Be Yourself at Work by Claude Silver Show Up, Stand Out, and Lead from the Heart
What's it about?
Be Yourself at Work (2025) demonstrates how authenticity becomes a strategic advantage in modern workplaces. It tackles the burnout that stems from endless performance and pretense, revealing how genuine self-expression actually drives connection, innovation, and meaningful results. It also provides you with actionable strategies for building inclusive teams where people belong and feel genuinely valued.
At the age of 19, Claude Silver found herself struggling up an 11,000-foot incline in the Rocky Mountains, crying hard. Her Outward Bound instructor spotted her and asked what was going on in her head. Silver admitted she was singing a Nine Inch Nails lyric: “Head like a hole, black as your soul, I’d rather die than give you control.” The instructor told her to get another song into her head.
That moment changed everything. Silver realized that even when circumstances felt beyond her control, she could choose the internal soundtrack guiding her thoughts. She learned that controlling her inner dialogue was the foundation for showing up authentically in life and work. And authenticity is the remedy to the exhaustion and underperformance that happens when you can’t be your genuine self.
In this lesson, you’ll learn how self-knowledge becomes your foundation for authentic leadership. Discover the three emotional capacities that transform teams, how to build real belonging, and why listening with presence – not solutions – is what the world needs most. Let’s get started.
Shelly sat at her desk drowning in chaos, convinced she’d failed and couldn’t change anything. Then Maria, a colleague she trusted, sat down and told her something blunt: you’re not powerless here. You can control what you choose to do next. What’s holding you back isn’t circumstances – it’s what you’re doing, or not doing, about them.
What Shelly discovered applies to you too: before anything else shifts, you need to understand who you actually are. Self-knowledge fuels everything. When you truly know your strengths, your vulnerabilities, and the way you land on others, you stop drifting. Instead of reacting to whatever comes, you make intentional choices. You see yourself clearly – the good, the not great, the raw truth – and from that clarity comes real strength.
Understanding yourself isn’t where the work ends. You need a way to act on that knowledge, and that’s where three emotional capacities come in. First, emotional optimism: the deep belief that tomorrow holds something, even in darkness. Difficulty is temporary. You can move through it. Second, emotional bravery: choosing to act despite doubt or fear. This shows up in small moments – speaking up when it’s easier to stay silent, having the conversation you’ve been avoiding. And third, emotional efficiency: when people trust each other and share real purpose, things move fast. Momentum builds through genuine connection and trust.
Why does this matter? Because showing up as yourself changes everything. You stop burning energy on pretense. You create space for others to be real. The practical gains are concrete: you become visible, you build genuine relationships, you get real support, creativity flows, and results follow. On the flip side, hiding costs you. Your reputation suffers quietly. Teams fracture. Productivity drops. You’re left with regret.
Being messy – being fully human – isn’t reckless. Breakthroughs happen in unpolished moments. When you’re brave enough to be vulnerable, you give others permission to do the same. The small impressions you leave on people’s hearts ripple outward, making them braver and more open too.
Neuroscience reveals that emotions guide your thinking – they function as your brain’s wisdom system and navigation tool for better decisions. Yet guardrails matter. There are real moments to pause: when you’re overwhelmed, exhausted, unsafe, or with someone hostile. Knowing when you should step back is as important as knowing when you should lean in.
Start by writing your own timeline of when you feel fully yourself and when you don’t. Ask hard questions: Do I belong in my spaces? Where am I holding back? How do people respond when I speak up? What makes me authentic? Write honestly.
For years, Destiny moved through work as a shadow. She watched, hesitated, shrank. Confident colleagues declared big ideas; by the time Destiny spoke, conversations had moved on. She believed her quieter style made her contributions seem less valuable simply because they weren’t forceful. As a Black woman in senior leadership, she felt constantly scrutinized, like she had to prove she belonged. To survive, she convinced herself that she had to speak the way celebrated leaders did – boldly and effortlessly commanding attention, even though it felt completely unnatural.
What trapped Destiny was a label she’d internalized: that leadership required a certain style, that her identity was a liability. You carry similar narratives. Some undermine you – labels like lazy, oversensitive, perpetually anxious. Others inflate without substance: natural leader, high potential. Both trap you in fixed identities. Strip them away and you’re simply a human doing your best.
