Create Real Community in Hybrid Teams

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted–delighted isn't even a strong enough word–I am honored to be chatting with Cali Williams Yost. I can't believe it, Carly. We did this in the very first year of CareerCast. We don't even say how long ago, but it was a long time ago.

So Cali is the world's leading authority on high-performance flexibility. For more than two decades, Yost has been among the first to foresee many flexible workplace trends. She used those insights to help leaders build dynamic, responsive organizations that attract and retain and engage diverse workforce, increase productivity and innovation, enhance employee well-being, and respond rapidly to operating disruptions. With clients like EY, Freddie Mac, the Singapore government, and USB Americas. Yost’s work meets at the intersection of strategy, infrastructure and culture of shared leadership.

Cali, thank you so much. I know you're super busy now more than ever.

Cali Williams Yost: I know, right?

Anita Brick: I know very little about this. So I'm really thrilled that we're having the conversation today. So thanks for making the time.

Cali Williams Yost: It is absolutely my pleasure, Anita. You know I thoroughly enjoy spending time with you. So pleasure is all mine.

Anita Brick: Feelings are mutual. So the basic level, let's just get some definition. What does it mean to have a community in a hybrid environment?

Cali Williams Yost: So that's a great question because I think we have to start out by defining what community is, right So if you look at the dictionary, community is a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of shared common attitudes, interests and goals. So let's use that as our definition.

What is that feeling of fellowship? How do you build that with others in a hybrid work environment that has those common attitudes, interests, and goals? Well, I think part of the problem we're having is we have to move beyond hybrid. Hybrid’s part of the problem because hybrid is very “where” focused, and I think it's difficult for people to organize and have fellowship around what that means.

I would change the question a bit to say, what does community look like in a flexible, dynamic organization? Okay. An organization that is operating with strategic intention across workplaces, spaces, and time. And why that's different is people in that environment are organizing around a question. And that question is, what do we need to do and how, when, and where do we do it best.

And so the community–the common attitude and interests and goals–is really formed around answering that question with each other. And the answer to that question, what do we need to do and how, when and where do we do that best, is going to be different for different jobs, different teams, different organizations. You can approach it from a common process, a consistent process, but what the outcome of that is going to look like is going to be very dependent on the realities of those different jobs in those organizations based on the type of work that they do.

But the organizing structure is around the work. It's not around the where. People can't get excited about that. Like, where am I working? Am I onsite, am I remote? It doesn't land. Whereas if you start with what are we doing? And let's really look at that, not just from the tasks and priorities of our jobs, but then also the culture we want to build and the strategic purpose of our organization. That's when people can start to get excited. And that's when you build community, is when again, you're answering that question around how you operate in the most optimal way in this flexible, dynamic reality we were in actually before Covid. But now it's here to stay. And how do we optimize that?

Anita Brick: Okay. And I agree with you. I think it is a big strategic question. But in the trenches, in the field, so to speak, people get stuck in where they sit today or when they have responsibility. And when I think about the questions that came in, they really are around that. Let's keep the lens that you set, and then let's look at some of the specific situations that people talked about.

So there's an alum who said, I lead a team of nearly 100 people at different levels. It is easy to, quote unquote, forget those who aren't in the office invisible. I don't want to play favorites and also don't want this to feel forced or scripted. I welcome your insights and recommendations.

Cali Williams Yost: That is a great question because that gets to how do you operationalize high performance flexibility? What does that look like as a leader? And if that alum has 100 people at different levels, probably with very different jobs, right. And so they are going to work possibly in different flexible ways. So some of them may be onsite sometimes and also remotely sometimes. It sounds like some of them are onsite because that's just how their jobs are. That's how they have to work.

So now this person is a leader of a flexible work team. Their job is really twofold. One is to master those basics of good management. Pre-COVID, when we were organizing work around the place, you kind of could get away with not having mastered the ability to set clear priorities and goals, to have clear performance metrics. You know, you could just say people are here, so they're working. You can't do that anymore. You really do have to give people the parameters within which you are determining their performance. And that really goes back to just managing effectively.

But then there's this next level which is leading across the different aspects of when people are working. And what that means is you have to be comfortable communicating not only when they are in person with people, but using the technology that's available to you to be able to be in touch with people, whether they are in front of you or not.

