74. Best Of: How Emotion Shapes Our Communication, Decisions, and Experiences
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Hi, Matt here. As we end the year, we got a bit emotional, which reminded us of one of our top episodes on the topic of emotions and communication. So as we close out 2022, we thought we'd reshare my episode with Baba Shiv. Baba is a neuroscientist and professor of marketing at the GSB, and his research looks at the role of emotion and motivation in shaping our decisions and experiences.

To help introduce this episode, let me introduce you to our amazing executive producer, Jenny Luna. Welcome, Jenny. Hi, Matt. Yes, this is one of my favorite episodes. It has a lot in it. And since we first recorded it exactly two years ago, I still think back on techniques that were shared. Which ones come to mind for you? Well, Baba talks about presenting an idea that's not fully formed because if others feel involved in the brainstorming, they will support it more down the line.

Absolutely. I use this all the time. Yeah. And it's super counterintuitive. I tend to think I need to come in fully prepared, all buttoned up with my ideas. But as Baba talks about, buy-in comes from others when they feel like it's their idea too. And that really appeals to the emotional brain. It sure does. And I also like when Baba gives advice about time and time of day.

It can really influence how we feel and how we're prepared to do things like pitching, receiving feedback, and collaborating. We all need to be a little more strategic about when we schedule our communication. That's why I scheduled this right after my morning coffee. Yeah, I just had my tea as well. I think we're ready to go. And in fact, I encourage everybody to sit back and relax and enjoy Baba Shiv. Listen carefully and take notes.

to better understand how we can use emotion in our communication.

Welcome, Baba. Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thanks. A pleasure to be here with you. Great. One thing I and others love about working with and learning from you, Baba, is your amazing energy and passion for what you do. I look forward to an energetic and educational conversation. Shall we get started? Absolutely. So you're a neuroscientist by training. Can you help us understand how you approach studying the topics you explore, especially when it comes to communication? Absolutely.

Yeah, the fundamental premise, this is based in all the evidence out there. Most of human decisions and human behaviors are shaped by emotion and not by reason, right? I mean, if you ask me to put a number to this based on all the evidence out there, I would conjecture something like 90 to 95% of people

Our decisions, our behaviors are constantly being shaped non-consciously by emotional brain system. Wow. If you think about from that lens and for communication, the first thing to do is to play into the emotional brain rather than the rational brain. That's the fundamental premise when it comes to neuroscience and communication.

When we think about what it is we want to say and who we want to say it to and how we want to say it, you're saying lead with thoughts about emotion and really plan from the emotional perspective. Is that what I'm hearing? That's right. The basic idea is that if you look at most people, what they do when they're trying to persuade others and they're trying to influence others, communicate to others, they present rational arguments. And you can see this happening time and time again. There'll be a 30 slide deck packed with numbers and charts and so on. Right.

And we fail to recognize that the emotional, the rational brain accounts for only about five to 10% of human decisions, right? I'm not saying you can ignore the rational side. You have to provide enough fodder for the rational brain to ration, right? But first and foremost, you need to play into what the emotional brain is looking for. And that'll actually depend upon the mindset of the individual. Is that person in a risk-averse type one mindset or a risk tolerant type two mindset, right? I mean, these are terms that are borrowed from statistics. We all know about the type one error and the type two error.

Type 1 error is a fear of making a mistake. Type 2 error is a fear of missing out on opportunities. Actually, it's not a fear. It's actually a desire for new opportunities. So to figure out what kind of state your brain is in, what mindset it is, because the brain has two separate circuitries, one for risk-averse behaviors and one for risk-tolerant behaviors. And to really understand where that person is in these mindsets, it's a type 1 or a type 2. Ah.

That's really fascinating. So we have spent a lot of time across the various episodes of this podcast in different ways talking about getting to know your audience. But I like how you're distinguishing this between a type one and type two.

What are some of the things you look for or could ask to ascertain where your audience is in terms of the way they approach your communication? So many different things, right? One is, for example, the time of day really matters, right? When we wake up in the morning, our serotonin levels are at their peak.

If it is in the morning, you know that that person's brain is much more open to new ideas because the brain is more likely to be in a type 2 mindset, assuming, of course, that the person has a good night's rest, right? I mean, you're going with the function. Right, right. If you're on during the day, serotonin levels are going to decline, which means that that person is going to shift more to the type 1 side.

