Unlocking Empowerment through Clear Communication

Cristina Amigoni: It's that choice. The empowerment is to give enough resources and information as a leader and a parent to then allow for that choice to happen.

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

Both: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”                                                                       

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.”

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, it's just Cristina and I. We are here to talk about one of our favorite and a very common topic that's coming up for us a lot in our work these days. That is the idea of empowerment and the places that we tend to get it wrong. 

Cristina, welcome back to just us podcasting for a bit. We have good topic at hand. 

Cristina Amigoni: We do. Yes. I feel very empowered. Thank you. 

Alex Cullimore: Feel empowered to talk about this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Talk about this. We're empowering ourselves to talk about this. Now, everybody else, well, it's your choice. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. Empowerment, just like everything else in the world, works by just saying that you are empowered. If we just say it to ourselves, we're fine. It's like an injection. It's like the COVID vaccine. You just put some empowerment right in your arm. Two days later, after a brief fever, you're good to go. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes, yes. If only they were that easy. Yes. As you mentioned, empowerment is not just something you declare pretty much like anything else. But a little bit like trust is another one, integrity, accountability. Any of those big declaration of we're empowering you. We are trusting you. It's actually what happens on the receiving end, not what happens on the gift-giving end of empowerment. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Again, it's not a gift that I open up. I just got empowered, and it’s really not a card. 

Alex Cullimore: I've been feeling really down, but thank goodness you gave me this. 

Cristina Amigoni: I know. Yes. If I don't feel empowered, if I don't feel trusted, if I don't feel cared for, then whatever is happening in the gift, it's not for me. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. We dance around these words, and we often – then they sometimes end up getting overused in a business context, and so we just switch to a new word that makes a lot of the same ideas. Things like trust, integrity, honesty, high value, just high communication, empathy, et cetera, we can use these terms. All of them, they’re not wrong, but our application tends to be off, and then we end up forgetting the fact that this is a two-way street that you can't just have integrity as like, “Well, we put it on the wall on a poster. Integrity is our core value. Everybody's now integritized.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Integers. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's exactly how it works. You just – now, you're all integers. Now, you're all empaths. Now, you're all trustees, whatever it is. Empowerment's very much that way. You're all empowered nerds. I don't know. I'm going to come up with a better term for that by the end of this. You're all empowered. We say it like it's that easy, but it does have to be felt to be used. It has to be continually revisited and revamped to make sure it's in the right place. 

We hear things like – there's great quotes out there like Steve Jobs saying, “I don't hire smart people, so I can tell them what to do. I hire them so that they could tell us what to do.” That’s kind of how I walk and do when I feel like things like empowerment. You want to have people who are there for their skills, their brains, their whatever to give you the right information and to help you make the right choices. You want to empower them to make the right choices for themselves so that you all get towards collective results. 

I think people maybe walk off the wrong path the second they hear that. They're like, “Okay. Well, you're all empowered.” They'll try just the statement of everybody's empowered and then wonder why nothing has changed. The culture before was either not safe, so nobody's making a decision. Or it's so empowered, people are making the wrong decisions and have no idea where the central guide is. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Oh, yes. Actually, I'm glad that you said safe because that's the other one that gets thrown around like, “It's a safe culture.” I'm like, “You don't get to determine that.” Safety is something I feel, not something you tell me exists. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. This is very much one thing we've joked about. I think it was one of our earlier, very early podcast guests. I think it was Dave Needham, but he talked about he would go facilitate things. He'd go back and his wife would be like, “Well, how did it go?” He'd be like, “I can't tell you. That's for the students to decide. I can feel like it went great. But did the information come across as something that's usable? No, I don't get to decide that.” 

