>> Debra Carnegie: Hi everyone, thank you for coming. My name's Debra Carnegie and I'm
pleased to welcome Erica Ariel Fox to Microsoft research visiting speaker series. Eric is here to
discuss her book which is a New York Times bestseller. Winning From Within, a Breakthrough
Method for Leading, Living and Lasting Change. Erica is a longtime lecturer at Harvard Law
School's program on negotiation and a founding partner at Mobius Executive Leadership. She
also serves as a senior advisor to Mackenzie leadership development. Mixing nearly 2 decades
of experience with business leaders and her personal touch, Erica brings a unique voice to the
conversation about leading wisely and living well. Please join me in giving her a warm welcome.
>> [applause]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Thank you Deb. Greetings all of you, thank you very much for coming. I've
been on a wild wind tour for the last month and a half doing talks all over the place. Talking
about the book, sharing about the ideas and I always want to share one of my most recent
adventures with wherever I am speaking next. I want to share with you, about a week ago I was
in Los Angeles and I was at a talent agency where the people were very, very nice. And we were
exploring an idea which is how many of you have ever seen a show called Super Nanny? Did you
ever see Super Nanny? Okay, see. So super nanny, for those of you who don't know, she like
parachutes in to highly dysfunctional families. The kids are screaming and running around and
super nanny comes in and she gives parenting advice. And then in the second half of the show
you see the happy family implementing all of super nanny's excellent advice. So the idea was,
this show will be called the coach. And it would be some dysfunctional executive team and I
would parachute in like super nanny and identify what was going wrong and then I would give
coaching to the team and then you would see them all very high performing team at the end.
So we pitched the idea and these incredibly nice women look at me and they said, you know at
the new trend is in television? Naked.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Naked is actually apparently like the in thing on television. So for example,
survivor used to be normal survivor, but now it's naked and afraid survivor so could there be a
way we could do the show naked? I'm thinking, yeah this is not, that wasn't my vision and I
think the naked coach, no one's going to watch that. So, yeah. Anyway I wanted to share that
with you as a way of linking my adventures on the road. I hope there will be fewer curveballs in
this conversation today than in that one, but I'm very happy to be here today to talk to you
guys about the book and promise not to parachute into your lives after this looking for
dysfunction.
What I want to talk about is the way that we all get in our own way. In our lives, in our
leadership, in our professional teams, in the projects we pursue, in our love lives. Probably not
any of you here, but some people messed things up in their love life. And give you a pretty clear
map for something you could do about that. And I came to get very interested in this, the idea
of how we prevent ourselves from doing things that we know we could do, we should do, we've
had training or we've read a lot of good books and we have tools and techniques, but often
times when it matters most we don't use them.
So many years ago I was teaching an executive education program at Harvard Law school. It
was a weeklong seminar and we had one faculty member and three delegates. So let's imagine
I'm working with the three of you and the exercise would be taking place over the course of a
day. We had a video camera, we're going to give video feedback to people, and each person
had a chance to choose a challenge. Something that was really difficult in their lives. And they
would bring it the next day and we'd work together as a team, you know with a coach trying to
really get a breakthrough. So in one instance of running this exercise, I found out the night
before that one of the people in my group was a justice on the Supreme Court. You're supposed
to be daunted and say oooh. I was 25, I had just graduated from law school and my job the next
day was to give coaching to this person. Thank you, so now you get the ridiculousness of the
situation. And I you know, panicked. I was thinking what could I possibly have the say to this
person. And I started fantasizing if he has conflicts with Parliament or you know sentencing
guidelines in his other justices. Who knows what he's going to want to talk about. This was not
by the way a US justice, it was a High Court judge from another country, but I couldn't really
imagine what he would bring. Fast forward to the next day, it's his turn to do the exercise and
we asked him, you know very elegant gentlemen, respectfully sir if you could tell us about the
challenge you chose. He says, I really want my wife to stop choosing my ties.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: And with total sincerity I said, I'm sorry. He says for 50 years I come out of
the washroom and she's laid my close out on the bed, why does she do that? I hate that.
>> Audience: She loves you.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Aw, he said she loves you. So I asked him a question which was have you
ever asked her not to do that? Now that is my problem. I simply cannot bring myself to ask her
to stop. And in that moment I really started to see negotiation, conversation, leadership
interactions in a totally new way. Because this actually wasn't a conflict between the judge and
his wife. It was a conflict inside of him, a part of him that wanted to say something, a part of
him that didn't. Right, we could role-play lines. Like we could practice, how about you don't do
that anymore. Or we could practice, I'm brainstorming. How about if you pick out my outfits
Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I do it Tuesday, Thursday. You know do some joint
problem-solving. This is a problem inside of himself. And a way to get out of it is not going to be
practicing what he can say, it's going to be identifying these parts inside of him that are in
conflict. Getting really clear what they are and what they care about, what they want from him.
