Own Your Behaviours, Master Your Communication, Determine Your Success | Louise Evans | TEDxGenova — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Translator: Hui chu Chen
2. 0:20I'd like to introduce you to these five chairs
3. 0:25because they are actually the real protagonists of my talk.
4. 0:30They have a special message to give to all of us,
5. 0:34and the message is about
6. 0:37what behaviors and attitudes we bring into the world in every moment.
7. 0:43Now, to show you what I mean,
8. 0:45I have a story to tell you from my personal life.
9. 0:48And I was trying to build a stronger relationship
10. 0:52with a very important person,
11. 0:54the daughter of my partner, 20-year-old daughter.
12. 0:58To do that, I thought,
13. 0:59"Let's have a great evening out, just the two girls together."
14. 1:02And I chose a special venue,
15. 1:07the Blue Note Jazz Club in Milan.
16. 1:10That night, the Manhattan Transfer, which is my favorite jazz group,
17. 1:14were playing.
18. 1:15So, we meet, atmosphere is fantastic.
19. 1:18We are getting on very well,
20. 1:20and I'm happy.
21. 1:24Being a baby boomer, loving the music,
22. 1:28I thought, "Well, is she liking it as much as I am?"
23. 1:31So in that moment, I just turned to look at her to check.
24. 1:35And what did I see? I saw this.
25. 1:39She was on her iPhone.
26. 1:43Now, how to react?
27. 1:45I had some choices.
28. 1:48First choice.
29. 1:52Excuse me. What is she doing?
30. 1:56She's on her iPhone.
31. 1:57I mean, I spent all this time and money
32. 1:59thinking of a fantastic evening, I bring her here, and what?
33. 2:02After two minutes I take my eyes off her,
34. 2:04and she's on her phone?
35. 2:05I mean, what is wrong with this generation?
36. 2:08I mean, they got the attention span of a fruit fly,
37. 2:11for God's sake.
38. 2:14(Sighing)
39. 2:18Choice number two.
40. 2:23This was a mistake.
41. 2:25(Laughter)
42. 2:27Why did I bring her here?
43. 2:28I mean, she's bored; she's not interested; she doesn't like the music.
44. 2:33What was I thinking? I mean: Why should she like the music?
45. 2:36I mean, this is stuff for baby boomers.
46. 2:40She probably thinks she's spending the evening with a dinosaur.
47. 2:44Oh, God!
48. 2:46Choice number three.
49. 2:52Hold your horses.
50. 2:54Count to ten. Take a deep breath.
51. 2:58Don't jump to conclusions.
52. 3:00You don't know what she is doing on her iPhone.
53. 3:02So just relax.Take it easy.
54. 3:06Have another drink.
55. 3:08(Laughter)
56. 3:11Choice number four.
57. 3:14Now, you know, what's really important for me
58. 3:17is that this evening together is special,
59. 3:20that she feels that after this evening, she can really open up to me;
60. 3:24she can feel safe with me, and that -
61. 3:27I'm always an open door for her, that's what's really important for me.
62. 3:31I just hope it's going to happen -
63. 3:33I just hope.
64. 3:36Choice number five.
65. 3:43What's important for her?
66. 3:45What's going on in her world right now?
67. 3:49What's important for her?
68. 3:50I really would love to connect to her.
69. 3:53What do I need to do that?
70. 3:55(Sighing)
71. 3:56You know, I was having real problems trying to answer that question.
72. 3:59And in that moment, she turned to me and she said,
73. 4:05"Louise, did you know that this is the only Blue Note
74. 4:08in the whole of Europe?
75. 4:09And there's one in New York, and then there's two in Japan,
76. 4:13but this is the only one here in Milan.
77. 4:15That's incredible; the Italians have got it."
78. 4:17And she said, "Oh, and I've looked up the Manhattan Transfer.
79. 4:21Do you know that they've been playing and singing together for 40 years?