You as a manager, have to be much more thoughtful and intentional about how you are developing your people, regardless of where they are working and whether you are seeing them in person. And that really is a skill that you have to practice.

So I'll give you an example. There's a leader that we work with. He has a bunch of people who are on site, but he has a number of people who he never sees globally. So we have to also remember a lot of this is we weren't onsite with each other all the time anyway, especially if you have global teams. So what he does is he has office hours for people who are onsite with him once a week. He has an in-person office hours, but then he also has a virtual office hours that's during the week as well the people can participate in. And he's very thoughtful about making sure his direct reports, that he is keeping track of how often he has connected with those people. He hasn't seen somebody in person, he makes sure his assistant reaches out and gets a coffee or a quick check in on his calendar for the people he is not seeing face to face day to day. And the other part of this too, is he himself is making sure he is working flexibly to align with the way most of his people operate. So he's not physically present, always in the office as well. He makes sure that he's virtual because a lot of his people are working flexibly as well.

As a manager, it's making sure you're being clear about how you're measuring people's performance, how you are setting priorities for them, whether they're with you or not in person, and then making sure you're comfortable communicating and collaborating across these different platforms and modes of communication that are available. Probably your team has, but you're optimizing them.

Anita Brick: I see that, and I think that's a really good point. Where I'm struggling a bit–there's a question that reflects this as well–is the difference between having a regimented connection or touchpoint and really having a sense of community and belonging. Another Boothie said. I found that it is one thing that people are visible, whether it's in squares, on a screen or in person, and quite another for people to feel seen and connected. What is your advice for managers and team members to ensure that everyone feels seen and connected, so that we are a community?

Cali Williams Yost: So let's step back a little bit and talk about how you operationalize all this to begin with. So this assumes that you have gone through a process with your team that you step back–this is not just you as a manager–everybody together has stepped back and said, all right, what do we need to do? What's our culture? What are our strategic priorities? What's our purpose? What are the tasks of our job? And then you as a team have thought through okay, so where do we do these priorities and tasks most effectively? When do we do the most effectively?

How do we do the most effectively? You've set up together the guardrails within which you are working. That's not happening right now. What's happening right now is it's all super random. There's no coordination to it. And that's why it's not working. So then after you set that structure up, your flexible operating model up, you are training people to be successful and working within that model.

And what that means is managers know how to manage a flexible work team. Teams know how to coordinate with each other, and individuals know how to then take what's their priorities are and figure out how, when, and where they've done their best. So every answer I'm giving to these questions assumes that that has happened. So if that has happened, then you have thought through how you are going to find that connectedness in your organization.

So I'll give you an example. So there's an organization, it's global that we work with. It's 1500 people across the globe and they have a headquarters in Seattle. That group has decided in addition to just the meetings that they have, where some people are in-person and some are virtual, they're getting together four times a year. Everybody is coming to this headquarters, and they are intentionally creating experiences where it's a lot of community building, a lot of interactivity over a course of those four weeks that happen throughout the year. Prior to the pandemic, they used to do that, but a lot of the time together, when they all came together at the headquarters, was spent in presentations. So what they've decided to do is they're going to record the presentations in advance. People will watch the prepared part of the time together, and then what they're going to do is reserve as much time as possible when everybody is in the same physical place to again, just be together, have those interactive conversations, and that's how they're going to optimize not only the in-person time for people to feel seen and interact with each other, but also optimize the times when they are not necessarily in person together. Because they can use the time they were in person to really have those relationships that allow then the more virtual times they're interacting to be effective.

So it's important, Anita, that everybody understands that that initial structure setting, that process of thinking through what we do and how, when and where we do that best allows for the team to say, how do we have to leverage those times when we are with each other? When does it not matter that we are not physically present? And how do we continue to stay connected in an effective way to do our work and have that community.

Anita Brick: That totally makes sense and what the company in the organization in Seattle is doing makes a ton of sense. One of the questions that came in was talking about the gap between awareness of what needs to be done. So the step before, how do you operationalize this? And falling short on the operational side. And I know that it is very specific to an organization, but are there some things that you've seen that accelerate the actual execution or implementation of what needs to come first?

Cali Williams Yost: Yes. And the first thing–I'm going to give you five steps. First thing that has to happen, senior leadership. And I'm talking the whole C-suite. I don't mean just the CHRO. The entire C-suite has to align around why a flexible operating model? What does that look like in our organization, and how do we get there? Because when I'm seeing too much in organizations, is everybody is looking to the CHRO to write a policy and then be done with it. It's not going to happen.

