Your Personality and Your Brain by Scott Schwefel (Full Transcript)

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1 Your Personality and Your Brain by Scott Schwefel (Full Transcript) Scott Schwefel, CEO of Discover Yourself, presents on Your Personality and Your Brain at TEDxBrookings. Here is the full transcript of the TEDx Talk. Full speaker bio: MP3 Audio: rain-by-scott-schwefel-at-tedxbrookings.mp3 Right click to download the MP3 audio: Download Audio YouTube Video: Scott Schwefel CEO at Discover Yourself Thank you. Thank you, Scott, thank you, Amanda, for that flight that we had and the authentic conversation. I m here to talk with you about the brain science of communication, as it relates to business on fire. Igniting your business, igniting your business for growth. Igniting you, in what you do in your business. What I want you to think about for a minute is, what does it take to do that? What will it take you to ignite your business? And to me, it s the science of communication, but really it s the science of self-awareness. How aware are you of what you re capable of doing? How well do you know yourself, how well do you know other people? It s about what you pay attention to. So, what I want you to think about just for a second is a question you ve answered a million times in your life: who are you? In business, you probably talk about your role: I m a painter, I m a consultant, I m a fireman. Right? You might talk about a personal role: father, mother, sister. I d like you to answer a little bit differently, and to help you, I ll answer it a little bit differently. I d like to answer, it if I can, with an alliterative adjective. A what? Alliterative adjective is just an adjective that starts with the same sound as your first name. My name is Scott. My adjective would be smiling.

2 Smiling Scott. It could be standing Scott, it could be speaking Scott. You might be frustrated Frank, tired Tom or, because of the time, hungry Henrietta. Whatever it is, I d like you to come up with it quickly and share it with people on your right and left. A one-word adjective that starts with the same sound as your first name and describes you right now. Come up with it quickly and share it. Go ahead. Okay, if you didn t come up with it, you can still work on it and come up with it over lunch in those authentic conversations that you have. But the reason I asked you to do it is probably something you didn t do yesterday or last week or last month. It s not a way that you typically answer the question, which means you had to think about it. You actually had to use your conscious brain to come alive, come aware, and come up with something new, versus just a traditional or a typical answer that you gave. But what it leans into is, who do you think you really are? It s about selfperception. How well do you know yourself? And how well do you come across to other people and is it the same? I want you to think about when you first became aware, self-aware, this morning. Probably for many of you, looking in the mirror, brushing your teeth, you started to think about: who am I and how am I going to show up today? Who am I going to be today as I interact with other people? I wonder what impact I ll have on them. Take a look at my slide however. Sometimes we look in the mirror and the image we see of ourselves is not what the rest of the world sees. If I were to ask you again in terms of just selfawareness, do I identify more with the kitten in this image, or do you identify more with the lion in this image? Where are my kittens in the group? Let me see. You just identify more with the kitten. Where are my lions in the group? Wow. Look at the difference. Okay? How do kittens vote? Meow. Right? No one wants to be the first or only kitten. It s not funny. Lions are right there. It s a difference in personality. What I want you to start to pay attention to is, what are those unique differences in terms of personality for you? What s this word, by the way? No, really, everyone: what is this word? [Audience: Silk!] And what does the cow drink? [Audience: Milk] So, here s the thing, okay? Here s the thing. There are two parts of our brain and my job is to slice yours in half today, and help you realize that a big part of communication is driven by your subconscious. It s the part of your brain that loves to give you answers, it just gave you the answer milk. But it was the wrong answer, wasn t it? That s what your subconscious brain does frequently when you interact with other people. It makes assumptions, and they re wrong, and you roll with it.