The real work is untangling yourself from these narratives. Use the L.I.E. exercise: Label – identify your limiting belief; Internal Evidence – find cracks in the story; and Evolve – create a new mantra. Destiny transformed “I can’t be myself” into “I win by seeing what others miss.” That came from her documented truth.
Labels also shape how you interpret your emotions. When you believe you’re “too sensitive,” you dismiss your gut feelings. When you think you must be “always on,” you ignore exhaustion. But your emotions are actually wisdom – data revealing what matters, what triggers you, what energizes you.
Workplace dread isn’t personal failure. It’s real emotional labor from juggling demanding relationships and relentless performance pressure. Neuroscience shows your emotional response has a timeline. In six seconds, your brain decides if something threatens or excites you. The chemicals last roughly 90 seconds. If you pause, you create space between reaction and response. Grounding rituals become strategic: deep breathing, feeling your feet firmly on the floor. They’re how you regain control.
Belonging differs fundamentally from fitting in. Fitting in means contorting yourself to match the crowd. Belonging means finding spaces where you’re safe being yourself. When you stop trying to be what others expect, you give others permission to do the same.
Build belonging actively so you and others can thrive. Be yourself fully. Take up space, even when nervous. Find a buddy – a mentor, friend, or coach who sees your potential. Start small: a genuine question, a coffee conversation, asking for help. These actions build the connections that let you feel genuinely included, while helping others feel the same way.
Understanding yourself is foundational work. But the real power emerges when you bring that authenticity to your relationships and teams. We’ll cover that in the next three sections.
What does it actually feel like to be part of a team that’s working? Not just going through the motions, but genuinely connected, trusting each other, and moving toward something meaningful together?
The answer lies in three interconnected ideas: active citizenship, psychological safety, and the way you show up.
When you become an active citizen on your team, you’re doing more than your job. You’re showing up as your whole, imperfect, genuine self. You’re contributing to something greater than yourself while genuinely believing that everyone in the room matters equally. This is built through the same three emotional pillars you discovered earlier: emotional optimism – the shared belief that “we can figure this out together”; emotional bravery – choosing to express yourself genuinely; and emotional efficiency – the speed and trust that comes when people sync.
But none of this happens without a foundation. Trust and psychological safety form the bedrock. Trust is built daily through openness and willingness to be vulnerable. Psychological safety means feeling physically and emotionally safe, knowing you belong, and believing that when you speak up, make a mistake, or admit you don’t know something, you won’t be punished or left out.
Research from Google and Harvard confirms what matters most: teams with high psychological safety outperform in every way that counts. They innovate more, stay longer, and bring better results. It all stems from one simple truth: people need to feel like they matter.
This connects directly to how you communicate and show up. Your energy, attention, and care set the tone. Different people communicate differently – some need to talk things through out loud, others need quiet time to think first. When you ask how people prefer to connect, you create space for real voices to emerge.
Kindness transforms all of this from concept into lived reality. It’s practical, not sentimental. When you notice someone’s effort, identify what’s going well even amid difficulty, and lead with empathy instead of criticism, you shift the entire energy of the room.
In your next team interaction, ask one genuine question and fully listen to the answer. For example, you might ask a colleague, “How do you prefer to share your thoughts – do you like brainstorming out loud, or do you need time to think and prepare first?” This simple question signals that you see them and care about how they work best. Try noticing one thing someone did well this week and acknowledge it specifically. Even a brief, genuine recognition shifts energy. And check your own presence – are you distracted by your phone or preoccupied, or are you actually there with the people in the room? These small, intentional moves are how trust builds and teams become real.
During an Outward Bound course, Silver and nine others were descending a mountain trail when a flash flood struck. Raging water crashed toward them like a freight train. One teammate anchored a rope to a fallen tree and pulled the group to shelter behind a boulder. They clipped on and clung together as trees and rocks shot past. When the water finally receded, all of them emerged alive.
That moment teaches us something leadership textbooks never capture: a crisis doesn’t build strong teams – it reveals what’s already there. What saved Silver’s group wasn’t technical training or panic response. It was the trust and bonds they’d built through weeks of shared challenges, failures, and small moments of showing up for each other. A crisis simply exposed what already existed.