80. 4:24That's incredible!"
81. 4:27And she said, "Also, look."
82. 4:30She handed me her iPhone; she'd sent a message out on Facebook;
83. 4:34it said, "In the Blue Note in Milan,
84. 4:38with the Manhattan transfer and Louise, the best!"
85. 4:46Now, that was a close shave.
86. 4:49I mean, I could've really spoiled that.
87. 4:51Because I could have sent her a disapproving look from this chair.
88. 4:56And she could've started telling herself about me, things about me,
89. 4:59like, Louise, she's controlling.
90. 5:04She's difficult.
91. 5:05It's not easy to be around her.
92. 5:08And that was not my intention at all.
93. 5:10And in fact, she was completely engaged.
94. 5:13She was there,
95. 5:14multitasking in her digital way, but she was enhancing our reality.
96. 5:19So, in milliseconds,
97. 5:21I could have destroyed that beautiful moment that we were creating together.
98. 5:26And this is what we are doing all the time,
99. 5:29we are making choices about the behaviors that we bring into the world.
100. 5:34And the choices that we make have a direct impact
101. 5:38on the conversations that we have,
102. 5:41the relationships that we form,
103. 5:43and the quality of our lives in general.
104. 5:47So, what can we do at a practical level
105. 5:52to help us be more conscious about this?
106. 5:55Because they don't train us this in school.
107. 5:57It's not on the school curriculum - how to behave well, really.
108. 6:00So, what can we do?
109. 6:02The idea of the five chairs came to me
110. 6:05when I went and attended a nine-day course in nonviolent communication
111. 6:11with its late founder, Marshall Rosenberg, an extraordinary man,
112. 6:16who did so much for world peace.
113. 6:19And after that, it sort of changed my life.
114. 6:21After that, I decided that it was a message
115. 6:24that I needed to get into our workplaces.
116. 6:28Workplaces where I spend most of my time
117. 6:30being a coach, a facilitator, and the trainer.
118. 6:35And also, where we produce some of our most questionable behaviors,
119. 6:41sometimes toxic behaviors.
120. 6:44So, the idea of the five chairs is to help us slow down
121. 6:49how we are behaving in every moment of our lives
122. 6:53and to analyze what's going on.
123. 6:55So, what I would like to do
124. 6:57is look at the chairs more closely and explain them.
125. 7:02The red chair.
126. 7:08This is the jackal chair.
127. 7:11I mean, jackals are incredibly clever, incredibly opportunistic animals.
128. 7:16They always on the lookout to attack.
129. 7:20And in fact, this chair here is the chair where we misbehave the most.
130. 7:26In this chair we love to blame, to complain, to punish, to gossip;
131. 7:33but our supreme game in this chair is to judge.
132. 7:38And if you don't believe me, I invite you to go on a mental diet;
133. 7:43I invite you to spend one hour with some human beings
134. 7:49and see if you can do it without one single judgment
135. 7:53going through your mind.
136. 7:56I mean, watch ourselves.
137. 7:57Somebody walks in the door, we go: bzzzzzzzzz,
138. 8:01I like, don't like, not really interested.
139. 8:04And we don't know anything about them at all.
140. 8:07So, this chair here
141. 8:09is a judging chair.
142. 8:11There's actually another game that I love in this chair,
143. 8:14it's the "I'm right" game.
144. 8:17And I used to do that all time, all the time
145. 8:19until my brother gave me some feedback.
146. 8:22I used to do it with my mother because my mother likes to exaggerate.
147. 8:25So she would say something like,
148. 8:27"Oh yes, there were 30 people at the family gathering."
149. 8:32And my job was to correct her.
150. 8:33I'm saying, "No, Mom, they weren't 30, they were 13."
151. 8:38So, I was the policewoman of the situation.
152. 8:42My brother touched me on the arm,
153. 8:44and he said, "It doesn't matter," to which I reacted,
154. 8:49"What do you mean it doesn't matter? Of course, it matters. She's wrong.