The CHRO can only do so much. The real work has to happen in the business, and that senior line leadership has got to get aligned, or the rest of it isn't going to work. Because what I'm seeing is there isn't an alignment at the senior level. There is still a sense that we're going to go back, which is unfortunate because until senior leadership gives the okay and support to begin to do that next level work, where you are looking at what you need to do, figuring out that structure you're going to work within.

It's not going to happen because people don't feel safe and supported. So step one, leaders have to get aligned.

Step two, you have to start with the question of what do we do? Then once you define the what, then you move to where do we do that best? And you don't just stop at where. It's also got to be when. And it also has to be how, which is how you use technology. What are our work processes? That has to happen.

Step three, then step four, is then you have to train your people. You have to train people to work successfully in a flexible organization. People do not have those skills. Naturally, the pandemic was a crisis-driven execution of flexibility. It was not planned. It was not optimized. So anything that happened during that two years, which a lot of good did happen, but it was not planned. It was not thoughtful. So now you've got to go back and you've got to give people the skills to optimize the way they're going to work in this new way.

And then the fifth step is you have to experiment, you have to learn, and then you have to recalibrate as you get smarter and better and figure out what's going to work for your organization.

So again, align your leadership. Then once you align your leadership, you've got to start with what. Then after you answer the what then you can start looking at where, but not just where, also where, when, and how. Then you have to train your people to be effective. And I don't mean just managers–managers, teams and individuals. And then you have to experiment, learn and recalibrate as you go forward. Those are the steps you can see from everything I just laid out how many organizations are doing that.

Anita Brick: Yeah, not too many. And in fact, one of the students said, we're not doing this. You know, we have a chart and we have so many people in the office to make sure that it's open and all of that, but it's really based on personal preference, not a strategic plan. And she said, I'm thinking that instead of creating a whole community, since I'm not seeing good leadership, maybe I start with one person or two people and build from there. Have you seen that work?

Cali Williams Yost: Let's go back to the core question. The core foundational question of high performance flexibility is, what do we need to do and how, when and where do we do that best.

And anybody can answer that question, even if it's for themselves. So let's say she starts with that question with like three people in her team, okay? They sit down one day–it can be virtually–they sit down and they ask each other, all right, let's just list it out. What do we need to do in our jobs? And then start to ask each other, okay, based on this task and priority, where does this happen best?

Does it happen best when we’re together? Does it happen best when it doesn't matter? Some of this can be virtual, some of this can be there. Or does it maybe happen best for remote? I mean there are things that legitimately happen better when you're all virtual and on zoom, let's say like a shared document that you're editing. Who cares where you are? It's actually better if you're all just logged in. Walk through that process. Then ask yourself, when do we do this best? And this becomes important when you're dealing with the concept of asynchronous and synchronous work. Those terms are so tricky for people. But basically what it is, is asynchronous means I don't need to get a real time reaction from you. You can do this independently. And synchronous means, I need to talk to you in real time. I need to get a real time interaction with you. Ask yourselves, this work – can we do it asynchronously? Does it require us to be in contact with each other? Or does it really require us to be interacting in real time?

And then ask yourself how you're using your technology. When you're posting a document, what type of documents go where? What are you using as your main source of messaging? When do you use email? Get some of that stuff organized and start from there and begin to build that community around your work from your point of reference. Anybody can do that. Just start asking that question with each other and putting the guardrails in place and operating within them, and see how it goes and experiment.

Anita Brick: I love that because it gives people a sense of control and confidence and then it works. And now you bring it up a level or two levels or senior level and say, hey, this is working. Can we rethink it? It re-empowers someone who may be feeling frustrated and when we feel frustrated, some people will act out and make it worse.

Cali Williams Yost: Yep. And the other thing to remember is too–and I think this is super important–there's this sense that you're going to find what you're looking for someplace else. And I think you have to be cautious when you are recruited to work someplace that says they have flexibility, or you can work hybrid, but they don't have any of this structure in place.