And then in essence getting to yes inside of himself so that he can then go interact with
someone else. And from that moment on, I've been researching, and talking and teaching and
writing about the idea that the most important negotiations you have in your life are the ones
you have with yourself. When you think about negotiating, either buying a house or asking for a
salary raise or you know negotiating for a product sharing across, you know maybe different
tech companies or what's going on now in the Crimea. Negotiating big world affairs or massive
business deals, negotiation is actually something you do every day, all day with yourself. But
there's really not been before a very good map for what that looks like or how to get good at it.
So that's when I became really interested in. My belief is that every single one of us, you know
mess up our lives every day. We may have different ways of doing that. We may shut down,
someone else may lash out, right. Someone else might just walked out, deny a conflict. You
might just get physically ill not knowing what to do but most people have some examples in
their lives where they either did say and do something or they chose not to do or say something
and then they are left with regret. Anybody ever have that experience? You lay in bed at night
like, oh my God, I just told my boss to shut up. Yeah, so I actually did have this experience two
nights ago. I had gone from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I was in San Francisco right before
here and I saw somebody who I hadn't seen for a long time. The backdrop you need to know
from this is that I got married three years ago and this person was a friend of my husband, my
now husband. I haven't seen him since before the wedding. So he came up to me, I was at a
cocktail party and he said hey, how are my dear friends Erica and Bernardus, that's my husband.
And I said, not that dear friends because you didn't even RSVP to our wedding. And I thought
wow, I didn't plan for that to happen.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: This was a completely true story and he said, what. And I said, I just saying,
we can chitchat you know if you want, but I mean, not really good friends because you didn't
come, you didn't even RSVP. I actually said this two days ago, so actually don't read this book or
listen to anything I say. I have nothing for you. You know, I'm going to have to write an email.
Which I was like horrified, I'm so sorry, that didn't come out right, , you know. And it didn't
right, really. I feel hurt from that time. I feel hurt for my husband, because it was his friend. I've
been carrying it, right. I haven't seen him. And when I saw him, the first thing that rose in me
was the memory of like, that was painful that he didn't. It felt then, he didn't care enough
about us to even tell us he wasn't coming and having never met him before, it was just there it
was. So that he wrote me be back and said it's okay. Just you know, it's the been kind of all
worked out. But I offer you this example just to say that it really is part of our daily lives. Even
people like me who practice a lot, we have moments where we get defensive, reactive, we get
hooked in some way. Maybe we felt threatened or insulted, scared, and we wind up doing
things that are much less effective than what we know that we are capable of. I have plenty of
experiences of not attacking friends at cocktail parties, so that's not my best. So the way I think
about the problem that winning from within aims to help people with is mess and miss. On the
one hand we mess up our lives, we mess things up at work. We mess things up with our
families, and communities, and boards we survived. From CEOs to summer interns, even
though we know better. We also just simply miss opportunities. You know you can imagine
yourself sitting around the room, sitting around a table and seven he says there's a really cool
new project. You know, who might like to volunteer. And maybe part of you is thinking, I would
love to do that. But then you say, don't want to look selfish or maybe other people should get
the opportunity or I don't know, this is like a very high status person. It's nerve-racking, what if
you don't impress the person, and then someone else raises their hand and it's like great, well
that person got that project. And then again you have to go home at night and say, why didn't I
volunteer for that? It was a great project for me. So often times we wind up making mistakes,
missing opportunities and then we're just left asking ourselves, okay well, now what? And I
think people will be happier, more successful and more genuinely fulfilled if we start to have a
way to avoid this cycle entirely. You don't have to fix it at this point, you want to have a way to
get ahead of it. As I say it doesn't work all the time but you kind of learn ways to understand
yourself, discover parts of yourself, develop them and learn along the path of mastery of
yourself that you actually can cut down dramatically these sub optimal situations. So the way I
talk about this in the book is as a performance gap. We have on the one hand our highest
potential to behave, I could've been lovely to that guy. Been happy to see him. We have what
we actually do in real life. Right, I shut down, I didn't volunteer, I sent that email, I know I
shouldn't have sent it. That's a gap between your best potential. What you really could do.
Right, the judge you know had to say something to his wife, and what you actually do. Which in
his story is nothing, but just let it eat you up inside for 40 years.
So I wanted to share with you four steps in the next 15 minutes as a roadmap for a process you
can learn that will help you close the performance gap. And the four steps are, one that you
start to recognize your big four, which I'll define in a moment. That you start to recognize them
in general and you start to appreciate how they operate in you. That's your profile, that your
big four constellation. That you start to learn the process of negotiating with yourself. I said
before that a lot of negotiating training, a lot of negotiation frameworks are about how to make
deals with other people, how to deal with difficult people or crazy people. In this case the
difficult person you learn to deal with is yourself and it makes yourself easier. And the last one
is that you set off on an ongoing journey. That you appreciate, that you become more and more
skillful over time. You can gain capacity that you don't have today and that's part of the
journey, it doesn't happen overnight. Okay, so step one is a somewhat radical idea and that
radical idea is that you, you what you think of is me is not singular. You are plural. Walt
Whitman said a long, go I am a large, I contain multitudes. What does that mean? Joseph
Campbell described human beings as a hero with a thousand faces. Right, how many of you
know that reference? So there is a long, long tradition of recognizing that the human condition,
our inner experience is not unitary. There are different parts of us. But in our society, in our
culture today at least in the West, we've largely lost track of that tradition which is hundreds
and hundreds of years old. That has guides and maps to understand how to navigate this in
your world which is complex. So the idea is that you start to recognize actually, I am me, but
there are a bunch of different parts of me in there and figuring out how they operate, what
makes me tick is going to be much more helpful than just operating on autopilot with no
understanding of what's going on. So I said Joseph Campbell talked about a thousand faces, I
think that is unwieldy, certainly for people in business life. So I've honed in on what I call the big
four. That is not in any way to say that the human condition has four parts and nothing more.
