From Risk Minimization to Value Creation: The Human-Centric Legal Leader with Jonathan Cullen

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Today I have the opportunity to interview Jonathan Cullen. He's a prominent Canadian corporate lawyer who spent quite a bit of his career in the pharmaceutical industry. He most recently served as a regional lead for Canada and Latin America in, in one of the multinational companies he worked for, and he He is currently the executive of a coaching and consulting firm. Thank you so much for making the time to come to the podcast today, Jonathan. Yeah, thank you, Claudio. Wonderful. I really appreciate the invite. Tell us a little bit more about yourself so our listeners know a little bit more about you. Yeah, sure. So I'm located in Montreal, Canada, and yeah, for 20 years I practiced both at an international law firm. I did intellectual property litigation, and then for the last big chunk of my practice, I was at Pfizer for 18 years up until very recently and ultimately had leadership roles of our legal teams and over time in Canada and in France and Latin America, including Brazil, which we've talked about a little bit, and just had wonderful experience there. And then recently I decided to become an entrepreneur and launched my own consulting and coaching practice focused on supporting individual lawyers in their career growth and also law firms in how they train and support lawyers and work with their clients. So that's a fresh new beginning for me. That's amazing. I really appreciate you mentioned something about, you know, technical excellence being necessary but not sufficient. And here in the podcast, you know, a lot of the people who listen to it, they are early career professionals or lawyers who are finishing up law school, those first few years of practice. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that, you know, looking back across your career, what are maybe some of the non-technical skills that accelerated even your own career into executive leadership? Yeah, sure. And it's, it's, it's probably not like unique to law. I think it's, you know, when you are in, for example, like a business, because if you're an in-house lawyer or you're at a firm and you're supporting, supporting a company or a client, the in-house lawyer, especially like you are, yes, practicing law and yes, as outside counsel, you're practicing law, but ultimately you're trying to help a business succeed. So if you sort of like raise it to a higher level, you are within a business, you're supporting a business. So then setting aside the legal skills you're bringing to the table, you have to think about like, what are all the skills that everyone at that organization should be good at? You know, and that is sort of neutral to your specific function. So I thought about that a lot and, you know, part of it is for some practices other than law and some careers, that's, it's a little bit easier to do that. I think in law, a lot of the things we learn to do well actually prevent us from becoming better, you know, business support people. I'll give you some examples. Like at the beginning, things we learn, like, you know, super high attention to detail, analytical rigor, you know, a high value on being correct and finding the right answer. Because of course, like if you're giving advice that contains the wrong answer, that's not a great start no matter how you're delivering it. But those things in a business can help, but they can really slow you down too. And, you know, in business, one of the most important things is speed. Like, yes, of course you've got to get it right, But getting it right too slow has no value. So that's an example where a lot of the practices that lawyers have, they're good to get the, you know, the best answer over time, but they're not the right business answer. So a lot of the things that I sort of saw over time that lawyers had to get better at were things we kind of had to unlearn. You begin with a base set of skills, and then before you can cross over to the next sort of phase, you have to almost unlearn things you've learned before. And that's very jarring. It's very scary. You know, to let go of, I'll give you an example, like being highly responsive, being super quick to respond with all of the right answers. Well, sometimes sort of sitting back and reflecting a little bit, you know, maybe you're not going to be the most responsive person. And how do you do that as someone who's service-oriented? It's very difficult. Or here's 17 different caveats to the advice you're giving. So those kinds of things, I think slowly, I think the best legal advisors learn when and how to let go of that a little bit. And that's a bit of a scary journey, to be honest. Oh, absolutely. That makes so much sense. I appreciate you bringing that up. I saw that you published a playbook as well called Lawyer to Leader, and there, one of the things you talk about is moving from risk minimizing to creating commercial opportunities. Why do you think so many lawyers might struggle to think beyond the legal correctness? Yeah, it's probably because we're— that's what we've been rewarded for our whole careers, right? To sort of spot the risk, share the risk. Maybe quantify it, maybe at best sort of give our view on how to manage it, and less so about using all of those same skills to spot and take advantage of opportunities. And it might be you're not being asked a question. You know, you're just observing your environment, observing the business you're in, observing your clients' work, and you spot something and you think, you know what, if we did it this