3 What I want you to do instead, like you just thought about the alliterative adjective, is I want you to turn your brains on. I want you to be conscious of yourself, more conscious of who you are, and the impact that you re having on other people. Right? A focus on awareness. Who are you really? How do you really show up and interact with other people? And it s got to start with knowing yourselves, and then knowing the other person. Once you know who you are and how you re wired, you need to be consciously aware of what Carl Jung called the otherness of the other. Because if you re not, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. Everyone of us has millions of patterns in our subconscious brain that determine how we interact with other people. And if we don t challenge them through consciousness, stuff just happens to us, and we think it just happens over and over again, and it s fate, we don t have control of it, but you do have control. Your conscious brain gives you the ability to change your outcomes based on changing patterns in your subconscious brain. How do we do that? We have a new thought. We have a new idea. We authentically steal ideas and pull them together. It s a as Reece said, it s in your toolkit right now. You have the ability to have a new thought at any time about anything in your life you d like to be different, and switching your brain on and having that thought creates a new pattern for you to hang on to. But it starts with knowing you and knowing others. So, how have we done that over the years? How have people done that? Heraclitus came up with a model 25 hundred years ago. It was very actively practiced in modern medicine at the time, but for over 2000 years, we tried to define people by type, by category. It s a way of knowing yourself and it s a framework. So what we re talking about here is with this conscious awareness, having a framework with which you know yourself, how you show up and who you are, so that you can communicate and relate to others. That s what it s for, that s the power of it. So that s one model. There are so many others in the world especially in terms of business, and igniting your business, or lighting your business on fire, helping people to be more self-aware. How many of you have been through some of the models that are listed here? Millions and millions of people, most of you as well. The power of these models is helping you figure out Who am I? How am I wired? How do I communicate? Because that s how I judge everybody else in my world. If I m seven feet tall, you re all short. I walk into work every day and wonder why I work with so many short people. Right? It s not about you being broken, it s about me needing a higher level of self-awareness. So how do I come up with that? Well, I want to share a model with you. One of many that are available in the world. And I d just like you to think about it for a minute, to help you categorize how are you wired, what s that unique natural personality that you bring. Think about if it s more fiery red. You re determined, competitive, demanding. You love to get things done and

4 you re task-oriented, you re always in go-go-go mode. Is that you? Does that resonate well? You re always about getting things done. My wife leads with high fiery red. For 27 years, while I m driving the car, and the light turns green, she says, Go! Every single time. Go, turn, turn left, turn right. Go, go, go! That s high fiery red. You re all about getting stuff done. The shortcut is do it now. How about sunshine yellow? Does that resonate better with you? Energy, enthusiasm, karaoke night, happy hour, life of the party, right? If it s you, you re laughing out loud, because you re seeing it in yourself. For all of you in fact right now, think about somebody you work with that s always telling you what they re doing. What they did the night before, what they had for lunch. What they re going to do in the afternoon, what they re going to do the next day. On and on and on. Think about someone specific. If you can t think of anybody, it s you. Okay? That s sunshine yellow energy. It s energy, it s enthusiasm. Try and make a decision for yourself right now. Are you more focused on red energy, task, getting stuff done, or do you tend to focus more on that yellow energy, all about people and relationships? Both are extroverted energies, both are noisy and talk to think. Let me talk to the other two for a minute. And actually trying to calm down and slow down a little bit. To sort of talk in that preferred style. Some of you lead with earth green. You re amiable, patient, caring, relaxed. You re brilliant listeners. You listen to see where someone is going to take you without the need to interrupt in a fiery red way and get something done, or maybe the need to interrupt in a sunshine yellow way and make the story about you. The gift of brilliant listening for what s said and even what isn t said falls within that introverted feeling, amiable caring, earth green. And the last one is introverted thinking, cool blue, analytical, cautious, precise. You want me to prove these concepts to you, you d like to read more about them. You like to study, you like to analyze, and you like to go deeper. Think for a minute which one of these is more like you and just share it with people on your right and left quickly. Which one do you think you lead with? Go ahead and tell them. Let me illustrate a point for you. Because it speaks to the whole point that I m trying to make, which is about awareness, about being conscious. Realize that if you lead with sunshine yellow, you quickly told everybody you could get to. Right? With energy and with enthusiasm, and you re sad that I cut you off already. If you lead with red, you turned to someone and said, Red. Why? Because it s like, Now what? Let s get something done. Now I know. Let s get something done. If you lead with earth green, you were probably a little bit slower and more cautious to lean to the right or to the left, to invite the person to share this information with you. If you lead with blue, you re not sure yet if that s the right answer, because you want more time to think and be structured and be logical. But my point about communication is: we need to know this about ourselves, we

