Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Now I have come to realize that due to being age 46 and having somewhat they consider old fashioned ways in communicating, Peter Yawitz.
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teaches college graduates, holds seminars across the world in order to help us with our communication skills. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Peter on the show. Hello. Hi, Roberta. I thought you were gonna say, I'm 46, and Peter, he's even older than I am. I thought that's what you were gonna start with. It's like, that's a great way to start. I didn't wanna throw you under the bus. Oh, no, no. You know, I live under the bus, so don't even worry about that. Don't worry about that at all.
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But thank you, Roberta. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about something and from one old fashioned person to another, but let's not call ourselves old fashioned. Let's just call ourselves been around a little bit and because of that can help other people understand the world of work and communication a little bit better. How about that? I like that a lot better. Well put. That's good. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about you. That's great, sure, I'd love to.
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I've been a communication consultant and coach for over 30 years, and I've been very lucky in my career to have worked in global offices of many large corporations. So not only do I understand the culture of the company that's hired me, I have to be able to add to that a local corporate culture or a local culture, let's say. For instance, if I'm working for a big American bank, I've worked with new hires, let's say in South America and Asia, Japan, Europe, all around the world.
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And a question that pops up all the time is, how do I match my culture with the culture of this American company? But not only that, the young people have always asked me questions about, you know, what do I need to do to not mess up? And because of that over the years, and one of my favorite jobs has always been to do new hire orientations, where after I talk about general issues about communication, people will just ask me questions that really are out of the blue, and I take every question very seriously.
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So because of that, I developed this persona several years ago called someone else's dad. And I started a website called advice from someone else's dad, someone else's dad.com, where I would take questions and respond to people who had questions that they felt no one else would answer. I took that and I turned it into a book, which is called flip flops and microwave fish, navigating the dos and don'ts of workplace culture. And I just came out this year with an updated version, my second edition, which you can find at my website, Peter Yowitz.com.
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or on Amazon, and it really deals with a hybrid workplace because as you and I know, you know, we're the old, oh, I hate to say funny duddies, but we've worked for many years in a certain environment and so much has changed. So much has changed not only because of generational issues or because of the multicultural issues, but because now we're in a virtual environment. So no one really has stepped back to say, all right, now what are the rules or the guidelines we need to engage better and to communicate better
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in a hybrid environment. So that's what I've been talking about a lot recently, not only just general issues about communication, but how do you master the communication issues when you've got people from all different backgrounds, all different ages, and can't even see each other in person? There's just so much we've had to adjust to. The thing about communication, we say 7% is verbal. So the rest, the 93% is now being projected on screen. So that's the bigger challenge.
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When we all went virtual, the first thing people cared about is to be as professional as possible. And if you look around on LinkedIn, if you look back to 2020, people, including me, did videos on how to sit up straight, how to have good lighting, how to make sure that you are not in front of an unmade bed, that you don't have other distractions in the background. So people really tried to be as professional as possible. What's happened over the past two years is people have been more forgiving.
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I can't tell you how many sessions I've had one-on-one sessions with people where a child walks in. Remember the BBC video of the guy from Korea? I was in South Korea. Yes, I know. Of course I remember that. And everyone was like, oh, that's a horrible thing. This guy is on a newscast, he's live, and his children are running in. But now, you know, this is life. We're all trying to balance life and work. And people with small kids, you know, you don't want them interrupting. You don't want them screaming in the background. But
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If a kid just needs to come in for a hug, I just think, okay, you know, that shows a little humanity. I don't really mind. So why fight it? I think everybody is in this position now where, all right, we do what we have to do. If there's a bed in my background, because it's the best place for me to work, that's okay, as long as it's made. The things that are most annoying, and this happens to me because I live in New York, I try to soundproof my home office.
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and I live on a low floor, there could be a fire truck coming down the street. I'm in Chicago every two minutes. I quickly have to hit my mute button when that happens, but I think people are just more forgiving because people didn't know in the beginning, they were so embarrassed to show some signs of their personal life. I mean, you and I, we both have blurred our background. There's nothing in my background that is any cost it or did, lets you know anything about my life. It's just very neutral. But when I see something, maybe something political, and I have seen things like that.
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I've just warned people, you know, even though you might be on a call with people who know you, you know, have pictures of your family, that's fine. Even if it's sports memorabilia, I don't care. But anything that could cause people to have your mind. Triggers. Exactly. A trigger or make you think, oh, that's not what I believe in. Doesn't belong in the workplace because we can make value judgments about people. And then it can color how you interpret what anybody is saying. And when you're in live.
