Where Does the Weight Go?

In the first episode of Carrying It, Phil Scott speaks with Paul Thompson, a commercial talent consultant who has spent years observing how people change as responsibility grows.

Together they explore the patterns that emerge when pressure moves through organisations: the leaders who absorb it, the people who quietly carry it, and the ways responsibility can shape behaviour long before anyone notices the impact.

The conversation touches on burnout, culture, promotion, hidden leadership, and the difference between the people who achieve results and the people who hold teams together.

If responsibility doesn't disappear but simply moves, where does it go?

Responsibility doesn't disappear. It shifts, and someone carries it.

That's true inside organisations, but it's also true in society. Every episode of Carrying It supports organisations working to improve how responsibility and mental health are understood and supported in real systems.

You can learn more about the organisations we're supporting through the links below.

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/local-minds/

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Responsibility is unavoidable in leadership and influence. In all kinds of roles, from parents to recruiters to pilots, what matters isn't whether it exists, but what it creates and where it travels. Responsibility creates emotional load. That load doesn't disappear, it shifts, and someone carries it. Welcome to carrying it when responsibility doesn't stop. That's what this podcast is interested in. Not how hard leadership is, but what responsibility creates. This conversation is about patterns, what changes in people as responsibility grows, and where that weight tends to land. Today I'm joined by Paul Thompson, a commercial talent consultant who sees these patterns across roles, organizations, and industries. Welcome, Paul. Hello, Phil. Nice to be here. Great. So let's dive straight in. Paul, you talk to a lot of people at varying stages in their careers, and you talk to people as they move through their careers as well. So you don't just speak to them about one role, you might talk to them about two or three sequential roles over the years as they grow through their career. And as you do that, and as all the people you talk to in various different industries, what patterns do you see emerge in the way that responsibility changes those people and the work around?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Phil, yes, I am a recruiter for my sins. You know me well enough by now, you know how much I love that phrase, right? It's a really interesting landscape. And I've been fortunate enough to be in the industry for four and a half years. And in that time I have seen a dramatic shift in technology industry where I predominantly buy my trade. I think the pressure on leaders and the individual contributors in the market that I work in is unparalleled in anything that I've seen before in my lifetime. That's driven by so many different factors. The thing for me that I always find really fascinating is not the role, not the company, the person behind all of this. And to start with, uh one of my favourite people on the planet who sadly is no longer with us, Mr. Robin Williams, to coin his phrase everyone you ever meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. Be kind always. It feels like in this world, that is something that is getting lost in translation. And I find talking to people about their struggles is deeper than the strategic goals of the company they work for, the targets they have on their heads. It's how each person deals with pressure and responsibility differently. But it's a remarkably rapidly changing market.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

That's a deep way to start episode one of this podcast series. We're going deep, Phil. Let's go deep then. What are those behaviors? Does it come through in the way that they talk? The amount of time that they appear to have for themselves or for their families? You know, that's your typical burnout cycle. Do they become very defensive? Do they become very egotistical? Obviously, everybody behaves in a different way, but given the breadth of people that you talk to, and in this episode we're trying to talk about patterns and recurring behaviors, what do you see most commonly?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Well, I'd like to come back to the burnout point. It's something that I'm particularly passionate about, something I recognize a lot, unfortunately, in my job. As a human species, the one thing that's becoming apparent in everything that we do is working for somebody else. And the kind of transfer of wealth, however you want to look at that, it feels like it's an ongoing struggle. I think. We as a nation and we as a species, we're working for the top 1%. But I just want to talk about the burnout thing. This is something I see time and time and time again. And I think people's thoughts around what burnout actually is are very, very different. To me, it's actually not necessarily the workload. It's the satisfaction that a human being gets from their work. I talk to sales leaders day in, day out, and they have a target on their backs constantly. If those leaders are passionate about what they're doing, it doesn't really matter. They're really quite happy to do the extra work. But it's when those leaders have lost their way, it's when their sales teams have lost their way, where they have no direction. When the board want revenue, but they don't give their leaders or their teams a clear pathway to achieving that. This is what I'm seeing so much. And in a world where everything is becoming tech and businesses are being bought and being sold and merged and acquired, are we losing the human element of what makes a really good culture in a business? And are human beings feeling completely devalued by the work that they're doing? And so what I see and I hear a lot, and you can see it in people's eyes when you meet them, and you can hear it when you're on the phone to them. They're just completely dejected and not really knowing where they're going in their life. And that's really quite heartbreaking, Phil, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