This process I'm outlining is ultimately what has to happen for any quote unquote, hybrid environment to be successful. If you can't get a sense from a place you're going to go that they've done this work, then I would try to do it where you are. Because you're familiar with the culture, you're familiar with the organization, and take the lead where you are and all of this new way of working. Begin to put that in place where you are. You might find it's more satisfactory, is what I'm saying. I just get nervous. People think they're going to find it someplace else, and that's not always the case. So start where you are and try to build it today.

Anita Brick: Okay. Well, let's say you do want to leave not because the flexible work environment is not working. You want to lead because you're pivoting to a new role or you're getting promoted or whatever the reason is. What are a couple of questions you would be asking during the interview process to find out where they are in the flexibility process?

Cali Williams Yost: That's a really good question, Anita. You know, again, this is hard. You're interviewing for a job. You've got to gauge how deep you can get into this with a prospective employer because, you know, the answer could be we really don't have a lot. And you've got to decide then do you still want this job? So whenever I give the answer to this question, I always urge people to really gauge how much you want this job and how much you need it to determine how deeply you're going to go into this questioning.

Let's assume you have options, and you can decide if you can take it or leave it based upon the reality of flexibility in that particular organization. So what you're going to want to ask is how do your teams operate in terms of where they can work and when they can work? Is there an ability to work both on-site and remotely, based on the realities of this job? It seems like it can be done in that way. How do you determine when you're communicating with each other? How do you determine when you're coordinating with each other and ask them how effectively have people adopted the technology that is available to them to do their jobs? Are people trained? Is there a consistency in terms of how people will use slack or email, or if they're using Teams? Is there a consistency to how people decide how they're going to be logging on to Teams and sharing documents? Like, that's the granularity, you want to get a sense from them they have thought through.

Then you want to understand are managers trained to lead flexible work teams? Are they really given the skills they need to be effective in not only coordinating, but executing the work across these different dimensions? And then I would also, if you want to even go deeper, say our teams train to teams, know how to work with each other, can't just be the manager. And how do you prepare each one of us individually to be effective as we work in a flexible way in your business? You're drilling down pretty deep there, but if you can ask those questions and they can give you the answers, that's great. Like then, you know, wow, they're doing this the right way. Then what can happen is when you feel that those questions stop being answered in an effective way, then it gives you a sense of how far along they are. You can decide, all right, you know what? They at least they're trying. Let me go in there. Let me be part of the solution. You know, let's work this through together. But you'll know the degree to which this is real and meaningful at this point in time.

Anita Brick: It's a good point, and I think that some of the questions that you posed can be answered, especially if you want this job more effectively in the later stages or even right after an offer is made.

I wonder if at the earlier stages you could ask them for, you know, an example of where this has worked well, to get them kind of an appreciative inquiry kind of approach to it, and then ask those tougher questions, maybe wait until you've actually received an offer.

Cali Williams Yost: I think that's a really good point. Anita. You know, again, you have to kind of understand where you are in the interview process and where you are with this job and how important it is for you to know this upfront. For some people, it's not going to be that important. They can get further along in the process before they really get a sense of how real it is. But then there are some people I've met who really I am just not even considering anything until I know upfront that this is truly the way I can work, and it's going to be effective for me and the organization.

So again, it depends on how important this is to you and how far along in the process you want to get before you decide, based upon your ability to work in a flexible, dynamic way.

Anita Brick: Excellent point. And that's a question that each of us has to ask ourselves as we enter that process. It's very tricky. From what I see, and, you know, I hear about lots of different organizations, there aren't a ton of them that are doing this super well. So you may need to be part of the solution.

Cali Williams Yost: Right. And you just go in knowing that that's the point. Just go in knowing that. Because I've heard enough stories recently of people who've taken jobs where they were told, oh, you can do this. We're flexible, we're a hybrid work environment. And then it's really not great. Like it isn't well orchestrated, it is not well executed. And they're disappointed and it's not what they wanted. And I don't know, I just think you want to try to get a sense. They could have still taken the job, but they would have gone in eyes wide open.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Makes sense. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Cali Williams Yost: I absolutely do.

Anita Brick: Okay. There are a couple of questions. So clearly this is on people's minds about what I would call the niceties. So having virtual or in-person celebrations, birthdays, lunch meetings, other celebrations, volunteering together and all of that. And the two questions–one was from a student and one was from an alum–but they both kind of zeroed in on the same thing and how forced it feels. I know that if you put the other pieces together, maybe this will come together as well, but any insight on how to make it feel less like a required happy hour at 5:00 on Friday by zoom or even in person, versus something that people genuinely want to participate in?

