TrueLife - Chuck Wisner - Conscious Conversations

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️🎙️🎙️ Chuck WisnerIn the space between stimulus and response lies the true essence of leadership and growth—a space that Chuck Wisner has spent decades mastering. Drawing from his rich background as an architect, mediator, and transformational coach, Chuck has dedicated the last thirty years to helping individuals and organizations unlock their potential by understanding the untapped power of conversations. His journey from the creative but often contentious world of architecture to becoming a trusted advisor for Fortune 200 companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla is a testament to his ability to dissect complex human dynamics and reframe them for personal and professional transformation.Chuck’s methods are rooted in the art and science of conversations, where the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves shape our interactions and outcomes. He believes that by becoming mindful of these narratives, we can shift from reaction to thoughtful response, fostering not only leadership excellence but true human growth. His work, shaped by his time with Peter Senge at MIT’s Center for Organizational Learning and refined through years of consulting with high-profile leaders, speaks to the profound impact of deliberate and conscious communication.Today, Chuck is a sought-after thought leader who helps guide leaders and teams in some of the world’s most innovative companies, offering them the tools to navigate complexity with clarity and confidence. His life and work remind us that in every conversation lies the potential for growth, freedom, and transformation. Let’s dive into the mind of a man who has spent his career teaching others how to harness that potential—one conscious conversation at a time.https://www.chuckwisner.com/Conscious Conversations Book USA | Conscious Interaction for Life ChangingBest Selling Books on Consciousness | Art of Conscious Conversation — Chuck Wisner One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody is having a beautiful day. I hope that the sun is shining. I hope that the birds are singing and the wind is at your back. I have with me today the great Chuck Wisner,

and I want to introduce him. In the space between stimulus and response lies the true essence of leadership and growth, a space that Chuck Wisner has spent decades mastering. Drawing from his rich background as an architect, a mediator, and transformable coach, Chuck has dedicated the last 30 years to helping individuals and organizations unlock their potential by understanding the untapped, power of conversations. His journey from the creative, but often contentious world of architecture

to becoming a trusted advisor for Fortune 200 companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla, is a testament to his ability to dissect complex human dynamics and reframe them for personal and professional transformation. Chuck's methods are rooted in the art and science of conversations, where the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves shape our interactions and outcomes. He believes that by becoming mindful of these narratives, we can shift from reaction to thoughtful response, fostering not only leadership excellence but true human growth. His work shaped by his time with Peter Singh at MIT's Center for Organizational Learning and refined through years of consulting with high-profile leaders speaks to the profound impact of deliberate and conscious communication.

Today, Chuck is sought-after, is a sought-after thought leader who helps guide leaders and teams in some of the world's most innovative companies, offering them the twilight. to navigate complexity with clarity and confidence. His life and work remind us that in every conversation lies the potential for growth, freedom, and transformation. Let's dive into the mind of a man who has spent his career teaching others how to harness that potential. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Thanks for being here today. Thanks for having me. That was a generous introduction. Well, you got a new book out called The Art of Conscious Conversation, and I think that you have spoken to language of experience throughout your life, and I just want to bring that to the audience. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah. And let me just jump right in here.

You know, a lot of the times, most of my audience, I think, is probably read Victor Frankl, and we know that great quote about the space between words and meaning. But Victor Frankl spoke of a space between stimulus and response. How can we consciously expand that space within our conversations to allow for more authentic, transformative communication? Well, that space is complex. There's multiple dimensions there. For one, we are in conversations like fish and water.

We grow up learning how to converse and interact through our family, our parents, and our cultures. And so that means that we pick up these patterns unconsciously, and then we replay them over and over and over again. And depending on our life experience, those patterns might shift and we might learn something else. But that sort of that notion that we're in conversation without full awareness. So there's one, that's one dimension, which I like sometimes to talk as like being on autopilot, which plays out to our reactions because if we're on autopilot in our thinking and we have a regular pattern of reacting, then we don't have that space to go, wait a minute, I don't have to do it that way. I can do it this way.