Which means that if it's going to be in the afternoon, I want to kind of weave into the communication things that will bring about comfort, right? I mean, the way to switch the brain into a more open, risk-tolerant mindset is to first and foremost bring in a state of comfort to the brain. So how do you do that? You weave in the familiar. Familiarity brings a lot of comfort to the brain. It could be trust, tried and trusted.

right? That brings a lot of comfort to the brain. It could be validation, testimonials. I'm not the only one saying this. There are other people saying. And of course, the other techniques that we can use, and we can talk about this as we go along, is to induce laughter. Laughter is one of the fastest ways to alleviate stress. So it sounds to me like

based on what you've just shared is early in the morning, that's a great time to do brainstorming and position new ideas. And later in the afternoon is when you tell your jokes and you try to build trust and comfort. Is that what I'm hearing?

We actually recently, in a recent episode, dove into the value of humor and communication. And you're exactly right. It really accelerates people's openness and willingness to listen. That's great. I love that you're talking about how the context influences communication and addresses or influences immediately somebody's receptivity to your messages.

I want to switch gears a little bit and more and more of our communication these days is online as you and I are communicating right now. You've recently done some research into what predicts people's engagement with online content.

What did you find and what can we take away from your research to help us in our online communication? So, I mean, again, it depends on the modality that we're using, right? The medium that we're using to communicate. I mean, it can range from text messages, it could range to emails, it could be voice communication, it could be an audiovisual communication.

And all these things are different. I mean, the easiest, of course, is audiovisual communication, right? Because you can get a sense of, you know, where is that person? Is that person reacting favorably or not, right? Mm-hmm.

When you get into audio, you still have that. You've got to pay careful attention to the tone of voice, etc. When you start getting into emails and messages, one thing I always kind of tell people, and I do it, put it as a practice myself, is emails got to be very careful because we don't know how the email is going to be interpreted by the other person. If it's going to be an email to a friend,

fine. I mean, they will understand where I'm coming from. But if it is going to be more a professional setting and you're sending an email, you've got to be very careful. So the way I kind of compartmentalize this is that

I start with, for example, personal emails. I do all my personal emails together. The reason being that it is very difficult for the brain to switch the frame that it is adopting. Oh, interesting. A piece of communication, right? I mean, one thing that is unique about the human brain is that we can adopt multiple narratives, multiple frames.

to make sense of the world around us. And so the personal things is easier to do. They're not going to kind of throw you in a frame, you're in a friendly kind of frame. Now you get into a communication which is more professional and you want to make sure that you're not misunderstood. So the way I kind of do that is spend a lot of time as though I'm talking to that person face-to-face.

And then to kind of say, okay, let me write it down. And now does it make sense? And very often what I'll do is that if it is going to be an important email, I wouldn't send it out immediately. I'll kind of wait until the next day morning.

just to go back and revisit the email and say, okay, am I making sense out here? Am I going to be misinterpreted, et cetera? And very often I'll finish the email by just saying that I hope this makes sense. Of course, let me know if it is not. And give the person an opportunity to kind of come back and say, hmm, it makes sense or it didn't make sense. Or if the person says it makes sense, then the person in a way has already been persuaded. Right. So you get that early acknowledgement by asking that question.

I really never thought of this but I can see how it would impact my life to chunk together time where I'm just doing personal correspondence, personal communication and make that different and distinct from when I am doing more

more professional-based communication. I myself just take things in sequential order. So if it's an email from a friend, I respond and then I go to an email from a student to an email from a coaching client and I can see how I could get myself in trouble by doing that. I'm curious in your own personal practice, Baba, do you

Do the personal stuff first and then the more professional or do you flip it the other way around? I can see advantages to either or is there a preference? Does it matter? One of the things, if it's going to be an important piece of communication, I start spending time in the morning. As I said, that's when you are at your best in the sense of the brain can be more flexible. There was a type one, type two. So I spent some time thinking about what I'm going to say. I'll craft that email immediately.

probably before lunch and then allow it to remain there until the next day morning. And then I'll say, okay, now does it make sense? I see. All the personal emails, I do it in the evenings, you know, when I know that my brain is a lot more kind of in a type two mindset, in a type one mindset, I'm sorry. So, I mean, that's a great way to kind of correspond

personal email because you feel good after actually crafting a personal email or a personal message, right? Right.

