Latest / Expertly Said / Mary Jane Salinas on Leading with Ignorance in Science Communication
Transcript
- Kristen Sweeney: You're listening to Expertly Said, a podcast on the art and impact of communication. I'm Kristen Sweeney, founder and CEO of Every Little Word. My guest today is Mary Jane Salinas. Mary Jane is an executive director of medical excellence in the biopharmaceutical industry, where she provides strategic leadership across scientific communications, publications, strategy, and medical affairs. She partners with cross-functional and global teams to elevate how science is communicated, ensuring clarity, rigor, and alignment at every level of the organization. As a leader, Mary Jane is passionate about developing high performing teams, enabling thoughtful decision making, and ensuring medical excellence shows up not just in the data, but in how that data is shared. Mary Jane, welcome to the show. Mary Jane Salinas: Thanks, Kristin. Glad to be here. Kristen Sweeney: Can you share a little bit about your origin story with us? ⁓ My understanding is you did not start your career in communications. Mary Jane Salinas: I sure didn't. So I am a pharmacist by trade. I did the ⁓ what most know as Count by Fives pharmacy for about a year out of school. And really I had done the Count by Five things all through schools, working at traditional retail pharmacy at a local grocery store. And I loved it. I loved having the relationships with the patients. I loved the fast paced environment. I liked solving problems. And so when I graduated, Kristen Sweeney: That's it for this episode of Expertly Said. We are produced by Every Little Word, a boutique content and communications agency. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, or leave us a review. If you want to connect with me directly, please do. You can find me on LinkedIn, just search Kristen Sweeney. Thanks for listening. Talk soon. Mary Jane Salinas: I got a few job offers actually to work retail and I was ready to pay off my student loans. So I took the chance and went and worked at a retail pharmacy. did it for a little bit over a year. I started as a floater pharmacist and that is one that goes in between different stores and kind of fills in gaps as needed and then got a more permanent ⁓ assignments and got to become the pharmacy manager there and grow a team. ⁓ However, traditional retail pharmacy has somewhat changed over the years and there is less and less opportunity for what I like to call using your science mind. ⁓ And so I actually got a call from one of my preceptors from university who asked if I'd ever heard about medical information, that if I was interested in a career change and at first I actually said no. But then about six months later when I started to think, how am I going to work back to back 12 hour shifts and every other weekend and have a family one day, I decided to call her back in and said, tell me a little bit more about medical information. And so thanks to her, I transitioned into medical information from an agency standpoint. And basically I answered phones and from patients, from HCPs, healthcare professionals from the community regarding questions on different medications and represented a lot of different industry companies and provided medical information for them. And it was great. I was there for about three years and had kind of tapped out on what I could do next there. being the curious person I am, I wanted to kind of go on the inside of all of these companies that we had worked for. And so I took an opportunity to transition to a medical information role on the industry side and was there for a little bit. And then continued my career at another company a few years later doing both medical information and transitioning there to the medical communications and publication side. And that was really kind of where I started to expand my medical affairs knowledge and expertise ⁓ and ultimately kind of just continued up the ladder with opportunity grabbing as I could and have now landed at a global pharmaceutical company and heading up the medical excellence arm. Kristen Sweeney: I love the phrase medical excellence. ⁓ One of the taglines for our business is content for companies committed to excellence. It's such a stake in the ground, that word, right? Mary Jane Salinas: Yes. Yes, no excuses, but I think there are so many things that influence medical excellence. And whenever we were thinking, as we kind of built this global team, what all falls into my purview, it was more than just, you know, publications or communications or evidence generation. so medical excellence kind of was a good fit all term that we decided on. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, love that. I'm curious, ⁓ what do you feel like bringing that scientific background in versus maybe a background in journalism, which is like a really common pathway we hear? ⁓ What do you think were maybe some of the advantages of that and were there any kind of big lessons you learned on the communication side as you progressed? Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that having a scientific background is extremely important when it comes to the medical side of biotech or pharma. ⁓ There's also a communication side on the corporate side, don't get me wrong, the commercial side. But whenever we are thinking about medical communications, there is so much that we have to communicate around the science that is of the utmost importance and to do it effectively and clearly and be able to understand it yourself. However, of course, we are not taught ⁓ grammar and journalism and writing and creative writing whenever you go through pharmacy school, believe it or not. And so I think that not diving into a lot of those skills through my schooling was probably somewhat of a shortcoming. ⁓ Luckily, Kristen Sweeney: Ha Mary Jane Salinas: Whenever one of the things that I did in my career was whenever I worked in medical information, I like to talk about medical information being very black and white. It is strict. is within the lines. is black and white. It is reactive, unsolicited. But I had a creative itch that I really wanted to scratch. And that's when I moved to medical communications. And so we can do a little bit more creative things when it comes to our publications and our content for healthcare professionals in the field and I do have a creative itch and so that was kind of my fulfillment there. ⁓ Now I've definitely learned more and learned how to reach further when it comes to creativity from peers and from my commercial colleagues that maybe have a different background as I do, but we also lean heavily on agency partners that have just different skill sets because it's really all of the pieces of the puzzle that make what we do good. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ One of the things I wanted to talk with you about is some of your work in rare disease. Can you give us just a quick kind of high level overview of your background in rare disease? And then we'll dig into maybe how that work has ⁓ impacted your approach to communication or what's different for communicating with those populations. Mary Jane Salinas: Yes, for sure. So I've worked in kind of a, we call it neurology, neuromuscular, neurodegenerative space for almost all of my time in pharmaceutical industry. However, at the very beginning of my pharma life, I was not in rare disease. And so within the last five to 10 years, I really transitioned into companies that focus on rare disease and treating rare disease. And I think what makes that different is that it's a smaller team externally that we're working with. Not only is our reach when it comes to physicians that we need to partner with smaller, but also the resources that they have at their hand is smaller. Their systems might not be set up as robustly. And really importantly is patients are always involved when it comes to science and health and their health care. However, those in rare disease is just a different environment. It's often, I work in pediatric rare disease and so we have the caregivers are so passionate about it and so heavily involved and it's often what they do now because they have a kiddo that is affected by a rare disease. And so it's really very heavily patient involved and patient focused. And that's why I'm really passionate about working in that space. It's just, get to have these relationships and work with and support and really see the effect that you're having on the community and the impact. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. What? I'm curious. I'm not quite sure how to ask this, but how, beyond reaching the patient population and that caregiver population, and obviously the HCP is associated with diagnosing and treating rare disease, how do you think about... broader awareness. This was a while ago now, but I'm thinking about like the ice bucket challenge, right, for ALS and this thing that was super viral and it took off and suddenly everybody had at least a surface level understanding or recognition awareness of this rare disease. How much is sort of general population awareness a... part of the strategy typically and where do see the value of that if at all or do you find efforts tend to focus on a more like a smaller group? Mary Jane Salinas: No, I think that general awareness is really important. ⁓ It's especially important in diseases where the time to diagnosis is important. So when you think about certain rare diseases where it's a diagnosis that may be diagnosable at birth, but perhaps signs and symptoms don't show up until a little bit later, but they could just look like ⁓ a little bit of delay in meeting milestones, right? But all kiddos are different, all babies progress differently. So maybe it's not too much of a concern with the pediatrician. But really once you see, you know, a six year old, seven year old, an eight year old, it's apparent like maybe something right is not typical. Then that's when perhaps parents start to wave a flag and, you know, kind of raise what they need to with physicians and the physicians might start to think, yeah, this is not. you know, something that I normally see as a primary care physician and then they might refer them and the diagnosis journey can take a while. But if they would have at the very beginning gotten maybe a newborn screening, they could have started with, you know, some rare diseases you can start with gene therapy early, some diseases you can start with other treatments really, really early. ⁓ And so I think that general community awareness is important, especially in