You mentioned a few things there that I'd love to dig into in a little bit more detail in terms of board expectations and how the leaders behave and what happens to the teams. But if we just stay on this for a couple of minutes, how does that manifest itself in those people? You say it comes through in the conversations, you see it in their eyes. That's powerful. But what in their lives is changing, and how are they behaving differently with the people around them? Because they're behaving differently with you, you see it, but they also are gonna behave differently with their teams, with their bosses, with their wives and children, with their dogs, even. How much of a sense of that do you get from them as well? Because you're an agnostic observer almost in that dichotomy.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Hey, do you know what? Oh, it's really it's really tough. You mentioned wives and kids and dogs, and some of the people I talk to who are just working to achieve the strategic goals of the board. They don't often get to see those people in their lives. If they're passionate about their jobs, that's fine. They will do what they need to do. They will work late, they'll work weekends. The passion's there. I'm gonna give you an example recently of a chap that I met, and he was telling me the story of how he joined a software company and headed up their sales team. And the company was acquired. It built a team, it built a really strong performing team, and the team were working for him. You know, they were playing for the manager. You could tell. That changed when the board decided they were going to bring in new leadership to the business. Again, something I see time and time and time again. And they changed the dynamic of the business, the culture. The eyes of this chap were completely hollowed out. I felt really sorry for him. I didn't know whether to give him a hug or buy him a pint or something. And I actually stopped the conversation halfway through when he was telling me about what he's looking for, and I just said to him, okay, I'm gonna put all of this to one side for a moment. You're telling me about what you've achieved and what you can do. Just talk to me about you for a moment. I'm getting the feeling that you're really struggling with all of this. And yeah, he was. And it took 35, 40 minutes of conversation with a complete stranger. I'm a complete stranger to 90% of the people I talk to. And yet people open up to me in ways that I feel quite I get a bit of imposter syndrome. I'm like, I'm not a therapist. You should you should be telling me this stuff. But actually, it's really humbling. And I feel the stories I have are both enlightening and frightening at the same time. And it boils down to a couple of things. People are more transactional than ever before. People are more impatient than ever before. Why is that? Why are we like this? Is this because of the expectations on them as leaders that we want revenue, we want revenue right now? Are there other factors coming into play? And it gets even more interesting, really interesting, when you start talking to the people doing the actual selling, the people that report into these leaders. Because I'm seeing a massive shift in business culture. And look, Phil, you know this more than anyone, right? The brown stuff, it rolls downhill, and I'm seeing this more and more and more in organizations. And you've seen this too, right? You've definitely seen this.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, absolutely. So I opened the show by saying leadership is hard, but that's not what this podcast is about. This is about how that pressure travels and moves. I'm a big believer that pressure is created more than it is dissipated. You might create pressure at the value of no. Sorry, my mind is immediately there going to Alan Shearer saying pressure, what pressure? Pressure is. Maybe I can use that quote later in a series, but you create pressure and some of it dissipates, absolutely. But I think some of it stays and it just moves. So, in your example, the leader there that you were talking to clearly feeling a lot of pressure, no doubt about that. And a lot of that would have been created by the board and the expectations and the market that he was operating in. And he does his best, I'm sure, as every good leader does, to dissipate as much of that or to shield their team from as much of that as possible. But I don't think they succeed. And I actually I think it's even more than that. I don't think they succeed as well as they think they succeed. It's always visible when the brown stuff rolls downhill to steal your phrase. But what about when it's not visible when it's rolling downhill? You think you've built a dam, you're securing it, you're stopping it, but actually it's not, and you're maybe then not as aware of those consequences. So in those scenarios, where do you think, and I'm gonna get us off brown stuff and back onto pressure, just so that we don't put off anybody that might be listening to this, where do you think that pressure moves when people aren't aware of it? Does it just go directly to the person below them in the organization?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