This truth transforms how you lead. Real urgency – where actual well-being hangs in the balance – demands immediate action. But most of what we call “urgent” isn’t. We turn routine emails into “ASAP” emergencies and normal deadlines into catastrophes, living in constant false alarm. When you distinguish between what truly matters and what’s manufactured drama, you preserve your team’s energy for genuine crises. You also become more innovative, better able to handle setbacks, and far more capable when real challenges arrive.
Beyond crisis management lies another shift: authentic leadership. Stop trying to be someone else’s version of a leader. Your natural style – whether you lead through presence, vision, mentorship, decisive action, or strategic building – is your actual power. The leaders your company desperately needs aren’t organizational copies choosing comfort. They’re people brave enough to be genuinely themselves.
This doesn’t mean staying fixed. Real growth happens when you recognize where you naturally excel and identify where you need to evolve. A visionary who overlooks concrete limitations exhausts a team. A perfectionist who grips too tightly suffocates creativity. A mentor who creates dependency disempowers people. Knowing your starting point and understanding where your strengths could backfire keeps you growing.
The deepest shift is this: leadership moves from being the person with all the answers to being the one who unleashes potential in others. You stop being the star performer and start orchestrating success through your team. That’s where lasting impact lives.
Do this today: Name your natural leadership strength – the style that feels most like you. Then ask yourself honestly: What are the ways my strengths could backfire? Where do I need to develop? Finally, identify one person on your team and ask yourself, What potential do I see in that person that they don’t see themselves yet? Then actively create conditions for them to discover it.
While snowboarding in Park City, Silver witnessed a friend’s devastating wipeout. A ski patroller arrived and crouched down, radiating calm. Instead of rushing to fix everything, he listened as her fear poured out, asking gentle questions and offering steady reassurance. In those few minutes, he created safety. Watching him work, Silver realized something profound: this was leadership. Not having all the answers. Not performing confidence. Just showing up with presence and compassion.
That’s where real leadership lives – in deep listening that leads to action.
Many leaders stop after they listen. They hear, nod, and move on. Nothing changes. But exceptional leaders do something different. They listen without armor, willing to be changed by what they hear. Then they act: they follow through on conversations, connect people to resources, and create systems where problems get solved instead of gathering dust in meeting notes.
This matters because leaders face unique pressures. Tough calls that steal sleep. Values clashing with business demands. Information they can’t share. The constant weight of always being on. The temptation to pretend they have it all figured out. Real leadership means getting grounded before you lead, facing what’s hardest first, owning your mistakes, asking for help instead of performing heroics, staying curious about what you don’t know, and celebrating the small wins people make every day.
Beyond individual leadership lies culture itself – the invisible heartbeat of your organization. Culture emerges through daily choices: who you hire – for diverse perspectives, not comfortable sameness. How you keep talented people – through genuine connection and growth. How you frame feedback – as oxygen for growth, not judgment. Every interaction either strengthens or weakens your culture’s fabric.
We’re living in a human revolution. Algorithms can optimize schedules and predict performance. What remains uniquely human? Connection. Trust. Kindness. And your authenticity. Your gentleness isn’t a weakness – it’s your superpower. Your sensitivity isn’t a flaw – it’s your gift for recognizing what’s real. These aren’t liabilities. They’re exactly what the world needs.
Every time you show up as yourself, you leave what Silver calls a heart print – an unmistakable mark of authentic presence that ripples outward in ways you might never see.
In your next conversation, show up without a solution ready. Listen to what’s not being said. Then act – make a connection, remove a barrier, follow up. Notice someone’s progress this week and acknowledge it. Ask yourself: Where am I trying to be a hero instead of asking for help?
In this lesson to Be Yourself at Work by Claude Silver, you’ve learned that authenticity is foundational to everything that matters. Self-knowledge reveals your strengths and vulnerabilities.
The three emotional capacities – optimism, bravery, and efficiency – become your tools for genuine connection. Limiting beliefs dissolve when you challenge them. Psychological safety and belonging are essential for teams to thrive. And real leadership isn’t about having all the answers – it’s about listening with presence and unleashing potential in others.
Your vulnerable, messy, authentic self is your superpower. When you stop performing and start showing up genuinely, everything shifts. Culture transforms. Teams deliver. Others find permission to be real too. Your heart print ripples outward in ways you may never see.
Just as Silver learned on that mountain: you get to choose the song in your head. Make it one that lights your spirit – because you’re exactly who you need to be, right here, right now.