The second is there's a huge gap between, well, there's often a huge gap between our private conversation, what we have going on, the chatter, the monkeys in the mind going on, and what we say out loud. And that is, my theory is that the bigger that gap, the more stress we live in. because if I'm internally upset and negative and cursing and swearing and judging, but I'm saying nice things on the outside, that's an incredible sort of individual sort of level of stress. So there's work to be done there. And then so the reason that the book is divided into four types of conversations, and the first conversation is storytelling. And that's so, it's so important that.

that's first because it's fundamental that if we don't understand and we don't investigate and we don't work with our own stories, the ones that help us and the ones that hinder us, one that help us are beautiful. I mean, we go to cocktail parties, we tell stories about our work, about our kids, but I mean, stories are a beautiful thing. We love fiction and life is rich. But then there are stories that hinder us and get in our way. And if we don't investigate those and we don't investigate our conversational patterns, we don't know how to change that space and change our reactions. So there's a bit of a learning curve that we have to do our work, which then affects how we interact with other people and our ability to do it better, which reverberates through all

the other conversations. I love that description. Thank you. I think it speaks to the, if we see that gap as being able to be widened, if we're conscious about it, how do you think, I can't help but reflect on like the printing press and the written word versus the spoken word. It seems if we talk about storytellers, like we come from the lineage of storytellers,

from the mythologies or, you know, sitting by a campfire, listening to our elders on some level. And then all of a sudden, boom, the printing press, and we have these ideas like exact repeatability. How do you think,

has that, do you think that maybe that has shortened that gap, We went from storytelling narratives, and we still do on some level, but now we have these concepts like exact repeatability that get in the way of interpretation. It certainly has had an effect, and the printing press and then radio and then TV and then the Internet and now artificial intelligence, right? Right? All those things are all evolutionary things. But there's a fundamental distinction that says Muriel Rickhouser is a poet. And she, lovely, I might have her name, might pronounce her name wrong, but she has a quote that says,

the world isn't made of atoms, it's made of stories. I love it. And I just love that because, and the other person I really love his thinking is Yuval Harari, who wrote the book Sapiens, Homo sapiens. And what it means is that through all these changes and all this evolution of technology, fundamentally we interact, we converse, we believe through stories. And the damning part of that is when we have our story and we have no space in our mind or our heart for other stories. So everything from religion, I mean, money is a story and law is a story.

you know, and religion, mythologies are stories. But when we get attached to our stories and our ego is engaged in our stories, that totally changes the dynamic of who we can be and how we show up in conversations. It's interesting that you bring up poetry on that level, because it seems to me that poetry is a way in which we can merge not only linguistics and words, but feeling. And it also broadens that idea of awareness on some level. Do you think that we're like, how do we get to have more meaningful conversations?

I know that we, in your book, you talk a little bit about surface communications. Everybody's in a hurry to tell like this sort of side monologue or they're, they want to talk just briefly about substance stuff. But how do we get to more meaningful conversations in today's world? Well, I think. So the first practice, and I think of practices because if we, want to change how we are in conversation. There's no magic switch. No. If there are a magic switch, I'd be a rich man. I'd say, hey, you want to have a different conversation? Pay me $5,000. I'll switch the switch and boom, you know, you'd pay me or someone would pay me. Totally. Right.

Right. But there's no magic switch. So awareness is key, is step one. Awareness of our patterns. We all have conversational patterns, interaction patterns, right? We all have triggers, right? So awareness for our triggers, awareness of our patterns, awareness of our strengths and weaknesses, right? I had an event with a neighbor just the other day that here I am. I've written the book. I've been in this business for a long time. I got really triggered because they were doing something what by my standards was unfair,

didn't make any sense, had no logic to it, no feeling to it, and I was triggered. And I told them, I said, I'm really angry. This just doesn't make sense, right? So this notion of being aware of all those things, that's what opens the window when we can start saying, I don't have to react that way. There's a better way to understand. And so when I dissect and take deconstruct conversations by looking at

four types and then four archetypal elements of each type we're taking them apart so that we can hear,

think about and be in conversations in a new way. Right? So one of my teachers, Rafael Atchevedia,

said if I took you to Alaska and we studied, we lived with the Inuits, for three months or something, we would learn their 20 to 30 names for snow. Because each name has a reason that it's named that way, whether it's good for building igloos or whatever, whatever.

They have these distinctions about snow. And if we learned them and understood them, when I came back to New England, I live in Boston, when I came back to New England, I would never see snow the same way. right because now i i i've been given this these thoughts and ideas differently and so i i love that because that's how i was taught to say there's new ways to think about conversations there's new ways to understand conversations so that you can make the change so you can be more effective and you can be more productive or humble or whatever your goal wants to be your desire needs to be I love it.