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conversation with someone or even just in this virtual environment, I could look at you and you could look at me and you could make some assumptions. But once we start talking, all that vanishes because it's superficial stuff. Peter has dark hair and glasses. Oh, I know what that means. And I would hope you just like, oh, okay, fine, whatever. And then just move on. But something like a political sign in the background is something that you cannot unsee. So I would avoid those issues. You know, you do what you have to do these days. Yes. And I hope people are a lot more understanding.
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So before we get to the nitty gritties of the book, talk about our years of experience starting from the 90s. Our business letters were a lot more formal. We used to say, dear Peter, instead of hi Peter, like we do today. Even the way we paraphrase things, we used to just make it a lot more formal. In of England type of English, which now this new generation that you are coaching as well is not used to. So how are you able to bridge the gap?
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That's a great question. And I'm glad you asked that. I will say that when I first started in business back in the eighties, I remember emulating what other people had done in letters, you know, no one writes letters anymore, but I remember seeing what someone had written and I did the exactly the same thing. And I remember very clearly, I would start a lot of letters with pursuant to your request, please find enclosed here with it. So I would write that and I would do it all the time until I realized like, I never say those words. So that was the previous generation.
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I would just say, as we discussed, I've enclosed the following document, which is how I speak. Now that is to me just as formal as anything else, but it's the way we talk. So maybe our generation adapted a little bit from the way we talk. And now we have to think about how the people talk today. How do we adapt to that? I like your example of the salutation. We used to say, dear Roberta, dear Peter, and now junior people, when I say this in a seminar, I talk about the hierarchy of salutation. Here.
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If I said, you wrote dear Peter, a lot of people say, oh, we'd never do that because they're afraid that the next line will be, it's taken all the courage I've had in my life to put this letter together. I love you Peter. Oh my goodness. Right? Because dear is an endearment. If I wrote dear Roberta to you, as much as I'd like you and we've just met, I can't say Roberta, no offense to you, that I'm not in love with you because we just met.
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So now, high is the more accepted salutation. And what's wrong with that? It's friendly, it's fine, it's global, and people understand that. Language is always evolving, but the thing to remember is that you can't go overboard. I wouldn't say, hey, what's up in a business email. Just say that for your friends, but I still think there might be people of our generation or even the generation in between us and the youngest generation that might think, well, you know what?
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That's still a little bit informal for business communication. So a lot of the abbreviations, you mentioned one before we started this podcast. I never heard of it. Yeah. So I've received W Y D I had no idea what that was. I had to Google. It means what you doing and even more confusing because we say, what are you doing so that a is not even there. There's no way I could have made that up. Right now. Listen, if eventually that becomes standard practice and communication. Okay. Fine.
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I don't think it is yet. So because it's not yet in the normal vernacular of the majority of audiences that you might communicate with in business, I would stay away from it. It's just the same thing I would say to anybody in a technical field. For instance, no matter what you're working on, there's always an abbreviation for something you're working on. It could be technical. It just could be an abbreviation that you use for some team. But if you use that abbreviation to a broad audience, there's gonna be people that are saying, I'm sorry, I don't understand what that is.
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you might want to define it or not use it. Like SME is a very typical one, subject matter experts. In human resources or in team building, people understand what SME is, but I can't guarantee that anyone would understand. In my kind of small medium enterprises. Exactly. I was texting with an old friend about something, about somebody's business. And I said, as we say in business, T-A-M. I thought, okay, maybe he'd look it up.
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you know, which stands for in business, that's total addressable market. Because we were talking about somebody's business and he just texted me back, TAM, question mark. And I had to define it, but it was a friend and I was just being a little jokey about it, but I would never use that TAM to people that didn't understand it. I might say total addressable market TAM and then use TAM after that, but I wouldn't start with that. So it's the same thing with other kinds of abbreviations. I'm all for adapting to what a younger generation wants, but just...
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always understand it. If someone's going to miss the point, it requires an additional email to clarify it or an additional text. And people don't have that time. So understand your audience a little bit and understand that you might have a broader audience than you think you do because your email might be forwarded to somebody else. Or it's the same thing with emojis. If you put a wink face emoji in an email, which I don't recommend, I could send it to you, Roberta. I hope this podcast does well, wink face. And then you sent it to somebody else. Like
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Who is this guy, Peter, who uses a wink face? So just be aware that a lot of people might not interpret things the way you do. Yes. When you pitch your idea, your software tech idea, I say to those people that I helped coach Amazon directors and not take ease like you, they just want to know that this software you've created, how is it going to help Amazon do better? You can have a graph, you can have a slide with stats.