You don't get to decide that people are empowered. People have to feel empowered, and it has to be safe. Safety is definitely one of those, which we're safe. Everybody can trust everybody here. Well, if the actions don't back that up, I guarantee you they don't. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. For the empowerment piece, the two spectrums, the pendulum swings from two very extremes. What's interesting is that one of the struggles, the challenges of something like empowerment, trust, safety, all of them, it's not a one-and-done. This is not a medal. You're not crossing the line. You're not handing out certificates, and that’s it. Just because you've declared it once, it's all done. Just because it's felt once, it's all done. This is a daily practice. It's just like working out. It's just like eating healthy. It's just like sleeping. We don't get to sleep once and be like, “That's it. I'm done with sleep. I'm all good.” That's one of the pieces. 

On the pendulum of the extreme, one is empowerment means I come up with some vague or slash vague, some sort of words that are put together that make sense but without defining the next level down. I tell people you're now empowered to make that happen, and I abandon them, effectively abandon them from actually relating what that North Pole is, and how we're going to get there, and what's needed to get there, and what's expected of them in order for us to get there. 

I also ignore the resources that are needed because I'm like, “Well, you're empowered. Go figure it out on your own,” which if anybody's a business owner, well, yes, it is. It's up to us to figure out. Nobody's actually going to tell us what to do with some guidelines. We don't create our own accounting rules. We actually have to follow somebody else's rules. 

Alex Cullimore: Unfortunately. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. There are still guidelines, even as business owners. We don't have a blank page on everything. We're not empowered on everything, even there. We're empowered a lot, but we're not empowered for everything. Then the other pendulum is you're empowered, but then tell me exactly what you're doing every single time, and don't do it that way. Do it this way. If you do it in a way that is different from what I had in mind, then you're doing it wrong, so I'm going to give it to somebody else. Neither of those things are empowerment. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a really good scale of it. You've got the either we're going to empower you so much that we're not going to give you any information. Just good luck out there. Best of luck to you. We haven't defined anything for you, so I hope it goes well. You're empowered to make all the decisions you need to. Then, usually, that ends up swinging back to the other end of the pendulum when either people aren't making any decisions because they're not totally clear where to go. 

Or they've made all kinds of disparate decisions, and now suddenly you feel like you have to go back to that more other end of the spectrum you're describing, which is almost that micromanagement of, “Hey, that's not we intended this. We really need you to do this.” Then everybody's like, “Well, we didn't get any guidance.” It’s understandable kind of on both ends of the spectrum why people then feel disenfranchised and start to separate. 

Leaders or executives might start to feel like they have to rule more with really strict directions because nobody's going to get it done otherwise, whereas the leaders down the chain will feel like they can't make any decisions, and they're going to just stop trying. Then you end up not really growing those people as leaders or letting them do those. You start to lose that balance. 

I think there's the journey of empowerment, too, of like are you showing that you can make good decisions, and it can be trusted to do your best. Even though we're all working with an unpredictable future, are you going to take accountability when it doesn't go right? What are you going to do with that? That's the growth as an individual person, along your own journey of empowerment. It also then requires the leaders to start to let go of those reins a little more and be like, “Okay. No, I have to let this person take this. I have to let them go more.” 

I imagine, though, I am – of the two of us, you're the parent here. I imagine this is very much like parenting of just slowly they grow. You have to – they now can take on more responsibilities. It's not like they're all just static. Ideally, they are continually changing and growing their ability to be responsible, and you have to be willing to let that go as that happens. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, it very much is. It is very hard. It's hard as leaders, especially leaders, when we come from we were the contributor, we used to do this, and now we're letting go. Somebody else needs to do this task. That's really hard. For parenting, it's different because it's not that we used to do it. I mean, yes, we did, but it's a different mindset. I've experienced it this week actually with my 13-year-old. It's fun to have a teenager, by the way. That's a whole new part. 

Alex Cullimore: Everybody says that. It’s a – 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It’s so much fun to have a teenager.

Alex Cullimore: I hear 10 out of 10 one of the best parts. 

Cristina Amigoni: One of my favorite is when every response to any question is a grunt. It is so much fun. As a parent, you see when they're struggling. You know exactly why they struggled because you've done it yourself. You've gone through that yourself to that point, through that journey yourself, and so you want to prevent that, and you can't. 