Cali Williams Yost: So this is such a great question, because this is how a lot of organizations have been leading. They've been leading with things like this, these moments where they've kind of force people together. I would say, imagine these gatherings, these times together, are part of that broader conversation. Because what you would have done is what's the culture? What do we need to do to build our culture where we feel connected with each other and things probably will come up? We need to have moments where we are gathering and celebrating and having fun together. Okay, great. How when and where do we do that best? What does that look like? And then it would be part of that broader reimagining of work that you have discussed. So these moments would not just be standing alone off to the side. They would be part of this broader operating approach you've thought through, and they have a place and people understand why they're happening and why they're important, because they would have played a role in identifying them and then thinking through what that looks like.

If the answer is we need to have lunch meetings, guest speakers, birthday celebrations. That's how we build that part of our culture. Great. How, when, and where do those lunch meetings happen best? How, when, and where do we have guest speakers most effectively? How, when, and where do we celebrate birthdays? And you may find some of the answers are we got to do this in person.

Let's say we're an organization that gets together. I'll use my Seattle example again. Four times a year, we're physically present with each other. During those four weeks, we're going to make sure we have birthday celebrations to celebrate the birthdays that happen that week, or we're going to have guest speakers come in or we're all together. But other times of the year, we're going to try to be creative and do them virtually. We're going to have lunch meetings virtually. We're going to have birthday celebrations virtually. We're going to have guest speakers who come in and present remotely, and that's great too. But you've come at it from what you're trying to accomplish with that event in the context of the broader organization versus just have this thing stand over here that doesn't have any context within your broader strategic objectives of this new way of working.

Anita Brick: It totally makes sense, because otherwise it feels like something that doesn't fit right. Everything else, it just feels a little fakey to me.

Cali Williams Yost: It does. It feels forced. And again, the challenges it's not part of a whole. You haven't stepped back and said, what role do these events play in our broader work organization, in the broader way that we operate together?

And I love the word community. I think that's a great way to approach it. How does this fit into our broader organizational community that we're trying to execute on? Like, what does this mean? And I think that's where people struggle.

Here's where it is, Anita. People know work has changed. They know. They know we're not doing this the way we did it before. And it's almost like we're not talking about that, okay, these standalone events are happening, but we're trying to make them happen without acknowledging they need to happen in a new structure that we have to think through broadly. And that's where people struggle. I just think they're not understanding why they're doing these things.

Anita Brick: It's really interesting. I was thinking about something someone shared with me about almost pretending–and I'll use air quotes around pretending–that everything was the same and they were going to go back to the way they did these cross-team events.

And some people joined because it was in person and they felt comfortable. Others didn't, but it was as if they were pretending it was the past, without really integrating this new information and level of safety and all of those things, which is very difficult to do because it's more comfortable to go back to the past.

Cali Williams Yost: Well, I think it's easier on some level to think you could, but I just think at the end of the day, you're delaying what ultimately will have to happen. Which is a stepping back and saying, okay, you know what? It is different. But lots of good stuff happened over the last two and a half years that we can learn from. What do we want to keep from that?

But there are definitely things missing. Being together matters. What does that look like? Being together? What does that look like and why are we doing it in service of our work, in service of our culture? What does that look like? And then figuring out what the new next is going to look like. It's not a hybrid work environment. It is a flexible work environment where you're working across workplaces, spaces, time, using technology. All those elements come together in how you're operationalizing the way you're going to work going forward. I really do believe hybrid is keeping us stuck, because it's making us focus on where first instead of the work first, then determining how, when, and where it's done best.

And many people do not have hybrid jobs. So when you come at this from a perspective of hybrid, you are leaving out between 45 and 60–I think that's the percentage–45 to 60% of the workforce that literally has to do their work on-site, and they're not including them in the conversation around, all right, so what type of flexibility might work for you?

If there's one message I can give everybody from this webcast. In your organization, start with the work. Start with the what. And when you do that, then pull everybody together in a community to organize around executing that what in a flexible, dynamic way. And that is how you are going to create the fellowship, the common attitudes, the common interests and goals that build community is when you're figuring out what that looks like together and then executing it in a coordinated, deliberate way.

Anita Brick: And including everyone.

Cali Williams Yost: Yep, everybody.