It's interesting to the metaphors and imagery that we use. If you learn the 10 different words for snow, you'll never see that way again. Can you help us understand that a little bit like the relationship between linguistics and imagery in our mind and how maybe you could unpack that? I know it's a huge topic, but I mean, can you help us dig deeper into that? Yeah, yeah. It, you know, it's an interesting one because there's a couple of dimensions, because at one level, having a new name for something or a new distinction about something, it's not just, it is the name, but it's also understanding the, the, the, the, the, the, the, why is it named that way? Because it's a particular thing, you know, it has a particular function, right? That, what it does is, you know, our, our storytelling brain, we, we definitely have a part of it. of our brand of story telling, has new information that it then puts into the pot of our history and the pot of our patterns, right, and says, oh, wow, I can't look at that innocently anymore.

Or I can't look at that with judgment anymore. Or I can't look at that in such an arrogant way because now I understand there's another side to the story or I understand that they're not doing that to be a jerk. They're doing that because they don't know any better. So there's It's like a little mini awakening. You can see something with new light, right? And that makes a difference. Now, on the other hand, there are teachers like Edgartouli, who, you know, wrote his lovely book, what's his book?

The Power of Now? The Power of Now, thank you. You know, it says, you know, when we label things, we're separating from them. So, you know, there's that, there's that, you know, through that deeper thing. We aren't labeling to separate from. We're labeling to, my idea of distinctions is labeling to better understand.

And, you know, that which really broadens how we can think about something. If we're thinking narrowly, we can now have, you know, think about it in a broader, bigger,

holistic context. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to, it's such a double-edged sword, this power of language that we have that helps us define the world around us, but simultaneously puts blinders on us. You know, there's a great story by Terrence McKinna who talks about language, and he says, now think about a baby who sees a bird for the first time. And he sees this fluttering little fairy monster flying to the room and it's a hummingbird. And he's just,

his mind is a buzz with all these colors and flapping and sounds. And we go, look, Timmy, there's a hummingbird. Like, we've just stripped the imagination from them. You know, so crazy. Yeah, right, right. So, you know, the idea is how do you hold both? Yeah. My wife is an artist and, you know, some of the work that we've done is like learning to hold opposites, you know. We tend to get stuck on one path or one way of seeing, but if we can learn to hold opposites. And that's true with a lot of my clients, you know, they want to sort of do better at their job,

but they want to explore what else is out there and they get torn and say what you can do both you hold them together do both you know we where our mind is big enough to to to to do that but it's like everything else it's a practice you know it takes a little bit of time you know when we're when we're thinking about changing our conversational patterns or we're thinking about holding opposites what we're doing is we're we're messing around the neurons in our brain right well That ain't no small thing, you know, it doesn't happen overnight. And it takes a little bit of time. And so as I was, as I've been doing this work, I developed a theory, which I call the pendulum, that if you think about a vertical line that is real, the vertical line of real time now.

And then something happens in the moment that you get triggered or something happens that sets you, right? And you have your triggered reaction, your emotional reaction. you do something stupid in a meeting, you call someone a name, you get angry at your neighbor, whatever, you have this reaction, right, that doesn't serve very well. And, well, if you then say, well, okay, two hours later, you go, why did I frigging say that? No. Why did I do that, right?

That, that is a moment, that is a small awakening. You go, whoa, I didn't have to do it that way. I could do it a different way. And then you investigate what your trigger was, what your concerns were, what you wanted to have happen, what your standards are. There's these four elements that I talk about in the book. Yeah. that same person or a similar meeting or a similar event happens, instead of two hours later, but the work you've done, the practice you've done, you pull it to two minutes. So you're still in

the meeting and you go, oh, that was the stupidest thing to say. You have time in the meeting to go, you know, I'm really sorry about what I just did because here's what I was really concerned about. And I sort of didn't speak well, but now I want to explain my thinking and why I felt the way I felt. That's an incredible shift if you can do that real time. And it takes practice, you know, to move that pendulum from two hours to one hour to two minutes to real time. I love that. Without giving away the secret sauce, can you like, is that like, it sounds to me like you're leaving breadcrumbs on the trail for yourself to stop. hey, this is a desire issue, this is a power issue, or this is a shadow issue?