One of the examples from this week was my son with his math homework, which he's one of those people where he's really good at math, but he absolutely despises it, which is worse than despising and being bad because then he can't get out of having to do the harder math. He can't get out of having to do it faster. He can’t get out of having to learn more because he actually excels at not doing it but the results or the testing enough. But it is the one thing that he absolutely despises. 

It’s yesterday. It was yesterday or the day before. I think it was the day before, where he's complaining that he has homework, blah, blah, blah. This whole big drama that I'm not aware of comes up which is like, “Oh, I had 27 problems to do overnight, which doesn't sound right, and each problem has four parts, so do the math. It's over really 100 problems that you're trying to solve, and I can't believe that this is what the teacher is doing.” 

It becomes this whole thing now. There’s, “I'm looking for allies to back me up on this is not right,” because discerning is what I do. When I smell that something is wrong, I don't quite go down the – I'm not going to become your ally until I actually understand the situation and get all the data. Once I get the data, then if I need to become your ally and do something about it, I will. But, first, I need the data. 

Then I start asking questions like, “Wait. When was this assigned, yesterday?” He was like, “Well, no. On Friday.” I’m like, “Okay. So you had 27 problems to do over the weekend because they were due Monday, and you only did some of them because then it was too much, and you couldn't do it, and, oh, my God, you've been doing homework for an hour, and you should stop.” Whatever happened that I wasn't present, too. 

“Well, yes.” I'm like, “Hmm, okay. So what are you doing today?” Like, “Well, I'm doing today's homework and yesterday's.” I'm like, “Okay. What was yesterday's homework? What’s today's?” Like, “Well, I don't know.” I'm like, “Well, that's a problem.” 

Alex Cullimore: Head start. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We’re going down really well on this path of what's the reality versus what's the dramatized story that I'm getting. Anyway, to go back to the empowerment piece, when all said and done, he didn't have two days. He had four. He decided not to start four days early or to actually do the homework and not only. But when all this drama comes out, he was on problem 26 of 27, which the last 10 were one quick multiple-choice answer. 

Reality was slightly different from what was said, but that was one of those empowerment moment where my instinct was, well, if you had started your homework when it was assigned, not four days later, maybe you wouldn't be here. That's where as a parent, I struggle with not telling them what I would have done, which is don't start an hour before you go to bed on the last day or four to do all your homework. What are you going to get? This is what you're going to get. You're going to get drama. You're going to get stressed. You're going to be upset. You're going to make the whole household upset. I'm like, “How is this news? You waited on something that you didn't have to wait.” 

That's where – and I have to – after I say it and I get the grunt back, that's when I realize like, “Oh, wait. He actually has to go through this on his own. He has to learn what the pain is on his own. I can't tell him avoid the pain this way. I can't somehow, yes, give that.” The empowerment is to go and watch him fall and smash his face and suffer and not say, “I told you so.” 

Alex Cullimore: It’s the hardest part of later-stage parenting and most of leadership is the not saying I told you so portions. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a really good illustration of that dynamic of learning to let go and having that empowerment. Empowering in that gathering the research of what am I empowering on. Do they have what they need to have? One thing we'll see often in companies is people being like, “Well, I'm just not sure where the line is. Where my role ends and where somebody else's role begins. Or how much I can say or do.” 

Then if you listen to that at face value, then it does generate all of the standard questions of like do you feel empowered here or this? People don't tend to answer those honestly not because they're trying to hide them so much as – I think it's a lack of understanding of what is possible, as well as how much they can push back. Since there's this continual discomfort of pushing back on people who have your job in their hands and can let you go wherever, it ends up feeding that cycle. 

