Communication Skills: Tailor Your Tech Expertise to Non-tech Stakeholders

we are yes I think we are live yeah all right welcome everybody I'm Maria glazo from Ukraine I'm a tech English communication coach I specialize in empowering Tech professionals to Skyrocket their careers and confidence through English advanced communication skills and to do that I use a 10we program with my exclusive rocket approach and today oh my God I'm so excited because I have a very special guest thank you so much for coming this is Nick centino from the USA from Seattle and we will dive together into the nuances of communication skills how to tailor your Tech message your Tech expertise to um well non-technical stakeholders to some different audiences because basically it's a part of the job right and a lot of miscommunication happens I would say in that direction and well spoiler alert not only because of the language and what I can say even mostly not because of the language so that that's what we're going to talk about and guys if you have any comments questions please share them uh we will address them as we go and of course um also at the end okay so I will try to make sure I will not miss anything we'll do my best yes and of course um um yeah Nick could you please tell us a little bit about yourself what you do and yeah everything for sure yeah and thank you for the introduction thank you for having me here this is something that I'm very passionate about um in a lot of the content and messaging I try to put out it's uh it's software engineering related but I try to make sure people are hearing it's not just your technical skills everyone knows you need technical skills and software engineering like we know that but people seem to be missing out on focusing on more soft skills like Communication in particular so yeah um I'm excited for this uh as you mentioned yeah I'm I'm from the US actually I'm originally from Canada I live in the US working at Microsoft now uh I am a principal engineering manager there I was working on uh the deployment teams that are inside of The Office 365 part of Microsoft and so I I got to work with employees on my team mostly from the US but also from Mexico and we had a sort of a Ed line reporting structure from China as well so we had a a whole counterpart to our team in China which is super awesome and then this year I've switched teams but it's a very similar setup I have a lot of employees from uh Latin America so Mexico Brazil Costa Rica which is super cool and also again counterparts in China so there's people from all over the world and it's really it's really fun to work together wow that's amazing and how many people are on the team right now currently H that's a good question in total I think reporting to me is just over 10 and the the dotted line reporting structure I'm not exactly sure and actually I forgot we have because this is new there's a team in Prague as well so that's new for me having more like European representation I I didn't have that before my previous team so there's even more employees there so yeah very it's very cool yeah it's very right amazing and so now also currently you have like Chinese right employees and um Latin America right Europe This is new right so all this uh like and like the the the working relationship in particular like I have us and Latin American employees reporting directly to me but the engineers that are in Prague or in suia China they have their own manager in their own representation but in terms of working on projects we get to all collaborate together wow that's it's exciting and also challenging I guess and this is actually my question you know the first question um so when you're working together with your team and um in terms of that you like to make sure that you understand each other do you feel like from your perspective because this is really interesting for me and I believe for my audience um what about the like should we really worry about the accent about the complex grammar some fancy vocabulary I'm asking because a lot of tech professionals who come to me they worry like a lot about that they overthink you know about these things and of course this hinders their success and their progress and their like speaking up abilities let's say that's why I think it can be really interesting to get your perspective as an engineering manager who actually manages people and well it matters to you right that you are like on the same page so what what would you say yeah no this is it's a great question uh I think the the very short answer is no uh accents and things like that they they do not matter um the it's it's funny because I'm saying that and I think before we were going live I was saying one of the things that like I get in my own head about is pronouncing other people's names so for example uh people in China a lot of the pronunciation of their names is very different than sort of the different sounds and things we would say in the English language so I might read their name and I'm going in my head like I actually don't know the expected way to pronounce that so even though my advice is kind of like you know your accent or maybe how you pronounce things like that's not a huge you know consideration even for myself I get in my head about it so I absolutely understand I think one of the call it like an unfair Advantage I have is that I am a native English speaker so in a lot of the conversations we have it's going to be English so I have that unfair advantage and as an engineering manager it's kind of like I don't know from a call it like a position of power um it's kind of like I don't know I I don't have I don't not as nervous so I think other Engineers that are maybe more Junior they already have a lot of things stacked up against them right they're like I'm newer here I'm less experienced maybe English isn't my first language so there's so much more to get in your own head about and I can only imagine they're thinking if I can't speak English perfectly isn't that really going to you know be against me here so that's