Is there some sort of exercise that you allow people to walk through to help themselves recognize that faster so they can do it in real time? Yeah, sure. And so I sort of think of there's the four conversations in the book, doorytelling, collaborative, creative, and commitment. But then in each conversation, there are these four elements. and the four elements are so simple, and that's what I love about them, because they're universal, they're archetypal.

Nice. And you can, so I think of them as a little template, a little cheat sheet, you know. Hell, you can put it on a, you can put it on a sticky note, you know, and, you know, you're in a Zoom going, you're put it on your sticky note, you know. And because every judgment we have, every perspective we have, unconsciously, or consciously, it both happen, we have these four elements. If we have a judgment, we're judging because something, we have a desire and something's not happening that aligns with that desire. Or we have a fear that we can't meet our goal,

or we have a fear that we can't get what we want. Desires are a beautiful thing because they inspire us and they give us ambition, but they're also a huge trap because for many people, our, desires don't align with reality. I have an example, I don't know if it's in the book or not, I can't remember about a young man I was working with who really wanted his next promotion

to be the director of a pretty large energy company. And he was convinced that the job was his. He wanted it really badly. He was really ambitious. And he was convinced that it was his. He did his, you know, he's been working hard. That was his desire. He didn't get the job.

And he got to work with me because he was, he was triggered and his boss said, you better talk to Chuck. Anyway, what would Chuck say? But he, he, we did some work and he realized that his desire was not aligned with reality in that the people he worked with his colleagues and his bosses, really didn't see him how he saw himself. And he never got, so the two-edged sword, he never got that feedback, right?

But he was also locked into his own story about I'm the best, right? Which guess what? If he thought he was the best, he was showing up as arrogant. They didn't see him as humble. He was showing up as arrogant. They didn't see him as collaborative, right?

So once he did that work, what he was doing was investigating, okay, what did I want? wanted this job, did it align with reality? I don't know. You know, where are the power issues at play? Well, you have bosses. What do they really think of you, you know? And what are your standards for this job? And what are their standards? So people had different standards about what it meant to be a director and his standards. I've done my hard work. I'm a good guy. I'm going to, I can do it. I can do the job. But if their standard is to be more collaborative and their standard is to be more

humble, you know, creative but humble and work with other people. That's not how he saw him. So he suffered, right? Yeah. But we just walk through those so he could sort of take, you know, it's not that he didn't know it, he was just blind to it. So we take the blinders off and he can see, oh, wow, I've been acting like a, I've been acting like I deserve this job, like I was the prince or something or I was

an arrogant one. And no wonder I didn't get the job. changed dramatically and within six months he had a new job. Promotion. Had a new company? No, same one. Same one. Okay.

Yeah. He did the work. Yeah. So I tell that story to illustrate these simple things that allow us to investigate our own thinking and our own patterns and our own reactions, right? It tempers our ego. We can become more emotionally intelligent. We have, when we do that, then we have choices because we're seeing things differently.

We have new ideas and new ways of thinking about things. And then we can say, oh, you know what, I can try on some new things. I can try to be more collaborative. And what does that, then that's work. What does that mean to be more collaborative? You know, so those four things are beautiful self-investigations. But guess what? They're also incredibly handy to, in collaborative conversations,

conversations where you're mutual what I call mutual learning conversations there's multiple perspectives and we're trying to understand different perspectives if if I come into a conversation with a fist that's my ego that's my righteousness that's my arrogance saying this is the answer this is how it should be this is what we should be doing guess what other people come with their fist and you know we're just we're battling and we've all been in meetings like that where people are just saying, well, that's stupid. We should do it this way. Yeah, we did that two years ago. That's what it. Anyway, we're like this. The questions,

when you do your own work, you come in with an open hand and say, I have a position, and I'm not asking anyone to give up their position or their opinion, but I'm asking me to open their hands. Here is why I'm thinking, here is how I'm thinking and why I'm thinking the way I am. I have concerns, I have desires, I have standards. And when we enter with an open hand, And that takes a little, it takes some vulnerability, right? Yeah. We're opening our, we're literally opening ourselves up. And it's inviting to other people.

But the four questions become a really great shortcut for asking questions of other people who are coming to you with a fist. So you come to me with a fist like, no, it should be this way. And I go, well, tell me, what do you want to have happened? What's not happening that you want to have happen? What are you concerned about for tomorrow? And by the way, what standards are you using to judge whether this would be successful or not or whether this is a good idea?