Anita Brick: I love the strategic nature of this, including everyone. It's not happening right away. It's happening in different degrees in different organizations. So let's go back to the individual who asked the question about where to start if you're not senior leadership and you want to create a change at least incrementally and experiment. What are three things that you would advise someone to do to start that change in their immediate environment?

Cali Williams Yost: The first thing I would advise you to do is pull together a group of like minded people who you work with and ask them to sit down with you and start to map out with each other. What do we do? What are the tasks and priorities of our job? You can start there. But then take it up a notch and say, what do we do in terms of the culture that we want to create? The way we work together as a team, what's meaningful there?

Then when you started identifying that for your particular little team of four, let's say that you're working with, then ask each other, okay, where do we do these things most effectively with each other? Based upon the realities of what those priorities and tasks are, where do we do them best? When do we do them best? Do you have to set core hours? Does it matter when you are sending out messages to each other? Do you want to set some parameters around expectations of getting back to each other and being accessible and responsive? Look at the technology you have available to you. Are you optimizing it? What could you four be doing better together to figure out how you leverage that technology to communicate and coordinate. And then just start doing it.

Oh, I would also say with each other, if you don't manage each other, but you might want to just say to each other, what does success look like? When we know we're doing things well, how do we measure that and then start to work within the structure? You've set intentionally sitting down each week before the upcoming week, sitting down and saying, all right, based upon what we're doing, we have coming up, do we still agree this is how we're going to get it done? Great. I'm going to be on-site these days with you. We're going to be working remotely these days. We're going to be communicating with each other within these hours. We're going to be using technology this way. And then just start doing it. And then three months from now, four months from now, step back and say, how's it going? Are we getting the job done the way we decided success, what that looks like? Do we have to recalibrate? Great. And do it again. And just keep doing that and you'll see you'll begin to see there's intentionality that begins to happen around what you're trying to accomplish and how you're doing it. And that's what's missing is the intentionality and the coordination that has to happen.

Now, Anita, everything I just said, that's effort. That's work. And that's what everybody seems to want to not do. When work was showing up every day in the same physical place during the same hours, you didn’t have to do all this. But that's not reality anymore. To have the flexibility that makes sense for your job that everybody now wants, there is going to have to be an aspect of intentional planning, coordination, and execution within teams. That then, though, builds that common sense of shared fellowship and interesting goals that everybody's looking for. The return from that is what everybody seems to want. So make the effort, take those steps and you'll get what you're looking for on the other side.

Anita Brick: Makes perfect sense. And I think the other part of this, or just to riff off of that a little bit, is the people you want to keep, this is super important to many, many of them. And the ones you don't care about keeping, they can probably just roll with how things are, but you're not going to have the team that you want.

Cali Williams Yost: Exactly. And I would say–this is what I always say to leaders–when you start to execute a flexible operating model in an intentional way, it's like the ocean goes out. You know, when the ocean goes out and all of a sudden you sort of see the bottom of the ocean floor, like what was probably right. Like all of a sudden the people who really probably weren't actually being very effective before Covid, all of a sudden it becomes much clearer that they probably aren't people that you're going to want to keep. The people who actually dive in and do this and want to make the effort and are effective, they're going to be even more effective and give you even more because they're able to think through what they need to do and how, when and where they do that best. So they're even more effective than they were before. It's effort, but it's effort that actually does pay off for everybody in the end.

Anita Brick: I could see that. Wow, I feel much more encouraged about all of this. I have some things that I can do and maybe some suggestions that I can make. Thank you very much, Cali.

Cali Williams Yost: Oh, my pleasure.

Anita Brick: Yeah, thanks for making the time. You are so good at this. And it's kind of amazing to me–one of our very first conversations, long time ago, you went back from Wall Street to get an MBA at Columbia to do this work. 1993. People thought, what? What is she even talking about? And that's what makes you a pioneer. It makes you credible and it gives you such a perspective and insight. I am so honored to know you.

Cali Williams Yost: Anita, I'm going to say I am honored to know you, my friend, because you are remarkable. You saw in me what I was trying to say to the world even back then. And I so very much appreciate your support of that. I'm grateful for it. Thank you.

Anita Brick: Thank you, and thanks again for making the time. This is very valuable. I can see where it will do a lot of good. So thanks again.

Cali Williams Yost: Oh, I hope so. You're welcome.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.