155. 8:53And she needs to be corrected for her own good."
156. 8:57He touched me on the arm again, and he said,
157. 9:00"Do you want to be in a relationship with your mother,
158. 9:03or do you want to be right?"
159. 9:08Big lesson.
160. 9:09From then on,
161. 9:10I always looked upon my mother's exaggeration as a form of abundance.
162. 9:17So, here in this chair, what we tend to do
163. 9:20is we tend to see what is wrong with other people
164. 9:23rather than what is right.
165. 9:24Mother Teresa reminds us,
166. 9:27"The more we judge people, the less time we have to love them."
167. 9:34The next chair is the hedgehog chair,
168. 9:37the yellow chair.
169. 9:38Now, the hedgehog -
170. 9:40When we behave like hedgehogs, we feel very vulnerable,
171. 9:43and we curl up, we protect ourselves against what we feel is an evil world.
172. 9:49And what we do is we mercilessly judge ourselves in this chair.
173. 9:54So we turn this chair, the red chair, on ourselves.
174. 9:59And we say things like, "I'm not intelligent enough.
175. 10:02I cannot do this. Nobody believes in me."
176. 10:05And we have certain fears,
177. 10:07we have fears of being rejected, fears of disappointing, fears of failing.
178. 10:14And we also play the victim.
179. 10:16So it's, "Nobody cares for me, nobody loves me."
180. 10:21But in fact,
181. 10:23when I use this in companies, and I ask managers, and I say,
182. 10:27"Where do you spend the most of your time?"
183. 10:30Hardly anybody comes and sits here.
184. 10:33Because it's quite difficult to admit our weaknesses sometimes.
185. 10:37We need a lot of courage.
186. 10:39And yet, we all suffer from self-doubt.
187. 10:43But it's really, what do we do with our self-doubt?
188. 10:47Do we give up and give in?
189. 10:50Or do we say no?
190. 10:51I want to find the resources and grow.
191. 10:54And Krishnamurti says something wonderful,
192. 10:57he says, "The highest form of intelligence
193. 11:00is the ability to observe ourselves without judging."
194. 11:05So, next chair.
195. 11:10This is the meerkat chair.
196. 11:13I don't know if you've ever seen a meerkat.
197. 11:16They are not many in Italy, but they are incredible.
198. 11:20When they are on sentinel duty,
199. 11:22they can stay for one hour just like this:
200. 11:26one hour moving their head and only their head.
201. 11:29Incredibly vigilant.
202. 11:31And when we are in this chair, this is what we do.
203. 11:34We're mindful; we're very aware;
204. 11:37we are observant; we stop; we pause.
205. 11:40We take a deep breath, and we're conscious.
206. 11:43This is the WAIT chair. W-A-I-T.
207. 11:48What am I thinking? What am I telling myself?
208. 11:53So here we become very curious.
209. 11:55If somebody is angry, instead of saying, "For God sake: grow up, will you?"
210. 12:00We think, "I wonder why that person is angry?"
211. 12:03And we feel interested.
212. 12:05So this chair here is ...
213. 12:09When I think of Nietzsche,
214. 12:10this is such an important quote for this chair.
215. 12:12He says, "You have your way; I have my way.
216. 12:17As for the right way and the only way, it does not exist."
217. 12:22So here we have a choice.
218. 12:26The red pill or the blue pill?
219. 12:29It's the sliding door chair.
220. 12:31And in this moment when we make the right choice,
221. 12:35we move into this successful living.
222. 12:39Next chair.
223. 12:41Here we go into the world of detect.
224. 12:44Now, why detect?
225. 12:46Detect because we become detective of ourselves,
226. 12:49like Sherlock Holmes of ourselves.
227. 12:51We take a magnifying glass, and we look at our behaviors.
228. 12:56It's a beautiful chair because we become self-aware.
229. 13:00We know who we are. We know what we want.