way, it would actually be faster. It would be less risky, or take advantage of something I'm aware of, or hey, our competitors are not doing that. Because often the legal advisors are highly aware of the entire business. That's a sort of a special position I think that role has. And it's the flip side is that's a responsibility. Like if you're one of the few roles that sees the whole business, you should be connecting a lot of dots for people who maybe are more siloed and they're working on a particular business unit or something, or they're trying to achieve a certain project. You know, I was always of the view that the legal counselor should be helping every So, but again, it goes a little bit against what we've been rewarded for in the past that shapes our behavior. We tend to be a bit more conservative because that's what protects the organization. I love the idea that like if you are just solving problems, the best you will ever achieve is to bring us back to yesterday's status quo. Like you run into a problem, your job is to help solve it. The best you'll ever get is to return to yesterday. You know, rather than just doing that, what about in addition to spotting problems and protecting us from getting worse than yesterday, what about spotting things that could help us get better in the future? That, that's like a turning point, I think, for people in their legal careers to really bring it to the next level. And there's always, you know, a question of like, how do legal departments, you bring value to the table? And a lot of it is on that side, like the value creation side. And there is some of it already that's brought to you. Like if you're brought a commercial deal and your job is to close the deal, help with the contract, the negotiation, you're of course creating value, but that's value that was brought to you sort of in pieces and your job is to put it together. I always appreciated the lawyers and legal professionals that could see around the corners and sort of see what's coming and say, you know what, if we went this way, if we took advantage of that new change in the law, we're going to be ahead of our competitors. And a lot of that involves taking more risk. I loved risk. Like, I wanted more to come towards us because if we managed it well, we would outcompete our competitors who were unwilling to take those risks. We were in the business of providing medicines that helped people, you know, get better, change their lives, breakthroughs for certain people that had serious health issues. So the risks were, if done correctly, were really worth taking. You know, like if you have a patient who is Going to receive their medication in a timely fashion, and the downside result from them is they may lose their life. You know, maybe a legal risk for an organization has a different perception or different shape, and you have to be able to absorb that as a lawyer and say, well, you know what, normally we might be concerned about doing this, but the upside for our patient is so big that we're going to take this risk. I always thought shaped me over time to see what was really, you know, worth looking at, worth doing, and to put your thinking hat on in quite a different way. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I find it interesting that in bigger corporations, you have a legal team, right? So you're not only acting on your own, and then you also have all the outside counsel that will come in, in different matters. I appreciate you bringing up all of this idea of the status quo. And there's a specific moment though, that might change quite a bit. And I know you've led the legal teams through some very interesting moments. And being in this specific industry through COVID, for example, must have been quite the challenge. So, so I'm curious, what did that kind of experience teach you about decision-making under this uncertain environment? How do you communicate that through all the stakeholders so that that legal advice that is maybe, you know, connected to risk can be best understood by all? That's the ultimate example for me, at least in my career, and for many of my colleagues as well. And I'll just start with, the entire time I worked at Pfizer, I don't think there was a single time I ever did anything on my own. It was such a collaborative environment. It's such a complicated industry, and it was such an incredible environment to work with, like, teams of incredibly smart people. And when I think back, even like small projects, you're always in a group making decisions together. And the COVID challenge and the vaccine the organization brought to market was just the, you know, ultimate example of that. And for me, on the prioritization side, if I just talk about that, you definitely can prioritize when you have to. And in that example, of course, we had a single priority for quite a while that we needed to bring to market. At the same time, I'll give you the example that we still had other products that had to make it to patients, you know, oncology products for cancer patients. And just think about all the hospitalizations there were during COVID We also had products that went to the hospitals to treat patients who were in hospital. So you couldn't drop everything and focus on one thing. That being said, it was clearly our priority, and I really got used to thinking about almost one thing for 6 months, you know, like to really try to help with, and along with the rest of the organization, can we bring something to market at a speed that we had never done before in the fastest time possible? And for me, at a practical level, what that meant was I would— I was