There are many lineages that could tell you, you have 100, you have a thousand you know
different dimensions. I focus on these four for two reasons. One, in 10 years of research I could
tell you that these four short again and again in different names, in different languages, but
over and over. From cave dwellers to depth psychologist and now neuroscientists who are
mapping the brain say we have a part of us that dreams, that longs for a better future. A part of
us that thinks rationally. A part of us that feels and a part of us that wants to take action and
get things done. These four are very fundamental. And the second reason is, I've just
experienced that using them that executives in many different industries, they are helpful.
People get them quickly, they notice which ones they are using and not using and then they
start to gain capacity pretty quickly. So I apologize, there's no CTO here. I realized this morning
that was you know, we can add that. But the image that I want to offer you is of an inner
executive team. As if you had these executives inside of you. A CEO that was about setting
direction and vision and possibility. A CFO or General Counsel that likes to gather facts and
information, takes different perspectives, helps you manage risks and evaluate trade-offs. You
have an HR expert who cares about people. Who knows how to engage employees or create a
sense of affiliation on the team. That whole set of skills. And finally you have a sort of chief
operating officer who really wants to keep the trains on track and help you get things done.
How many people with that description could start to see parts of yourself that if we asked your
friends to describe, you'd see one of two of these inside of yourself? Okay, great. So the first
step is just recognizing you have these four. It turns out that they actually are a lot like different
negotiating parties, which is why I talk about the negotiation within. They have different values,
different interests, different priorities, different styles of communicating with you and you
really want to get to know them. The second step is to start thinking about what I call your
profile. And that means everyone in this room has some tendencies around how you use these
four. You all have all for them as potential but most people tend to use one or two of them a
lot, maybe have one that they would just never use, they say well that's not me, I'm not like
that. You have different situations where you call on them for different reasons. So a profile
essentially means, I started to come to notice that in many situations I'm really only using these
skills and I'm not using those, and that's just a good awareness to start with. So many business
people who I work with for example are very productive in terms of their jobs. Their clients like
them a lot and they have teams that constantly complain about them in 360° feedback. Right
people criticize, they are so mean, the guys a bully, I think he hates me, and when I confront
executives with that information they often are shocked. They don't see that side of
themselves. If you asked them, you know do you push your team very hard? They will say, you
know they don't work harder than I do. And we have standards of excellence. So it could be
true that one of these is an overdrive in your life that you may not even notice. There's also a
common pattern I've seen organizations where one person on the team is sort of the isolated
patient, identified patient. As like they are the people person, they remember the birthday of
everybody on the team. Maybe some of you are this person. They always want to check in
when people get back in from vacation and holidays, but they run a risk which is really straight
logical business people don't always take them seriously. They seem sort of lightweight. So
checking in with the people in your team is a wonderful skill. Balance in a business environment
with demonstrating you can make a logical argument, that you know how to analyze
information, right. You have to balance these strengths depending on the circumstances that
you're in, not get stuck in only one or two of these because that's where you're comfortable. So
I want to give you guys two minutes before I keep going to turn to someone near you. It could
be someone behind you, someone in front of you and ask yourself this. If we asked the people
who know you best, take your own self out of it. If we asked the people who work with you
every day, the people who live with you to describe your profile. He's you know is always
thinking, always trying to solve problems but not the most relational, emotional guy or no I
think actually your pretty balanced at all those things although maybe the dreamer hasn't been
very active lately. Just take a minute with somebody near you, what would the people who
know you well you think say about how you use these four in your life?
>> Audience: [talking amongst each other]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Okay, 30 seconds.
>> Audience: [talking amongst each other]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Okay, just between us, I know it's being videoed, but if you put that out of
your mind.