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but keep it in layman's terms so that they understand, oh, okay, so he's creating something that if we took it on board, it can help grow our revenue by 30%, whatever it is. I completely agree to that. And what I remind people is, imagine four tiers of audiences solely based on attention span. If you're a technical person and you have to communicate something, let's say a pitch to technical people, but also like the CEO of the company.
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and then maybe vice presidents or the lead team under the CEO. What does the CEO care about? As you said, the CEO cares about, is this going to help us financially? Is it going to help us for efficiency? Is it going to help us from prestige perspective? Right. So I want a quick answer. This will help us raise revenue by 40 percent or this will increase productivity by this amount, or no one else in the world has done anything as revolutionary as this. If we do it, we'll be the first to market. Right. That's a CEO. And how long does it take to say that? Maybe two sentences.
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So that's tier one, they have the shortest attention span and they're most focused on the bottom line as it pertains to them. Tier four would be the extreme. Let's say those are the fellow techies. Oh, tell me all the details of everything that you had done. So if you're tier four, you can't expect everyone to be tier four. If you think about it from a basic email perspective, tier one people are gonna look at great subject line, because they'll say, this will increase revenue 40%. Oh, I'm gonna open that, or glad this team is on it. Tier two would read maybe the first two lines of an email, which would give me the,
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strategically significant message about why that will help us. Tier three might look at some bullet points and tier four, what are they going to click on? The attachment. How often, Roberta, do you click on an attachment only when you've got extra time? Only when I have extra time. And if the email gave me enough information not to have to click. You won't exactly. If that's your business, if you're working with somebody and said, this is an active live document, we have to update it together. Then you're going to look at it. Or if your manager sends you an attachment.
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You say, I'm sorry, I'm a tier two person. I don't read in documents. Well, then I would say you're fired, but I would say God invented attachments for that purpose. That's what attachments are for. Right. So now coming to your book, when I read it, I said, wow, you have covered literally, and I mean, literally everything dress code, first day at work, how you greet water cooler converse. You have covered literally everything.
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I tried to, and really it comes from years of answering questions that people have asked me really around the world. It started with, as I said, some of these international people, and then also added to the people locally, the young people who just wanted to know what I need to do not to come across like a boob. That's really what I did. And the reason I updated it was because my book came out two years ago, The World Changed, and I felt I needed to address the issue about hybrid that nobody anticipated. My book came out six weeks before the pandemic hit.
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We've got great reviews and it won the bronze medal at the Amazon Book Awards and Axion Book Awards, but it was hard because I didn't want it to be out of dates, which is why I updated it. Yes. The last two years certainly have turned everything upside down. Yeah, definitely. Let's just talk about some highlights. Obviously we're not going to cover everything we want to encourage our listeners to buy the book. Let's just talk about some of the highlights. Let's take away maybe three or four key points. Sure.
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a couple of things that I'd say are the main takeaways, especially for today. There's a lot that's lost in translation because of Zoom, because of cultural issues, because of lack of communication. You have a one-hour slot, let's say, for a Zoom meeting, and you don't have those opportunities to stop by anymore. Or sometimes you do. If you're in the office, I would encourage everybody to do that. So what I say to everybody is don't feel that you are superhuman. If you're
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for one hour and your boss asks you to do a lot of things. Don't feel that I have no idea what the boss says. I feel like an idiot. I didn't understand it. You're not superhuman. Nobody is. There's nothing wrong with taking time to clarify things, to be able to send an email afterwards or even say in the meeting, I'm not sure I got this. Could I talk to somebody right afterwards to make sure I have the action steps clearly stated? And I'd be happy to send an email around to make sure that I have it right. Now, if I were a junior person and I said that, I am saying to you, I'm eager
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I'm there to help, but I want to make sure I'm doing exactly what you want me to do. There is nothing weak in saying that. And a manager loves it because the manager says, well, I want to make sure you get it right. That's fantastic. Then we have to avoid the back and forth later on when you didn't get it right. So remember, you are not superhuman. We don't have that opportunity to stop by somebody's office to say, I'm not sure I got that. Can we spend five minutes? You have to set up an appointment and it takes a long time. So I would say.