interesting and something that in my previous lives uh one thing came up about the accent in particular and uh this is something that we actually we have already talked about but not here that's why I would love to repeat it that a lot of guys come to me and they say okay I would like to sound like a native speaker and they don't specify anything just native speaker and this is like so General and at first I was like I was really puzzled like okay what does that mean you know like who right like I don't know like Tom Cruz or whatever like English or I don't know Charles Prince Charles or because there are so many kinds right yeah my friend from Scotland uh I mean Scotland native speaker and he was told by some guys that you are not native enough okay what does that mean and they said well you don't talk like the queen or something you know like the Standard English or something I don't know this is ridiculous and um yes and uh yeah what the thing that came up that uh American accent can actually seem credible right you know and uh yeah like when there is a discussion and people for example with uh this accent right the people tend to listen to these people more or you know so this is something that can be you know subconsciously I would say so I don't know if you notice something like that or maybe no maybe you have compl well yeah when we talked about this originally like before this stream right this was something like I would straight up say I had never considered this it's not something like again my bias is that I am a native English speaker um I have a Canadian accent so maybe that's less credible than the US accent but no it's not something that I've ever I've ever thought about and it's really good to okay I should back up when I say it's good to hear this it's good um to be aware of it I I would say it's a little puzzling to me that people are so attached to it but um I think that's really important insight and when we were chatting about this before I think both you and I are kind of saying like yeah like that shouldn't matter like it really shouldn't matter to towards your credibility if you have a us uh you know American accent like that should not matter but the the reality ends up being like perception like how you perceive things truly becomes the reality and if you are kind of one of these individuals really chasing like how do I how do I get an American accent I want to be more credible even if it's a subconscious thing where you're like I'm in a room and I hear an American accent there for this person must be more credible to me it's almost a little bit dangerous right because that becomes your reality that these people must be more credible but there's no um like how you speak English like has nothing to do with your intellectual capacity right or or your domain knowledge this is just one of the the ways that we're communicating and yeah it's uh you know the short answer is like I don't think it should matter but I find it fascinating that some people do really gravitate towards that so that was very insightful for me to hear from you yes well I heard this from clients you know I'm learning a lot from them when they come and what challenges they experience and you know this like internal barriers right and that's fascinating because this really stops them from a lot of things and I wonder in your team do you actually see sometimes maybe that the person is struggling with the language or they are pretty much I don't know maybe you created such a an environment that they already like oh okay just say yeah like not worry about that no yeah great question I think like my my observation is like there are there's certainly individuals where I'm I'm aware that their English is not perfect and that's kind of almost what I would expect I only speak English if you tried to get me to speak any other language it would just not work like I took French when I was in elementary school and I can say bonjour and that's it um you know I cannot speak other languages so the fact that these other individuals can speak English I completely understand what they're saying even if every single word isn't perfect the point is like I understand clearly so in terms of like do I observe um challenges with it uh the the answer is still Yes though and the reason I observe challenges is not because I think that they're doing a a poor job of it but it's it's in their confidence so there are some times with individuals to give you an example it doesn't bother me I'm not taken back by it but some people might um and awe a lot more or kind of stutter a little bit and I can tell they're pausing to look for the right English word they know what they want to say they know all the ideas but they're going I need to figure out how to say this sometimes they'll even say I don't know the English word for this the I don't know how to say this in English and to me I'm like that's totally fine like you're you're navigating the communication so the answer to your question is yes I do see it come up but it's not um it's not because I'm struggling with interpreting what they're saying I see up because they're acknowledging I'm having difficulty and sometimes this will come up in one-on-one conversations where they will tell me directly hey like I'm still not confident about my English and it's usually very surprising to me because I'm thinking your English is great like it's you know I have no challenges so I can tell you more I'm right now also in different communities of Educators Educators who have spent all their life you know like for example I have been learning English basically for 25 years because it started when I was six and those Educators they have even more experience and when we get together oh my God it's so eyee openening when they share that they struggle also with the language and they are not sure or something you know so it's like oh my God this is interesting and what to tell about for example clients who have a little bit less experience with that yeah so what matters is as I understand the clarity the intelligibility