Even when people have good intentions, it's easy to lose that track and not do the research and find the data of like, okay, when you say you don't feel empowered, what does that really mean? What behaviors might I be exuding that will contribute to that? Okay, at what point is this a lesson that you just have to learn? At what point is this something that I should guide? If it is a lesson they have to learn, then it's the next step of like how do I become patient enough to let that happen to help pick them up when they have fallen and smash their face and just say, “Yep, okay. What are we going to learn here,” and help raise that awareness. Hopefully, that's a productive conversation, although not unlike teenagers. It's likely to be met with some grunting. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. The grunting will probably be the same. But it is true because that's the tendency. It's like, “Oh. Now, that I've seen how you've handled this, I could come in and micromanage your homework.” Actually maybe not let go as much as I have been, which is maybe I should stay informed with what are you supposed to do every night, and are you getting it done. 

But then I veer away from that. That’s when my – Like, “Well, no.” I could do that. It's going to make our relationship harder. Is he going to feel empowered? I mean, yes. He probably – that empowering in math is probably not where he goes. But is he going to learn what he needs to learn? Is he going to be empowered to learn what he needs to learn? He's probably not because then he's going to be expecting the micromanaging for any type of homework all the time. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Then transfer that into the next stages of life which is like, “Oh, what am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to do here,” instead of developing the critical thinking skills of like, “Okay. Well, how do I make a decision about how I'm going to use my time and understand that just whatever consequences come from that, I can predict somewhat and do something with.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I can choose. I'm now a choice as I am choosing to procrastinate on this, knowing that it will be painful when I finally get to it. Or I can choose to procrastinate on some things because they're not quite as painful, and there's not bigger consequences. Or I can choose, but it's that choice. The empowerment is to give enough resources and information as a leader and a parent to then allow for that choice to happen and to be there. 

Part of the, “Hey, I'm struggling,” is like, “Okay. Now, it's time for me to jump in and not just say, ‘You're empowered. Figure it out on your own.’”

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I just like this analogy. That means keeping the long-term and short-term goals top of mind. It's very easy in the workplace, especially if we’re going to be moving between workplaces and people going to – they're going to feel that things are out of their control at times. At times, it will be out of their control. There will be decisions that they won't have a choice, and it can be very easy to fall into just firefighting mode of like, “Okay, I don't know what's going to go on with the bigger picture. I don't know where we're going to go long term. But right now, I can do that.” 

The parenting analogy that might be, okay, I'm going to make sure that all the homework assignments are done. But if that might lose track of the long-term vision of I'm working to raise somebody who has the ability to make these decisions for themselves in the long term. This is part of the process is learning that. What better place than middle School when there's very low consequences to start to figure that out and start to learn that you're going to have to take some responsibility on your own. Yes, you will suffer some consequences when stuff happens, and that's part of life. We're going to just have some stress. 

It's hard to do that in the workplace, and it's hard to do that in general because that's experiencing hardship. It’s kind of forcing us to do that or forcing us to watch people as leaders go through that hardship that we would sometimes just really rather they not have to experience. That really is painful to watch. We have to have that stepping back and seeing both that longer term goal and the shorter term goals. 

Yes, we do have to put out these fires. But if I put out all these fires, I'll be exhausted. Or they won't ever learn how to fight fires. Or at some point, then we have a different problem on our hands, so which problem are we really solving? When do we have the time to give the empowerment and do the growing of the person? When do we have the, “Okay. I'm sorry. This just has to happen right now. You're just going to have to listen to me on this one and be willing to let that go.”?

That's a big test of trust in the relationship of whether we can trust that the person is stepping in at the right time, even if it rankles us, and that they are stepping back when it no longer is an emergency. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. The piece is that, well, it's probably easier for most of us to go into the micromanage, the pendulum, and talk like, “I'll do it for you, or I'll figure all things out. I'll go fight the fires for you, or I'll figure out how to be there and do it every single time, every step of the way,” especially when we go into leadership positions, and we're used to being the ones that used to do it. 

It’s much easier to let go and see something done differently and accept that just because it's done differently doesn't mean it's wrong. If it's wrong, if the consequences are not that high, then let it be. Those are the pieces of letting go. How do we go from, “I'm doing everything for you and with you, and I'm going to be there micromanaging you,” to, “I am not completely letting go, but I give you enough so that you can actually feel empowered, so you actually are empowered.”? 

