Cracking the Communication Code, Cultural Nuances, and How to Truly Influence People w/ Erik Berglund (Part 2) - Ep. 25

Welcome back to another powerhouse session with the incredible Erik Berglund! In PART ONE, we laid the groundwork for understanding our internal decision-making frameworks. In PART TWO, Erik shifts from the "what" to the "how," giving us the tactical playbook for authentically influencing others. How do you uncover someone's preferred communication style when they don't even know it themselves? What's the critical difference between using scarcity as a cheap tactic versus inspiring through abundance? How can a single word or a subtle shift in tone completely change your message across different cultures?

⏮️ Catch Up on Previous Parts

💡 Unlocking the Playbook

The Simplest Hack: Just Ask: To understand how to best communicate with someone, the most effective method is the most direct: ask them. Erik explains that most people have never articulated their communication preferences, but the sheer act of asking builds immediate trust and connection. Even if they don't have a clear answer, your curiosity shows you care about them as a human, making them far more receptive to your influence.

Tune In to WII.FM: Everyone is naturally tuned into their favorite radio station: "What's In It For Me?" To truly influence someone—whether in sales, leadership, or a personal debate—you must first invest the effort to understand what they value and what they're trying to accomplish. Pitching your solution without understanding their world first feels transactional and will almost always fail because you haven't answered why they should care.

Beyond Words to Culture and Tonality: Communication is so much more than the words you choose. Erik demonstrates how tonality, pace, and body language can completely alter a message's meaning. These signals are culturally specific; what signifies respect in one culture (like averting eye contact) can be interpreted as disrespect in another. True influence requires being aware of these nuances and adapting your approach to bridge the gap.

🤫 PART TWO's Playbook Secret (The official No Trade Secret drops in PART THREE, but here is the hidden secret of PART TWO!)

The core answer is to just try. Be aware of the gap that might exist between your preferred communication style and theirs. Your awareness alone and your effort to bridge that gap will bring you closer to connection and influence than if you had spent no time trying at all. It isn't about getting it perfectly right; it's about the genuine effort to understand the person across from you.

🗣️ Words to Build On

"[It] is never going to go out of style to validate the human being across from you, to convey empathy to them, and to seek to understand what's going on in their world just because you're curious and interested." – Erik Berglund

"The best indicator of how somebody is going to be influenced is how they've previously been influenced." – Erik Berglund

"Just your awareness alone, your effort to bridge the gap, is going to bring you closer than if you had spent no time trying." – Erik Berglund

👤 About Erik

Erik is the founder of the Language of Leadership and Loominary, and the host of the 'I have some questions' podcast. His work focuses on changing what people say and how they say it in order to be influential. His companies create skill simulation systems that allow people to practice the most difficult conversations before they occur in real life. He lives in Bend, Oregon with his daughters (10 and 7) and his wife of 13 years. 

🔗 Links & Resources

• Connect with Erik on LinkedIn
• Check out the I Have Some Questions Podcast
• Visit the Loominary website

🎧 Make sure to tune in to PART THREE to hear Erik Berglund’s ultimate "No Trade Secret" and keep this momentum going