how easy it is to understand right and actually we will talk about this a little bit more okay um so for you for example yeah yeah so accents or whatever these don't really matter as long as you can understand the person I mean yeah y there there is a I would say there is a degree if the if the accent is I mean if it compounds many levels right so if the English is uh not strong to begin with like that's that can be challenging then you layer on a very heavy accent that can make it more challenging but it's like I would say like 99% of people I talk that is just not even a remote concern um it really has to be someone who has not spent much time working with English where it might be challenging but I can even then I can still navigate the conversation with them so I would say for people that are like so hyperfocused about doing a terrible job or something like it's still we can still communicate so it's not a concern yeah I understand I remember also back then I was really concerned about being judged you know oh my God you know so this is yeah this is a big one you know and then when I started to communicate with people more and more and more from different countries and exploring the opportunities it was opening and also I I lived in Canada last year yeah for a year and I remember that there was a very interesting feeling for me because I had these conversations my English was also not always perfect especially if I was tired or something right but yeah I made some mistakes or whatever but what I felt that nobody not a single person you know made like oh my God you know like made some look judged me or something and I was oh my God that's what we are doing to ourselves first of all you know like in our head you know like but not really people like in reality you know they mind their own stuff you know you have the goal you need actually some other things to get done you know accent is I think the last the least thing that they worry about you know absolutely that's so true I have never sat like I know I know this is live and no one would admit to this anyway but I've never sat in a conversation and been like I know we're trying to meet about some design or some technology choice and all that I'm doing is sitting there going oh this person's not saying this word right ha like it never we're so focused on other things um the only time that has remotely come up is if someone makes fun of thems where they say something they're like oh that's not the right word haha and then we go yeah like it was funny you said it but like it's fine like it's not like we're making fun of them right that has never happened yeah yeah that's that's exactly all right and okay if these you know I would say all these things don't really matter what about what matters so what is essential in effective communication for you what really matters so what in your perspective yeah I think ultimately like it's going to come down to the domain that we're working in so I think you kind of you touched on this right at the beginning when we started going live here but it's like it's not so much like the the language is like the tool that we're using in our communication right but really we're using the language to discuss Concepts and ideas about whatever domain we're working in right so for example you and I are talking right now we're speaking English that's the tool we're using in our communication but the domain we're talking about kind of meta but it's like we're talking about communication and and and Clarity and things like that so like the fact that we can align on these topics is what's important so for example if I started talking to you about very specific technology used for Microsoft routing you might be like Nick what the heck are you talking about and like it's not it's no fault of yours obviously like if you don't know about that how could we ever have a good conversation I would need to find ways to go oh Maria you I know that you haven't been exposed to some of these things and unless you've been working at Microsoft in this space and I didn't know so I would have to find different ways to go articulate those Concepts to you and make sure that I find a common ground that we both understand so I would say okay if you don't know about our code base I wouldn't expect you to I could more easily explain like hey like what we do in our area is when we have people that are using applications and they need to connect to other things that we have inside Microsoft those requests come in and go through our platform like at a high level and I think that's probably something you and other people could easily understand so it's this Common Ground about the domain less about the language language is just a tool for it oh that's a great point that it's just a tool just remember this is not an some I don't know incomprehensible art or something right just the tool to get your idea across and make sure that you know things get done right right I actually um noticed that um a lot of my clients appreciate that I don't have much knowledge of the technical part because it makes them um work harder to explain to me some technical concept that even I can understand you know and they can use some anal ology so yeah they do struggle but in a good way you know so they really kind of try to find some ways okay this works like this and so on and it makes them easier uh it makes it easier for them I would say to then uh use this analogies or something when they actually you know explain them at work for examp yeah that's a it's a hugely powerful tool to be able to use like a metaphor or an analogy yeah to be able to explain something that's how we find common ground because again if I had to even for me as the engineering manager on my team I have not like written any of the code that our team has so people have had to use metaphors even for me to understand the technical things we have going on so yeah yeah absolutely we have a question here so let's dive into that from Aurora thank you so much uh how does one expand the English vocabulary