Writing to you from Taiwan today.

I haven’t flown into a completely foreign country on my own in quite some time. I’ve forgotten the feeling of being totally lost in a city. Travel has a way of stripping away competence. You become, almost immediately, a beginner. New streets, new sounds, a language I cannot speak…the strange, humbling experience of needing help to do even the simplest things.

I’ve been using Google Translate, of course. Holding my phone up between myself and strangers, letting the algorithm do its best impression of understanding. Sometimes it works surprisingly well. Sometimes it produces something completely absurd. You laugh. You try again.

But what I keep noticing is that none of the tech is the real bridge. The real connection is the moment you look someone in the eyes and work it out together. A quick nod or kind smile with a squint of the eyes — any effort to meet each other halfway without the luxury of perfect words. It is so simple it almost feels naive to name. But when it happens, and it works, you feel it in your chest. Something tiny but true passing between total strangers.

Being here has made me think about writing this email, Wednesday Words, in this technological boom we’re in — more surrounded, flooded really, by language.

Machines can already explain almost anything. They can summarize articles, generate insights, offer tips, and produce endless clean paragraphs that sound like they know what they’re talking about. And some of that is useful. Truly.

But it also makes me wonder what will become rare? And in turn, what will become valuable?

I don’t think it will be more information. I think it will be presence.

The feeling, through a conversation, an experience, and even a screen, that there is a real person on the other side of the words. Someone who has wrestled with what they’re saying or writing. Someone who is seeking to understand, getting lost, and trying to share bits of life and work the best way they know how.

That’s when information will land on a deeper level.

And that is what a lot of this work at Experience Institute is about…being human, and translating growth into shared moments that help all of us understand how to get to the next place together. That may be a simple email, or a team workshop that leads to an ah-ha, or a program that leads to a new new way of thinking you didn’t know you needed.

Zooming out, I actually think this is the work of every leader today. No one needs you to present as perfect. Instead, be an honest, human translator. Parse what matters most in ways that can be understood, felt, and shared.

So here’s to 2026 — no matter how good the technology gets — to being human. Together.

P.S. Curious about developing your presence? Join us for our Q1 open workshop, Cultivating Your Presence, on February 11, 12–1 pm CT.