sitting in this room often working through our contract with the Canadian government to go as quickly as we can and to get this product out. And on my lunch break, I would walk the dog in my neighborhood and everybody knew where I worked and what I was doing. And I would walk out and you remember during COVID people would just sit on their porches. They had nothing to do and they would just talk to neighbors from across the street. And they would say, how's it going? You know, when are you— when are we getting this thing? So number one, I felt enormous pressure because then I would go home at night and if there was a day where we hadn't, you know, concluded our agreement and I knew there was one more day that we were gonna have to wait. You know, and then you look at the news of how many people had gotten sick and died that day and even down to the number of people who were in your own city and neighborhood. It brought a real sense of realness to me and to my practice that like the thing I was working on was having a real impact in the world beyond, you know, anything I had experienced before. Even though in working in healthcare, I knew that our products were going directly to people over time and people who really needed those products. Including people in your own family. You know, you see that over time, but this was just at a scale and immediacy that was very, very different. So I think some of the things I learned was one, you know, how to really focus on something, on a single thing for quite a long period of time, how to manage the other things that still need to get done. And, you know, throughout that also, it was a little bit mentally taxing. I remember I had a basement flood at the time, just unrelated, and I thought I was going to lose my mind. There's just too many things going on. just to bring back to center, you know, and to refocus. And I had the support of my family and my wife and everything. But also, I think there's a sense of pride that comes out of something that you really work with others on. You know, I really felt good about the job we had done. And I guess at the practical level, in concluding large agreements or any negotiation, I think a lot of it comes down to trust. You know, when we worked with the Canadian government, we were pretty close to coming to an agreement and there was a a gap between the two parties, which is normal, you know, and every lawyer listening to this has gone through that. And, but I think, you know, given the circumstances, one of the things relied on and expressed was that they could, they could trust us, that we were going to do what we said we were going to do, even if we couldn't put all elements on the piece of paper on the first day, just because time was of the essence. And, you know, I put my name on it and said, we will deliver on this and Canadians can trust us to do this. You know, I would never have done that without the support of all the people working on the project and working with me and thousands of people, because I knew they were all going to deliver. You know, it's quite a special group of people. When people are looking at their careers, looking at their jobs and the organizations they work at, you know, you should ask yourself, do you really trust the people that you work with? If you were in a situation like that, would you put your name on something and then rely on everybody else to deliver? If you're not at that kind of organization, maybe you think twice about where you are. You know, that to me sold working at Pfizer. I, I just was really touched by the way everyone came together to do that. That's amazing. What a nice story. I saw that some of your writing focuses on, on visibility, on executive presence, influence, and all of that. And young lawyers sometimes have a hard time thinking about what can I even share, what can I do. I don't know enough substantive law to share any kind of advice that makes sense, or what do I even share? Does that mean just writing stuff on LinkedIn? What does Visibility mean? Why do you think that lawyers maybe are uncomfortable being visible? And then also what that visibility could be. Is it only inside your organization and trying to be visible there? Is it coming out on LinkedIn, your website, and so forth? What are some of the ways that you see that working out these days? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's, it's normal for people to be asking that at the beginning, especially. I would rely on a few core principles. Like the first is just to know who you are, like yourself, what you're comfortable with. Some people, they don't have a great sense of themselves and how they want to be in their lives, and that's normal at the beginning, and that'll develop over time. So throughout your career, I would just, you know, give the advice that no matter the situation you're in, you should feel like what you're doing feels like you, you know, and not doing it because you think, okay, that's what other people do to be successful. You know, it's okay to learn from others, but you should sort of feel a core you. At least on my part, I have always tried to, and I haven't always been successful in that, but tried to remain as close as I can to myself and I'll give you an example. Like, I'm not a super formal person. I like to connect with people, good humor, and to make people feel comfortable. And so that I tend to stick with that method of communication. So as I start, you know, becoming more present, I would call it, internally at a company and/or externally, keeping it in a way that I felt was representative of me makes it A little bit easier. You