besides participating in Maria no webinars I read English novels or any non-technical books and love to play daily word word daily word Wordle yeah this is yeah I think this is like an implication or something right uh yeah okay I think I played it a few times okay um okay would you like to address that or it's more maybe about me I can I can try at least from my side um and this is like I have to acknowledge bias here right like I have it's a great question I've not really had to think about this ahead of time like uh so I'm trying to imagine if I had an employee for my team saying hey like I want to improve on my English how can I get better at it um I think you know inside here this comment say besides participating in Maria's webinars right the I think the reality is one of the best ways and I would say this for any skill is to be practicing it so um right one of the I've not gone through this so I'm trying to acknowledge that but I would imagine if I were just trying to read books right as an example you might be exposed to more English words this way but you need to also practice putting them into action so you might build a vocabulary of like words that you recognize but if you're not putting them into practice I could imagine it would still be difficult to you'd be doing this thing where you're pausing going I have to remember the English word for this because you haven't practiced using it so I would kind of say that uh strictly looking at written things to go find words like that can be helpful but I think finding ways to to practice speaking so uh finding more opportunities to speak English with other people I think would be hugely beneficial oh yeah oh yeah the practicing part that's what my usually my sister did to me she used to be also a teacher of English but her methods were really unorthodox because basically what she she would do she wouldn't like teach me any words she would just put me in front of native speaker so I didn't have any chance you know to the situation not to use my native language and uh just say go and I would be like like a kitty you know trying to somehow you know like swim out of that situation but I'm grateful to her because it gave me a lot of lots of practice like real world practice because I didn't have that at school or university it's yeah it was more like in another Direction and I was answering this interesting question um a lot of tech professionals they come to me like really lot and they when I ask them okay what have you done so far right to you know like level up your um level and they usually tell me oh I have been watching friends and um I have tried application like dual linga or reading English novels I mean yeah this is all good but uh the vocabulary there is really specific and general and when you would like so it really depends on the goal right right for example you need this like English for uh I don't know for the meeting for the speaking up English Noel might not really help a lot I mean this is good kind of just like for the hobby or something for I don't know something like to do in your free time or something but for the specific training and for this I I love using this analogy when uh for example you can imagine that uh it's like from Sports you like a casual Runner you run every day and then you decide oh you know what I would like to compete in the Olympics and you like just keep uh running every day that's it and well nothing kind of happens right because you lack of some uh specific training you know like some specific muscle diet there are so many like different very specific moments and for that so relevant vocabulary is the key I would say here and um like one of the ways that I encourage my clients to do is like when you come to work really pay attention you are in this International environment there are certain phrases that people are using so pay attention to that and uh if you also try to say something you don't know how to say this is exactly the vocabulary that should be in well she should be in your vocabulary yeah so um yeah like record the meetings you know like listen to the meetings try to like try to make it as practical and as close to your work as possible if you're reading read some technical articles because you will getting you know you will be getting exactly the uh oh I like the technical uh vocabulary I remember you mentioned this awesome example about the acronyms uh could you tell I I wanted as you were talking I was like oh I need to chime in to mention this but to Aurora's question here right so uh my assumption reading this is like if English is not your first language and you're trying to improve on this you know how would you approach it but I would even say like English is my first language that's the only language I know and even for me at Microsoft there's been many situations I've been at Microsoft for almost four years and I can tell you that almost every single day there's more technical terms where I'm like I've not heard that so I and especially going onto a new team earlier this year it was like the whole domain like conceptually I understand it but the terminology the acronyms being used it's it's almost like learning an entirely new language because I don't know anything that's being referred to so as Maria was saying like I think the best way is to be exposed to the the actual domain the technical area that you want to improve upon because going so General if your goal was like something technical you're going to probably find like it doesn't translate to what you're trying to accomplish so I thought that was a great way to to represent it but acronyms are a huge yeah yeah and you you also mentioned that you were really kind because uh you would uh in slack something right you would kind of explain to people because you knew that this is yeah this is challenging right so you would kind of help other people right I went through the same learning process and I'm not trying to claim like I'm an expert at trying to catch people up on acronyms but there would be things if I like we had a lot