Would this apply also to all of the video meetings that we're doing these days? Would you recommend taking those earlier in the day and then allowing yourself more time to do other work in the afternoon? Does that follow the same logic? It depends on the goal of the communication, right? The important part is what is your goal here? If I want to have more creativity, brainstorming, I want people to be coming up with new ideas.

often schedule that in the morning if it is possible. If that is not possible, then what you do is in the afternoon, I just make sure that I start the meeting with some small talk. If I can bring in some humor, I will do that later on. Again, it's just for the brain to kind of

get into the right state, brain of the recipient in the right state, and also my own state, right? Because you've got to be in the right state to be effective as a communicator. Right. So it's not just making sure your audience is ready, but you also have to be ready. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Let us say I'm giving a talk to a large audience, right? And then I give talks with sometimes 300, 400 people in the room.

And I have to give a talk out there. My most important thing is, am I in the right mental state and physical state? And so I'll do things like if I'm not in the right mental state, physical state, I will

i will kind of you know maybe i'll meditate in the morning or go for a quick run come back just to feel good about myself uh that i'm in the right state to give the talk right no that makes a lot of sense it's interesting because i have a ritual too to help me get in the same state and i hadn't thought of it that i was doing it for my brain uh in the same way you're talking about but i actually like to say tongue twisters right before i start it helps me focus it warms up my voice

Nobody ever hears me do this, but it's something that I do to help get myself ready. So interesting. And then the other thing I do is if it is going to be a talk, I'll actually record myself before and then look at the tonality of my voice. Is the passion showing there? Right. If not, what should I do to bring in that passion? So I might actually imagine the audience or one member of the audience who is actually nodding and exclaiming.

acknowledging and how deep is the communication. That's something that I do as a practice just to make myself feel comfortable. Because at the end of the day, it's about, are you feeling stressed? Because if you're stressed, it'll show. Sure, sure.

I really like that idea of visualizing your audience being responsive to you as part of your preparation. But now that we're virtual and sometimes without video seeing others, we could do that same thing in the midst of our communication to help us really feel like we're connecting and landing. I like that a lot. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. So in researching this episode, and it was a lot of fun, you do lots of interesting work in varied domains.

I came across an old GSB Insights article, and it was entitled The Art of the Imperfect Pitch. Can you share with us best practices you've learned in your research that can help us persuade others beyond what we've already talked about?

Happy to share that. So this is called the IKEA effect. IKEA effect says that... Like IKEA, where I go to get my furniture and then get frustrated putting it together? Yeah, yeah. The IKEA store. It is IKEA within quotes, by the way, because it's actual IKEA assembling the furniture. Sometimes it's frustrating. Yes. IKEA effect says is that whenever the brain perceives that it is making an investment in something, it could be mental, it could be physical, it could be monetary, the brain gets invested in

So this, along with another observation that comes from my teaching at the design school at Stanford, the design school has a mechanical engineering section where the prototypes coming out will all be polished because they have 3D printers, etc. And the other section is what we call the art section, which will be aluminum foil, foam, etc. So the prototypes are going to be rough. And what is fascinating is that time and time again, and it's backed up by the research I'm doing right now,

is that if you present a polished prototype, others will only find flaws.

If you present a rough prototype, others will see potential. Wow. So think about this as in the very early stages of an idea, if you want to influence a stakeholder, go to the person with a rough prototype, back up the napkin on a whiteboard, whatever it is, and seek advice. When the person starts providing advice, the IKEA effect will kick in. Then your idea will become that person's baby as well.

The most effective way of persuading people is for the person you want to persuade persuades himself or herself. That's the most effective way, right? Because if the person believes that it is her own idea or his own idea, you know, the person is going to trust is going to be familiar because who does the person trust the most? Right.