>> [laughter]
>> Audience: Anybody want to share anything that came to mind? Maybe not about yourself,
but about a hypothetical person.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: How many of you found that when you thought about it that you probably
do have one or two that you use more or even three, but there's one or two that you don't use
nearly as much? How many people found that? So that's pretty common. And what I want to
say to you is that you have this full breadth of potential. This is like an inner technology. These
parts of you have tools and techniques and methods and processes and it's as if you're only
using half the inner technology available to you, which I know none of you would do with real
technology. So it's really important to start to investigate these parts of you. Something I feel
also pretty strongly about is the basic principle that we do all have these big four. We use them
to varying degrees. There are a lot of corporate typing systems, right that will tell you your blue,
or green but then you're not red. Or of course Myers-Briggs, very well known, an enormous
contribution to helping people understand themselves, but at the same time can give people
the impression, oh I'm a thinker not a feeler, right. I'm this and therefore not that. And I don't
believe that. We have the intrinsic inboard innate capacity to live fully, broadly to our full
potential. It's likely true that over the course of our lives we learn things through success and
failure. Like I'm very good at this, I'm going to keep doing that. Or maybe someone in my life
told me, acting like that is no good and then I stop doing that. But now were all adults and we
can open our eyes and say hey, there are parts of myself I left behind, maybe because my first
manager told me, you know I'll never be a people person because I'm a brilliant tech person,
that's just not true. And I can try it out from working with thousands and thousands of
executives. The story you tell yourself. The profile or identity you describe can limit you and it
can also open a lot of new possibilities if you're willing to explore how you describe your profile
and what else can become possible. So two more steps. The third, this is kind of where the
rubber meets the road. Once you have the awareness and insight, you learn to negotiate with
yourself. You learn to notice there are different parts of me in a conflict and instead of just
having some vague sense of discomfort or stomachache or migraine, I'm aware that different
parts of me have different preferences or priorities here. I'm going to hear them out, and then
decide. And I'm going to give you an example of this. I was working with a large company based
in Europe and I was working with the executive team. They were negotiating a very big contract
with a company based here in New York. And these negotiates had gone for a month. The deal
on the table seem very sound. They had different people evaluate it and essentially they had a
deal. The US organization sent over a contract for the Europeans to sign and my client called me
hysterical and said, they wrote the amount in US dollars. Not in Euros. Which means that
although we agreed to these numbers, they are paying whatever it was at the time, you half or
you know two thirds of the amount because they wrote it in US dollars. And we are negotiating
in Euros the whole time. So he called his lawyer of course and he had his lawyer call the lawyer
in the US and they said you know I think we're having some kind of breakdown here. We had
agreed to these terms and conditions under the understanding that the shared currency was in
Euros. And the lawyer actually was very apologetic. You know it was just a mistake, an innocent
mistake, we're going to fix it, were going to send you a new contract. So the lawyer wasn't sure
whether he believed it or not, but he said you know what do I care, they are going to give us
the contract we thought we agreed on in Euros. The client, the executive I worked with, he
does not agree. He said this is not an innocent mistake. This is an intentional attempt to rip us
off. Did they think we wouldn't notice? You know and he just wanted to pick up that phone and
start screaming at the business guys on the other side of the deal. Understandably so. Yet he
had to decide between the different parts of himself. In my emotional self I'm outraged, I feel
betrayed, this is injustice, right. In his warrior, I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to say this is
not okay, and as a thinker in his rational business self, it's a good deal for his business. In fact
the very deal he agreed to. Not even a different deal. He already agreed to the deal the day
before and he thought it was a good business opportunity then. And his dreamer might likewise
say, we did this deal because we think this contract is going to move us forward to our strategy
or it's going to help us in the direction we're trying to go. But then you still have this part saying,
I don't care, right. I don't care about the deal. I've been wronged. And that part is not wrong.
Right from this lover, warrior perspective, it's perfectly legitimate to say, the most important
thing in this situation now is I call this guy. I call him on what he did. I get to tell him that I don't
respect his business practices. That's what this sort of lover, warrior wants to do. But in this
moment he can either just do that and put the deal at risk or he can notice, okay, part of me,
that's what that part was to do. Another part of me is excited about the future that the contract
represents and rationally speaking I've run the numbers. It can be a profitable deal. Now these
guys have to decide. And there's no right or wrong choice. They are all legitimate, the only thing
you want to make sure to do is choose. And very often we make important choices in this kind
of situation, just on autopilot, right. I mean if you're the kind of person who only speaks up and
shares your feelings, that's what you're going to do, regardless of the business opportunity. If
you live your life in a rational, logical business framework, you're going to just keep going and
may not notice that there's a part of you that is really hurt and angry, that feels betrayed. And
you are abandoning that part of you completely. You don't even notice that there they are. And
by the way if that's a pattern you caring for 15 years, you'll start to notice when you have a
heart attack when you're 46, right. I mean you can't just ignore these strong emotional
experiences for your whole life. They will ultimately, many people would say and I would say
myself, they will show up in the body, they will show up in disease. I mean these things have to
be worked through. So in that case, more or less we really we're really just weighing if this were
a one time, sign the deal, exchange goods, we have the transaction, we don't have to work with
this again, then it might make more sense to just let the thinker, dreamer go forward. If it's was
a situation where these two guys were going to need to work together a lot, for the next
decade, and now no trust. Right, the guy in Europe since he doesn't operate in good faith, you
can't build a working relationship on that. You're going to have to say, I really need for you to
help me believe that this really was an honest mistake. Because it doesn't seem that way.