know, if you start doing any activity that puts you a little bit more out there and it's not you, you're gonna feel really weird about it. It's not gonna be a fun experience and you're gonna hesitate and say, why, why would I do that? So I think that's core principle number 1. And number 2 is you can go really, really far with just intellectual curiosity. You know, be curious about things around you. That's kind of how I started. I'll give you an example. I remember when I began my practice, somebody asked me about, oh, could you check on this Canadian trademark? And when I was doing intellectual property, well, I was looking at the trademark and I was curious enough to know, I wonder what the situation is in the US. And I looked it up and there was all sorts of like interesting angles there. And I'm like, oh, I don't know why we're doing that, doing that. So the— I brought the person my, you know, the famous memo you do as a young associate or whatever I was at the beginning. And I sort of had on page 2 some options that, you know, weren't asked of me and I didn't spend too much time on, but I thought were interesting angles. And, you know, the person that I was working with said, wow, that's really cool. Let's build on that. Let's, you know, let's raise that to the client. And then it sort of becomes like, you know, extra layers that you start to become an expert in a certain area. And then it's almost like incumbent on you to think, well, I should share this expertise with others. I should share what I know with other people. It's otherwise a little bit selfish, you know? So I would say when you're starting your practice and you're worried about, okay, should I, within the organization I'm in or external to that, how out there do I want to be? And I think think, you know, 2 things. One is you should always connect it to the approach of your organization, the values of the organization, what that organization is trying to achieve. That was easy for me when I worked at Pfizer because I fully believed in the direction and value of the organization. And then also you should find someone internally, whether it's your manager or the partner you work with, ask that very question. You know, just say, I want to shape my external presence a little bit. What advice would you give me? Because you do want to your, you know, person next to you on your side making sure that you're not going too far out on that tree limb and having it break. And get the advice of people, you know, that within the organization that you trust. And even if you want to write a, you know, external piece or something and you could have them read it, you know, and say, what do you think about this? So you can start small. And then the last thing I'll say is you're definitely going to screw it up. Like you'll have an appearance or you'll write something or do a post somewhere or something internally and it won't go over well, or people won't like it, or you'll get zero clicks or whatever if you're doing it on social media. And that is absolutely not a reason to stop. Like, that, that's fine. And that completely happens. You got to keep going, especially, you know, lawyers tend to be, tend to enjoy writing. They don't tend to be very good at it from a population that's willing to read things. So you gotta shape, shape that a little bit. If it didn't work the first time, try a different style, but that still feels natural to you. Amazing. No, another, another piece of great advice. I appreciate it. And Jonathan, you've been recognized as a General Counsel of the Year. You've been named to the GC Power List Canada, but your work today focuses more on helping other lawyers now to grow as leaders. And I'm curious, you know, can you tell us a little bit more about that transition into entrepreneurship? And also, you know, I believe that you probably saw this need in the market when you were on the other side. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more, you know, at what point did leadership development become more meaningful to you? I was the same as everybody else at the beginning in the sense that you, you know, the practice of law is so difficult and demanding and intellectually challenging, and that's part of why I like it, that you do need to put a lot of focus on your own learning yourself. And you are, you know, inwardly focused for a long time, and that's normal and that's good. You've got to sort of hone your craft and get good at that. But pretty early on for me, I really appreciated like when I would work in groups, I was always interested in how the other people in the group were doing, you know, and how they were succeeding or not and what their struggles were. And I always appreciated learning from them what they were struggling with and how they succeeded in certain things. And then eventually over time, you start to have one or two answers to the questions that other people are struggling with. And I felt very strong gratification that I could help other people, not having the answers, but helping people work through and walk through the process of learning. And I found in doing that, I got better just through the very fact of attempting to help and attempting to support people. I would learn from their successes. It was before I became a people manager. Once I was a people manager, I definitely was already rooted in this. But even before that, I started to get more pride and professional engagement for myself through the success of others, you know? And part of it is, there's a human part to it, of course, like to see people succeed. that you work with and that you support. It just feels good. But