Be Yourself at Work (2025) demonstrates how authenticity becomes a strategic advantage in modern workplaces. It tackles the burnout that stems from endless performance and pretense, revealing how genuine self-expression actually drives connection, innovation, and meaningful results. It also provides you with actionable strategies for building inclusive teams where people belong and feel genuinely valued.
At the age of 19, Claude Silver found herself struggling up an 11,000-foot incline in the Rocky Mountains, crying hard. Her Outward Bound instructor spotted her and asked what was going on in her head. Silver admitted she was singing a Nine Inch Nails lyric: “Head like a hole, black as your soul, I’d rather die than give you control.” The instructor told her to get another song into her head.
That moment changed everything. Silver realized that even when circumstances felt beyond her control, she could choose the internal soundtrack guiding her thoughts. She learned that controlling her inner dialogue was the foundation for showing up authentically in life and work. And authenticity is the remedy to the exhaustion and underperformance that happens when you can’t be your genuine self.
In this lesson, you’ll learn how self-knowledge becomes your foundation for authentic leadership. Discover the three emotional capacities that transform teams, how to build real belonging, and why listening with presence – not solutions – is what the world needs most. Let’s get started.
Shelly sat at her desk drowning in chaos, convinced she’d failed and couldn’t change anything. Then Maria, a colleague she trusted, sat down and told her something blunt: you’re not powerless here. You can control what you choose to do next. What’s holding you back isn’t circumstances – it’s what you’re doing, or not doing, about them.
What Shelly discovered applies to you too: before anything else shifts, you need to understand who you actually are. Self-knowledge fuels everything. When you truly know your strengths, your vulnerabilities, and the way you land on others, you stop drifting. Instead of reacting to whatever comes, you make intentional choices. You see yourself clearly – the good, the not great, the raw truth – and from that clarity comes real strength.
Understanding yourself isn’t where the work ends. You need a way to act on that knowledge, and that’s where three emotional capacities come in. First, emotional optimism: the deep belief that tomorrow holds something, even in darkness. Difficulty is temporary. You can move through it. Second, emotional bravery: choosing to act despite doubt or fear. This shows up in small moments – speaking up when it’s easier to stay silent, having the conversation you’ve been avoiding. And third, emotional efficiency: when people trust each other and share real purpose, things move fast. Momentum builds through genuine connection and trust.
Why does this matter? Because showing up as yourself changes everything. You stop burning energy on pretense. You create space for others to be real. The practical gains are concrete: you become visible, you build genuine relationships, you get real support, creativity flows, and results follow. On the flip side, hiding costs you. Your reputation suffers quietly. Teams fracture. Productivity drops. You’re left with regret.
Being messy – being fully human – isn’t reckless. Breakthroughs happen in unpolished moments. When you’re brave enough to be vulnerable, you give others permission to do the same. The small impressions you leave on people’s hearts ripple outward, making them braver and more open too.
Neuroscience reveals that emotions guide your thinking – they function as your brain’s wisdom system and navigation tool for better decisions. Yet guardrails matter. There are real moments to pause: when you’re overwhelmed, exhausted, unsafe, or with someone hostile. Knowing when you should step back is as important as knowing when you should lean in.
Start by writing your own timeline of when you feel fully yourself and when you don’t. Ask hard questions: Do I belong in my spaces? Where am I holding back? How do people respond when I speak up? What makes me authentic? Write honestly.
For years, Destiny moved through work as a shadow. She watched, hesitated, shrank. Confident colleagues declared big ideas; by the time Destiny spoke, conversations had moved on. She believed her quieter style made her contributions seem less valuable simply because they weren’t forceful. As a Black woman in senior leadership, she felt constantly scrutinized, like she had to prove she belonged. To survive, she convinced herself that she had to speak the way celebrated leaders did – boldly and effortlessly commanding attention, even though it felt completely unnatural.
What trapped Destiny was a label she’d internalized: that leadership required a certain style, that her identity was a liability. You carry similar narratives. Some undermine you – labels like lazy, oversensitive, perpetually anxious. Others inflate without substance: natural leader, high potential. Both trap you in fixed identities. Strip them away and you’re simply a human doing your best.