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Probably like I the I think they're I th and I think to your point too it's it's not um it's not completely one bucket one or the other, but I think it's probably comes in you know it's probab you know like a main bucket and then some sub things that are important into the total equation uh to get that complete recipe of the perfect way of communicating. Um but I think a big one is gonna be um is gonna really ride on the logic behind it and being rooted, especially if it's something um you know, it's which is the the funny thing about that is that i I also believe in and always do uh trust my gut on things. Um so that's where this kind of is a little bit contradicting. Um but i i I guess the to the point of an argument, if you were trying to make an argument to me, you you have no r like you have no direct influence on w what my gut tells me. Um but I'm going to definitely uh you know, if it was an example uh on um where you were trying to convince me to I don't know, uh become a client of yours, for example. Uh you know, let's use an example that uh you know is kind of a real life thing. Um then I'm going to lean on the logical reasoning behind uh why this why doing why making that decision is gonna benefit me or my company or uh result in some kind of outcome that is beneficial uh for me. Um and you know, it's it and then I think from there is where my gut um my gut will play into it in the analysis of how I feel during our conversation. And I I guess a maybe a part of what plays into that is how you do communicate what you know communicate the things that I'm trying to understand from a logical perspective to me. Um because like I'm I'm um I would say I'm I'm not this stereotypical number nerd, finance analytical type person. Like I obviously have that side to me, but um I definitely like enjoy and and love and have a huge passion for the like for just the human side of people and the um you know the things on the inside, and you know, I'm someone who feels big feelings and has uh and definitely um places a lot of weight and importance on on a person's energy, but I think logic does come into that, but I guess there's another bucket that probably comes into it is the um is the way that you you're able to connect with me on a human level, um, because the one thing that would even if you had all of the logic in the world to make a case for whatever you're convincing me for, if it feels like it's just a transactional relationship, then I'm not gonna do it, even if all the logic's there, because I like to do things with people on and I like to connect deeper with people uh on like a human level and not have those transactional level relationships, uh, if that makes sense. So I think those are probably the two buckets, and I don't know if that's kind of the you know if that is kind of almost encompassing everything, and then the buckets are kind of one you know fall in one of those two camps or not, but that's kind of where I it's it's really gonna be on logic and uh the ability to um to connect on like a real human level.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah. So has anybody ever asked you that question before? Or is that the first time first time? So this is an important thing to recognize. My first answer to your question, how do you determine the way somebody would prefer to be communicated with? Well, you can ask them. And you also have to recognize that it's not like somebody is sitting on the other side going, Man, I really hope that this guy asks me my preferred way to communicate because I have such a well-prepared answer because I've answered this question so many times. No, they haven't. Almost nobody's ever answered that question out loud before. Even if you've thought about it, ruminated about it, whatever, you've probably never had to articulate out loud the way in which you would prefer somebody communicates with you. So my first answer is ask somebody because you never know. They might actually have an idea of it. The second observation in that is when they don't know, that's okay. The fact that you asked is already probably going to move you closer to being able to communicate more effectively with that person because connection and trust are two things that you started to get to at the end. And almost all of us base our willingness to receive influence from somebody else based on our perception of connection and trust.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Great book.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

It is never going to go out of style to validate the human being across from you, to convey empathy to them and to seek to understand what's going on in their world just because you're curious and interested. And if you can help them along the way in their world because you understand them better, even better. And if you can monetize that by sales, fantastic. But the sheer act of trying to connect with that person, trying to understand what's going on in their world, just asking the extra question and not in a transactional way of hey, what was Father's Day like for you? Or how's your wife doing? What's going on in your kids' lives? You know, those aren't questions that now, if somebody asks that and you give them an answer and then they jump immediately into a sales pitch, well, that was a surface level delivery of the concept. But if they ask one or two follow-up questions, they actually care about me as a human more, I'm gonna be more susceptible to influence. So my first answer, ask. My second answer, when they don't know, that's cool. Continue the conversation. Like just seek to understand the human being across from you in a way that very few people have tried to do, and you will probably earn a tremendous amount of trust, learn amount enough to make your argument better, whatever your argument is. And by the way, when I use that word argument, I don't mean you're arguing. I think most people understand that. You're you're in a conversation where your job is to influence them. You're gonna convey something to them they may not have done otherwise. You can make a stronger case if you know a little bit more about the person across from you. Now, for me, what I know, I know I probably would describe, I think your buckets uh way of describing it, Jerome, is pretty spot on, right? I don't think there's any one way in which it always works for everybody. There's probably a dominant bucket or a couple, and then there's smaller buckets, but there's also buckets that will never work. If somebody doesn't know what matters to me, I have a very hard time buying from them. If they haven't done the baseline effort of understanding what I'm trying to accomplish, then it's gonna be very difficult for them to position their product in a way that makes me want it. Even if I do want it. The sheer lack of them trying to understand where I'm going and inserting their position as a their service or widget as a thing that's gonna get me there. I don't believe you. You don't know where I'm going. And that's how I feel. You know, we started this conversation offline talking about cold email. Both of us, by the way, for the audience's sake, were highly influenced by a guy named Brian LaFormento. He helped us both with our podcasts. We've been on an accelerator with him. That's how Jerome and I first met. And both of us responded to a cold email from this guy. And that's how we fell into this whole world together. And neither of us really responded to many cold emails. So I don't even remember what Brian's was, but whatever it was, both of us had to feel a connection like this person got where we were going, or we never would have opened the thing in the first place. But isn't that what's wrong with most cold email or most cold LinkedIn outreach? Is it feels like a person who's making a massive set of assumptions about what you care about and trying to say their thing can help you get there? And your natural reaction is like, F do you know about me, dude? Why would I possibly read this? You're so far off base that I can't even waste my time opening your email. I'm just gonna mark it as red.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah, I mean, Brian, uh I mean, he it's funny, we uh we talked about uh a cold email uh yesterday's uh another person's cold email and uh he read it and he said he's like dude, this is terrible. This like like this doesn't speak to this doesn't speak to the other person. This is all about what the sender is selling. And it's like um and it's like why sh you know and I guess you know, like that's uh a lot of people say it's like why you know why should I care, you know, about what your product or service does and the features if you yeah, like to your point, if you're if you're not uh also understanding um the person on the other side and why why should they care?

