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Google’s Team Secret: Why Interactions Beat Talent · The Science of Leading

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Science of Leading.
• 0:01
  Edwin, I want to start with a finding that messes with a lot of leadership
• 0:05
  instincts: Google looked at 180 teams across engineering and sales,
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  and the surprise was that the best team was NOT the one with the best
• 0:14
  individual talent.
• 0:15
  It was the one with the best interactions.
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  Yes...
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  and that distinction matters more than people think.
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  Most leaders still build teams like they're drafting an all-star roster.
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  Get the smartest engineer, the strongest seller,
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  the high-potential operator.
• 0:31
  But Project Aristotle found that who was on the team mattered less than
• 0:35
  how those people behaved together.
• 0:37
  That is a very inconvenient truth for executives who love résumés.
• 0:37
  Wait!
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  180 teams.
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  That's a big enough sample that you can't just shrug it off as one quirky
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  department.
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  So the old fantasy of, like, "put all the A-players in one room and magic
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  happens"...
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  that really doesn't hold?
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  Not reliably,
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  no.
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  Because brilliance can cancel itself out if people don't feel safe enough
• 0:59
  to use it.
• 0:59
  The big reveal was psychological safety,
• 1:02
  a term Amy Edmondson helped make central to management thinking.
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  Very simply: can I speak up, admit a mistake,
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  ask a naive question, disagree with you,
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  and not pay a social price for it?
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  "Social price" is the phrase that lands for me.
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  Because in a real workplace, people are doing that math constantly.
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  If I challenge my boss in this meeting,
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  do I look difficult?
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  If I admit I missed something,
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  do I look incompetent?
• 1:26
  Exactly.
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  And when the answer feels risky,
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  people get quiet.
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  They withhold doubts, concerns,
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  half-formed ideas.
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  Which means the team loses information.
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  And leadership, at bottom, is partly an information problem.
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  If the truth can't travel upward,
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  sideways, or across functions,
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  the team will look polished right up until it fails.
• 1:46
  That makes this almost
• 1:51
  counterintuitive in a painful way.
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  Because the "best people" might actually be the most dangerous team if
• 1:56
  everyone's protecting status.
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  Dangerous is not too strong a word.
• 2:01
  A room full of accomplished people can become a room full of performance.
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  Everyone signaling competence,
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  nobody exposing uncertainty.
• 2:09
  And then a team confuses confidence with coordination.
• 2:09
  Is that why vulnerability
• 2:15
  keeps coming up in this conversation?
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  Because I know some leaders hear that word and think,
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  oh no, now we're doing feelings instead of performance.
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  Yes,
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  they do.
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  But vulnerability in this context is practical.
• 2:27
  Matt Sakaguchi has a lovely example from group facilitation: he opens
• 2:32
  by sharing something personal first,
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  which gives everyone else permission to stop performing.
• 2:37
  In organizations, the equivalent might be a leader saying,
• 2:40
  "I may be missing something here," or,
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  "I got that wrong." Small sentence,
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  enormous effect.
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  So the move isn't sentimental.
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  It's operational.
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  If the boss says, "I missed that," suddenly other people can say,
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  "Actually, I think we're solving the wrong problem."That's right.
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  Psychological safety is not about being nice all the time.
• 3:01
  It's about making candor possible.
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  The team that can say, "I disagree," without humiliation will usually
• 3:08
  outperform the team that smiles,
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  nods, and ships avoidable mistakes.
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  And this is where managers get twitchy,
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  right?
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  Because the next question is always: fine,
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  but how do I measure THAT?
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  Give me a dashboard, give me a score,
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  give me a traffic-light system.
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  Ah yes,
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  the ancient managerial prayer: if it matters,
• 3:27
  surely it can be put in a spreadsheet.
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  Project Aristotle did use surveys.
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  People rated statements such as whether they felt safe expressing a different
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  opinion, whether the team could depend on one another,
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  whether they could navigate roadblocks.
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  Useful, certainly.
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  But the deeper signal was often in patterns of behavior.
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  Patterns like
• 3:48
  equal turn-taking?
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  Yes -- equal turn-taking and social sensitivity.
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  In strong teams, no one voice dominated every conversation.
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  People read the room better.
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  They noticed when someone wanted to speak,
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  or when tension entered the meeting.
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  It wasn't just what people said; it was whether the conversation itself
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  had enough oxygen for multiple minds.
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  So let me try to say it back.
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  A manager wants one clean number.
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  But the better question is, who speaks in our meetings,
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  who stays silent, who gets interrupted,
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  and whether disagreement actually changes the discussion.
