Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Human beings really think about relativity. That's part of what the brain does.
Conversational intelligence is hard-wired into every single human-being's cells. It's the way the cells engage with each other. Believe it or not, cells talk to each other. The immune system talks to the cells.
It turns out that human beings are hard-wired to have conversations impact them in such profound and significant ways that it can actually turn genes on and off. That's a core, fascinating challenge for all of us and insight.
Every human being needs to know to be a great parent, for a teacher to be a great teacher, and for a business partner to be a great business partner. We can't fall back on, "Oh, I only said it once and it didn't matter." That kind of phrase. That's a not-good thing for a leader to hold inside. If what that leader did is do that separation and this person now knew that they were not going to be on the popular team, doing it once and then not doing it again isn't enough to erase what just happened.
It's 100% important to have a dialog with yourself going all the time. That's an ego talking to you, beckoning you to do more, but it's not the voice that you need to have in order to solidify the trust relationship. You have to be really transparent with yourself and say, "What can I do now?" What can I really do and how do I bring that into the world. In other words, those self-talk, we have to constantly be auditing, is our voice inside our best friend? If it's not, you have to make it your best friend.
What we're trying to do in conversational intelligence is not only define that trust continuum for people, not only helping them notice, which is so important, what's happening in them and others when distrust lives, but also how to bring people in trust. When they do, what happens, this part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex is loaded with wisdom, integrity, strategy, insights, empathy, foresight. It's beautiful. It's so designed for that, and often it's turned off because people don't have trust with each other.
I've spent years studying words. Linguistics, language, the power of words, the power of phrases on human beings. All of that. It's part of my, almost obsessive, fascination. It turns out that there are some keys that we all need to know about how conversations impact us, because they do at a chemical level. There are certain things that if we learned this, it would totally change our interactions with others, and that's the following. There are certain words that have a feeling of, "I love you, I care for you, you're in my tribe."
If I say any word, like, "Sit next to me." There is a chemistry inside of my brain and your brain that is figuring out what that means and turning that request into action. The brain is designed in a way to enable us to translate these strange interaction codes that people have with each other into something that can manifest a whole company's success. That's so extraordinary and that's what's going on. Everybody in the world needs to know that, in the whole planet. I just talked to somebody who studies cosmoses. She said, "Cosmoses need this."
Something that we call developing the third eye in others. The eye is that people have intention when they're interacting, and often don't realize that there is an impact for everything that they do. The littlest thing, from scratching their head back here. This is, universally, "I don't understand what you said." That's what the scratch behind the ear means. If we know that, it's a whole other level. I could go back and say, "Let me do this again, because I'm seeing that it's not fully registering." We should be teaching these to people, is what I'm saying.
I want to share that I had and still do, and a great relationship with Angela Ahrendts. She was the CEO of Burberry. One of the things that I saw her do at Burberry was that every person she screened for a job, they had to go through the trust test. Do they understand what trust even means. Do they consider it in their life. If people didn't pass that part of the test, they didn't get into Burberry, because she wanted a team. It was extraordinary to be with her, because she brought them to the height of their best behaviors, including trust, which is the most important thing here.