Yeah. Right. So that's also consistent with the saying that Matt, you might be familiar with in Silicon Valley. This is famous saying that if you're a startup and you go to an investor for money, you're only going to get advice. If you go for advice, you're going to get money. Yes, absolutely. So many of our students, many of the people I coach, and I'm sure you come across

want to get the pitch just right. They want it to be perfect. And what I'm hearing from you, especially early on, is it's less about perfection and more about being open and direct and seeking feedback and advice. That's what's really going to help you. That's right. And there's a related phenomenon here. Now, of course, it cannot be used in all contexts. And I want the listeners to be very, very careful about this, is that if you're only going to be reporting out

then an imperfect pitch can actually backfire, right? So again, it depends on the goal of the communication. If you want to persuade others, there's a related phenomenon called the hairy arm phenomenon. I don't know, Matt, if you're familiar with this. Hairy arms, like hair on your arms, okay. Yeah, hair on your arm. I mean, it's an apocryphal story where an advertising executive makes the picture-perfect pitch to a client, picture-perfect pitch. And at the end of the pitch, the client goes, let me think about it.

So the executive goes to the boss and says, boss, what happened? I mean, this was the picture perfect pitch. And the boss says, you made it too perfect. Right? So you're making the pitch out that a person goes and wants to contribute, wants to come in, but, and, and it's not able to kind of contribute. And therefore it's left with this feeling that there must be something wrong, but I'm not able to put my finger on it. So let me kind of delay. Let me, let me think about it. So,

So what the boss says is, that's why it's called the hairy arm, is the boss says that, hey, you know that the pitch that you made are showcasing the ad campaign. At the end, you have this person holding the product. Make that person's arm hairy.

So the client is going to say, "Ah, I like this. Oh, I see the hairy arm. Get rid of that and we're fine." - I see, perfect. So you give them something to look at. I love that story. - But the important thing to remember is that you don't want to start with the hairy arm at the beginning of the pitch, right? You want those first impressions matter a whole lot, right?

And so you don't want to start off coming across as being incompetent in the beginning. But if you want to leave a small amount of an imperfection out there, that is, you'll do much better at selling. I see. So I'm wondering, to me, it strikes me that this approach would not only help with persuasion, but even in giving feedback, for example, many of us, when we give feedback,

We fixate on saying it just right so the person is likely to change the behavior, the approach that they have. And it might make sense to seek their input or their guidance or invite them to participate so that they become more invested in it. Correct.

Correct. And the other thing also, and Matt, you're the expert at this one, is that to be a good communicator, you have to be a good listener. And you've got to be, what I mean by listening is that it's not just the auditory part of it, but you've got to pay careful attention to the audience that you're talking to, right? Right. And allow the person to talk, allow the person to talk, because then the person has ownership over the idea. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of research, as you might be aware, that talk time matters and fostering trust and feeling a sense of involvement and engagement comes from the other person talking more than you do, if that's your goal, to get them more engaged and feeling trusting. So listening is important for sure. Listening is important.

And also having prompts out there like, you know, so what is kind of top of mind for you? What is giving sleepless nights to you? Let me kind of get a sense of where you're coming from and how I can be of help. I cannot guarantee that I will be able to come up with suggestions that are the best suggestions out there. But at least I can serve as a sounding board for you and then figure out if I can help you out.

Right. So it's making invitations and offers to help and also learning what's important for the other to get them talking so you actually have something to listen to. So I like that a lot. And also starting off with the small talk, right? I did a piece of research way back when I was at the University of Iowa with a large engineering company where the CEO wanted to find out who are the best salespeople and what makes them the best, right? Mm-hmm.

And it turns out that people who are really good in selling are actually very good listeners. They don't do much talking. We would often think that

You know, good salespeople are, you know, very extrovertish and do a lot of talking. That's not the case. The best salespeople listen a lot. There are other techniques that they use, and some of them have been backed by research. And so one of the things that they do, and it comes naturally to them, is that they are masters at social mimicry. Mirroring, right? Neurolinguistic programming is called mirroring, right? They're very good at that. So they do that. And the other one you notice is that they have a phenomenal memory for...

facts about the person they're talking to. Right. Right. And it comes to naturally be actually showed pictures of clients and they would be able to tell immediately, yeah, this person has got two kids, the daughter goes to soccer and has this information in the head. And for people who are not used to that, it makes sense to do the background research. Right. And also after communicating with the person immediately after that,

Spend even about five minutes of noting down what happened in the communication, where there's some small tidbits that you can actually refer back to the next time you're communicating with a person. It requires some bit of discipline out here. And that is one thing that good salespeople are very effective at. They're very disciplined in terms of how they approach communication.

