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Own Your Behaviours, Master Your Communication, Determine Your Success | Louise Evans

FIVE CHAIRS- FIVE CHOICES

I'd like to introduce you to these 5 chairs because they are actually the real protagonist of my talk. They have a special message to give to all of us and the message is about what behaviors and attitudes we bring into the world in every moment.

Now to show you what I meant, I have a story about my personal life and I was trying to build a stronger relationship with a very important person, a daughter of my partner, 20 years old- daughters.

And to do that, I thought "Let have a great evening out, just the 2 girls together."

And I chose a very special venue is the Blue Note Jazz club in Milan and that night, the Manhattan Transfer which is my favorite jazz group, were playing.

So, we meet, atmosphere is fantastic. We are getting on very well, and I'm happy.

and Being a baby boomer, loving music, and I thought "Is she liking it as much as I am?"

And so in that moment, I just turned to look at her to check

and What did I see? I saw this: she was on her iPhone.

Now, How to react? I had some choices

First choice: "Red chair" Excuse me. What is she doing? She is on her iPhone. I mean, I spent all this time and money thinking of fantastic evening, I bring her here , and what? after 2 minutes I take my eyes off her, and she on her phone? I mean, what is wrong with this generation? I mean they got the attention in span of fruit fly", for God's sake .

Choice number 2: "Yellow chair" This was a mistake. Why did I bring her here? I mean, she's bored; she is not interested; she doesn't like the music. What was I thinking? I mean: Why should she like the music? I mean, this is stuff for baby boomers. She is properly thinks she spending evening with a dinosaur. Oh, God.

Choice number 3: "Green chair" Hold the horses, count to 10. Take deep breath. Don't jump to conclusions. You don't know what she is doing on her iPhone. So, just relax. Take it easy. Have another drink.

Choice number 4: "Blue chair" Now you know what's really important for me is that is evening together is special, that she feels that after this evening, she can really open up to me; she can feel safe with me , and that I always an open door for her and that's what is really important for me. and I just hope it's going to happen. I just hope.

Choice number 5: "Purple chair" What is important for her? What is going on in her world right now? What's important for her? I really would like to connect to her. What do I need to do that?

You know, I was having real problems trying to answers that question. And in that moment, she turned to me and she said: Louis, Did you know that this is the only Blue Note in the whole of Europe? And there's one in New York and then there's two in Japan, but this is the only one here in Milan. That's incredible; that the Italian have got it". and she said "Oh, I have look up the Manhattan Transfer, Do you know that they have been playing and singing together for 40 years? That's incredible!

And she said: "Also, look". She handed me her iPhone; and she'd sent a message out on Facebook; it said:  "In the Blue Note in Milan with the Manhattan Transfer and Louis, the best!"

Now, that was a close shave. I mean I could have really spoilded that. Because I could have sent her disapproving look from this chair. And she could  have started telling herself about me, things about me,  like, Louis, she is controlling , she is difficult. It is not easy to be around her.

And that was not my intention at all. And in fact, she was completely engaged. She was there, multitasking in her digital way, but she was enhancing our reality. So, in milliseconds.  I could have destroyed that beautiful moment that we were creating together.

And This is what we are doing all the time,  we are making choices about the behaviors that we bring into the world. And the choices that we make have a direct impact on the conversations that we have , the relationships that we form, and the quality of our lives in general.

So, What can we do at a practical level to help us be more conscious about this? Because we don't get train us this in school. It's not on the school curriculum - how to behave well, really. So, what can we do?

The ideas of the 5 chairs came to me when I went and attended a 9 days course in nonviolent communication with it late founder, Marshall Rosenberg, and extraordinary man, who did so much for world peace.  And after that, it sort of changed my life. After that, I decided that is was a message that I needed to get into our workplaces.  Workplaces where I spend most of my time being a coach, a facilitator, and the trainer. And also, where we produce some of our most questionable behaviors, sometimes toxic behaviors.

So, the ideas of the 5 chairs to help us slow down how we are behaving in every moment of our lives and to analyze what is going on. So, what I would like to do is look at the chairs more closely and explain them:

The red chair : "ATTACK" This is the jackal "Chó rừng" chair . I mean, Jackal are incredibly clever and incredibly opportunistic animal, craftiness "Mưu mẹo". They always on the lookout to attack.

And in fact, this chair here is the chair where we misbehave the most. In this chair we love to blame, to complain, to punish, to gossip; but our supreme game in this chair is to "judge".

And if you don't beleive me, I invite you to go on a mental diet; I invite you to spend one hour with some human beings " and see if you can do it without one single judgment is going through your mind.

I mean, watch ourselves! Somebody walks in the door, and we go: bzzzzzzz. I like, don't like, not really interested. And we don't know anything about them at all. So this chair here is a judging chair.

There're actually another game that I love in this chair, it's the "I'm right game". And I used to do that all time, all the time until my brother gave me some feedback. I used to do it with my mother because my mother likes to exaggerate "phóng đại". She would say something like: "Ah yes, there were 30 people at the family gathering". And my job was to correct her , and I'm saying "No, Mom, they were not 30, they were 13". So, I was the policewoman of the situation.

My brother touched me on the arm and he said "it does not matter" to which I reacted. What do you mean it does not matter? Of course it matters. She's wrong, and "she needs to be corrected on her own good". He touched me on the arm again, and he said: Do you want to be in the relationship with your mother? or do you want to be right? Big lesson.

From then on, I always looked upon my mother's exaggeration as a form of abundance. So, here in this chair, what we tend to do is we tend to see what is wrong with other people rather than what is right.