those diseases, ⁓ just to know that this exists and this is what it looks like, but also general awareness for those kiddos that are going through it so that if you have a child that's in elementary school and they might have a classmate with a rare disease to understand really what it is and what challenges they might be facing, but also how they can support and help and relate and build relationships with them I think is really important. And so from a medical standpoint with what I do with general community awareness, ⁓ We usually have patient advocacy teams within our organization that sometimes live within the medical umbrella, sometimes not. ⁓ But we work closely with them to make sure that we are able to show up at patient advocacy meetings with our science, with information about just the disease, with sponsorships if appropriate, so that they can continue to help really raise awareness. disease. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I love that. I appreciate the really nuanced and thoughtful connection of what the impact really is for the broader community at large. I want to switch gears just a little bit before we get to our one big idea. ⁓ Looking ahead for us, what do you see changing about scientific communication? Maybe what has changed recently, we can of course bring in AI if that is relevant to the conversation, but channels, formats, overall approaches, what from your perspective is going to be different a couple years from now? Mary Jane Salinas: Thank I mean, how do we not bring AI into a conversation? But I will talk about other things other than AI. I think that obviously AI is something we're all going to have to figure out. ⁓ It's going to be utilized across all sorts of medical information, but we really need to figure out how we do that compliantly and appropriately and accurately. And what you put into AI is what comes out of AI. So making sure that whoever's Kristen Sweeney: Yep! Of course. Mary Jane Salinas: training AI or setting up or what have you, I'm not a tech person. ⁓ Also has a scientific background and the knowledge to be able to really arm AI. But then utilizing it in healthcare is also very tricky because of all of the compliance and the guardrails that we need to make sure are built around it. Now, other things outside of AI that I think will change, I think that are... ⁓ Physician population is obviously, I'm a millennial, right? So we have, millennials are different perhaps than, what is it, Gen X, you know, a lot of our typical older, more seasoned, tenured professors and HCPs that we have in the field. And I think that everybody learns differently and everybody is used to taking in information differently. And that's something that is really important for us as industry folk to figure out because what might have worked for the last 10 years to use as a vehicle for data dissemination might be very different than perhaps what the new upcoming doctors out there want to use to learn. And so we're used to publishing papers and Lancet, you know, journal, but I'm not sure that that's how a lot of the newer physicians might want to read or do they have time to given, you what our healthcare system is looking like, et cetera. And so are there ways for us to provide data through more accessible ways through snippets? Can we provide medical information via chatbots, via text messages? Are there other ways that we can compliantly do this? And so I think that that is really where it's heading. You know, we call... We use the word publication extenders a lot in my life. so beyond a typical journal manuscript, what else can you do to give that publication legs per se? So is it a video abstract? Is it some infographic that we can create and perhaps have our field medical teams leave behind and share so that it's more digestible at a snippet? ⁓ But I think that that's really probably the bigger thing that we need to. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Mary Jane Salinas: solve for now ⁓ with AI probably supporting some of that, but that's also going to be a longer journey. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah, I was a... just recorded an episode earlier this week ⁓ with a business leader and she was talking about how there are four generations working side by side in her workplace right now. And the communication challenges as a leader are quite intense as a result of people wanting to learn a different way. know I'm a millennial as well and although I will pick up the phone, I have a husband who pretty much, if you can't order, take out online, like. Mary Jane Salinas: Good. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: we're not eating from that restaurant. different preferences. I think, I mean, I really like the extender terminology because to me, speaks to the source of truth is still the paper, right? It's not. And so I imagine that you're trying to find a way to it's giving people a window in. If they need more information, like it's not saying that a 30 second video is everything they need to know. It's just, is that the entry point? Is that the thing that helps them identify? ⁓ Is this relevant to me right now for my patients to maybe go a bit further? It's almost like the invitation in not meant to be the replacement for the, the formal data itself. Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah. Absolutely, I think that that's important. It's more of how can I get this either in bite-sized pieces or how can I know that there are new data or how can I know that these data are relevant to me? And so a window in, a little bit of snippet, a little teaser per se so that then they can dig into the primary publication, right, whenever they need to know all of the things. Kristen Sweeney: Yes, yes, absolutely. So I want to switch gears now and bring us into the one big idea. This is a chance for us to get into the nitty gritty of one insight, experience, or aspect of your work that's had an impact on how you communicate. I love this one big idea that you brought in, which is lead with ignorance. So to start, can you explain what lead with ignorance means? Mary Jane Salinas: Yes. So when I say lead with ignorance, it is not an excuse to stay in the dark, we'll say, right? It's not an excuse to be ignorant, to not figure out the solution, to not figure out the answer. But I think when I say lead with ignorance, that has really rung true to me over the past six months to a year as I have been of newly formed and developing global medical affairs team and having a leadership role within it. ⁓ We work with Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Mary Jane Salinas: our medical affairs colleagues across the globe. And they speak different languages, they have different regulations. are different, the drugs are at different levels of availability. They have different teams backing them. It's just, there are so many nuances and differences. And when I go in and I'm creating communications for them, either to use externally or internally so that they can learn and understand our data. It has been very important for me to lead with ignorance, to admit that I don't know what I don't know and to make sure that they feel that their input is important and heard and taken in. And so I think that so often we have leaders that come into a place and they know everything, they've done this before, they've had a ton of experience, they're very knowledgeable, but when they don't seem open and human, then that puts up a wall. And so one of the things that I found most successfully, whether it's cross-regional or cross-functional, is to lead with ignorance and to raise my hand and be like, hey, sorry for the silly question, or I don't know this, can you help me so that we make sure that our path forward is going to be successful and collaborative. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I love this. It's very similar to a principle ⁓ that I apply in my own work. ⁓ I interview a lot of executives and experts. And although we put in significant preparation before those conversations, the reason we're on those calls is to download their knowledge, right? And so it's intentional that I don't know what they know. That's why we're there. ⁓ And I find that it counter-intuitively demonstrates and takes a lot of confidence to say you don't know something. But being willing to say that versus the kind of like quietly scribble it down and I mean, there are times where a drug name I'm like, do my best, look it up later. You know, not everything needs to be, not everything needs to be finessed in the moment, but ⁓ I think it demonstrates confidence to be able to stop and say, I'm with you 60 % of the way and then you lost me and I need to make sure I understand that because I'm going to go have to go out synthesize this information and go do something with it. And if I don't understand it or I I haven't fully grasped the nuance of, what you're talking about. ⁓ then I'm not going to be able to do the next step effectively. Mary Jane Salinas: I think it's also really important when we think about communicating with healthcare professionals is we lean on them as much as they lean on us. So when we are finding ways to share our data or educate the public or other physicians, there are experts in the area that have dedicated their life to it and have dove in more than I ever want to dive in. And it is important that we are comfortable going to them and being like, Hey, is how we are talking about our mechanism of action, ringing true to you. Is it relatable? Is it correct? Does it make sense? Does the science connect the dots for you? And to be able to ask that of them and say, like, we depend on you and we know that you're an expert too, but also here is some information that we can be experts on is a really, really important relationship. to a. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, that's great. I'm thinking about, course, HCPs are not the only audience that you have, although they're very important one. How does leading with ignorance show up in maybe when you think about patients and caregivers and what they need to know or maybe what their sort of baseline is for understanding information? How does that apply? Mary Jane Salinas: No, I think that the community and patients and caregivers are so important for all of the work that we do as well. When we start any journey down a potential... rare disease or collaboration, there's always things like community ad boards that we do or partnerships where we're trying to do publications around what we call more of a patient lay summary or a plain language summary. And so we want to find ways that we can work with and for the patients as well, because if we are sharing our knowledge or sharing our data in a way that is going over everyone's head, it's not going to be helpful. And so I think us being able to ask the questions, it's like, I understand these science, here it is, is this how you talk about it? Is this how you and your peers are communicating about it? Is this how your patient advocacy teams hear about it being discussed at the camps or the conferences? But also, if we explain it this way, does this make sense to you? Is this visual? usable and relatable to you. And so it's always really important to make sure that we're bringing in all of the stakeholders that might be receivers, I guess, of our communications. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. One of the things that I think is fun actually is the challenge of navigating sort of customer or user language with technically correct language. And there are certain spaces in which, you know, it's the customer language, it's like the more you can just take that and drop it into your own messaging and you're good to go. ⁓ Complex industries, technical industries, that's not an option in the same way. So I find it a puzzle that is an interesting challenge for me to navigate. How do we talk about this relatably when perhaps the language is not. precise or specific, but it is the language that maybe a patient population tends to use and marry that with the factually accurate information we need to convey. you know, there's no formula for that. That's ⁓ lot of intuition and feeling your way in and having lots of people, know, your compliance and regulatory and legal partners double check and triple check. But ⁓ I do find out a really kind of... interesting dance to do. That's part of the message. Mary Jane Salinas: It's a fun puzzle and it just, definitely takes a village. We talk about, you know, raising children taking a village, but also communications takes a village. It's, it's something that everybody needs to have involvement in or a say in, but also there's so much puzzle making or puzzle solving that has to be done. ⁓ and then the whole compliant thing also puts an additional twist on it because there are so many, ⁓ regulations and they differ depending on what region we're creating our material for. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious, is there an example you can think of where that sort of leading with ignorance led to a scientific communication where you were like, this really made an impact because I was able to stop and say, tell me more. Mary Jane Salinas: Okay, let's see. Time specific to scientific communication. think that... There, so yes, we have worked recently on a certain publication or manuscript that has been very R &D driven. So research and development, ⁓ clinical development, which is a different group. We work obviously very close partnerships with them, but ⁓ that's not necessarily my umbrella, right? But we support their publications and we want to support publishing their data in the right way. ⁓ in a good journal, we want to make sure we're successful there. Sometimes they data dump on us and they talk about our data because they've lived it so closely for the last, you know, 10, 15 years. ⁓ And they talk about the data like it's the back of their hand. ⁓ Yes, and there have been, and so recently we had a manuscript where we had an ultimate Kristen Sweeney: The ABCs, yeah. Mary Jane Salinas: maybe the medical team had an ultimate goal that was perhaps a little bit different from the R &D's ultimate goal and vision for the data that we were sharing. And so there was a time where I had to step back and be like, okay, what is our ultimate audience? What are we hoping to achieve? And understanding the fact that many of the recipients of this message might have a similar background or understanding as me or other people in medical, are we... communicating these data in a way that will be meaningful and clear to them and tell the story you want to tell. And so I had to kind of be like, remember, I'm a little bit ignorant here on a lot of these analyses and these data and the modeling, et cetera. And so how are what we are saying? ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. Mary Jane Salinas: usable to somebody and I don't want say a lay person, it's not a lay summary by any means, they're very, very advanced, experienced, smart people that will be reading it, but it's just a different lens that we have to put on sometimes when we switch between even, you know, close functions like R &D and that. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I love that you brought it back to objectives, which can kind of get lost along the way sometimes, right? Or it's a good, it's, it's your. you're like to come back to the standard and be like, are we still here? Or in all of these individual conversations about these pieces and parts, have we sort of drifted from that? ⁓ And all of that development, know, there's speaking of AI, think ⁓ a sudden interest in editing, ⁓ but this idea of what's in, what's out, what are those trade-offs from a language perspective, right? And, ⁓ it is not editing for its own sake, but it always has to come back to why are we doing this? Who is it for? And it's not that nobody knows that. It's that it just gets a little lost in the minutia, which you have to be in the minutia, but ⁓ sometimes you got to pull back to and just kind of like a reset. Mary Jane Salinas: All right. The data are what the data are, but it's what we are trying to say about it and what we are wanting to convey with it that we need to make sure is always between the lines, per se. some people that have been working on the data and the analyses for so long are obviously very close to them and very loyal to them and have so much time that has spent on them. And so we have to make sure that they're comfortable with what Kristen Sweeney: Yep. Mary Jane Salinas: it turns into, we also have to level set and make sure that we are all on the same page when it comes to the end goal. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, what a great example of leading with ignorance. And I like too that there's a couple different ways to sort of interpret that. But the leadership piece is in there, right? It's not like, I don't know. There's a sense of I am doing what I need to understand, but coming in with that sort of humility and saying, like, I maybe don't know everything yet, but I'm going to learn it. Mary Jane Salinas: Good night. And I want to learn it and your input is valuable and heard and received. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's awesome. Let's move on to our lightning round segment. ⁓ This is the last word. Five questions. Every guest gets the same five questions. Mary Jane, are you ready? All right, we'll find out. Question one, what is your favorite word to say out loud? Mary Jane Salinas: think so. shenanigans. I think I could use it appropriately in work. You know, when you're trying to be like, what kind of shenanigans have been going on? Where, you know, where nobody takes too much offense. But also with my three small children, we have a lot of shenanigans that go on. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ so good. I was gonna say how often or is this a daily occurrence weekly? Mary Jane Salinas: At least daily. I mean probably times a day where I walk into a situation I'm like, okay What shenanigans have been going on in here or what shenanigans did your little brother rope you into? So yes Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. We have a similar one which is ⁓ messing which is it's the when you are supposed to be doing one thing but you're just it's indescribable what you are in fact doing but it's not the thing you're supposed to be doing. ⁓ Question two what's a word you might know from reading but you are not sure how to pronounce it? Mary Jane Salinas: Yes, yes, I see you've been messing. That's fair. Well, so you're going to put me on the spot because obviously I can't pronounce it. So Worcestershire, Worcestershire, Worcestershire, that's all. I don't, I've heard it, I still can't repeat it. Like it just never works. But when I read it in a recipe, I know 100 % what it is. Kristen Sweeney: Ha ha ha. Yes. ⁓ Exactly. All those extra seasonies in there. What's one phrase we're saying you wish could be retired for good? Mary Jane Salinas: I had two that were kind of a tie. ⁓ My first was, let's circle back. And my other is, let's take this offline. And I think it's because they both kind of put something to the side and choose not to deal with something right then. ⁓ Whereas oftentimes, at least in my life, we are on meeting after meeting after meeting. solving for things and working together, but really your meetings are with different people. And so when you have an opportunity to all speak together, because perhaps someone hasn't been responding to email because they've been in meetings all day, and then you bring something up and someone says, let's circle back on that or let's take this offline, it often doesn't get picked back up and it's a way that they're just not wanting to address it then. And I think that there is a time and a place to absolutely not hash everything out in a call if you don't have the time. But I think it's just how you respond to that situation versus using those phrases, I think, could be improved upon. something like, heard, that is a wonderful point. We have a one-on-one next week, let's talk about that. It's so much better. Kristen Sweeney: I the, what you've just articulated is the ownership of it, of if you're pushing it and you use the we, which I like to say we don't do anything. You do it or I do it, but we never do it. And so sometimes I think that lets, that person does not want to deal with it now, but they are also not interested in taking the responsibility for saying, not the right time for this conversation. Mary Jane Salinas: Right. Kristen Sweeney: I will message you or even can you message me, depending on the dynamic. But I totally agree. ⁓ The other thing, I've gotten better at this over the years, but there were times early as a younger business owner and I'd be with an executive or subject matter expert and we'd be on a call with the purpose of we're doing our Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: content interview now and this is going to result in a specific article or maybe multiple content assets on a specific timeline and they wanted to come in and talk about what they wanted to talk about. And I was