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It's okay to send a follow-up email. It's okay to ask somebody, I'm not sure I got it. Make sure you're clarifying things. I'm empowering you to do that. So that's one takeaway that I've been saying a lot recently because there's a lot of fear among junior people that they just don't wanna seem naive and are not getting it. Yeah. Remember when we were in school, our teachers always used to say, ask the stupid question because more than half the people here were silent. They have the same question in mind. They are afraid to ask it as well.
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because they think they're going to sound stupid. And when you ask, what did you find? A lot of notes. Exactly. No one's superhuman. But I also would hope that as part of that, because that's a great comment, Roberta, people recognize the importance of active listening. Again, you can't be superhuman to listen to everything people have said. But there's nothing wrong with taking notes. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that last point. Could you restate that? What I think you said was this. Roberta, you could say to me,
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Peter, that's exactly right. That's exactly what I said. Or you might say, actually, let me just restate it in a different way. So it was a win-win for absolutely everybody. There are no stupid questions. I've had people ask me questions in big groups about, or do you have to talk to your boss if your boss is in the adjacent toilet stall and ask you questions? Is that a stupid question? Some people might think it's a stupid thing. It happens. Yeah. So you want to act appropriately. We've all been in that situation and it's very uncomfortable.
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But you also can say, just give me a minute, OK? And then end of conversation, and you talk later. There are no stupid questions. And ask those questions to clarify. Another point that I want people to make is that to be a truly successful person in business, especially as it relates to communication and pitching, if you want to look at it as pitching, but not everyone is a salesperson, I would just say to be successful. Try to understand your audiences and what motivates them. What is their currency?
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I mentioned this with that tier one CEO who might care about bottom line, might care about efficiency of prestige. What does that person care about most? So when you're presenting something to somebody, give me the relevance, the rationale why you're doing something. If you want something, frame it in, this will help us figure this out because Roberta has asked me to do it and I know she is going to be the one to be able to execute the plan. If Roberta is held in high esteem, bingo, that person automatically will pay attention.
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So try to find out what motivates people, frame your conversations around that goal that people have. And the last thing I wanna say, people are always, they look at this spectrum of passive versus aggressive. And they say, oh, I don't wanna be passive because that would be bad. And they don't wanna be aggressive because that sounds bad too. So where should I be on that spectrum? And my advice is throw out that spectrum. Don't worry about passive or aggressive. Look at it this way, in business, you wanna be assertive. You wanna say what you want.
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But then again, if you're polite about it and put it in context, you're going to be on better footing. If I want someone to buy my book, I would say, buy my book. It'll help you. No, that's aggressive and annoying. No one would talk that way or passive. It would be like, I don't know, there could be ways. Maybe you could buy my book and maybe that would help you. Well, that's passive. And it doesn't show that I'm unprofessional if I did that. So if I just said, I'm recommending that you buy my book because I think you'll find many tips that will be valuable to you as you start your career.
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in terms of how to approach other people, how to deal with certain situations. And I'm always an open book for you, figuratively and literally. So I hope you do that and please stay in touch. Now, what am I doing? I'm being assertive about why that will help the listeners understand how to communicate in business. But I'm also saying I'm here for you. I'm polite. That could be a model and Roberta, you and I talk about being old fashioned. That's something that's never going to be old fashioned to be polite. So keep that in mind. And so those three things about not being superhuman.
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get to know your audience's currency and be assertive and polite are maybe the morals of what I teach in seminars. And assertive doesn't necessarily mean buy my book. It's going to help you with this and this. Trust me. It's the best book ever. The last 10 communication books you've read, they have nothing on my book. I'm no, that's not my style necessarily. That's not exactly the polite way of doing it. That's speaking of passive and aggressive. There's also the passive aggressive manager, which is.
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You know, next time maybe someone could help you figure this out. Okay. So what are you trying to tell me? There's this passive backhanded way of giving me advice rather than tell me something specific. I can't read between the lines. I agree. But then again, the alternatives have a lot of merits. Okay. Well, are you not making a decision by saying that give me the background about something or things like, I haven't the slightest idea how to approach that. To me, when I hear that, okay, you might not have the slightest idea to approach that.
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But tell me what you would do to find somebody who would have a better idea. That's right. So don't close things off by saying, I just don't know. I wouldn't know what to do with it because that's not showing willingness to work with anybody. So if you legitimately don't know how to deal with the problem or what resources do you have that you could look into off hand, I'm not sure how I would deal with that, but you know what, let me ask Roberta, let me ask someone that I work with, or I went to college with who's an expert. This, let me see when somebody can help me out and I'll get back to you later this afternoon.