from a professional angle, it's harder. Easier if you're given a task and it's very difficult and you say, all right, I'm just gonna plow through it. I'm gonna stay up all night and I will solve this. And it's up to you. You've got your coffee and you work through the problem. So yeah, the problem may be hard. It could be super difficult and you've gotta be smart and figure it out, but you're in full control of yourself. So the tool you're using, your own brain, you're for the most part in control of it. But when you're working with and through others, it's messy. Like, people are messy. They can show up one day and not be in a great mood, and that's normal. And sometimes that's me. And to work together as a team, especially to achieve an objective, very difficult, you know? And I was really drawn to that intellectual challenge of how can you solve problems bigger than yourself and that you need a team. That just was very challenging. Everybody on a team is different and they work at different speeds and they start from a different place. And then I started to really enjoy sort of the meta problem of, can you both achieve the objective with the team or through other individuals and also have a secondary objective within there that they're all learning and you're learning at the same time? So not only is the goal achieved, but the whole group got better through the thing. And then when you get the next challenge, you're a stronger group or you're a stronger, you know, team or an individual on the team. And so I started to think, wow, this is really what I like. I like to help others achieve those goals. Goals. And in my last year at Pfizer, a few of my team members won some significant awards through amazing work they did. And, you know, I had a smile on my face for weeks, you know, because— and it actually was my friends in Brazil. They just hit it out of the park on a really, really challenging file they had and a contract they had. I had a tiny part in just sort of helping them brainstorm you know, challenges and they did all the heavy lifting. But, you know, to be part of that and to sort of see them achieve that, to me, it's completely changed how I view my practice. And that's in part what led me to make my decision to start my own business to focus entirely on that. You know, focus on can I help other people turn the lens on themselves a bit, get their own insights out of their, you know, career, take it to— take themselves to the next level. And at the enterprise level, can I help a law firm, for example, like develop their talent system to develop their people? Can I help them to acquire and develop and keep their clients in a different way? Because I mean, just as an aside, I spent so much time, you know, choosing and working with law firms and I thought, wow, that's another intellectual challenge that I would like to help people with. So, you know, at some point it did, it did flip for me that like my individual achievements just got wound into the achievements of others. And that's what I really enjoy. That's beautiful. I really appreciate you know, being in a profession with people who have those values. Hmm. I know your background combines, you know, psychology, litigation, executive leadership, coaching, and even a collaboration with the author of the book Essentialism for his book Effortless. I'm curious here in twofold, you know, how have those different experiences shaped the way you took your career forward, but also now the way you coach lawyers? I know you've also spoken a little bit about, you know, burnout prevention, protecting your health and your intellectual capacity. And I'm curious if there's, there are specific habits or mindsets that you see that, you know, high-performing lawyers are doing without maybe noticing. Yeah, sure. I think one thing that a good legal professional can have is a varied diet of learning from wherever it comes from. And I appreciated my educational background and I'm a continuous learner. I thought when I finished my bar school and I I put— I remember putting my pencil down thinking, I'm never going to take another test again. And I have taken many since and just, you know, to do some new things. And I— so that's always been me, to learn about the world around you a bit more. And I firmly believe that that makes you a better lawyer. You just, you see things differently. You can bring to the table to your client a little bit of experience with the world that says, okay, hold You're bringing me a problem that looks like this, but what about this? You know, because you have either the experience or the instincts to say things are not always as they seem, and you should, you should be a little critical of what you're seeing. And can we come up with another solution? Because it's not always binary. It's not always just A or B. What about C? I'm glad I had a little bit of a space in my life to learn art history, psychology, you know, whatever, so that you are bringing a different perspective to the table because, and because over time you are going to get more narrow and more niche in your job, you know, like intellectual property litigation, for example, can be quite niche and you start working for a very narrow band of clients on a very narrow band of subject matter that's highly specialized and you and 7 people in the world do it, you know, because so number one, intellectual variety. Right now, I just published something recently on LinkedIn about like reading things that are not about law. You know, just read, read things outside of your sphere, and then that'll train your brain to connect issues that are unconnected. That is