of new hires that came in right after me on my team and um I'm on boarding to the team learning the acronyms as they're coming in trying to and I'm seeing those acronyms come up and seeing the new employees on the call and I'm going oh like let me save them a moment to go doc like I'll write in the chat here's what this means and there's a person on the team that's maintaining like a huge uh like wiki page of different acronyms that you know new employees can go check out and stuff so yeah it acronyms just uh make things really difficult for new people regardless of your language to to catch up on no absolutely have you ever had the situation when it wasn't about the acronym but just English word that you just I don't know stumbled like came across and it was like oh what's that yeah I mean I I can't think of a specific example recently but it absolutely happens just for a non um a non acronym English word to this day this will happen like I don't know at least once a month kind of thing where I'll see an English word I'm like I don't know what that means I don't I know if I sometimes depending on the context um this is kind of interesting I guess if I'm reading something it depends on the the context right but I might be reading a paragraph and I know the tone that the author has and there's some word that shows up and I'm like oh I know that this is say an adjective I know they're describing the thing that they're talking about and I don't know what that adjective means but I know this author has been talking poorly about this thing so it's probably adjective that means something bad and then I kind of make a mental note and if I'm curious I'll go look it up but sometimes when you have enough context around what you're reading one individual word is not so bad to not know yeah I have the same in my native language sometimes I come across yeah like such such moments it's just um like guys they put a little bit too much pressure you know sometimes that for not knowing something and that is actually okay you're just in this is you know like learning mode and everything and just not to kind of put too much pressure so that's U yeah something that I would definitely kind of would like to address okay somebody sending their love thank you so much guys if I'm not showing right now some other commments it means that well they're not in the streamyard but I will definitely address them closer to the end okay all right and the next question is actually the most I guess interesting one right because IT addresses okay so how to uh tailor your message your Tech message when you talk with your manager with your project manager product manager you know all these different people because uh yeah what is like the main misunderstanding there in your observation and how to yeah how to tackle it yeah so the first thing I would say is it has nothing to do with the language um so I say that because say a lot of my interactions not all of them but a lot I'm dealing with other native English speakers and even if they're not native English speakers they are they speak English so fluently that I never would guess right they might it might be their second language and I would never know so I have a lot of these interactions and I still need to make sure that I'm going through this process of trying to communicate effectively with other stakeholders and this could be like I'm fortunate that as an engineering manager I like to think that I've maintained a lot of my technical background so I do a lot of programming outside of work uh to try and make sure that that's there so I can for the most part relate to the engineers at the technical level maybe not all the nuances of our domain that we're in but if it say they're referring to some parts of code if they pull up a code riew and want to show me code I can understand what's going on because I program so I have some of the technical depth um and then you know say there's project managers and I'm not not trying to bucket project managers as not having technical background I work with one in particular who's extremely Technical and it's awesome but you need to be able to understand your audience that you're communicating with and what I mean by that is going back to what we were saying earlier is like your the context that you have so you might understand the the concept or the area that you want to be having a discussion about the message you want to relay but the context that you have is going to be different than anyone else you talk to even if it's the exact same role as you right they're going to have a different context so you always need to be thinking about the message that I want to provide someone else it's not how do I say this message the most clear way for me it's how do I make this message clear for them and you have to start thinking about what information they have access to like we have to make a bunch of assumptions sometimes if we're not familiar with the person right so Maria if if I had never asked you before if you were you know if you're a c programmer I might end up making the Assumption like maybe let me just assume that you have never programmed before I might be totally wrong you might be an expert programmer but I would start and I would maybe maybe go a little bit too deep assuming that and you could correct me early on and then I would adjust my communication knowing that I have more context about your context so it's always about this alignment getting the context right right right this is interesting so basically you're getting into the shoes of another person and trying to understand what what their needs are what they care about right like if it is a manager also about some business outcomes yes how actually Your solution because this is something that I also noticed that sometimes programmers they can have this narrow um like narrow look not really taking in into account like the bigger perspective and the bigger picture why like why should I bother something I have my job here that's it it's already GNA a lot right but uh as I see yeah this