That's the piece that it's nebulous because there's a lot of like, “Well, I told you to get – to just go hike a 14er. Why aren't you on top of a mountain?” But you didn't tell them where the mountain was, and you didn't make sure that they had the equipment. They were not told by when they needed to be on top of the mountain. You didn't consider the environment and the fact that they are now trying to build a boat on the beach. Which one are they supposed to be doing?

That's the piece where the empowerment needs to come with clarity. It's not an excuse for lack of clarity. It's not an excuse to say, “This is – Alex, go write a book.” Okay. What am I writing a book about? What's the end result? What are we expecting? What are we doing it for? Why are we writing a book? Do we have a deadline? What do we expect to be happening? What's the experience? It's not that simple. Then complain. I'm like, “Why hasn’t he written this book? I told them to go write a book. I told him he's empowered to go write it.” 

Alex Cullimore: I didn't get my empowerment vitamins this morning. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Where's the book? But those are the pieces that we have to understand where that balance is. The balance is do we have clarity. Have we clearly understood what the outcome is, what it looks like? Let's teleport ourselves to the future state when this book is written and existing. Who's reading it? What is it about? What does it provide? What's the main topic? What's the format? All those things seem like they're details, but they're details that are needed if Alex needs to go write this stupid book on his own. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's a great way of describing it. I think that clarity, people get confused. Leaders can easily start to get confused on the level of clarity they have to provide because clarity sometimes, it'll jump into like, “Oh, so I have to provide every step-by-step instruction?” Like, “No, you're not going to have time to do that.” If you did do that, you won't be wrong in thinking to yourself, “Well, I probably should have just done this myself.” That's probably not going to help much. 

The higher and higher level you get, that clarity becomes really finding that North Pole, not only climbing a 14er. You're climbing that 14er. That's exactly 14 miles to the northwest that is – whatever the details are and that – here's the vision. Here's why it's important that we get there. Here are some things that can then help with – here are some things to consider. We know that there's a patch of boulders there. Do you guys have the equipment for that? We know there's three rivers to cross, so make sure you're keeping track or have dry protection gear, whatever it is. 

Those are the things that you can provide clarity on and that you can just continually check in on without being like, “Here's the exact path, and follow this GPS step by step. Here's exactly what latitude and longitude you'll be at every three seconds.” You don't have to waste your time doing that. You do have to figure out how much clarity there is. You do have to continually be checking in because clarity is one of those communication pieces where you can say what you think is clear. But until they understand it, it's not done, and that's fine. 

You might be perfectly clear on that, and you might get so tired of saying it. In fact, almost assuredly, you're going to be tired of saying it because you're going to have to say it so many times. That's still important, and that doesn't mean to change the message. You might have to change how you're delivering it, change it for the audiences. But unless you change the actual why and you change that North Pole or you slowly – people realize like, “Wait, I think you were describing that 14er. But now, it looks like we're looking at this 14er.” Then they're going to start to lose faith in the communications. 

You have to be clear on your vision. You have to be stuck to it. When it feels like it needs to change, you have to then communicate that change like, “Hey, we were wrong. We thought it was that 14er that we should climb. It's actually this one. Here's why we think that's important. We know it's going to be a transition, so we're going to have to go down that mountain that we started climbing and up that other one.” 

Acknowledging those things then helps guide that, so then people get tied to, “Okay. So I've now finally set the vision. People are finally on it. Now, I'm realizing it's the wrong one. What do I do?” Well, you just have to make the transition. It has all the same hallmarks. You can still provide that clarity, and still provide that empathy, and still help provide the tools, and make sure that people are continually aligned. I'm not saying that's easy. I'm not saying that's not occasionally tedious. But that is absolutely what's necessary, so you can know what level of empowerment you need to go to. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Those are all excellent points, all of those things; clarity over and over and over, and also the clarity and the validation. Just because it's clear in my head doesn't mean it's clear on the people that I'm communicating it to. Then repeat and also validate. Repeat and validate, and then change your mind. Let's all change our vision. If it turns out that that's not where we were supposed to go, that doesn't give us what we wanted. 