No, it doesn't, Phil. No, it doesn't. And actually, this is a really, really valid point, and you mentioned this a minute ago. Where does the pressure go that you can't see it? It moves. Pressure's like, you know, um, if you're having physio and you you've got a pain, the physio will treat the pain, but ultimately the pain can sometimes move somewhere else in the body.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

You have just given me an idea that I need to get a physiotherapist on as a guest, because that's the brilliant analogy.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Well, there you go. The point to make is that guy that I met with the hollow eyes, he was shielding his team. He was a sponge for everything that was being thrown at him. He was the sponge. Well, things break really easily when that amount of pressure is put on them. And, you know, where is he wrong in that? Should he disperse some of that pressure or should he shoot some of that pressure back? And this is a question that I guess it's down to the individual. The best leaders I've ever worked with and had the pleasure of meeting and knowing are those leaders that will take the pressure, that will absorb the pressure, protect their team, but not be afraid to give back. But, you know, over time it's going to wear down. And this pyramid effect, how do those individuals manage the culture in those organizations? It's really, really difficult. And so it has a huge impact. And I've unfortunately met people that just don't deal with pressure very well and they take it out on their teams. It happens a lot, and I'm seeing it more and more and more. So why is that? Why is this happening so much more in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Do you think there's just too much? You fill a bowl of water and eventually you keep filling it and it's going to overflow. Nobody's getting away from the fact that there are bad leaders. There's any number of phrases, Teflon shoulders and all that kind of stuff, where they just don't take any responsibility, they just pass stuff down. We could all probably find one or two of those in our past, and I'm sure many people listening to this immediately a name will spring to mind. But let's put those to one side because I'm not really worried about trying to help those kinds of ones. Is it a I've just absorbed too much? A sponge eventually becomes sodom and it cannot physically absorb anymore until it's dried out. And how does that sponge dry itself out? If the leaders can't keep overflowing with that, how do they let go without it just flowing downstream? What other avenues are there to dissipate all that pressure?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

We're living in a world where the term burnout is used too often. We're seeing the crippling effects of uh chronic anxiety and depression more and more often. I'm very careful with these terms, Phil. I have a personal belief that every single human being on the planet has anxiety. If we didn't, we wouldn't go very far in life. Some people are just geared up to deal with those things more than other people. I work in an industry where it is rich with neurodiverse people, some incredibly gifted people. But in my world, in my sector, there's one thing that we talk about a lot, which is ADHD. And uh, if you're in sales, it's almost obligatory. You know, it feels that way at the moment, and I worry that these things are getting watered down because people who are suffering with crippling anxiety will not tell you they're suffering with crippling anxiety. They won't tell you that they are going home to their wives, their kids, their dogs every night and actually really struggling. They won't tell you because they're probably the type of people that like you used to sponge an allergy. They will just soak it all in. They're they're gonna protect their teams, they're also gonna protect their family from these things. And it's really, really hard to see. One of the things in my job, I often speak to people more than once. Believe it or not, I I try to speak to people more than once. If I've got a particularly difficult conversation with someone three, four weeks later, how's it going? Let's just talk. And then that second conversation, you then start to unlock so much more about that person as a human being. Maybe at first they don't trust you, they're like, you're just a recruitment and someone. But actually, then you start to unlock the person. But how are they dealing with it? It's difficult. And until you build trust with someone, they're not gonna tell you, they're not gonna tell you what they're doing. But this goes back to the whole thing. What are people having to deal with in their lives that you just have no idea about? Actually, I've put this uh as well to you, Phil, because I've had the pleasure of knowing you for a good couple of years now, and people speak very, very highly of you. At what point do you recognize it's starting to get a lot, and how do you deal with it?