miscommunication happens right because of this misalignment right that you um don't take into account like the bigger picture right and all this uh moments right like what are the needs and the business you know how it impacts and the value yeah yeah and I think there's I would say there's almost two parts to this right one is um can I communicate an idea effectively to you doesn't mean that um you might agree with it right there's like so there's this other part of like persuasion that I want to bring into this so if I were trying to explain a concept to you and then I I realize okay Maria might not know about this that's fine let me find a common ground and that way I can explain it to you and you can go say oh that Mak sense now now we've arrived at a common ground that's kind of what I was referring to in the beginning about understanding the context of the other person and this other part that you're mentioning is extremely critical in terms of being effective beyond that so now that we have an understanding of what's being discussed if I had a goal to persuade you right so let's use an example this is a pretty typical one in programming I'm a programmer I'm working in a code base and I'm acknowledging that there's a lot of technical present in the area of code and I go I don't like this I think we really need to prioritize working through this right so I could say Maria there's a lot of tech debt here and you might say well what what do you mean by that I could go explain to you what the tech that means but that doesn't mean that you're persuaded that we should go work on it so there's this extra layer to your point where let's think about the business value let's think about what the other person not only knows about because that's the the bare minimum to communicate in the first place but now I need to persuade you like why is this beneficial to go work on and when I say persuade it sounds kind of funny because the goal is not like I need to prove that I'm right to you right like the ultimate goal when we're working together is not to say hey look I'm right it's to say like we want to get to truth so if I can try to persuade you and say hey Maria I think that we need to do this that because as software Engineers we can't work effectively in this area of code you might say okay that makes sense but Nick we don't have any other features in that area of code for the next like two years or that's a legacy area of code we're going to be retiring it in the next month and then I might go oh like I didn't I didn't know that right so the fact is that I need to be able to explain to you in a way that you would want to Value it hey like we're going to be slow if you were my manager you might say oh we don't want the engineers to be slow right so I'm I'm appealing to something you care about and then you can maybe add some extra context that I didn't have and ultimately we come to like a truth not like a who's right or wrong right and I'm just curious if I'm only like beginning to understand like and kind of going outside of my scope and my responsibilities and kind of starting to see you know the bigger picture what can be my strategy so how can I get to know what the needs of another person what what the needs are right and maybe what kind of questions can I ask for example to another person some maybe open-ended questions or something what would you recommend yeah that's a that's a really good question but I think the the answer to your question is almost in the question itself it's like it's truly spending time with other stakeholders to understand what they care about so for example there's sometimes situations where you know a programmer and engineer might feel like uh a project manager or their engineering manager is micromanaging them like they might have that feeling like why are they always asking for status updates do they not trust me right they're micromanaging me but if they were to be genuine and say like you know have a just an open conversation like hey like what like what kind of information do you need for me because you know I seem to be getting asked for status updates a lot like is there another way that I can help make sure that you have this kind of information just having open conversations like that you might realize they're kind of the person in the middle and it's like I'm getting asked from some other stakeholders and it's like cool how can I work together with you to get you what you need so that you know I'm not feeling bothered every five minutes about a status update I can still make your life easier but it's really honestly just having conversations and trying to understand instead of just making assumptions so oh we're so good at making assumptions don't we I don't know aren't we because I don't know this is something such a huge moment when we just assume things yeah she's like micromanaging because she doesn't trust me and and just it just goes and goes and goes and of course it deteriorates maybe the whole relationship but the resentment yeah it's it it can be awful if you just leave it unchecked for sure yeah oh my gosh yeah I actually had uh such a moment in my career when I had um like clients with whom I have I worked and it was like back like long time ago I would say and because of different I would say like restrictions of the company for whom I have been work I I worked at that time um I couldn't really get into communication with them like I didn't have much I don't know capacity understanding or whatever so it was kind of and my fault as well in a way and I remember that there was this kind of disconnection so I tried to somehow understand them better but I couldn't and actually that situation it led to my burnout severe burnout eventually because of this you know resentment just accumulating and so on and so forth and then I just completely changed you know my approaches I went you know into coaching and psychology and you know like a lot of different domains and combined them together and I started to have conversations with my clients and asking them really