And just those questions, you're sort of prying their fingers open. Totally, I'm peeling it. Yeah, right. And then good people will come along and they'll go, wow, I never thought of it that way. Or I might say, see, what you just told me? I never thought of it that way. Now we're in a different conversation.

Now we're in a totally different, we're learning from each other, we're open. So that's the practice of a good collaborative conversation. How we advocate, how we inquire, how we ask questions, how we tell our story, how we present our position, close fist, open hand, open heart. Yeah, I love it. It sounds a lot like I once heard a quote that said the difference between a manager and a leader is a manager does things right and a leader does the right thing. Obviously, there's reasons why you have to do things right versus doing the right thing. But asking questions is a powerful way in which you can open up a real dialogue.

Is that something that's always possible, though, in today's world where we're, have these sort of expectations on us if we are a manager or if we're an employee or even if we're a boss on some level we got to meet the boards the boards you know quotas and stuff is is it is that possible to yeah i think it is i think we're all of the four conversations we love our stories and we love commitment conversation the commitment conversation is the conversation about action who's going to do what by when and why and how and where um that's the That's the action. We love action conversations. Okay. You know, we go to a meeting, a bunch of people tell their perspective, and either the boss or someone else says, okay, what are we going to do? Right? I call that the

conversational bypass because what's going on is there's a bunch of stories, a bunch of egos, a bunch of arrogance, a bunch of judgments going on, flying around. And then, okay, but we have to make a decision. What are we going to do? And the bypass means that we're missing out the middle two conversations. which are the juiciest. The ability to collaborate, mutual learning, hear other perspectives, learn from each other, and then the creative, like, oh, gosh, just what we talked about, there's three more possibilities we haven't considered. Now there's new ideas that they bubble up just because there's space in the conversation, right? Yeah. I don't, and I get this pushback all the time. I've worked in the auto industry. We don't have time for this shit. Totally.

My answer is you don't have not, you don't not have time. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally does. Because for every bypass you do, you probably have some percentage of your decisions aren't well vetted, aren't the right decision. And so I'm not talking about a two-day off-site. I'm not talking about a one-week seance, you know, or I'm talking about taking a half hour to go, okay, let's just hear the different perspectives around the table, you know. And then after that, let's say, well, what are all the possible solutions without shutting down

things and without judging? What are the ideas that we now could think about that we couldn't think about a half an hour ago? It's still going to be the bosses or whatever the structure is for decision making to make a decision, but they will make a wiser decision for having done that. It speaks to the idea of getting on the same page. Like, we've all been in rooms with a tense conversation probably or a critical conversation and everyone's heartbeat is going or maybe your hands are sweating or something like that. But there is something that happens if you're in that room long enough and you're willing to be open.

Maybe you've seen some brain chemistry feedback on that. But don't we all kind of start radiating at a similar level when we start having a real conversation? Oh, yeah. There's great research. I mean, not, I mean, heart rates. You know, people start, you know, opening up. You know, dialogue is, I don't know if you know the work that's done around dialogue,

get people that disagree and sit in a circle. And it's a lovely process. It was boom, the physicist boom, who I think created this. And the idea is you get people that are chewing on a really tough subject. And you put them in a circle. And the rule is that you want to hear from it. everybody, everybody gets to decide when they want to speak up. One person speaks at a time.

And nobody, like if you're speaking and you're saying, I think that we should take Route A to get to our goal, or I think we should spend this much money or blah, blah, blah, whatever we're doing, or family dynamics, everyone else has to suspend their beliefs and suspend their judgment. So the next person gets to say, that was really a stupid idea. that's a rule breaker, right?