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah. My old coach, uh I was very fortunate early in my career to have coach a guy named Keith Rosen as as my coach that I worked with for about two years. Keith was written two best-selling books. Um one is called uh Oh man, why can't I it's sales champions? Something about it's sitting over there. I'll come back to it. His second book is called Sales Leadership, uh Building Sales Champions. What is Keith's name? I it it doesn't really matter to the conversation, but it bothers me that I can't remember. Coaching salespeople into sales champions. There it is. Anyway, I read this book, it blew my mind. I chased Keith down, asked him to be my coach, and that literally was at the origin of my my coaching career taking off and developing a lot of the skills that I monetize now. But um Keith shared with me this uh this perspective, what's in it for me? And he called it uh it's our favorite radio station, WII.fm. We're tuned in to that station naturally. It's not selfishness, it's not nefariousness, it's not it's not um anything like that, it's not narcissism, it's just how we all work. It's resource management. We have to prioritize the things that are gonna do more good for me than other things. And if you don't know what's good for me, if you haven't spent any time or effort trying to identify what's good for me, not your assumption about what's good for me, more money, more whatever, me, I'm pretty uninterested in hearing whatever your pitch or perspective or argument might be. Um and a lot of this we're we're putting in the frame of like being sold on something or buying something from somebody. But this is true if you enter into a political debate with somebody. You know, if you're talking about politics with somebody where you're genuinely at the table just having a conversation, but you're trying to convey your position around any hot topic, abortion, the Iran war, left, right, school, whatever it is, you're gonna have a pretty hard time influencing that person if you don't know what they care about. If you don't know what values they prioritize first, what's in it for them? You have to be willing to come back to that. So ask them is answer number one. When they don't know the answer to the question, if they do know the answer and they tell you, great, structure your arguments in a way that aligns with their ability to identify what's gonna be influential to them. If they don't, it's okay. Ride the journey with them. Ask them a few follow-up questions. How have they bought things in the past? You know, we think of this in the sales vein as qualification. Hey, when your company makes a big decision like this, what's the process usually look like? You know, before you decide who you're gonna partner with to buy your home next home, what is what are some of the characteristics of the previous realtors you've enjoyed working with? You know, so the best indicator of how somebody's gonna be influenced is how they've previously been influenced. You know, could you tell me about a time where you had to change your mind about a political topic? How'd you get there? You might not have the arena to ask the person that way. You might not have a podcast where it's your job to ask people these questions, but in a conversation, you can find a way to uncovering how they have made decisions or changed their mind or thought of things in the past. That's probably gonna be a helpful piece of information if you want to get that person to change their mind again. And somewhere in there is that recipe of those buckets that you're talking about. The other thing that I know doesn't work for me is scarcity. You mentioned this earlier. There are people who react to the world through the lens of scarcity and minimizing bad results. If somebody leans on that, if somebody tries to paint a horror picture of how poorly something's gonna go, I won't, I am immediately turned off in such a way that the call's probably over. I do not respond to fear or stress or fear or scarcity. It literally makes me hostile. And I get this like chip on my shoulder, F you buddy, you're telling me it can't be done. Now I want it even more. And so a person could use that as uh an effective tactic against me. But if somebody were to use those types of things, it wouldn't work for me. So the person sitting across from you has a preferred method of communication, one that's going to be more effective than others, and they have some that you should very much not do. And if you do those, you should anticipate they will react very poorly, whatever poorly means in context. And uh being aware of both of those things would would make it a lot easier for you to be influential in our lives.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah, no, and on uh on the topic of scarcity as well, I feel like that's the primary um mode of how people are you know influence people on on social media, like how much you know clickbaity fear-mongering type stuff is out there, especially you know, in a world that we're both very interested in deep inside of uh with AI. Like I I've talked about this before where I feel like people are in either the abundance, look at all the opportunities, look how amazing, uh look how much look at the possibilities of what we can do now uh with this technology uh versus the a camp of people that I think I think an overwhelming majority of people sit inside of uh of this scarcity of uh because there's th all this stuff out there saying they're gonna it's gonna replace them, they're gonna lose their jobs and um and it's gonna do this and that and it's gonna turn into a uh movie terminator and we're all gonna die and we're all gonna be dead soon. Like, and I'm like I can't read that stuff because I'm like, well, first of all, if we're all gonna be dead, then let's do as much cool stuff and as much living as we can right now. Um and why would you possibly want to spend the if if we are all gonna die in ten years, why would you want to spend the next ten years uh in a scarce place of scarcity and fear? Um but then also it's like I just think it's yeah, it's uh you know cup half full, cup half empty kind of approach. And uh unfortunately social media I see is like a is a place where it at least appears to be that uh you know the scarcity and fear angle is is the overwhelmingly effective way to deploy influence on people.