directly first of all of course making um really them like making them comfortable creating safe environment that they would feel you know that they can actually say and encourage them to say something honestly and right now it really helps me also to navigate um different I don't know different situations or actually the learning process that it really becomes effective for the person because responding to their needs directly and not making an assumption or whatever it's yeah the assumptions can absolutely lead us astray and um it's funny like the like I said the answer was in your question right and I think a lot of us it's so easy to be like ah like if I have to go have a conversation with someone that's work like that could be uncomfortable that could be awkward and I just you know it's human I I understand CU I'm like I don't like having awkward difficult conversations but what's more Awkward or difficult like having that conversation sooner or going on for months being like why does it suck to work with this person why are we never on the same page like the choice is yours it's usually when you have a conversation like that it can be like relationship changing for your your working uh relationship right it's like it can absolutely turn things around and once you start the conversation you're like oh it's actually not even bad at all like yeah it brings so much Clarity and kind of releases the tension you know that would be you we sometimes might not even be aware of that you know tension or resentment you know and when we actually clarify it's like oh my God so much better and absolutely yeah and uh maybe the last question right we mentioned a little bit about the safe creating the safe space the safe environment because I think this is really like really important and I remember how I think uh I came across your profile because uh there was some discussion on I don't remember who really but there was some discussion and you mentioned that it's really really important to create you know the safe environment and it was like around that topic and it just like resonated with me immediately and then yeah I just kind of got to know about about you about your profile about what you're doing so I kind of yeah resonated with that a lot so what would you say about that and how do you create the safe environment also in your team yeah uh and thanks I think this is a it's a super important topic so um if we if we use the opposite right if you if you're working in an environment that's not does not feel safe and when we say safe here it's like cycle olical safety not like workplace hazards like there's sharp things everywhere so um psychological safety so this idea if you're in an environment where you don't have psychological safety you would feel like um people will make fun of you for saying things or having perspective that might not be what everyone else has so you don't want to speak up or you might feel that if I have to go you know if we're talking about software engineering in particular right I'm going to go land some code changes but you don't even want to push them up to production because if anything could possibly be wrong you know you're going to get in a lot of trouble maybe you're going to lose your job you're you're fearful right so we talk about psychological safety and safe environments it's about creating an environment where you are not afraid like that's I think the most basic way that I could put it so like why is that important well the reality is that we're human and we are going to make mistakes it's just like it's one of those things it's not like oh how do I prevent all the mistakes like we can we can work to minimize them but if you're saying like as soon as I make one mistake I have just failed you've set yourself up to fail like it's gonna happen you will make a mistake so when we talk about these safe environments for me it's really about making sure that people understand like I know other people in leadership and management positions know your peers know know it's okay to make a mistake we try as much as possible to put systems in place to mitigate mistakes to prevent mistakes course there's gaps in those systems because we've made mistakes like it's not perfect so we do as much as we can to minimize the impact of making mistakes and that's an ownership that everyone in the team or the organization should have we want to make sure that people inevitably will make a mist stake and we can say hey look no big deal like we can work around it when you have things like that the idea is that when you I'm going to use the word fail here so when you fail at doing something like this it's not an ultimate failure like you know a mistake is a mini failure and that's okay you learn from it you share information with other people uh that way you know say it's a gap in an automation system that should catch bugs like cool that's not your fault that there's a gap there that's everyone's kind of owned fault a shared kind of ownership there let's go make it better you'll help the next person so when you don't have this safe kind of environment to work in you have difficulty growing as an individual because you don't want to go outside of your comfort zone you'll be punished if you do right that feels that way you uh innovation's very stifled because you're like if this isn't just the norm then like again I'm going to be penalized for it it's just n overall bad so yeah not taking the risk and everything right because in Innovation it kind of it is based on taking the risks and doing some experiments of course in some reasonable ways right but but still right about that absolutely I also noticed one interesting thing when um my clients for example they uh kind of tend to I I feel that they're not really comfortable with making mistakes and they really worry about that a lot I start sharing my failures and just like laugh at them together and they kind of I see it kind of helps them to release this pressure oh okay if she makes mistakes you know with some you know like different experience