And  Mother Teresa reminds us "The more we judge people the less time we have to love them "Càng phán xét người khác bạn càng có ít thời gian để yêu họ"

The next is The hedgehog chair/ the "Yellow Chair": " Self Doubt" . Now, the hedgehog- When we behave like the hedgehogs, we feel very vulnerable , we curl up, we protect ourselves against what we feel is an evil world. And what we do is we mercilessly judge ourselves in this chair.

So, we turn this chair , the "Red chair" , on ourselves.  And we say things like, "I'm not intelligent enough, I cannot do this, nobody believes in me".

We have certain fears, we have fear of being rejected, fears of disappointing, fears of failing.  And we are also the victim. So, it's "Nobody cares on me, nobody loves me".

But, in fact, when I use this in companies and I ask managers, and I say:  "Where do you spend the most of your time?". Hardly anybody comes and sits here. Because it's quite difficult to admit our weaknesses sometimes. We need a lot of courage.

And yet, we all suffer from self-doubt. But it's really, what do we do with our self-doubt? Do we give up and give in? Or do we say no? I want to the resources and grow.

And Krishnamurti says something wonderful, he says "The highest form of intelligence is ability to observe ourselves without judging" " Đỉnh cao của sự thông minh là khả năng tự quan sát mà không hề phán xét"

So, next chair "Green chair": "WAIT" This is meerkat chair "chồn đất". I don't know if you have ever seen a meerkat. They are not many in Italy, but they are incredible.

When they are on sentinel duty, they can stay for one hour just like this: one hour moving their head, and only their head. Incredibly vigilance.

And when we are in this chair, this is what we do, we mindful; we very aware; we observant; we stop; we pause;  we take a deep breath and we're conscious. This is the WAIT chair. W-A-I-T

What am I thinking?
What am I telling myself?

Here, we become very curious. If somebody is angry, instead of saying "for God sake: grow up, with you? And we feel interested. So, this chair here is... when I think of Nietzsche, this is such an important quote for this chair.

He says "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way the only way... it does not exit." " Bạn có con đường của bạn, tôi có con đường của mình. Vì con đường đúng là duy nhất ..không tồn tại". 

So here we have a choice. The red pill or blue pill?  It is the sliding door chair.
And in this moment when we make the right choice , we move to successful living.

Next chair/ Blue chair: "DETECT". Here we go into the world of detect. Now, Why detect? Detect because we are become a  detective of ourselves like Sherlock Holmes of ourselves. We take a magnifying glass  and we look at our behaviors. It's a beautiful chair because we become self-aware.

We know who we are, we know what we want, we know where we're going. We are not afraid to speak our true. But we also create our boundaries. We look after ourselves in this chair.  But we're very very powerful. We do not give up power away. Here we give up power "Red chair".

So, with the Blue chair , here we grow, we become free. We come into our full power. We become assertive but not aggressive   

So, Aristotle said: "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" "Biết mình là khởi sự của sự khôn ngoan" 

And we can be here for our whole lives.

Why is the dolphin? The dolphin because it is such a wonderful animal.  It is playful; It is intelligent; it communicates beautifully. When I think of the Dolphin, I think of us at our very best as human beings.

Next chair/ "Purple chair": "CONNECT". This is the giraffe chair, Very beautiful chair, very difficult. I don't know if you know, but the giraffe has the biggest heart of all land animals; it's that size.

And not only does it have the biggest heart, it also has the longest neck. So it has incredible vision.

So when we are in this chair, we are displaying empathy, compassion, and understanding. And in this chair, we put our egos on the back burner, and we listen to people. We hold people in our presence, and we care for them.

Stepping into somebody else's shoes and understanding them is a great act of generosity.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better." "Khi không thích ai đó, tôi phải tìm cách để hiểu họ hơn"

So, in this chair, it's an invitation to look at other perspectives, to embrace other realities, to embrace diversity, and to become tolerant. And the most important question in this chair is what is important for him or her in front of me? And the intention in this chair is to stay connected whatever happens.

So these are the chairs.

How do we translate this into daily life? Well, you can imagine, if you go to work, maybe you can go and you give a presentation, and it goes very well. So you are here, thinking "Great, fantastic!". Then, maybe you have a meeting and things go badly, and we sink into these chairs. Now our challenge every day is to understand how to find the balance between sitting here and sitting here.

Because if we're sitting here "red chair", life is not that happy.

But if we're sitting here, in these chairs "Green, Blue, Purple chairs", we're more relational; we're more open; we more intelligent; we're more thoughtful. 

Something that really moved me very very deeply when I first read it was this: Viktor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning, said": Everything can be taken from man but one thing. The last of human freedoms- choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances" "Mọi thứ bạn có đều có thể bị lấy đi, trừ một thứ, sự tự do -hãy chọn thái độ sống trong bất cứ hoàn cảnh nào."

This is so powerful. So when you next want to snap at your children, or argue with your partner, or punish someone at work, try and come into this chair "Green chair" here and think. And if by chance, you end up in this chair-"red chair" which very often happen. Can we find the courage to say "I'm sorry" and make everything right again?

So, my invitation to you is to take these chairs home with you. Play with them. Make them your own. Tech them to your kids; they get this immediately. Put five of them in the boardroom at work and watch how your meetings will improve. And the next time somebody presses one of your red buttons, just think: Five chairs, five choices.

Can we all commit to making our homes, our workplaces, and this world a better place? One behavior at a time.

This speech is a call to action. We spend about eighty percent of our day at work, the rest is at home. If we have a bad day at work we are likely to take that negativity home with us and vice versa. It is of paramount importance that we create healthy environments in the spaces that most affect our lives by giving of our best and receiving the like in return. The 5 Chairs is a powerful and systematic method which helps us master our own behaviors and manage the behaviors of others. To be a good leader is to contribute to the success and happiness of everyone, at work and at home, on a conscious level. The 5 Chairs offer 5 Choices. Which will you choose?

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