They're going to have to work that out to make the deal succeed over time. So I would
encourage you to just start thinking about situations in your own life, where you might have
made a move quickly. Whether to say something, not to say something, to express your
feelings, to make a certain kind of evaluative decision. To throw risk, caution to the wind and
not measure risk because you're so inspired and excited. And in those moments you want to
call on one of the big four that's not at the table and just tap in and ask yourself, does my
dreamer, warrior, lover, thinker have a piece of wisdom here that I need to think about before I
just move.
To put that on a bigger scale just for a minute, I've talked a lot about being more effective and
having higher performance, higher performing teams and organizations, it's also true that
many, many traditions, wisdom traditions, psychological traditions, now I think some neuroscientific traditions in terms of being able to measure heart rate variability in all sorts of
coherence in the body had said for generations that the way to not only an effective life, and a
high performing life, but also a meaningful life, a fulfilling life is to bring the different parts of
yourself into some kind of harmonious balance. This is a very timeless image of that, right.
These parts are all interwoven together. The black is in the white, white is in the black. They are
kind of route and circular so there just in a constant cycle that moves, but this symbol in
essence is also seen as a way of life. You really want to have all the different parts of who you
are interdependent, active, alive, available because there's a deeper wisdom to what that will
bring through you over the course of your life.
I love this cat. This cat is looking at a lion in the mirror. So I said to myself, self, your amazing.
The last part is just to decide to commit, that you're going to expand your profile over time.
Whatever constellation you have today, I use these two a lot, I don't use this one, that's not
your personality. You're not locked into that way of living. That is the way today you are
balancing these parts of you. It's not a death sentence. It doesn't really tell you anything about
how you are going to start to live, love, lead and work with other people tomorrow. And I want
to share with you just a personal example that I had with this because it really brought home to
me the truth of this, that these things are fluid and ever changing.
So I grew up on the East Coast, I don't know if it if you could tell that I came from New York, but
in case that wasn't obvious I'm originally from New York. And I grew up in a pretty traditional
Jewish household and my whole life, my family had a fantasy for me which I deeply integrated
that I would get married around 25 or 26 to some ideally rabbinical student. But anyway, some
nice Jewish guy from Manhattan and then we'd have some kids and then send them to medical
school. So it turns out, I went through my 20s, went through my 30s. I met my beloved when I
was 40. Not only when I was 40, but the man that I ultimately married was married before and
he has a little son from his first marriage and he lives in the Netherlands, not anywhere near
Manhattan. He lives in the Netherlands and he has shared custody obviously of his son, so if I
want the guy, then I want Europe and the whole thing. Not my dream. It wasn't. So I went
through a really challenging period of confusion, but I know my dream. My dream was I was
going to meet this guy and I was going to have these kids and we were going to live in the
suburbs, maybe Massachusetts, and I had to confront in my dreamer, that dream already didn't
happen. Right, I already am not 35 with two kids, and I'm actually 40, unmarried with no kids,
so I'm still attached to that dream, but actually that dream already didn't happen. So here's a
real opportunity with a guy who I actually love. It represents a life towards which I have no
dreams, I have no visions of living in Europe. I have no dreams, no fantasies, I promise you of
learning to speak Dutch. But that's my life now and so in that life I do have to say myself, okay
dreamer, we've got to find a new dream. Here I am, I live in the Netherlands, I have this
fantastic stepson who refuses to speak a word of English.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Still love the guy, you know it's a totally new world. And I could sit every day
in my new life thinking like, oh my life thinking, oh my life just didn't work out, if I stay attached
to that dream. Or I could say no, it's a new day. So and I really work at trying to imagine, you
know what's the happiest life for myself here, what's the highest potential I have in this context
to fulfill myself, my purpose, my possibility in a different vision of a family than what I would've
had. So, I share that with you only because it's not just, oh the dreamer has a dream. Like yeah,
that's right and then maybe that doesn't happen. So then what? Okay well you have to keep
going. The lover has a relationship but gets hurt, devastated, brokenhearted. You say well, okay
well forget that, you know that whole people thing didn't work out. No, no more lover has
experiences, you learn and you say okay. Let me find out when that part of me is ready to
engage again. You keep going. And that's what this, you know expand your profile over time, it
means every day of your life as a new opportunity to use parts of yourself you haven't been
using or to tap into potential you have that is just waiting for you. Right, just waiting for you to
invite that part of yourself in.
So, I'm going to stop here, I'm also watching the clock and just wanted to ask any comments,
questions. It doesn't have to be a question, it could just be your own reflection or impression
and also, of course I'm happy to take questions. Yes.
>> Audience: So, I've been studying Myers-Briggs and these current profiling, and yeah like you
said I kind of feel like I'm sentenced to a label.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: He's saying that he feels sentenced in some of these typing systems, like
okay, that's the sentence.
>> Audience: Right, but as we try to adjust and try to bringing the other aspect of the four out.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yeah.