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That shows willingness. It shows me a timeframe. It doesn't close the door. So watch out for that passive aggressive response as well. And it shows that you are solution driven because that's one of the things that when you go for interviews, a lot of leaders are looking for when it comes to the employees, the subordinates. Solution driven, you take initiative. You're not just saying, oh, I'm just waiting on my cubicle, waiting for you to tell me what to do.
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I tell you, if you're interviewing for a job, you should give examples how you realize there was a problem everyone is trying to figure out and you figured out some solutions. What are the resources that you looked at? Show me how you solved a problem. And that will go a long way because I want someone to understand what we do, if I'm talking as a manager and help us solve those issues. If our job is for client service, okay, show me how you have served clients and gone beyond, I'm sorry, I can't help you. You know, if you talk like that, you should, you know, work with the...
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DMV, sorry, next, you know, you don't have three forms of ID. Sorry. Next. I'm sorry, yeah, next, yeah. That doesn't belong in my office. Let's touch a little bit on cultural differences. I once had a previous episode touching on that with a friend of mine. I used to live in South Korea, very different culture, wonderful people, I loved working there. I was almost there for about a decade. So I did an episode with him on cultural differences in the workplace because he was raised here.
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moved back to South Korea with his parents as a teenager so he could understand both sides. How should you handle yourself when working with a different culture? That is something that I dealt with for so many years in my career. And I'm glad you brought up South Korea. Let's just talk about Asian cultures versus, let's say, Western cultures for a minute. Because...
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There are certain cultural norms, you know, people in China, let's say, or I would add Japan into that too. And I would imagine South Korea. So South Korea is probably most Westernized or would emulate a Western culture more. Well, actually, let me start with an example. I had a woman who was originally from China and working in New York for a financial services firm. And she called me and she said, can we have lunch? Cause I'm having a lot of trouble communicating.
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I said, what's going on? And she said, we have a very fast paced culture and it's hard for me to adapt my way of thinking and communicating. And when she gave me this visual that I love, she said, in China, let's say you have a message, put it right in the center of a spiral. So then go out the spiral out, out, out, out, out. When you're communicating in China, even though you know what the message is in the center that you're trying to get to, you can't start there. You have to start at the outside of the spiral.
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and talk obliquely about things as you get circle around it and get closer and closer without specifically saying what you want. And as you get closer, as your audiences understand what you're trying to get through, they start nodding and nodding more and nodding more. So sometimes they might get it, but you don't even get to that center message, right? To me, that was a fascinating way of looking at things. And I said, well, I think you've answered your own question about how Westerners like to communicate.
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especially in financial services firms. Even though culturally it's very difficult for you to hit right in the center of that, that's really what people want here. Back to this thing about being assertive and polite, if you frame things in context, meaning this is what you want to get to, maybe give me a little bit of context around it. We are finding a dislocation in the market, so I would recommend investing in this.
25:09
Okay, so there is a reason why it and then get right to that center point. And then, so you get that tier one message for the tier one audiences. And certainly people in financial institutions in New York, I would put as very tier one, and then if they want more, you can go about outside that spiral. But knowing it's the opposite way, you might not get to that very tail end because they've gotten that main message. I have found that a very big issue in Eastern cultures and say in Asian cultures.
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because it might be considered rude to get to that point. Straight to the point. It's a cultural shift, and it is a communication shift that it's not impolite to get there, but you have to get to the point. The other thing that is similar to that situation is, as I said, the people will nod their heads in China as you get to that message. No one will ask a specific question. I'm glibbing blanket statements, and I'm not saying that everybody in China, everybody in Japan is this way, but in some cultures, it's considered impolite to interrupt and ask questions.
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So don't be afraid if someone asked a question or maybe you say that tier one message. Before I go on and I'll go with the details of things, are there any specific questions that you need to know that you want to ask right now? And maybe that's how it goes. You just have to adapt a little bit more. I'll give one other example. And this is something that I spent a lot of time in South America, particularly in Brazil, for working for American companies in Brazil, where which culture wins?
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Does the American culture win or does the Brazilian culture of being very polite and chatty and kissy and huggy and very affectionate and yeah, very affectionate. So which wins out? And the answer is if you're on a global call, well, then the culprit culture has to win out because that trumps everything. But if you're dealing with local clients and local people in your office, well, then you have to realize I can get my message across from the corporate perspective, but I have to respect how people act locally, even with clients.