Alex Cullimore: I've been learning to draw lately, and it's been a really fun just thing to do. But I cannot tell you the massive difference between the image in my head of what I'm about to draw versus what ends up on the paper. The clarity there is just not – my ability to deliver that is, hopefully, going to get better over time. That being said, that's where communication goes. It can be crystal clear in our head why we want to do this. 

Usually, especially in giant companies, you'll have a leadership team that will have been defining this vision for enough months that it all feels very clear to them and the communications they've started to generate, hopefully, before they actually start to give them. They feel clear. They feel aligned to the message. That's great. You do have to give people time to cognitively catch up to that and that clarity there. 

Even if they felt empowered from other changes, you still have to do this the next time, and that's where we get back into that idea that this is a practice. This is something that you're going to have to do day in and day out. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. Not only but whatever you think you have clear in your mind. If you actually can't explain it, it's not clear in your mind either. Something that's crystal clear in your mind, you can provide enough details and examples to actually paint the picture. If you can't paint that picture of what it looks like when it's happening in the future, it's not clear in your mind, so don't expect it to be clear for anybody else. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Please, please, please. Do not just throw it over the fence and say like, “You guys figure that out.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly, unless they're the business owners. 

Alex Cullimore: I’m drawing a big shape that has four legs. You tell me what it is. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Well, the one last piece on that is that the clarity exists. Hopefully, you should do some work to make sure it's clear in your head. The danger zone that easily we could fall into and we have to continually check in on is that once that message is starting to disperse, even it's between a team of two to three people or six to seven people, now they are all starting to get a crystallized image of the future that may not be the same. 

The continual check-in of actually aligning those, you can be as clear as you want. If the person sitting next to you who are both marching on what they think is the same thing, but it's actually not the same thing, then you fall into other empowerment challenges where like, “Well, I told my people to go work on this.” They might do it, and then they end up in conflict with the other vision that's now a competing vision. Now, people are going to start to feel the idea of loss, so that continual alignment back to making sure it's clear in my head, and that's clearly what's also clear in your head is –

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That’s a great one because if you're expecting all 10 people, 20 to climb the same mountain, and you have a checkpoint, and one shows up, and the other nine are somewhere else, that's not the time to say, “Well, they'll figure it out.” 

Alex Cullimore: We’ll just keep marching forward. 

Cristina Amigoni: Right, into nine different directions. You may want to pause and slow things down, until you go figure out where the other nine went. Even if you have GPS trackers and you know where they went, expecting them to turn around and realize they're going the wrong direction on their own, not enough. Telling them, calling them on the phone, and tell them, “You're going the wrong direction.” When they ask which way to go and they're like, “Well, you're empowered. You go figure it out,” not enough, so clarity. 

Alex Cullimore: I love the mix of metaphors here. 

Cristina Amigoni: Clarity and validation of that clarity. Are they repeating back what you have in your head?

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. I think what we – and this was what I kind of thought about going into this and I'm glad that – I was thinking for a little while there. We've branched into a different topic that is clarity. But clarity is the key component to striking the right balance of empowerment. I mean, you know empowerment. You have to provide every inch of clarity. You're going to wear yourself out, and your people are going to hate. 

Absolute empowerment, when you've given them no vision of what to do or where to go, that's a big giant blank page, and then expecting everybody to draw the same Picasso at the end of it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Yes. Yes. Empowerment without clarity, it's anarchy. It's not empowerment, so then expect anarchy. When there are 10 people around 10 different mountains, then call it success because that's the clarity they got. 

Alex Cullimore: Empowerment, just to take the step that you've laid out is dictatorship, so find your balance. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. 

Alex Cullimore: That balance is clarity. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. All right. Hope this was clear. 

Alex Cullimore: We'll find out. 

Cristina Amigoni: We'll find out. 

Alex Cullimore: Thanks, everybody, for listening. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. 

[OUTRO]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always uncover the human.

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