230. 13:02We know where we're going. We're not afraid to speak our truth.
231. 13:06But we also create our boundaries.
232. 13:08We look after ourselves in this chair.
233. 13:10But we're very very powerful.
234. 13:12We don't give our power away.
235. 13:14Here we give our power away.
236. 13:16So here we grow, we become free.
237. 13:19We come into our full power.
238. 13:22We become assertive, but not aggressive.
239. 13:26Aristotle said, "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
240. 13:32We can be here for our whole lives.
241. 13:35Why the dolphin?
242. 13:36The dolphin because it's such a wonderful animal.
243. 13:41It's playful; it's intelligent; it communicates beautifully.
244. 13:46When I think of the dolphin,
245. 13:47I think of us at our very best as human beings.
246. 13:53So, next chair.
247. 14:01This is the giraffe chair.
248. 14:06Very beautiful chair,
249. 14:09very difficult.
250. 14:10I don't know if you know,
251. 14:13but the giraffe has the biggest heart of all land animals;
252. 14:19it's that size.
253. 14:21And not only does it have the biggest heart,
254. 14:24it also has the longest neck.
255. 14:27So it has incredible vision.
256. 14:30So when we are in this chair,
257. 14:33we are displaying empathy, compassion, and understanding.
258. 14:39And in this chair, we put our egos on the back burner,
259. 14:44and we listen to people.
260. 14:46We hold people in our presence, and we care for them.
261. 14:52Stepping into somebody else's shoes and understanding them
262. 14:56is a great act of generosity.
263. 15:00Abraham Lincoln once said,
264. 15:02"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
265. 15:08So in this chair, it's an invitation
266. 15:12to look at other perspectives,
267. 15:14to embrace other realities,
268. 15:17to embrace diversity,
269. 15:20and to become tolerant.
270. 15:23And the most important question in this chair is what is important
271. 15:28for him or her in front of me?
272. 15:30And the intention in this chair is to stay connected whatever happens.
273. 15:37So these are the chairs.
274. 15:40How do we translate this into daily life?
275. 15:42Well, you can imagine, if you go to work,
276. 15:46maybe you can go, and you give a presentation,
277. 15:49and it goes really well.
278. 15:50So you are here, thinking, "Great, fantastic!"
279. 15:54Then, maybe you have a meeting and things go badly,
280. 15:58and we sink into these chairs.
281. 16:00Now our challenge every day is to understand how to find the balance
282. 16:06between sitting here and sitting here.
283. 16:09Because if we're sitting here, life is not that happy.
284. 16:14But if we're sitting here, in these chairs,
285. 16:16we're more rational; we're more open;
286. 16:18we're more intelligent; we're more thoughtful.
287. 16:27Something that really moved me very very deeply when I first read it
288. 16:30was this: Viktor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning,
289. 16:35said, "Everything can be taken from man but one thing.
290. 16:40The last of human freedoms -
291. 16:43to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances."
292. 16:49This is so powerful.
293. 16:51So when you next want to snap at your children,
294. 16:55or argue with your partner,
295. 16:58or punish someone at work,
296. 17:01try and come into this chair here and think.
297. 17:04And if by chance, you end up in this chair -
298. 17:08which very often happens -
299. 17:11can we find the courage to say "I'm sorry"
300. 17:15and make everything right again?
301. 17:18So, my invitation to you is to take these chairs home with you.
302. 17:24Play with them. Make them your own.
303. 17:27Teach them to your kids; they get this immediately.
304. 17:30Put five of them in the boardroom at work
305. 17:32and watch how your meetings will improve.
306. 17:35And the next time somebody presses one of your red buttons,
307. 17:41just think: five chairs, five choices.
308. 17:49Can we all commit to making our homes,
309. 17:55our workplaces, and this world a better place?
310. 18:00One behavior at a time.
311. 18:04Thank you.
312. 18:05(Applause)