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  Is that basically it?
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  Almost.
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  I'd add one more thing: whether people can raise a problem early.
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  That's a crucial tell.
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  If roadblocks only appear after deadlines slip,
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  the team may have compliance, not safety.
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  That one stings.
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  Because every leader has had that moment where they say,
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  "Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?" And the uncomfortable answer is...
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  they probably did the math and decided it wasn't safe or useful to tell
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  you.
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  Precisely.
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  Or they believed you only wanted good news.
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  Leaders teach teams what is discussable.
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  If every hard conversation is punished -- even subtly,
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  with a sigh or a defensive explanation -- people learn to bring you polished
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  surfaces.
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  And polished surfaces are kind of the enemy here.
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  They look efficient.
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  They feel calm.
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  Meanwhile nobody's saying, "This timeline makes no sense," or,
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  "Sales promised something product can't deliver."Mm-hm.
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  So yes, use the survey.
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  Ask the questions.
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  But don't worship the score.
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  Let it start a conversation.
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  "Do you feel safe disagreeing?" is useful.
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  More useful still is, "Tell me about the last time you disagreed here.
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  What happened?"
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  That's where the truth lives.
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  So if a leader's listening and thinking,
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  okay, I buy it, what do I actually work on?
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  Google landed on five factors: psychological safety,
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  dependability, structure and clarity,
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  meaning, and impact.
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  I love that list because it's not vague culture wallpaper.
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  It's pretty concrete.
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  It is.
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  And the order matters.
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  Psychological safety creates voice.
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  Dependability creates trust in execution.
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  Structure and clarity answer the question,
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  "Who does what by when?" Meaning answers,
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  "Why does this matter to me?" Impact answers,
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  "Does our work change anything beyond this room?" When those five are
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  present, teams stop wasting energy on confusion and self-protection.
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  Let's
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  make that practical.
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  If I'm leading a team Monday morning,
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  one move is modeling vulnerability -- saying,
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  "Here's what I'm unsure about." Another is clarifying roles,
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  because fuzzy ownership creates a lot of fake harmony.
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  Everyone nods, nobody owns it.
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  Yes.
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  And I'd add normalizing dissent.
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  Not occasional dissent -- normalizing it.
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  You can literally ask, "What are we missing?" or,
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  "Who sees this differently?" Then wait long enough for an answer.
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  Leaders often ask for candor and then rescue the silence too quickly.
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  That
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  pause is brutal.
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  Five seconds feels like an hour.
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  It does.
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  But that five seconds may be the distance between performative agreement
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  and real thinking.
• 7:02
  Another practical move is inviting quieter voices in without ambushing
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  them.
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  "Claire, we haven't heard from you yet -- what concern do you see?" Done
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  warmly, that changes the room.
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  And then meaning and impact -- those seem
• 7:18
  softer, but I don't think they are.
• 7:20
  If someone knows exactly how their work affects a customer,
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  or a patient, or even just the next team downstream,
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  they care differently.
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  They do.
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  People give more when the work is legible.
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  Not just assigned, legible.
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  And that's why team effectiveness is not a personality trait.
• 7:37
  It's not, "We're just a high-performing bunch," or,
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  "We're awkward but brilliant." It's designed.
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  Daily.
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  In how meetings are run, how mistakes are handled,
• 7:46
  how roles are defined, how dissent is treated.
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  Which means every leader is shaping team performance long before the
• 7:53
  quarterly numbers arrive.
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  Yeah...
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  and that's the part I keep coming back to.
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  If effectiveness is designed, then every awkward meeting is giving you
• 8:02
  data.
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  Not about whether your people are good enough - about what your team
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  has been taught is safe to say.
• 8:07
  Edwin, if there's one practical action step a team can take this week,
• 8:11
  what should it be?
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  Start small and make it real.
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  In your next team meeting, ask one question: "What are we not saying
• 8:19
  out loud?" Then go around the room and let each person answer once without
• 8:23
  interruption or debate.
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  Just collect what you hear.
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  After that, choose one item the team can act on before the week is over.
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  That simple rhythm tells people their voice matters,
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  and it turns a vague conversation about culture into a visible team habit.
• 8:38
  And if you want a practical way to measure and improve team performance,
• 8:42
  visit OAD.
• 8:42
  ai and try it for free.
• 8:46
  It's a simple next step if you want to turn team conversations into real
• 8:50
  insight.
• 8:51
  Thanks for listening to The Science of Leading.
• 8:51
  Bye for now - and we'll
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  see you next time.