The real work is untangling yourself from these narratives. Use the L.I.E. exercise: Label – identify your limiting belief; Internal Evidence – find cracks in the story; and Evolve – create a new mantra. Destiny transformed “I can’t be myself” into “I win by seeing what others miss.” That came from her documented truth.
Labels also shape how you interpret your emotions. When you believe you’re “too sensitive,” you dismiss your gut feelings. When you think you must be “always on,” you ignore exhaustion. But your emotions are actually wisdom – data revealing what matters, what triggers you, what energizes you.
Workplace dread isn’t personal failure. It’s real emotional labor from juggling demanding relationships and relentless performance pressure. Neuroscience shows your emotional response has a timeline. In six seconds, your brain decides if something threatens or excites you. The chemicals last roughly 90 seconds. If you pause, you create space between reaction and response. Grounding rituals become strategic: deep breathing, feeling your feet firmly on the floor. They’re how you regain control.
Belonging differs fundamentally from fitting in. Fitting in means contorting yourself to match the crowd. Belonging means finding spaces where you’re safe being yourself. When you stop trying to be what others expect, you give others permission to do the same.
Build belonging actively so you and others can thrive. Be yourself fully. Take up space, even when nervous. Find a buddy – a mentor, friend, or coach who sees your potential. Start small: a genuine question, a coffee conversation, asking for help. These actions build the connections that let you feel genuinely included, while helping others feel the same way.
Understanding yourself is foundational work. But the real power emerges when you bring that authenticity to your relationships and teams. We’ll cover that in the next three sections.
What does it actually feel like to be part of a team that’s working? Not just going through the motions, but genuinely connected, trusting each other, and moving toward something meaningful together?
The answer lies in three interconnected ideas: active citizenship, psychological safety, and the way you show up.
When you become an active citizen on your team, you’re doing more than your job. You’re showing up as your whole, imperfect, genuine self. You’re contributing to something greater than yourself while genuinely believing that everyone in the room matters equally. This is built through the same three emotional pillars you discovered earlier: emotional optimism – the shared belief that “we can figure this out together”; emotional bravery – choosing to express yourself genuinely; and emotional efficiency – the speed and trust that comes when people sync.
But none of this happens without a foundation. Trust and psychological safety form the bedrock. Trust is built daily through openness and willingness to be vulnerable. Psychological safety means feeling physically and emotionally safe, knowing you belong, and believing that when you speak up, make a mistake, or admit you don’t know something, you won’t be punished or left out.
Research from Google and Harvard confirms what matters most: teams with high psychological safety outperform in every way that counts. They innovate more, stay longer, and bring better results. It all stems from one simple truth: people need to feel like they matter.
This connects directly to how you communicate and show up. Your energy, attention, and care set the tone. Different people communicate differently – some need to talk things through out loud, others need quiet time to think first. When you ask how people prefer to connect, you create space for real voices to emerge.
Kindness transforms all of this from concept into lived reality. It’s practical, not sentimental. When you notice someone’s effort, identify what’s going well even amid difficulty, and lead with empathy instead of criticism, you shift the entire energy of the room.
In your next team interaction, ask one genuine question and fully listen to the answer. For example, you might ask a colleague, “How do you prefer to share your thoughts – do you like brainstorming out loud, or do you need time to think and prepare first?” This simple question signals that you see them and care about how they work best. Try noticing one thing someone did well this week and acknowledge it specifically. Even a brief, genuine recognition shifts energy. And check your own presence – are you distracted by your phone or preoccupied, or are you actually there with the people in the room? These small, intentional moves are how trust builds and teams become real.
During an Outward Bound course, Silver and nine others were descending a mountain trail when a flash flood struck. Raging water crashed toward them like a freight train. One teammate anchored a rope to a fallen tree and pulled the group to shelter behind a boulder. They clipped on and clung together as trees and rocks shot past. When the water finally receded, all of them emerged alive.
That moment teaches us something leadership textbooks never capture: a crisis doesn’t build strong teams – it reveals what’s already there. What saved Silver’s group wasn’t technical training or panic response. It was the trust and bonds they’d built through weeks of shared challenges, failures, and small moments of showing up for each other. A crisis simply exposed what already existed.