like, no, no, we're here to talk about it now. So yeah, I could talk about five. you know, five different ways that we do X, Y, Z. And I'd like, what are those ways? You know, and so navigating that dynamic of some people need a little more run-up, you know, they kind of want to plan to plan to do the thing. ⁓ And I'm a lot more like, we're here for the thing. Mary Jane Salinas: Yes. It reminds me of, we do lot of what we call insights discovery where we talk about the colors and the ways that we communicate your color personalities. If you haven't done it, you should. Yes, but there are four different colors, red, yellow, blue, and green. Kristen Sweeney: Whaaat? Mary Jane Salinas: take a survey of a lot of questions and then you get results and it basically talks about how you prefer to communicate and be communicated with based on your proportion of these colors. And so my color order for those that understand what this is, is I am red, yellow, blue, and then green. And so red is the, what do they say? They say be quick, be effective, and be gone. The yellow is like the sunshine yellow, include me. Kristen Sweeney: Mmm. Mary Jane Salinas: The blue is give me all of the details and the green is let me feel important. And so it's just the different ways. And so I am very much a red communicator where I'm like, we are here, we are going to be effective. We have a schedule and let's knock this out. But I also in the type that includes the smiley faces and the exclamation points in the email. So that's where my sunshine yellow comes from. But it's nice because if you have a team that has done that and you get to your team's dynamic and they're like, Kristen Sweeney: Yep. Yep. Nice. Nice. Mary Jane Salinas: color insights, then you can think about how they prefer to be communicated with and how they communicate so that if you need to work and collaborate with someone that is blue, they're going to want to know all of the details. So make sure when you do that introductory email that you are providing all of it within that. They probably don't want to call set up. It's just give them all the details on an email. So it's just a nice thing to have and a cool thing to think about. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Yeah, very cool. I'll have to check that out. love profile assessments. They're really fun. Question four, what's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah. I think it's just be a human. Like it's, it is also very related to the lead with ignorance. And I always tell everybody that, you know, we interview for a team or joins my team. I say, I always tell them as a leader, I'm a human just like you are. And I expect us all to make mistakes and that's okay. It's also okay to ask questions. It's also okay to not know the answer. ⁓ And so when you're communicating, Just be a human, assume the best intent, and make sure that you're always keeping open lines of communication. Kristen Sweeney: love that assume the best intent piece. That's not something I think ⁓ we're particularly good at as a society right now, ⁓ but it is important. Sometimes my daughter will, you know, ⁓ the most classic example would be like someone is driving in a way that I don't agree with. you know, she'll be like, yeah, maybe they're late picking their kid up. And I'm like, you know, maybe they are. Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah. Yep. Maybe there's a sick kiddo in the backseat. I know, you always have to step back as hard as it is. I assume the best in it. Kristen Sweeney: It's... Yeah. Yeah. Question five, what's the last thing you've read, heard, or watched that stuck with you? Mary Jane Salinas: This one is the one that I was really trying to think about. And I think my kids say things every day that stick with me. ⁓ But I think that for the biggest one actually, I was talking to a colleague last week as I was prepping for this because she had recently done a podcast and I said, okay, any pieces of advice? This is what I'm thinking. ⁓ you know, this is what the subject is, you know, and her response was, sometimes less is more. And she said, just make sure that, you know, I'm a very talkative, gregarious person, and she knows that. And so she's like, make sure that they get to ask all of their questions, make sure that they have, you know, like sometimes less is more, you don't have to have the answer, which also is related to a lot of. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, love that. Less is More feels like definitely the mantra for my inbox right now that I am embodying. Mary Jane Salinas: Yeah! That's weird. Kristen Sweeney: for my countertop, the mantra, like what I'm embodying. Mary Jane Salinas: Yep. I love it. It can be applied anywhere. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, that's right. So, so versatile. Mary Jane, thank you so much for joining me today. If our listeners want to learn more about you, where could they go to find you? Mary Jane Salinas: I think my LinkedIn profile is probably the best place to point them and there's always ways to contact me even beyond LinkedIn once you get there. So that's where would point everyone. Kristen Sweeney: Awesome. All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the conversation. Mary Jane Salinas: Absolutely, thanks so much, Kristen.