>> Audience: That will result in indecisiveness, internal contention and how to overcome that.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: I think that's the dilemma of trying to learn anything. Right, you could say,
okay in my comfort zone here, I'm really good at this. So I'll spend my life just in this comfort
zone. So how does it feel to operate in your comfort zone? Just shout out, what is something
you feel in your comfort zone? Competent, safe. What else do you feel in your comfort zone?
Relaxed, comfortable, it's boring, yes. Say again?
>> Audience: Unchallenged.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: You're unchallenged. Right, so it's both. You are in your comfort some,
you're ready to do this, it's safe and comfortable and also boring and you're not challenged.
Then you step out. Now your outside your comfort zone. So what does it feel like being outside
your comfort zone?
>> Audience: Scary, exciting.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: It's scary, it's exciting.
>> Audience: Exhilarating.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: It can be exhilarating.
>> Audience: Exhausting.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Exhausting.
>> Audience: Threatening.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: It can be threatening. That's the uncomfort part of going out of the comfort
zone, right. So it's also both. It's not comfortable, it's not necessarily feel safe. Don't necessarily
feel confident right when you're trying to do something new, however it's exhilarating, it's
exciting. You actually do learn and if you continue to practice the things that are outside of your
zone today, right. Down the road you realize, hey actually now those things are included within
my comfort zone. They are not scary anymore. And now I'd better try something else. So this
town is in my mind and Silicon Valley about pushing ourselves to a future we don't know yet,
right. Going into what's uncertain, not staying with what's tested and true but asking you know,
what's the coolest new smart thing we can bring to the world a year from now. Five years from
now. That's also a good mindset for life. I think you don't want to spend your whole life being
safe and bored. Yes.
>> Audience: Yes, I do have some questions. First I think, I read the first two pages, I think it's
very good.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yes, she read the first two pages. She loves it.
>> [laughter]
>> Audience: Yes, so when you have excite [inaudible] and I realize it might be because I'm
female. I'm more like a dreamer and a lover and the one that he says, I think it's more like a
thinker and the warrior, so do you think the gender difference will provide different paths?
>> Erica Ariel Fox: I thought about this of course, a fair amount. I think the difference is less and
less to be honest. I think we in this room and some of us are older and some of us are younger
than ourselves. I think we in this room still grew up in worlds where boys and girls were
socialized quite differently. Right, at least when I was growing up. And it's already very
different. Boys played on sports teams. There were clear goals. There were winners and losers,
right. And my friends and I played school where I was the teacher of course.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: And they were my students. But like our games were just about talking to
each other. That was our game, all of the time. You know we can play, I don't know, any game
that had a structure called we talked to each other and communicate and connect. You can't
win or lose at that game. The worst thing is if the girls don't want you in their group anymore.
That's devastating. And that's quite final actually. You think about losing a soccer game, you
know you could win next week. So do I think that in our generation we in general were raised to
pursue value connection relationship. You know imagination and fantasy dreamer kind of stuff
and that boys were raised more doing competitive things where you could see a winner and
loser. Were they conditioned more towards thinker and warrior? I think yes, but as a big but, I
don't think that's really that true anymore. I think many, many of those things have broken
down. If I look at young guys today. They are sharing co-parenting with their women. They are
taken quite seriously, like we are both responsible for nurturing, right. Obviously girls today are
playing on all kinds of sports teams and they do grow up loving competition. They do grow up
wanting to win, so I don't think it's in born genetically, as you can here. I think it has to do with
what's rewarded and encouraged and I think the kids that her kids now and as they become
older and enter the workforce, I don't think you're going to see that is a very clear line.
>> Audience: US soccer Olympics, that Olympic team, womens, very competitive.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Right. It would be worth you asking yourself how much is there a real story
here about me as a woman and how much is that story how I get myself off the hook from
saying, I really should use my warrior and my thinker, right. Yeah, and oh but I'm a woman so
that you know, sorry. No, I would say let's just establish there might be an element of that, but
get rid of it and see what becomes possible. Yeah.
>> Audience: What happened in your Euro to US dollars. Someone called you for counsel, right.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yeah.
>> Audience: And the reason why I'm really curious about that is when you typically in a
business scenario, and you have this.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yeah.
>> Audience: We kind of get coached to do a little bit of both, right. So you say, you suck,
smiley, smiley, smiley. You know, you became this, smiley, smiley, smiley and here's how we
would move forward.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Wait, how is that doing both? That sounds like a lot of smiley.
>> Audience: You say that.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yes, you smiley, smiley and then you sign.