This truth transforms how you lead. Real urgency – where actual well-being hangs in the balance – demands immediate action. But most of what we call “urgent” isn’t. We turn routine emails into “ASAP” emergencies and normal deadlines into catastrophes, living in constant false alarm. When you distinguish between what truly matters and what’s manufactured drama, you preserve your team’s energy for genuine crises. You also become more innovative, better able to handle setbacks, and far more capable when real challenges arrive.
Beyond crisis management lies another shift: authentic leadership. Stop trying to be someone else’s version of a leader. Your natural style – whether you lead through presence, vision, mentorship, decisive action, or strategic building – is your actual power. The leaders your company desperately needs aren’t organizational copies choosing comfort. They’re people brave enough to be genuinely themselves.
This doesn’t mean staying fixed. Real growth happens when you recognize where you naturally excel and identify where you need to evolve. A visionary who overlooks concrete limitations exhausts a team. A perfectionist who grips too tightly suffocates creativity. A mentor who creates dependency disempowers people. Knowing your starting point and understanding where your strengths could backfire keeps you growing.
The deepest shift is this: leadership moves from being the person with all the answers to being the one who unleashes potential in others. You stop being the star performer and start orchestrating success through your team. That’s where lasting impact lives.
Do this today: Name your natural leadership strength – the style that feels most like you. Then ask yourself honestly: What are the ways my strengths could backfire? Where do I need to develop? Finally, identify one person on your team and ask yourself, What potential do I see in that person that they don’t see themselves yet? Then actively create conditions for them to discover it.
While snowboarding in Park City, Silver witnessed a friend’s devastating wipeout. A ski patroller arrived and crouched down, radiating calm. Instead of rushing to fix everything, he listened as her fear poured out, asking gentle questions and offering steady reassurance. In those few minutes, he created safety. Watching him work, Silver realized something profound: this was leadership. Not having all the answers. Not performing confidence. Just showing up with presence and compassion.
That’s where real leadership lives – in deep listening that leads to action.
Many leaders stop after they listen. They hear, nod, and move on. Nothing changes. But exceptional leaders do something different. They listen without armor, willing to be changed by what they hear. Then they act: they follow through on conversations, connect people to resources, and create systems where problems get solved instead of gathering dust in meeting notes.
This matters because leaders face unique pressures. Tough calls that steal sleep. Values clashing with business demands. Information they can’t share. The constant weight of always being on. The temptation to pretend they have it all figured out. Real leadership means getting grounded before you lead, facing what’s hardest first, owning your mistakes, asking for help instead of performing heroics, staying curious about what you don’t know, and celebrating the small wins people make every day.
Beyond individual leadership lies culture itself – the invisible heartbeat of your organization. Culture emerges through daily choices: who you hire – for diverse perspectives, not comfortable sameness. How you keep talented people – through genuine connection and growth. How you frame feedback – as oxygen for growth, not judgment. Every interaction either strengthens or weakens your culture’s fabric.
We’re living in a human revolution. Algorithms can optimize schedules and predict performance. What remains uniquely human? Connection. Trust. Kindness. And your authenticity. Your gentleness isn’t a weakness – it’s your superpower. Your sensitivity isn’t a flaw – it’s your gift for recognizing what’s real. These aren’t liabilities. They’re exactly what the world needs.
Every time you show up as yourself, you leave what Silver calls a heart print – an unmistakable mark of authentic presence that ripples outward in ways you might never see.
In your next conversation, show up without a solution ready. Listen to what’s not being said. Then act – make a connection, remove a barrier, follow up. Notice someone’s progress this week and acknowledge it. Ask yourself: Where am I trying to be a hero instead of asking for help?
In this lesson to Be Yourself at Work by Claude Silver, you’ve learned that authenticity is foundational to everything that matters. Self-knowledge reveals your strengths and vulnerabilities.
The three emotional capacities – optimism, bravery, and efficiency – become your tools for genuine connection. Limiting beliefs dissolve when you challenge them. Psychological safety and belonging are essential for teams to thrive. And real leadership isn’t about having all the answers – it’s about listening with presence and unleashing potential in others.
Your vulnerable, messy, authentic self is your superpower. When you stop performing and start showing up genuinely, everything shifts. Culture transforms. Teams deliver. Others find permission to be real too. Your heart print ripples outward in ways you may never see.
Just as Silver learned on that mountain: you get to choose the song in your head. Make it one that lights your spirit – because you’re exactly who you need to be, right here, right now.
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