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Um I'll add one more thing if I can to you know again, my preferred methodology for figuring out how somebody prefers to be communicated with is to ask them and engage in a conversation with them. Um that shouldn't surprise anybody. My selection bias is use more words, talk to people, be curious. Um that's not everybody's perspective, that's not everybody's skill set. So a different way to think through it is you can make some probabilistic assumptions that'll steer you in at least the more likely direction. You know, if I had to listen, if I just listened to Jerome's podcast, you'll you'll hear Jerome, you're very selective with your words. You're intentional about the specific specificity of certain words that you're trying to use. And you'll you'll take a moment to find the right word because you want to communicate the right concept. It makes me believe that accuracy is probably pretty important to you, which is probably a pretty helpful thing for a person in the uh financial influence industry to possess, right? You don't want somebody who's flippantly comfortable using the wrong word to describe things to be the person who's recommending your financial strategy based on whatever goals that you have. So I can make some assumptions that a person who is a CFO or who runs a business in that space, who's selective about their word choices, might value a certain set of things more so than somebody who is a social media influencer around travel. I don't know much about what it would be to be a social media influencer around travel, but I suspect vibes and win others over with your energy and actually intentionally using the wrong bombastic words on purpose to make it so exciting is probably helpful in their business. And I could make those assumptions, and at an individual level I might be wrong, but at a probabilistic level, I'm most likely steering into a higher likelihood of being accurate than I am assuming the opposite. If I'm assuming I'm going to win over the travel influencer with cold logic, rationale, and numbers, that doesn't mean I that it might not be true for a specific travel influencer, but it probably is more so the case that I'm going to need to connect to the vibes and energy level and be a little bit more flippant with my language on purpose to connect with that person. But I should not steer that way. I'm unlikely to win over the engineer or the accountant using the uh approach I might use with the travel person. So some of those assumptions are fair. They're reasonable. You can take culture, you can take um career path, you can take job function, um, education. All those things are things you can, you know, digital signals you could go sleuth out about a person to have a better sense of what might work. But the core answer to all three of these approaches is just try. Be aware of the gap that might exist between your preferred communication style and theirs. And just your awareness alone, your effort to bridge the gap is going to bring you closer than if you had spent no time trying. So it isn't even important necessarily that you get it right. It's just that you tried to get it a little bit more right than you would have if you had just showed up and and not really thought about it at all.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Interesting. Yeah. No, I I yeah, I think I, you know, I I I definitely agree. Um agree with that. And then also you you I think you've made me aware of uh the way I I I just how careful I uh I am to select words that I didn't really realize. Um and I I I think I also when I don't have the exact word um you just made me aware of something that I I uh I precondition the before I say the word by saying this is not exactly the word uh to describe it. So that's because I I I th and I don't know where that comes from, but I think it's probably in just uh the way I I think some words can be misinterpreted uh and mean multiple things or just maybe mean something different to me. Like uh and maybe that's part of it is a culture difference, right? So like I'm born and raised in New Zealand, and so when I came over uh to the states, one thing that I noticed that I thought was people were using negatively uh in a way in conversations was it which it is something in New Zealand, because someone says like you're like, oh like unhappy, like tension, is like when you I say if I asked you to do something and you said sure that seemed like I had to learn that that was like that doesn't mean uh how I interpret it was begrudgingly yes. Like, okay, but fuck off is how I heard it when I first come over here. Every time someone said sure, and I'm like oh, like you don't have to, like I I was just asking, and it's like I said sure, and I'm like, yeah, but sure you moved to the Midwest, so you got uh close enough, so you got you got sure's abundant in abundance out there, yeah. And so that was something that I mean to this day still um is something that I have to kind of remind myself or even think like you know, I second guess the uh the feeling behind the word when people use it. Um and because I feel like I use it, uh like uh specifically last week, uh I can't remember what I was asked to do. Uh but I was it was in the morning, I was running around like trying to get ready. I had a busy day ahead of me, and I had a lot to prepare before I had to leave the house to go to an in person meeting. And uh so like I didn't have enough time in the day to do all the stuff I needed to uh for the business anyway. Um, and my wife asked me to do something, and I uh I said sure. And I int I intentionally used that word because I was like Yeah, I'll fucking do it, but I don't really want to right now. And she's learnt that if I use that word, what it means too. So like it it's kind of funny uh how she's also learnt what how that word is interpreted to me to recognize when I use it that I mean it the way that I have always thought of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