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So you have to constantly adjust which culture wins, corporate, local, corporate, local, but understand the rationale and also understanding that not one is better, it is just different. I used to say the same thing when I teach them English, I'd say it's not that English is better than Korean, you just wanna broaden your horizon in case when you grow up, you want to work internationally. That's right. So the point is be adaptable, flexible.
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Read the room. We might want to finish up with this, but we don't have to. We can talk for another hour. But what you just said about reading the room, that's really hard to do over Zoom, isn't it? All right. How can I really read the room? All I know is that right now, you and I are having a nice discussion for people who can't see us. We are both smiling and completely engaged in conversation with one another. But when you get six, seven, 10 people in a Zoom room, how can I tell that everybody is engaged?
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I'm trying to look as much as I can at my dock, the top of my Mac book. I don't know where you're looking, but we're doing the best we can to have good eye contact. When I've got six, seven, eight, nine people in a room, 12, 24, whatever. I don't know whether they're looking at me. They were distracted by so many different things, especially in a group meeting. So how can I engage people and read the room? How do I keep people interested when I know they're checking market data or they're checking their emails? Because I don't know what they're doing to engage people. You have to be able to.
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get into their heads, go back into what matters to them, and find ways to keep their attention high. The easiest way is to be yourself, to be affable, authentic, and use some stories and examples that people can relate to. As soon as I start telling a story, you know, Roberta, one thing that happened to me yesterday when I was working with this client, a really young person who was full of enthusiasm, as I started building it up, you wanna pay attention, because you're right. Right. Unfortunately, I don't have one. I was...
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But yes, as I said, as soon as you start a story, everybody's attention is on point because it sounds exciting. I always emphasize you always gotta have a story for your audience, obviously relevant to what you're talking about, something they can connect with. Don't do the lawyer and the judge walked into a bar, not that. And they never forget stories. They never forget stories. People worry about like, what kind of story can I tell? Sometimes it's just a business example, or sometimes it's just something that has a huge statistic.
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as revenue increased 35% once we were able to understand our customers better. And the key thing was when we did a survey, we found that, okay, there's an engagement in that. How do I get to that 35%? So even though it's maybe not a personal story, put it anything in the human experience that I care about that. And I'll start paying attention. The story about the circle, the message in the middle and the spiral. I'm never going to forget that. It is in my book, but because that woman was so visual when she told me that story,
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I use it a lot because again, you will never forget it. And it resonates so much. If when you start talking to maybe some of your Asian clients, they will say, oh my gosh, that is so true. Yeah. And I found that too. And it makes them feel I truly understand them, but I use that a lot. Same with South America. Yet last night, just socially, I met a woman from Buenos Aires and I told her when I've done business work in Buenos Aires in the morning, you started meeting at nine o'clock, everybody walks around the table and literally.
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kisses everybody, even though they saw each other the night before. Wow. Say, how was your evening? What did you have for dinner? Did you go to your child's soccer meet? How was this going? If you went to a meeting in Chicago and people started kissing each other, you know, you'd call HR and say, there's some harassment going on here. Oh, nine one one or something. Yeah. Nine one one. Right. At first I was taken aback, but I wasn't insulted. And if they met me the night before, so they hugged me too. Okay. That's fine. I was not going to instigate that.
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I learned from it, all right, this is the cultural norm here. But I also did say that if you're in Chicago or New York or London, and you start a meeting by kissing everybody, that's not appropriate. People just don't do that. Yeah. Cultural differences. Yeah. Peter, like you said, we can speak for another hour, but thank you so much. This has been a wonderful chat. I think anyone listening can tell what a great time we had. Roberta, I've had an absolute full of pleasure, 30 minutes talking to you. And I look forward to staying in touch with you. For sure. And this was a great chat.
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Thank you so much. Yes. Before you go, please tell us where to find the book again, your website and anything else that Peter Yawitz offers to us to communicate. Well, that's, that's very sweet of you. The easiest way is just to go to Peter Yawitz.com. P E T E R Y A W I T Z.com. You can find me on social media at someone else's dad. And you can always just go to amazon.com to find my book. It's called flip flops and microwave fish. Second edition.
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navigating the do's and don'ts of workplace culture. Thank you so very much, Roberta. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review. That was Pita Yowitz, the communication skills expert.