>> Audience: And then they emoticon and we're all thinking what, you betrayed me but you
know we'll still do business.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: And then three years later you see them at a cocktail party, and you're like
hey.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Can we talk about being friends? That's a thing about that whole US dollars
thing. Yes, so in many situations like this, the key is to find the both-and. Right, not to choose,
but it has to be a real both-and. It can be like smiley, smiley, oh you betrayed me, but hey let's
move on. I mean that's not actually honoring the reality of this perspective, right. So then the
question is rather than saying to myself, do I give clear tough performance feedback to this
person? Because it's a hard truth and I want them to get it, or should I be nice and encouraging
and tell them I believe in them? That's not a choice. You should be nice and encourage them
and tell them you believe in them and give them difficult feedback if that's what they need to
perform. You really want to do both. It's not as I said, it's not thinker or feeler or dreamer or
warrior. That's with the yin and yang symbol is saying. You have to draw in them all. So what we
did in this case, he said it's a good business deal from a thinker perspective, I don't want to
blow it up. I do believe it's part of the future of the industry, dreamer perspective and I am so
upset and angry because I don't believe it was an honest mistake, and I can't move on from
that. So what are we going to do? So what we did was we arranged a conversation for this
executive with the other side's lawyer. And we said okay, let's keep the other business guy out
of this for now. Let's give the benefit of the doubt for now that maybe it was a mistake but our
guy said I want to sit face-to-face in a conference room with that guy and I want to say you
persuade me that this was an honest mistake. Because right now I don't trust your client and I
don't feel good about moving forward. And so the guy brought out various emails, various
documentation. Your entire trip communication and he said look, draft after draft after draft it
says Euros, Euros, Euros, Euros, Euros. I don't know why it just turned into dollars. They could
have literally been, you know the administrative help that was typing this up. It was genuinely a
mistake. He shipped all this email communications between the lawyer and the client. He said
you see no exchanges here saying hey, we can create some extra value by changing the
currency. There's no indication, you know volition to rip you off. I'm telling you, it was an
honest mistake. And you know, we'll never know, but the client genuinely was skeptical walking
in and at the end of the meeting he thought, yeah I mean it could be an honest mistake and
there isn't really evidence otherwise and it was enough. He let it go and he didn't talk about it
with his, essentially his partner in the deal. So, I mean it's another example of also asking
yourself if there's a part of me that has a need or that's upset about something. Is there a
creative way that I can take care of that legitimate need that I have without putting at risk
something else that I'm worried about. If I feel that you really can't take tough performance
feedback, but I know that if you don't get the message you might lose your job, maybe I say I'm
going to go to your manager and say listen. You know you're going to have to get some
coaching over time because if she doesn't get better at this, I don't think she's going to stay and
I'm letting you know that because I don't think I'm the right person to tell her but I do want her
to get the information. Right, so by giving everybody a voice, you can then start to strategically
ask yourself by what path can they all get their needs met. Does that make sense? To my dying
day and going to wonder whether that was a mistake. I'm never going to know. Yes.
>> Audience: It was interesting you mentioned all the different systems that had four types like
going back to Plato's artisans.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yeah incredible references and philosophies.
>> Audience: Did you see whether like your four, studying your four aligns with other fours,
and why do you think there's four not three or five?
>> Erica Ariel Fox: That's a good question. What I would say is that my four are an attempt to
translate is on a very esoteric material into language that every day mainstream business
people can use and understand. So I think there is a close although not perfect relationship for
example in the cabbalistic tradition, mystical Jewish tradition of the four worlds. There's a
relationship in many different traditions where you would say, I see the seeds of this map in
this system. The language is very different. Some of it is not that different. Many indigenous
people have earth, fire, air, water. Four core elements of life and I have mapped them here.
Some say North, South, East and West. Some use the seasons, but I've looked at acupuncture,
I've looked at the five Buddha families. I've looked at, you know many different traditions
asking is there some way to boil this down and to translate. This is really the best word I have,
translated into language that we all in our world now can understand and use to get better at
what we do. So I did pick the four because they seem to me, again reading things in translation,
to be close to the truth of what I saw over and over. And what I saw over and over was four by
the way. Not like these guys. Well, the Buddha families are five but, and of course there are
some threes, but I'll be honest in saying many, many systems over thousands of years that tried
to describe the essence of the human condition. The essence of the human nature will identify
by their own language these four. I will also say and sort of beyond what we can do today, you
are not just four, you're not just your big four. You are a lot more than that. For example, the
part of you that is aware of the big four isn't one of them, right. So what's going on there? So in
the book I do talk about the transformers. These three aspects of our identity that are almost
like a board of directors. That are overseeing the operating big four, right. Like a board, they
want to make sure the big four are acting properly and optimizing value and not breaking the
law, but these transformers like a board aren't attached to any particular one of the four. And
so once you get the lay of the land of the four, then the fun really starts because you start to
learn about the parts of yourself that can exert choice over these guys. But put yourself behind
the steering wheel, put these guys in the back seat. You know let yourself lead your life, not let
your warrior lead your life because he always has or let your warrior leader life because she
always has. You know, you want to lead your life so you have to learn also about the part of
yourself that's actually bigger than the big four. And many, many traditions of course important
that from witness awareness to mindfulness. I talk about the lookout. Part of yourself is on the
lookout inside of you for what's going on. And the captain is the part of you that chooses.
>> Audience: So you mean to say my ex is not by board of directors?
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Well, trying to understand the operating model of your ex, that is actually
the advanced course. I do offer that, but it's like in a weekend format and it's very confidential
so I can't speak about that. But I'm glad you're asking the question. I think that's really the key.
Any other comments or questions? Please.