Right. And this is a nice bridge to my next question, which on this podcast, we've talked a lot about changing our behavior to better hone our communication. And your research has revealed some tactics that we can employ to make any goal attainment more likely. You just talked about being disciplined. What are some other useful techniques that we can use to attain the goals we have, especially when it comes to communication change?

First and foremost, in my opinion, the tactic is go for any practice that will kind of de-stress you, right? Anything, and this can range from, in some case, just taking some deep breaths. It could be visualizing the audience and visualizing

the other person being very receptive. It could be laughter. It need not be real laughter. Even fake laughter will kind of distress you. The reason that is important is because if we don't do that, if you're not in the right state, and what I mean by right state, if you're stressed,

then your brain tends to adopt frames that are much more risk averse. And it doesn't allow you to experiment because you're coming out of fear. Main tactic I'll say is just feel comfortable in your own skin. Are you comfortable out there?

Or are you still stressed? Now, sometimes you don't know that. So that's why practices like meditation is so very crucial, right? Not just for health reasons, but also for communication reasons. To be a good communicator, your brain needs to be a lot more resilient to stress, right? I mean, Matt, you have done this talking to an audience. And what will happen is that when you want to crack a joke, and this has been part of what you were planning to do,

and you get into the stressful situation, the joke will fall flat. Oh yeah. Right. Right. So some of the things that I'll do is I'll, I'll do the following. Oh, I got to tell a joke. I laugh myself before I tell the joke.

And then people will start giggling. Right. Because that's a natural human tendency, right? If someone else, if someone is laughing, you tend to laugh yourself. Right. And it's infectious. And then I'll crack the joke. So there are these kind of techniques. But the most important thing, I believe, is that, of course, you need to know your audience. Yes. That is something.

- First thing you gotta know, and you probably have been mentioning this time and time again. - We have, yes. - I'm a big believer that the most critical factor here is you are in a state of comfort. - Right, and we've talked about this, interestingly, we've had a couple guests, Christian being one of them who you teach with, and Dan Klein, who I know you know.

when it comes to this improvisational mindset. And really, the logic is the same. We get in our own way through our anxiety and the pressure we put on ourselves. And if we can actually learn to relax, that allows us to achieve our goal much more readily and be much more present-oriented too. That's right. And you've got to understand that the way the brain is working is all these instinctual brain systems are shaping it. If you're stressed,

Then what happens is that it'll completely shape the frame that you're adopting about the audience, about your content, et cetera. And your body language is also going to tell. A lot of our ability to persuade, as we all know, does not just depend upon what we are saying, but how we are saying it, right? And so if you're not in that state, I mean, it is going to show. It is going to show. Right. The tells that we reveal for sure.

I've enjoyed so much getting some of your tips. I'm wondering, do you have any other tips that we haven't discussed that you think might help us be more effective communicators? Absolutely. So if it is going to be a very important piece of thing, you're giving a talk to an audience, a large audience out there.

I would just say, go to bed early, as you often do, get a good night's rest. Don't sacrifice on sleep. I know people doing this that they will keep on practicing the talk and go through the night and get about three hours of sleep before they deliver the talk. If you're not had a good night's rest, guess what? Your brain chemicals are going to be such that you are going to be risk averse. You'll then adopt a frame of mind where your brain is already thinking about failure.

And that's the wrong state to be in. If you didn't get good night's rest, it could happen, right? I mean, you're traveling, like Matt, you do this and I have done this. You travel across time zones. Right. And you can get into jet lag and stuff like that. So one of the things I very quickly do if I'm doing that is first and foremost, what I'll do is

I'll order food that is comfort food for me. Okay. Right? So for me, it is growing up in India and you talk to most Indians, it is yogurt rice. Right? So I will just go order some plain rice, get some yogurt, plain yogurt, mix it up and have it because you need to have that comfort, right? Food brings a lot of comfort.

And then if I'm not able to sleep that night, I will go for a run in the morning because running also within about 15 minutes of a run, serotonin levels, chemicals in the brain will actually increase. And then you get into the right kind of a state when you're giving the talk.