SPEAKER_00 14:36

You have to be self-aware. I think that's clear. But I'd almost flip it round. What I'm trying to do is help other people recognize those things. So it's about looking at what do people who are leaders, and that's not necessarily CEOs and people at the top of the tree, that's anybody that has a position of influence or responsibility. So you might not even be a people manager. You may just have responsibility for a set of tasks where you need to work with other people. You're still a leader, even if you're not responsible for approving holiday requests and the administrative side of things. How can we help those people recognize all of those things? And I think something you said there about checking back in. You need that regular rhythm, that regular cadence. With anybody that I've ever led and with any project I've ever led, there is a non-negotiable, in my view, which is regular check-ins. Lots of people do sprints and stand-ups. You have five minutes or 15 minutes at 9 a.m. every morning. That's very common in the software development industry, less so in sales, where you're perhaps working with a team of individual contributors. But I said to someone who worked for me who'd said, I'm so busy this week, I've just cancelled my one-to-ones. And I said, Never ever do that. Because you're busy. But what message does that give to the people that are relying on you? They then lose their outlet. Maybe they had something really important that they needed to share or get off their chest or communicate. And some of them will do it anyway. When you get that email that says, Oh, this meeting's been cancelled or it's been shifted out a week, you get on Slack or Teams or WhatsApp and you say, Hey, there was this thing that actually I really needed to talk to you about. Can we just grab five minutes on that? But I think those people are not the norm. And I think leaders misunderstand that about the world of work in general, that there are people that will do that, but the vast majority of people are quiet and are silent, and they they will just say, Okay, I'll just wait a week, and and they absorb, if they're a sponge and they're close to overflowing, by the time the next week's check-in comes, they've already overflowed. So I think that regular communication is so important because it gives you those signals. The human psyche is so great at picking up on changes in tone and speech and patterns and all of those kinds of things that just having that communication can give you so much.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Phil, uh, you always talk a lot of sense. So, as human beings, we originate from primitive apes. We are still. We are. We're the same people that inhabited planet Earth millions of years ago. When you look at a family of apes, there's the alpha and there's the beta. The beta's picking the fleas off the alpha, right? And eating them. Weird. But that's what they're doing. And then you normally have a couple of deltas. We talk about leaders from a oh, I'm a sales director, I'm a sales manager, I'm a C-suite. Well, hang on. Surely there are leaders within an organization that are not those things. Do they carry the load? I've been blessed to work with groups of people that are incredibly empathetic to their colleagues. And I would say that those people are as much leaders as the de facto manager. They're there putting an arm around their colleagues when things get tough. Are they carrying it? Are they carrying the pressures of their entire department when somebody's struggling? They pick up on it really, really quickly. You can tell those people, there's not many of them, but they're the ones who are carrying it for the team. They'll get up, walk over to a colleague, and just say, Hey, you good? You want to go for a walk around the block? They're carrying it too. And I think the most successful organizations I've worked with are where everyone is singing from the same song sheet. We know it's tough. Sales is one of the toughest industries, and everyone's going to say this about their own industry, but it's relentless. You've always got a target on your back. And if everyone is teaming together and operating as a team, it's normally a really well-functioning team. But there are individuals within that team that are carrying as much load as the leaders in charge of them.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

It's a good point. And it led into something we touched on very briefly earlier, which was about boards and where that pressure is created. The behaviors that are rewarded that allow people to climb the corporate ladder are not always the behaviors that make teams function. They're those behaviors that boards prioritize. How do you get a promotion? You get a promotion if you're in sales by smashing your targets. If you're in engineering by delivering better code than somebody else, if you're in product management by delivering a kick-ass product ahead of schedule and a low cost, those are the people that take the glory. Behind them, there's all those people not going around giving hugs, but quietly making the machine work. Is there a scenario where the way that boards behave and the metrics that are prized that create that pressure are different to the ones that we should actually be looking at? And the real superstars of teams and the ones that carry that load, that weight, need to be measured differently.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

This was a discussion at a recent event, and uh it was a bunch of senior leaders sat around some classroom tables with some paper aeroplanes, I remember it fondly, and we talked about putting people first in a target-driven environment. Now, look, I don't want to make this all about targets. This is about the people. The best leaders that I've ever worked with somehow find a way of putting people first in their organizations, and it is really, really tough because the VCs and the boards and the owners have a responsibility to the business. It feels like it's rare to come across them now where they have a responsibility to the people. They might say they do. But do they really? Why does it have to be that way? Where the only way to the top of an organization is through high performance, through visibility. Why does it have to be that way? Are we missing a trick with some of the highest performing people in our industries by just looking at the high performers? I think we are. And from my experience, often we see businesses promote them the top salespeople into leadership roles. That's absolutely crazy. Absolutely crazy. And I'm not saying that it's never worked, but you know, I've not had a really good experience with this in what I've seen. So again, I think at every stage of an organization, a leader needs to be aware there are people in their team. There might be one or two really high performers, but there are people there who could carry the load a lot greater than those high individual contributors.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