You bring up such a great point. This is awesome. So communic like we've so far been talking about the way people might receive the words that you use. And those are really important, but the the nonverbal pieces of it or the assumptions behind certain words are really important. And we think about these as like cultural norms that we just take for granted. You use the New Zealand example. Um, I always use the lawyer in the Northeast. If that if I had a if I had a lawyer based in the Northeast and he didn't swear at me, I wouldn't think he liked me. That doesn't have anything to do with a specific lawyer. I don't know that I've ever met a lawyer in the Northeast. My assumption about, I've done a decent amount of business in like the New York area and mid-Atlantic. So like my assumption is that if somebody isn't comfortable swearing around me or swearing at me, that we don't actually have a very good relationship from that part of the world. Conversely, that person swears at you in Southern California, that means something wildly different than it does in New York City. There are cultural differences, even inside the same country, that are really important to understand. One of the programs that I run, the language of leadership, is all about intentionally using the right words and saying those words in the right way to be influential to people. And if I brought people in from the globe to have these calls and I taught them one specific way tonality or body language or word selection works, I'd be wrong almost all of the time, because I'm a white dude from middle of Bend, I'm in Bend, Oregon. Like my cultural norm is not the cultural norm for the world. And if you're not aware of that, you're gonna have a very hard time sometimes. When somebody says sure and you don't interpret that they mean fuck off, I'll do it, but I don't want to. You might think that they mean sure the way I mean sure. And I get into this argument with my best friend, actually, because he hates the word sure because he feels the same way you do about it. And I just naturally say all the time, sure, that sounds great. And I mean it that way. His interpretation is now I'm like begrudgingly doing something that I don't want to be doing. And he's my best friend. So if people you're really close with can miss this stuff, you can imagine how easy it is for cultural assumptions to weigh into your communication with people. And it goes beyond word selection. Your tonality conveys a lot. Now, for example, I could say uh let's pick I'll pick one from uh the language of leadership that we do all the time. When you're holding somebody accountable, the first question you want to ask is, when did you realize you weren't gonna be able to get that done? This is a micro lesson from one of my courses. If you didn't do something you were supposed to, the first piece of information I want to understand is when you became aware that you weren't gonna do the thing you were supposed to do. It's hypercritical to navigating a conversation with you around accountability. How I ask this question will dramatically influence whether you're willing to share the information with me. For example, if I were to say to you, Jerome, when did you realize you weren't gonna be able to get that done? I just conveyed a number of things to you beyond the words that I said. I used your name, I enunciated the uh Jerome, I ended the way you're with the downward tone, I paused, I used silence to indicate you're in trouble. I asked it in an aggressive, loud way, but I could also have said, Hey Jerome, when did you realize you weren't gonna be able to get that done? And I just changed structurally the meaning of that, but I used the same exact words.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