Yes. You just have to say, well, here's what I say. Here's my standard. Here's what my worries are. Here's what my concerns are. And over time, the room starts getting into sync, the mind and the heart start getting into sync. And this has worked with union folks and corporate executives

and worked in a lot of different dimensions. So that's a lovely piece. And then the other piece is just the notion of getting one aligned around even what they're doing, not what they're deciding. Everything goes into sync. There's an exercise I've done. I haven't done this for a while, but it's popping up via our conversation. Nice. The exercise is I'm probably sitting with like 10 or 12 people.

and the idea is we just I say okay we have to count or 12 people we have to help to one to 12 but only one person at a time and it has to be consecutive I might have it wrong but something like that and just it fails it just you know it fails people can't do it and then so what we do is we just do a really quiet little one-minute exercise where we all say the same word. I think it originated with Om, like the meditation. Yeah, yeah. You know, if people are freaked out by that, you can just use the word one,

or you can use whatever word you want. It doesn't matter. But everyone just gets in rhythm saying that, and you do one, one, one. And I said a rhythm and a pattern and a tone. And after doing that a few times, They just buzz right through the exercise. I mean, because their, their mind and their hearts are aligned. So it works.

Yeah. I can already feel, like, as you change the tone of your conversation to talk about that particular example, I can feel a difference in it. I can feel a difference in the conversation when we begin steering away from maybe the problem for a minute and becoming aligned with, it may sound crazy to people, but there's a spiritual. notion to a conversation. If you have, it seems to me at least, and I would love to hear your opinion, if we understand that the point of an argument is to solve a problem rather than to win, like I think that that's almost a spiritual component to it. Like, we're coming into it with an intention of something open and honest. What's your take on that? Right. Yeah, the, when I was, I was teaching with Fred Kaufman and Peter Senge through MIT years ago, the, the, the,

One of the most interesting distinctions that shocked leaders, it's so simple, but it's so powerful, was the distinction between we're all trained to be knowers. We are trained to have the answer. And literally, you think about it, even in elementary school, you know, you raise your hand because you have the answer and you get the golden star. You don't raise your hand and says, I don't, well, wait a minute, I have a question. I don't really understand. Sit down, Tommy.

Exactly. Not a room. Next. Anyway, that notion of being trained. And then, you know, as we go to college, we get smart. We become experts and we get hired to be an expert. So we're hired to be the knowers. There's nothing wrong with knowledge.

There's nothing wrong with expertise. But when our psyche is hooked on having the answer or being the smartest one in the room, Yeah. We can't listen. We can't ask questions. We get defensive. So the opposite side of the equation is how do you shift from being a knower to being a learner? And it goes back to your earlier point about the power of asking questions.

How do you be a learner by saying, I have a position, open hand, you have a position, you have a position, Let me understand your position, right? And that's why listening often fails because we aren't doing that open-handed work. And so that shift from nowhere to learner is a dramatic sort of psychic shift for many, many people, especially executives who've been trained to be the smartest ones in a room. And, you know, no judgment there. is that it's how it unfolds and how they get rewarded. But this notion of that openness, that openness to say,

I have a different position, but I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to understand. Now, that takes us, you sort of mentioned, can we have these conversations? Yeah. You know, fundamentally, society, cultures, we exist because we have a foundation called facts because things we can agree on that are indisputable I've gotten a little messy over the last eight years to say the least but you

know it's a oftentimes in tough conversations I'll say well let's ground ourselves in some facts are there three facts there are five facts that we can agree on that can be a foundation for us to have another conversation because our conversations and our perspectives are made of emotions facts and opinions stories are made of opinions and facts and then we have our emotions that follow suit so this notion of of being able to use facts as a grounding is really critical. And I have clients and I have people who I had to disengage from in conversation because I can't, not that I can't find facts, but they won't, they won't accept them.

Right. So it's really powerful. There was some work done in Sweden years ago. It might still be going on. I think it's called the next step. And it was an effort by some scientists to say they were really having a hard time thinking about the environment and responsible corporations, responsible production of equipment, whether it's refrigerators or cars, where everything. Early on, environmental stuff before climate change was really a heavy subject. And they did these interviews with all these folks, and they found that it was just,

the perspectives were all over the map. And the work of the next step was to work with those folks, say, okay, can we find three things that we agree on? And they were really fundamental things, like don't produce more that you can take out of the earth or don't produce things that you can't recycle. They were fundamental things. And those three or four things that they came up with

were incredibly, had incredible impact on their industries. In fact, I think there are videos done, and the king sent this video out to every citizen because this power of saying, here are the things we can agree on, and now when we have to make decisions about production or environmental decisions,

we have some grounding. We have some places to settle our, start from to make wiser decisions. Yeah, it's, it is such a fascinating time to be alive. If we think of our language as a living language and we're constantly defining what,

you know, different words mean different things to different generations now. It used to be in different eras, but like even in different generations now, you see this changing definitions. And how can we get on the same page when different generations have different definitions of what one word is. How do you have any kind of shared goals or shared sacrifice there?