Great. I love that. Any excuse to eat my comfort foods, I'll take. So I'm now going to tell everybody Baba told me to. Even if it is unhealthy, a little bit of it. Right. And I know you're in fantastic shape. I don't know if you remember one of the first times you and I met, we went for a walking meeting and I thought we were walking, but your walking pace is a lot faster than mine. I agree.

Right. I call it a twog, talk on a walk. Yes. And pre-COVID time, COVID affected everything. Right. It's more like a twog because you're jogging, or at least I was behind you. Before we end, Baba, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone who joins me. Are you up for that? Oh, yeah, of course.

Excellent. So if you were to capture the best communication advice you have ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would it be? The advice I got from my boss when I first got into sales, technical selling, he said, just be yourself. Hmm.

Don't try to be someone else. It's much harder to be someone else for sure. And I can see how that would be comforting and reduce your stress level. If you're trying to put on a face or a front, that would be definitely stressful. That's right. Right. I'm very curious about this. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? Oh, so many people that admire. So, I mean, it goes and I can mention two names.

For you, yes. Thank you, Matt. And they're very different in terms of styles and so on. So you kind of are from the Midwest. I think your mother-in-law, I mean, your wife is from the Midwest. Correct. One is Warren Buffett, right? Of course. Very different style, communication style. Very kind of friendly, open, honest, just friendly.

That's why he's speaking his mind. But words that come out of his mouth are things that you just want to write down and keep repeating all the time. Right. Yeah. And they move markets. And they do move markets. Right. And the second one is the person I admire a lot is Winston Churchill. I'm a history buff and, uh,

when you go through his communication, the speeches that he gave, oh my God. I mean, you can see, and you can actually go to some of the libraries and see how he worked on his speeches. Oh yeah. Right. He would go and redraft, redraft, redraft it. And when, and then even intonations to be made, where he'll actually have these, this is where I have to emphasize things. Yeah. Imagine he just moved a nation and actually moved the nations of the world to fight the

what was going to be a very dark period in our history, right? And just to think about how he inspired a nation to actually fight and not give up is incredible if you think about it. Oh, absolutely. And I encourage anybody who wants to learn more. The history of his oration and learning to be a good communicator is an example of just pure tenacity and really tenacity

working to be better because he did not start off where he ended up. Let me ask question number three. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe from your perspective? Hmm.

Communication, recipe, cooking. Okay. So if I have to use the cooking metaphor, I would first say, know who you are cooking for. Know your audience. Yes. Right? Second is, do you have the right ingredients? And the third is, are you excited about it? Right.

So help me understand. So I love that. And I like that you related it to the question very specifically. When you say right ingredients, you're talking about make sure you're in the right frame, your audience is in the right frame. Correct. Excellent. Very good. Correct. And also in terms of the content and how when the content has to be delivered, has to be done, because...

In terms of cooking, there is a recipe to be followed, right? Sure. And each person has their own recipe over a period of time of how to be effective as a communicator. We all develop our own. If you're not, you've got to become self-aware of the recipe for your success. So go back to the times when you were very effective as a communicator, very proud of, and ask yourself, what did you do there and what did you not do to make that effective?

Right. That is, it is a recipe kind of thing. And each person has his or her own recipe. Don't try to adopt someone else's recipe. Right. Of course, learn from the experts because the experts have already done it. You don't have to relearn the whole thing, but then you adapt that recipe to your own style. That is so important that, that taking time to reflect, I think is so critical in any skill you're trying to develop, but especially communication.

Baba, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. I knew we would learn a lot from you and we would have a lot of fun. And I am going to go make myself some macaroni and cheese now, my favorite comfort food. And we really appreciate you sharing your perspective on communication and how neuroscience can help us be better, more effective communicators. Thanks again. Thank you, Matt. It was a delight. Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to one of our best of episodes. Baba Shiv provided lots of important and actionable tips. You can find lots of other great Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast episodes from our previous seasons wherever you get your podcast. Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business. This episode was produced by Podium Podcast Company, Jenny Luna, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Find more resources, follow, and join our conversation on LinkedIn by searching Think Fast, Talk Smart. Hi, Matt here. Before we jump in, I wanted to let you know about three unique executive education programs offered to senior-level business leaders by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The Executive Program in Leadership, the Emerging CFO Program, and the Director's Consortium Program are

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