[MUSIC] Why are we talking about alignment and fit? It's really simple. Where you end up, the amount of time you spend with the people you work with, will profoundly influence your life, how happy you are, how productive you are, and who you turn out to be. Because the people around us influence who we are, who we become, and your reputation gets associated with theirs. One of my former students who's a young professional, a really wise person, looked around and he said, you know, the kinds of things that happen fall into patterns for the people who don't really stick here, or who get fired or who leave. The first one is that people didn't really understand the kind of work they would be doing, they didn't ask the right questions before they came here. Another thing that happens to people is that they end up on a team or a project or something, and they don't really like it, and they don't have the skills to get it changed effectively. So, either they don't know how to ask, so they never do, and they're really unhappy, or they don't ask very well, they don't have the skills to navigate the environment. So, they either burn bridges, or ask ineffectively, and either way end up in a bad situation. Sometimes, people don't understand how important it is to take responsibility for your own work and career and ask for expectations and feedback early. So, because, as we've talked about, it can be really uncomfortable for managers to give feedback, so they don't always do it or do it well. Some of these unhappy people were trending along, thinking they were doing just fine, they never got feedback, and then they turned into one of those surprised fired people we started Course One talking about. Sometimes, the people just didn't know themselves very well and they didn't know what kind of environment it would take for them to be successful, or to be productive or to be comfortable at work, and it just wasn't a good fit. Thinking about fit and alignment is what we're going to focus on in this lesson because your fit and your comfort are all going to be profoundly important for how successful you can be as a leader and as a professional. How do you find out whether you'll be in alignment with the values and the culture of an organization, and how do you determine if that's a good fit for you? Let's think about those issues together. [MUSIC] [SOUND]