So, in that scenario, do you think those people that are carrying that load, the ones that aren't promoted, just continue carrying it? And then when those rock stars are promoted, they probably know who is going to be better at coping with that pressure and that weight. And then they consciously or subconsciously divert it into the same place. So is it always the same people that are carrying that? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yes. In my experience, where a high performing individual is promoted above somebody who maybe would be better suited to the role, what happens in those organizations is those people who don't speak up they get better. Burnt out. And then they normally end up leaving that business. And so what we see is this kind of weird, almost toxic trail of really high performer, we must promote them. They're going to be our leaders. But they don't know how to lead because they're only really interested in themselves. And so when you get to that situation, the highest performing salesperson in the room could be one of the worst leaders of people in the room. They are the ones that are going to be selfish, a little bit more geared around how much money can I earn? They're not going to recognize the traits in people that make them good leaders. Then those people that are left behind start to get a little bit kind of frustrated. They're like, well, hang on, what more do I have to do to get into this situation? And guess what? They leave. And this is particularly prevalent in the technology space.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

In that scenario, it kind of goes back to what I was saying before. The people that will speak up when they get that delay meeting request, they'll say, actually, I needed you for something. The ones that are going to actively look for a job when they get passed over for a promotion are probably the same ones that would have said, actually, I needed you for something. But there's a lot of people that are sat there thinking, oh, well, I've been passed over again. I'll just carry on. And it's like, I need to stay here for the rest of the team. But in the scenario where they do leave, the pressure doesn't leave with them. They release their own pressure valve, but the pressure of the system stays. And then you've got the person that was most equipped to carrying it and doing the best job of carrying it is no longer there. Now it doesn't just sit, it's got to go somewhere else. How does that take shape?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Well, the pressure goes back to the leader. So it stays within the company. The pressure releases from the individual, or it may well not release if it's left for a really good team. I always find when I talk to people and they say the hardest thing about leaving was leaving the team behind. That tells me a lot about the kind of culture in that organization. And if I hear that more than once from people in the same organization, alarm bells start ringing. Why is there suddenly a greater attrition of really good people coming away from an organization? There is a problem there. People are carrying so much weight, pressure, expectation, and that can be an almighty burden for many, many people. And I always say to young people wanting to get into the world of sales, or even people who are just doing a bit of a career shift, you're going to enter into one of the most rewarding careers you'll ever do, but are you ready to handle the pressure? Because it's going to be tough. And some of the highest performers I've ever come across ever know that they are really good at one thing and one thing only. And they're so good at it. They don't profess to be able to lead a team of people. They don't profess to be able to go out and completely change their sales organization. And I always ask this question: is leadership a non-negotiable for you? And the ones that come back with zero hesitation, yes, it's an absolute non-negotiable pull. I have to lead a team of people. If they're like, no, I could take it or leave it. No, no, no. It's a non-negotiable. It's one of the toughest jobs you'll ever do, if not the toughest job you'll ever do, leading a team of people and dealing with the pressure that comes with that. The pressure from your team, the pressure from the top. And it takes a certain type of individual to be able to carry that pressure, Phil. I genuinely believe it.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Do you think all those people that say yes to your question are good leaders? Because there'll be people that will instinctively say yes because they think that being a people leader means you earn more money, or because being a people leader means you have a higher status in life. And they actually couldn't care less about the people that work for them. And then you get people that lead because they believe the sum of its parts are greater than the individuals within it, and they genuinely care about making a larger difference than they can on their own. So, what is it about that question? And is there a follow-up question that helps you differentiate between those two people that both say yes?

