 or 13. I have cousins that stuttered. I have a grandparent that stuttered. And with pretty much everybody else, it kind of just disappeared over time. And so people weren't all that concerned about it when I began to stutter because it just kind of posed away. And so I finally kind of came to the point of like, I'm 25, and I'm still stuttering pretty much every day. So I'm probably not going to outgrow it. And so you, as a person who stutters, you kind of develop these, what they call them, is avoidance tactics. So you pretty much do pretty much anything to not stutter. So you'll change words in your head, right? Because people who stutter, they have sounds and words that they have problems with. And so in conversation, you can think about the words that you are about Hasei. And then you change them before you are going to Hasei then. You or personally, I use a lot of filler words, so ahms and ahs and likes, see? As a way to, I guess, prolong the stuttering that is going to happen. And so I came to a point where I just decided that it was too challenging to talk all of the time, so I made the very smart decision of just being like, OK, I'm not going to put myself in situations where I have to talk to people, because that would be really bad. The problem is that every situation you're in, you kind of have to talk to people. And so I found myself not doing much. And it began to directly affect relationships. And so I finally was like, OK, I have to conquer this fear. I have to talk to people. And the only way that I was going to be able to talk to people was if I just stuttered. And so that was when I decided to pursue public speaking opportunities where I would talk about stuttering. As a way to kind of face the fear and to challenge myself and not be as terrified anymore. And yes, I know that sounds completely crazy. If you're afraid of something and you're like, well, I don't know how to swim and I'm afraid of sharks, so I'm going to jump in the deep end with the sharks. That's the kind of person that I am, apparently. And so after I gave a couple of talks, my whole view on communication completely changed. And that's what I'm going to talk about with you today. So the main thing that I want to tell you about communication is that communication is supposed to be an incredibly empathetic act. The problem is that it isn't ever. And so in order to talk about communication, I want to talk about how we converse, how we view conversations. So this is you. And you're hanging out one day and you're like, hold on. I have an idea. So this is you. This is your idea. And you're really excited about this awesome idea that you have. But you're like a chill person. You don't want to brag or anything. But you think that this idea could go places. So you think about the idea. You figure out how you want to present it. You think about the words that you want to use. You think about how you want to feel. You think about how you want the other person to feel. And so you take the idea. You take it to your spouse, your coworker, your boss, or your friend. And you tell them this obviously great idea. And you are expecting them to just lose their minds. They're going to think that this is the best idea. This is the idea that's going to end all ideas. And they are going to tell you that. And they react like this. And it's not that they don't care. It's just that you don't care about them. You don't want to have an actual conversation. You just want this person to love this thought the way that this guy loves himself. Hold on. There we go. And this self-focused approach, let's go ahead. That's one of my favorite quotes of Kanye's. Kind of brilliant. So this self-focused approach to communications, it just destroys conversations. And it can even cause problems on teams. So what do you need? You need to think about the person that you're talking to. You need to be empathetic. And that's because connection comes as a result of having empathy. And so if that's the case, like if this is true, which I believe that it is, then empathetic communication is going to drive collaboration. Now when it comes to building teams and building products and growing things, collaboration is going to be one of the most valuable tools that you have. But we have a problem. One of the things is that collaboration in 2016, it's done almost in highly via text. And look, I love Twitter. I love Slack. I think that those things are great. They help people feel more connected. They make sharing easier. But the problem here is that you are dealing with a Twitter handle. You are dealing with a username. You aren't actually talking to a real person. And that's because when you're typing things into your phone or into your computer, you're not actually talking to a person. And therefore, the empathy that you have to have is kind of lost. That's why technology can't replace the social aspect of face-to-face communication. And here's another truth. Failures of communication can't be automated away. You have to confront these things face-to-face. Because when you close a laptop, when you put away your phone, when you shut down the software, you are dealing with people. So this is all great, but we have a second problem. And that's people kind of hate talking to each other. Because talking is hard, right? And conversations are hard. And collaboration is extremely challenging. And collaboration fails. So let's break down the reasons why collaboration fail so we can know exactly how to fix it. So the two main reasons are that people are afraid of being wrong. And they are afraid that people aren't going to completely understand them. So let's talk about the fear of being wrong. Because that's just the fear of being judged, right? I can't tell you how many times I have thought of a thing that I wanted to say. And I have chosen to not say it because I was afraid that I was going to be judged, right? And the other reason is that people are afraid that they are going to be totally understood, right? And when people in here, you guys are technical people, right? And you have to deal with people that don't do tech, like me. So you have to explain things over and over and over and over and over again until the other person can completely get it. A lot of the times when you are explaining things, we don't ever get it. I'm never going to understand how to code. So it doesn't matter how many times you tell me like how this works, I'm not going to get it, right? And that can be an incredibly frustrating situation, right? And so instead of just saying, hey, I don't think I'm ever going to get this, you know, we just get angry. And we're like, well, this is dumb, or I don't have time with this, right? So how do you fix these problems, right? The first thing that you have to do is speak up and encourage people around you to do the same, because silence kills collaboration. The next thing that you have to do is think about the listener. When you are speaking to a person, you should take into account exactly what that person has to hear in order to truly embrace what it is you are trying to communicate, right? You know, we're all on different planes intellectually, and that's completely fine. Speaking to people on their level, doesn't do anything to compromise yours. The next thing that you have to do is think about the speaker, right? And the best way that I can explain this is to just kind of think about how you have to pay attention to me, like I know that it's not always easy to totally understand all the things that I'm communicating, and you have to be extremely patient. You have to pay attention, and you have to focus on what I'm saying. So when you discuss your thoughts and your opinions from a place of empathy and you listen to others from that same place, you are going to create something higger and header than what you could have come up with, tie yourself. And that takes vulnerability. It's the vulnerability to embrace silence or to talk about something that makes you feel really uncomfortable. And it also takes courage. The courage to listen to people when they are struggling to say something, and the courage to kind of stand there when they are being vulnerable. So the true keys here are to be patient, to be patient when you are listening to a person, but especially when you are speaking to them, and to be vulnerable, and to be courageous. Because all of those things are going to be the foundation of great team collaboration. Thank you.