>> Audience: Going back to your Euro, US dollar. Is it helpful to identify, I mean when you talk
to those different parties, did you identify what different elements were just addressed
different ways? Do you see when you are talking to the one side and then.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: No, and then the beauty of the system is how easy it is to use, right. So my
clients, look, literally we have four chairs. And I said, okay I want you to sit in this chair and I
want to hear your dreamer talk about this opportunity as your dreamer. You laugh, but just
wait. And the dreamer comes in he describes this incredible opportunity and what's going to
become possible. The dreamer is very angry and upset that these guys want to blow up the
deal, right. The dreamer sees this could fulfill a vision that the dreamer has had for 10 years and
we hear from the warrior and we hear from the thinker and we hear from the lover. And what I
do often with clients is I might say okay Sean, I want you to stand over here. I'm going to play
back to you just a little highlight of what each of these parts of you said. And as you stand back
and you can just sort of here into these perspectives, what's the inner wisdom in you? Not
attached to any of them, you know what comes up for you about the wise course of action
here? That's the stance of the captain. Okay, I get it, I hear you guys and I have to decide what
is best. And the language is very helpful. So I don't shy away from it because it's very clarifying
and if I say I want to hear from your lover, I mean these possible slight digression but only for a
minute. These of course are based on archetypes which MBTI was also, right for those of you
who studied Jung, these are fundamental human patterns that Jung believes are just inborn
into the psyche. From the moment we arrive, nobody needs to teach you how to have your
heartbeat. Nobody teaches you, you know to move your lungs. He would say no one needs to
teach you what these forces mean. They're inborn, they're in you. Just like you would know
mother or father before someone taught it to you or you might note villain and savior before
someone taught it to you. Have any of you guys ever seen a little girl five or six years old who
works out a little dance routine that's like a little shake, a little eyes. You're like, who are the
friends of this girl?
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Where are her parents? She didn't have to learn that, it's inborn. Right, she's
going to grow into the mature expression of it, but it's in her. No one taught that to her,
probably. It's not like she's watching it on TV. So they are inborn in us and the reason it's such a
quick intervention with executive teams, you know giving to employees through a company,
because once you get the language you can actually tap into these quite easily. Much more so
than it may appear to you sitting here now. Because they are fundamental forces that are in us
and each one of them carries their own wisdom, which is why it's a shame to leave one or two
of them behind in your life. You're missing out on what they have to offer you. He's like, oh my
God they are starting to bring out multiple chairs. I think this is, I just suddenly remembered I
had a conference call right exactly now. No, no, I'm teasing. Thanks for coming.
>> Audience: I'm going to my therapist.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Oh good, thank God.
>> [laughter]
>> Erica Ariel Fox: He's going to his therapist. I like to have that effect on people. They run for
my session and call 911. Any other questions or comments, yeah.
>> Audience: I feel like we've switched back and forth between the transactional which is here
is a situation that I'm faced with and here's where I need to be and here's the way I need to
think about it versus the resilience over our journey. How you need to evolve. Do you track, and
I haven't read the book so apologies if it's in there, but.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Well yeah, get to that.
>> Audience: Is it something that you talked about? Have you mapped people on their journey
as to how well they go into these different personas word different decision-making patterns or
when they do it and when they choose not to, or is that something that.
>> Erica Ariel Fox: Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. So a third of the
transformers is a part I call the voyager which is unique to each of you, what your voyage. But
there are also patterns that you can see. So one pattern that is typical might be, you start in
your career as an individual contributor. Right, you have tasks, you're executing in certainly
knowledge companies. You're using thinker and warrior because that's what your job requires
of you to do. And then if you're very good technically, you might get promoted to a managerial
position and you have a few people reporting to you and now, oh my god, right. I mean what do
I know about managing people. So the opportunity will almost demand that you learn about
those lover skills, employee engagement, inspirational leadership. You know building a
powerful cohesive team. He may not have needed that lover so much when you just had to do
your job but now you are leading the team. Managers who are successful also get promoted
into positions of firm wide leadership, right. And now they really need to be able to access and
share the dream. It's a vision of our company. Right, they need to be inspiring people with their
imagination and possibly getting up at annual meetings and here's my vision for our strategy.
Lover and warrior aren't going to be very helpful at that point, right. Even thinker and warrior
are going to be that helpful. Even lover for senior leaders usually isn't enough. People want to
know where were going, what's the vision? Why should I care about that? Why do I trust that I
should follow you because you see where we're headed? And those kind of things as well as
innovating new products and services, right. No shortage of the dreamer here. But in many,
many businesses when managers become executives, they have to go on a journey to
remember, I haven't been using my dreamer in so long, how does that work again. Because it's
quite different. Imagination, intuition, sensing you know what's happening is very different than
the other three so to generalize I think there are paths that require evolution and of course
everyone has their own journey, those are both true. Okay, I'm getting the sense because I'm
very in tune and discerning, I'm sensing that we should bring this to a close so thank you guys
so much for coming. I really appreciate the chance to dialogue with you.
>> [applause]