The first guy is an asshole, the second guy is someone who I feel like maybe is about to teach me a lesson uh in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Or might be too passive aggressive. You don't know. See, this is where it gets complicated. That tonality in body language is obvious to some people, right? And the first way I said those words was quite aggressive, intentionally slow. I spoke your name louder, I paused right after it, I used downward tones. These are all typically in America indicators of somebody asserting authority into the conversation. So your dad talks to you and you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Or when your mom uses your middle name.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

See, we all know that. That's a normal, that's a normal cultural reference for us. Conversely, when I use upward tones and I pause a little bit differently and I add Jerome. You know, my my head's cocked to the side a little bit. If you're not watching the podcast, you can't tell. But like I'm I'm a curious dog. You know, I'm I'm trying to convey to you this is a soft conversation, man. It's okay. In America, that would typically be perceived as a more casual curiosity rather than asserting of authority. I don't know that that's true in Korea. It's absolutely not true in Germany. I've done this globally in different places where what I say and what I teach is way too direct in some cultures, hostily so. If you used my methodology in most of uh the East in China, you would be one of the rudest assholes that's ever existed in that corporate environment. It is way too blunt and direct. Conversely, if you use what I do in Germany, you're beaten around the bush, man. Knock it off. You don't respect me enough to ask me a direct question.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Interesting. You made me think of something too, then, uh, because I that means would lead me to believe that then also probably the next thing if I asked you another way uh uh things get interpreted differently is gonna be uh the not some more of the non-verbal stuff. Uh you know, when it's not tone or um more of the body language type stuff. It you reminded me of a very specific instance. Uh so I didn't grow up playing baseball, but when I decided in New Zealand that I wanted to come over here and play baseball, I started playing baseball in New Zealand um like the the year that I left to come over here. And um the CEO of baseball New Zealand is uh uh is this American guy, Ryan Flynn. Uh he's an awesome guy, and he uh he helped me uh you know get started and you know pushed into uh picking baseball up. But um he's I uh American guy from uh I believe he's from from New York. Um he's at least from the east. And so like he was the first American person I've ever met in my life. And um, you know, the way he communicates was like was like something completely different uh you know from my first uh ever experiences with him. But he um he had uh AJ Preller, uh who is uh AJ Preller was is was uh the former Padres GM, I believe, and he was in New Zealand for something at the time. And this guy, the CEO of Baseball New Zealand, Ryan Flynn, uh had him, and he he came to one of my games uh towards the tail end um back in 20, maybe it was 2016, 2017, and I met him after the game. I was introduced, um, and it was him, AJ Pro, you know, like the Padres GM, which is uh intimidating to begin with, uh, and then someone else from the Padres organization, and you know, I shook their hand and just uh talked to them, and I was you know nervous as all hell. And Ryan uh had talked to AJ after the fact and told me that AJ, who um I'm not sure exactly where AJ is from in the US, but you know, deeply American culture versus me had not even been exposed to American culture barely at all at the time. Um AJ's uh portrayal of our uh encounter was the thing that stood out to him the most that he noticed enough to mention to Ryan was uh was a lack of eye contact that I made, which he thought was uh was uh he he I he I think he assumed, so then he mentioned this to understand it a little better, because obviously um I would assume you know, assuming that AJ has uh you know, being in the position he's at, uh he's had some level of communication training, especially uh being a GM of a uh major league baseball franchise that has people from all different types of cultures and backgrounds and countries, but never New Zealand. Um you know he may have never met uh you know, he may have just met New Zealand of his first New Zealand people on this trip. And he so his assumption was that that was uh was um was a sign of rudeness. Um and Ryan said no, it's actually quite the opposite in New Zealand, especially when it comes to um it's especially prominent in Māori Pacific Island kids. Um not making eye contact is a sign of respect to authority, uh, you know, like if you're getting scolded by your parent, you know, like it's to look at the ground uh and not make eye contact uh to anyone who has that, you know, that's like a sh a sign of respect, you know, like you don't like it would be rude if your parent was you know telling you off or something in that moment to look at them in the eyes, uh almost as if it's like some kind of a challenge, right? And so I I I didn't realize like that maybe that, you know, because it definitely for me was not a sign of uh me being rude or disrespectful to him. It was it was a like I absolutely thought he was the highest authority uh intimidation intimidating person figure I've ever met in my life. Um and so eye contact making eye contact with him was like just inherently like so uncomfortable that I you it was impossible for me to hold for more than a couple of seconds.