right that for example I have right so it's like it's okay right and just like to see it as an opportunity and build on that and learn from that and actually have fun because I mean nobody's perfect so yeah that's very that makes a huge difference um and I know I I was told this by one of my early in career mentees yesterday she had mentioned that she was watching some videos on YouTube and it was helpful so maybe she'll see this but one of the questions in our conversation yesterday she said could you tell me about a time that you failed and I was like like it's such a good question and I fail like fail all the time like I always make mistakes but I think one of the best things we can do in a especially in like a leadership position even if it's informal leadership is demonstrating to other people like take ownership I you know I messed up at this I'm still here still working like it's not the end of the world here's what I've learned here's how I'm getting better but when you can demonstrate to other people like it's okay to make a mistake Mar to your point you're kind of saying like this feeling of like oh like other people do this too like yeah like we are literally all human people will make mistakes and the more that we can share that um again when it comes to creating like a safe environment that's in my opinion one of the most effective ways to let other people know that it is a safe environment share your fails yeah absolutely and I see that right now on LinkedIn when I'm like reading different people what they are sharing like more and more they share some failures and showing that they're just humans not like some Superstars but just like ordinary human who makes mistakes and it's so relatable and how they what they learn and some lessons and so on and like lots of Engagement there because people resonate with that because well I think yeah this is amazing because it releases pressure you know like unnecessary press abely it totally does and if I can very briefly the example that I gave her in our in our conversation yesterday this was before Microsoft I was managing a team and we were kind of leading a lot of efforts around testing practices and I had pushed up code that ended up breaking things and it's kind of like the spotlights even brighter on us because it's like hey aren't you guys the team that does all of this test automation like kind of you know seems like there's an issue if you guys can mess up and it was like yeah absolutely like so I did a presentation to the engineering organization and I was like yeah like I messed this up like do we have tests in place yep but what was my mistake I assume the tests had coverage on this I was overly confident in our testing coverage so does that mean that we should not test things absolutely not we should be testing things like that should be there and in fact all of our testing infrastructure made it such that we can go look at the Gap very easily and add the test in like less than a minute so yeah like I'm gonna fail that doesn't mean that everything went wrong but it was an opportunity where I could share with the engineering organization yeah I messed up like it's okay like there's a path forward amazing amazing because you also like saw the opportunity to share and I bet that some other people of course learned from this like oh because not everybody for example could also think about it it could be also like they would assume just like you for example right about that situation so yeah that's yeah that's amazing that's amazing all right I think uh yeah we're good here I will check right now the comments or maybe some questions um just a moment some recent ones okay all right yeah I think yeah that was the question from Aurora yeah yeah okay okay wonderful yeah so thank you so so much for sharing your perspective because I think it can be so um how to say like empowering I think that's the word to like to hear to for other people that you know like it's okay and just like you can take off the pressure of all this like accent or whatever just like not to worry about the wrong things right but really I would say concentrate on the effective communication right what is your goal what would you like to um achieve here how you can get there then make sure that you understand also your o audience you know and their needs and kind of concentrate on that more yeah and not on some other things that really don't really matter that much I would say your your time and energy is much better spent on trying to like again language aside figuring out what your target audience is like what gets them going what information they need that's the most effective way and your accents are awesome so don't get rid of them I love hearing them uh I wish I had a I feel like my accent is boring except when I say a boot people go oh you must be Canadian so that's the only thing I got going for me but I see yeah but I don't know like I love accents like for example pelop Cru this is the first thing that always comes up in my head I cannot imagine her without Spanish accent it would be not P aopa Cruz you know or schwarzeneger or you know all the personalities you know it just like it brings you know something really special about you I never tried to get r with my accent for example I tried of course to make sure that you know I'm like understood by other people I speak like clearly everything but not really the accent I love it and yeah I think this is something to be actually proud of absolutely absolutely awesome okay thank you so so much for your wisdom I would say you know and for all the experience you know so yeah thank you and everybody thank you so much for watching right now and to to those who will be watching uh the recording because you know different time zones and everything so sometimes it's much more comfortable for people to watch afterwards so thank you so much and if you have also any questions please uh feel free to drop them in the chat and we will definitely uh come back to them and address them and yeah of course so thank you so much thank you