very, very important in my opinion. And you get that by having a varied background that teaches you that. My comment about just being yourself, I was super blessed to be able to have Greg come to be a speaker at a Pfizer event that I hosted when our legal division was in Canada. And we finally had a budget. It was a big meeting. And I thought, we're going to get Greg as a speaker. He was my favorite author, amazing just viewpoint on life and his book Essentialism. And he spoke to us for an hour and a half and just amazing. And because I was— I had been his, you know, nominal host, I wrote him a thank you email after. And I took a chance and I shared with him that I had written some, you know, some article about some books I had read that helped me become, you know, a better lawyer. And his was number one. And it was true. I had written that. So I wasn't just, you know, fawning over him, but it was true. And I shared the article with him. And he wrote me back saying, you know, he was really happy I'd shared it. He read it. I printed the email right away, you know, so I could frame this thing. And, and then he said, do you have any more? Do you, are you still writing? And I was like, yeah. So I shared some other things I'd written. And then he wrote back saying, I have a crazy idea. I'm in the middle of writing my second book. Would you like to help me? And I, I said, absolutely. And this was like a year and a half of just working with him on finding stories for his book and helping him out. And what I learned from that, among many, many things, Just brevity and clarity in communication and writing. Like when, now that if I were to turn around and reread Essentialism, and I have read it a few times, I didn't appreciate how crisp and short and clear his ideas were. And that comes from a lot of work. And he was always encouraging me to be shorter and briefer and more clear. And I tried to bring that mindset to my practice, you know, and I'm still not, definitely not perfect at it, you know, but to make shorter, crisper, clearer your emails, single idea, don't have like 17 different ideas in your message, you know, one idea. And also, he's a master storyteller. So like connecting stories to what you're trying to teach, you know, people learn so much more from stories than from data, you know, data is important, you have to have, you have to have evidence behind what you're saying. But people are not swayed by evidence, they're swayed by stories. So I learned a ton from that. And it's the ultimate example of like learning from outside of your sphere. If I were to say like physical and mental and spiritual wellbeing for lawyers. And unfortunately, the data is not great, you know, about how as a profession we take care of ourselves. So right off the bat, I think if you're beginning this journey in this profession or you're on the way, you should recognize right away through no fault of your own, you're in a high-risk profession for your wellbeing. So you can say to yourself, well, I'm just going to let it happen to me, or no, I am not going to be a statistic. I'm not going to be that person. I'm going to find a way to take control of my own life. And that was, it's not an easy thing to do at the beginning. I think it's okay at the beginning and earlier in your practice not to be too hard on yourself. I definitely, for many years, I worked weekends and things like that before I had a family. But once I was trending into having kids, I committed to myself that I was going to do better and slowly make the practice my own. And we all have our ways of doing that. But I think a commitment to yourself that you will do that is important. I'll give you a very practical example. Like people are always talking about being overwhelmed by email, for example. And then I'll ask them, well, how much email do they send? So I always, I like to focus on the sending part and they're not talking about sending, they're talking about the receiving, their inbox is full. But once you realize for every email you send, you will get at least one response, you'll probably stop sending so much email. So to be intentional about the communication You send. And there, I am a big fan of like one action having multiple impacts as a result for your development. So for example, to try to think about sending less email, which means probably having more conversations in person, on the phone, that is a leadership and development skill that is critical. Like having an actual conversation with a human being. Relationships are not built by email. You know, they're built by in-person meetings, communications on the phone or otherwise. So, you know, if you learn to do that a little bit, number one, you're going to have less in your inbox. Number two, the challenges and problems you're working on will get solved faster. It's so much richer in content. You get so much more solved. A lot of lawyers struggle with that is getting away from written communication so much because we tend early in our practice to lean on written communication because you can hone it, you can make it perfect, you know, every bullet point I mean, as great as you wish it to be. And people kind of get terrified, like, what if I get asked, you know, in the moment, how am I going to answer this? You have to start slowly doing that where you're less reliant on the email. And the nice part is when you do that, you become more efficient and your day can end earlier and you're not having to deal with so many written communications. So that's a very small example where, you know, developing yourself as a future leader or an executive and that mindset. It starts with emulating