SPEAKER_01 25:55

I always like to ask everyone that says yes to that question, what is your most proud achievement? And those that come back to me and say winning a large logo or scaling an organization to a certain revenue number, okay, great. Those that talk about the people and seeing people get promoted, then when they say, I still get my colleagues, ask if they can come and work with me when I've found a new job. That must be one of the most humbling things that you can ever go through as a leader. But those leaders that say that, are they carrying it as effectively as they could be? It's really hard to tell. I believe that it all boils down to culture within an organization. And why does culture have to be bad? It doesn't. It really, really, really doesn't. You can put people first in any organization. You can, but why is that not the case? I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm getting a good idea of it. But my belief is that every organization can have a good culture. It all boils down to the people. And it all boils down to the people at the top. Recently, there was a group of us talking about this actually, and it's how long do you tolerate low performance? And actually, I switched the question to well, why is there low performance? Is that a failing of the person or is the person leading that person? One of my favourite people I know, he is an absolute wizard at going into an organization and getting the best out of people. And he's worked for some real tough CEOs. Real, real, real tough CEOs. And he goes to that CEO and he says, Do you know what? Just trust me, I'm gonna deal with this. And the CEO's like, You've got to get rid of half your team. You've got to get rid of half your team. And he's like, No. Maybe, maybe not. Just leave this with me. And within the space of six months, that team is firing on all cylinders. He has made that team effective by figuring out what they're good at and by getting the one thing that they're really, really, really good at and getting them to do just that. And the CEO comes to him six months later, it's like, hey, pipeline's good, numbers are up. We maybe need to think about adding to a team. And he's like, No, we don't. I've got my team to a place where they're performing really, really well. I want to give them more. I want to promote them. I want to make sure they're happy. He's carried that, and that's a really tough thing to do. It's a really, really, really tough thing to do. And hats off to anyone who can do that.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

You you mentioned culture just before. Do you think culture is the one thing that can make that if every company had a good culture? And good culture doesn't mean tolerating low performance. That is a bad culture if you tolerate low performance in effect. But if we change cultures in organizations, then do we start to dissipate more pressure than we create?

SPEAKER_01 28:49

I feel like there's a lot of talk online, there's a lot of talk on social media, there's a lot of talk about culture, culture, culture. Come from the top. Like it's always come from the top. So why is it not happening? And there's a lot of talk and no action. Yes, in answer to your question, I believe that the very root of an organization comes from its people and its culture. Good people don't come around very often. How do you protect those people? How do you recognize those people? And I guess for me, the thing that I love the most is when I start to see a business grow from five to ten people and they start to grow to 20 to 25, and you can see them building a culture, and they do that by hiring the right people and getting it right from the start. And there's this whole question around the right people. And uh I guess it's part of my job to make sure that I introduce them to the right people. But the right people, that's the key. People that have culture ingrained in their psyche, people that put other people first, that's a skill, it's a superpower, and it's not easy. And a lot of people can say that they can do that, and a lot of people say that they've done it. But I can tell you now, Phil, there aren't that many people that have actually done that in comparison to the number that say they do. So why? And does it go back to this whole point around revenue, revenue, revenue in business nowadays? Is that the problem? Are we just putting that first and foremost? Because surely if you put the people first or revenue follows. People first, happy people, revenue follows. Everyone's then carrying something a little bit lighter. The leaders are working with a happy team. The team are happy, they're generating revenue, they're making money, and then every point in that organization, from the engineers, the architects, everyone, every single person in that organization sings from the same song sheet. Why can that all not happen? Why is it difficult? I'm still looking for the reason. I will find it one day.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Well, when you do, Paul, I will certainly have you back on and you can tell us all. And maybe with the people that I talk to over the next few weeks, that will be an emerging theme. But for today, thank you ever so much for joining me, Paul. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on here. Thanks. Thank you very much for having me, and I sincerely hope I haven't bored your audience half to death, Phil. I'm sure not. Paul, appreciate it. Thank you very much. Each episode of Carrying It supports organizations working to improve how responsibility and mental health are understood and supported in real systems. Uh, there's links in the show notes. This conversation with Paul was about patterns, uh, how responsibility creates pressure, moves through people in ways that we don't always notice immediately. And if responsibility travels, as we've shown it does, then the real question becomes how far.