5 need to be self-aware. Because here s a risk, here is a risk. What if you overuse these gifts of communication s energies? What does it look like if you overuse them? My wife believes that she s determined, strong-willed and purposeful when she tells me how to drive the car. I believe she s overusing that gift of red energy, and take a look. I believe she s aggressive, controlling, overbearing and intolerant. It s my perception of the overuse of that energy. You can overuse all these energies. Overuse that wonderful caring earth green, and you re docile, bland, plodding, reliant and stubborn. Bad green, we call it. In fact, we like to say, Hell hath no fury like earth green energy scorned. Some of you who lead with that earth green, you recognize that, right? Overusing your cool blue, thinking too much about something and not wanting to commit to action. Analysis paralysis it s also a risk. And of course, even sunshine yellow can be taken too far and move to excitable, frantic, indiscreet, flamboyant, hasty, out of control. So the challenge here in terms of being self-aware is: how do you know when you re using the gift of your personality up to the right level, and do you actually know when you ve gone too far? What you may not realize is that if you re interacting with someone who leads with your opposite energy, unfortunately, they tend to see you on this slide. Think about that for a minute. Your opposite energy, your opposite personality, tends to perceive you in a negative and you don t even realize it s happening because you re actually in the middle of having your best day. It s why communication gets complicated. Oh no, that s not funny. Here s the funny part. If you ve put yourself in one of these quadrants, put your spouse in another one. How many of you think you married your opposite type? Oh my gosh, what were you thinking? Opposites actually attract, they do. We re drawn to somebody who s very different than we are, we come together, it feels very whole and very complete, and we marry them and then we want to kill them for 40 years. Because they do everything differently than we do. I want you to think about that spouse when you go home tonight, think about the energy that they lead with and treat them that way. Treat them the way that their energy might suggest. If you think they lead with earth green, give them a hug for a little longer than normal. If they lead with fiery red, go home and offer to do a job. If they lead with sunshine yellow, invite them to happy hour or go out with friends and have some fun. And if they lead with cool blue, send them a text or an and invite them to do Password or Sudoku at home tonight. Meet their energy where it is. Think about where you are in the model. Think about energies that you lead with. Think about your family and your children. This is my family. My wife, I said, leads with fiery red. My youngest daughter absolute fiery red, loves to focus and get things done. I lead with yellow, so does my oldest daughter. Look at her hat. Energy, enthusiasm. Mine appeared disorganized. That s the risk of too much sunshine yellow. And

6 look at my son. It s hard to see, but look closely. When we had this little exercise ten years ago, he said quietly, Can I wear more than one hat? And my wife, with high fiery red, said, What? No! Pick a hat. Maybe in a moment we became aware and said, Connor, wear as many hats as you want. Look closely. He said, I m green, but I m more blue. And he actually put two hats on. That s the uniqueness of personality. It s the way we gather information and the way we make decisions and how we show up in most everything we do. So be aware. The psychology underneath, it is extroverts, introverts, thinking and feeling. The same psychology, Jungian psychology that underpins Myers-Briggs or MBTI. Just a brilliant tool or tools in psychology that helps you access who you are, how are you wired and what makes you tick. It s about being aware that this exists so that you can be aware of it in other people. I ll let you read this slide, because this is going to happen as soon as we go to lunch. You re going to look at each other and you re going to see behaviors. Just read it for yourselves. I know, it s crazy, right? But it s true. You do one of these things, don t you? And one of these things that other people does make you crazy. They re probably your opposite type. Isn t it funny how we do it? I should probably have one more for the person who leans in pretending to hit the open door button, but really hits the close door. Maybe that s bad red, I don t know. The point behind what I m saying is, think about how you re wired and how you show up in terms of igniting your business and having more success in that area. How might you contribute, whatever role that you play? It s a function of your personality and where you fit in our model. And if you really want to expand that impact, then think about it in terms of leading others. How can you have a greater impact? Because there s a natural position you hold within models like this, you re naturally good at some things and you struggle harder with other things. Be aware. Be focused. Know yourself. Know yourself, know other people. Pay attention to other people as you interact with them, for the purpose of understanding who they are and how they re wired. Take actions so that you can move forward, but recognize that when you re having trouble with someone else Here s a quote from Jung again. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a deeper understanding in ourselves. You ve kind of heard that theme from some of the other speakers. If you re irritated by something someone else is doing, pause and reflect on why. That s the question, like Reece was saying. Why? Why is this happening? What s going on? Because very likely, it s more about you than about someone else. So in wrapping up for you, pay attention. Be aware. Use your conscious brain to see who people really are. If you wonder what it feels like, pay attention to your blinking right now for just a second. Notice your blinking? You re doing it. You re self-aware. It s that easy. Now tomorrow morning when you re brushing your teeth and looking in the mirror, I hope you have a little moment of self-awareness again. I don t want you to think of me, but think about blinking. Look in the mirror and say, Wow, I m aware. I m going to be

7 aware of everybody that I meet today. That s the plan. Focus on others. Know your unique personality style. Use whatever model helps you make sense of you in relationship to others, but notice the otherness of the other. Everyone in here is unique from everyone else. Everyone brings a gift. Everyone brings a unique personality, and they re dying for you to notice it. Just like you are dying to be communicated with in your preferred style, so is everybody else. Give them that gift, take action, and make a difference. Thank you very much.

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