8. Nadia Belkind: Kindness has no language, the art and benefits of building and investing in relationships, the power of interpersonal communication

Grand Slam Journey

Nadia Belkind is passionate about supporting work environments that thrive on interpersonal communication. She sees it as her mission to help generate trust, mutual understanding, connection, and positivity. After her relocation to Stanford in 2018, Nadia started teaching her class called "The Secrets of Interpersonal Communication" at Stanford Bechtel International Center, helping dozens of international spouses communicate confidently and effectively. In 2019 She co-led a MasterMind Job Search group, and in 2020 she worked as a Teaching Assistant at Stanford BioSci Career Center, supporting a group of Ph.D. students. Today she is an Operations and HR Generalist at the Silicon Valley startup ScyllaDB. Nadia holds a Master's degree in Sociology of Education from Tel Aviv University.
Nadia and I talk about the importance of relationships and interpersonal communication. Nadia is a fantastic storyteller, and I appreciate the examples she shared from her life journey growing up in Israel and then moving to the USA. In both instances, she relied on her interpersonal communication to create new relationships. As Nadia would say, "Communication is not that much about what we say, but it is about how we say it. It is how we make people feel about themselves - that is what they will remember."
I love Nadia's larger societal view and, at the same time, her skill of being able to see the individual pieces of the puzzle and how they fit together. What stood out to me about Nadia the most is her positivity, curiosity, energy, and ability to think things through from all perspectives.
Favorite quotes from this episode:
"Kindness has no language. If you are kind to another person, they will feel it no matter what."
"Great things happen when we genuinely enjoy doing something for others."
"I realized how important is non-verbal communication in this context - when you are a foreigner - when English is not your first language - when you are trying to make new connections with people. It is all about communication but not the verbal communication that we think is so important. It's not about the words that I say as much as how do I make the other person feel."
"When we have too much choice, it is very hard for us to focus."

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