behaviors that you see those people do. I remember when I was a young lawyer at Pfizer, I was always annoyed by the people that would show up at my office like unannounced, no meeting, no email. Hey, I have a question. And I realized over time those were the more effective people. And then I became that person because I emulated that because it was much more effective than an email. And, you know, I would always see our better executives and future executives doing So that's one tip I would say is like observe the people around you who are, who are doing it right. You think that seem to be going to cycling or the gym and still very effective at work and seem to be calm and in control of what they're doing. Ask them, how do you do that? What's your approach? And observe them and copy a few of the things they do. That's always a good starting point. Fantastic. So to wrap up today's episode, I had mentioned before that page on your website that I really appreciated about a personal challenge related to to a health challenge in your family. You mentioned that that journey changed your perspective on life, on resilience, and many other things. If you could tell us a little bit more, you know, how did that personal experience influence the way you lead teams, you mentor lawyers, and even the way you define success today? Yeah, sure. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, my son Tristan, who is now 14, he has Down syndrome. And when he was born, he was very, very sick. He was at death's door for many months. So that was a huge challenge for my wife, myself, my family. I was off work for 6 months to manage that. You know, having a child with a disability is definitely something that we didn't expect and is still a challenge. It's my greatest challenge every single day. That being said, professionally, it definitely redefines what urgent is, what, you know, critical and important is. Like anyone who's dealt with a serious family health issue, You realize all of a sudden really nothing else kind of matters. Anything can wait. Anything can wait. So I remember going back to work right after that and I had completely transformed in terms of like what was really urgent. And especially I worked in healthcare, so I viewed the healthcare system differently and the challenges that our patients were having. So I got a completely newfound understanding of what the people who used our end products were really going through. So that was number one. And I definitely became kind of calmer under pressure and I didn't feel as much pressure from people when normally, you know, previous to that, I probably would be, you know, very concerned when, you know, something wasn't going exactly how I wanted it to be. It's not everything's going to work out perfectly and we've just, you just keep going. Things will be okay. You know, you do your best. I lost a lot of the stress I had from those things not being perfect all the time because I was just shaped by, you know, the events we had with my son. I would come home and have to deal every day with, to be honest, bigger challenges than I had at work. So it really reframed, you know, how difficult and challenging things were at work. At the same time, the other thing I think it did for me was to remind me that everybody is dealing with something. something, you know, at home. Everybody, every single person. Like when I was with my son at the hospital all the time, every family had their own challenge. You know, one wasn't worse or harder than the other, it was just different. And as a people manager, that was a really good lesson for me later in my career, that every single person you're working with or on your team or that you're collaborating with, or the person who annoyed you because they didn't write you back their email right away, everybody's dealing with I was privileged that they would share their personal lives with me. Not a single one of them had like, you know, a perfect life. They all had something going on. And it's very incumbent, I think, especially on managers to remember that and to give people a break and to give them grace and space and time to recover from things. And then, you know, just like for me, Pfizer was amazing to me when I was off for 6 months. You know, my manager, I'll never forget, he just focus on your family. And he never pressured me in any way. I came back as a much more dedicated employee. You know, I was very grateful for the support I got from people that literally brought us food and all these things. I never forgot that. So that— so the small blip in my career, the 6 months I wasn't available, you know, some places might sort of write you off and just say he's not dedicated anymore to his practice. But quite the opposite. I was very dedicated to the organization. And I remembered that and I tried to treat people in the same way over the course of my practice. And now it's the same as I'm working with people who come to me and they're maybe struggling a little bit with part of their career. You know, it's so easy to jump into like what's going on with your work, but sometimes there's stuff in the background, you know, and it's always up to the individual whether they want to talk about it or not. But that's, that shaped me, I think, as a human being type, you know, manager who has more of a view to the human behind the person. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you making the time to share all these thoughts and stories. Absolutely. Thank you, Claudio. It was a pleasure. I really appreciated you inviting me. Thank you all for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next episode.