Yeah. Effort. So well said. True. True. Effort. You know, there's no magic pill for that either. It's like, you know, listen, listen to their concerns, listen to their standards. Personally, of the four things that are the archetypal elements of our judgments and our conversation, standards are one of the least conscious and least appreciated and least used of the four. You think about it, every position we have, perspective we have, every hard, hardcore position we take, or every judgment we have underneath, pretty much in the background of our brain, back, you know, or inside of our storytelling brain, the story that we're telling is based on standards that we,

didn't even consciously adopt. Excuse me. We picked them up from our families, our cultures, our education, our, you know, our work, or, and so we have standards that drive everything, which are more, our morals and our values and our, you know, all those things. But yet rarely do they come forth and rarely can we talk about them openly or even consciously? And sometimes in arguments, you know, it's just little things. Hell, my wife and I would fight for years over, you know, whether we did the dishes before we went to bed, you know. She likes to go bed like, she goes to bed like a maid. She does the dishes and loves the kitchen super clean when she wakes up in the morning.

And I'm happy to go to bed like a king and to hell with the dishes. and I'll wake up as a servant, you know. Yeah. But until we just, all we did was instead of fighting, all we did is realize, wait a minute, we just have different standards. Nobody's right. And instead of fighting over that,

we get the laugh, okay, who wins tonight, you know? Or, okay, I'll help because I'll let you be the little queen tonight or the maid tonight. And so, but it's that standard that's underneath that we often have battles over. And so that's a lot. light example, but if you think about something more serious, what are my standards or my morals or my whatever about what a leader should look like or what kind of decisions a leader should be

or how a leader should behave? We all have these, but they're buried. So I like to say we can, another way of opening our hand, we can share. This is how what I think is right and fair and good or whatever. Back to my neighbor's story, the reason I got triggered was my standard was about what it means to be a good neighbor. You know, if you can help your neighbor out and it's no skin off your back,

why would you not do that? For me, that was unfathomable. They have a different standard, you know? So, okay. But, you know, those, they go a long way to get us off track in conversations. Does that make sense? Oh, it makes total sense.

I, you know, for me, that same sort of story that happens between your actions and your words is, has been a problematic. And maybe it's becoming a little bit older in my life, coming up on 50, you know, I remember for a long time, I would always tell my daughter, like, listen, I love you. And you can become whatever you want to, if you believe in yourself and you follow your heart. And I, you know, I took a look at my life at the age of 48 and I realized I was working a job that maybe I wasn't following my heart. So I can tell my daughter, I'm blue in the face, do this. But that's not what I'm showing her. And like, as I found that in myself, I saw that pattern in myself. And I'm fortunate.

I have a wife that loves me and I found the courage to change and leave something that was really well financially and do some of this not as financially. But there was there was this space between stimulus and response where, look, I'm lying to my daughter by telling her these things and then not doing them. I can't do that. I get goosebumps when I think about this story. But when you see the pattern of yourself, you can start seeing it in other people, right? And maybe that's how we have real change. That's right.

Yeah. And for you, that was really like that was a little light awakenings. You know, you get a little aha moment, right? You go, whoa, wait a minute. Or eventually. Yeah. And I think. listening.

You know, the third conversation is about creativity, and that is about our ability to co-create with other people. But it's also learning that we are well trained to be in the left side of our brain and be rational and have literal decisions and blah, blah. And actually, as science says, the rights of our brain is actually the boss. and because it's the intuitive, it connects the dots, it feeds bigger things, it's conceptual.

But we're sort of, that's sort of trained out of us. It's there, but we have to re-engage with it. We have to re-discover it so we can listen to our intuition. So what you did was a little bit of like, wait a minute, there's this little voice says, I'm not 100% here. I'm not 100% happy with what I'm doing. And there's something calling, you know. Yeah.

And can we follow that? You know, I'm on my fourth career. I was a musician. I went to architecture, and then I changed to this world on I'm in. And then I just wrote a book. And but each one of those wasn't a rejection of what was before. It was a matter of being attracted to something and acknowledging that and being willing to leap, you know, to leap of faith. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's part of this reacquaining ourselves with our intuition and our creative right hand, right side of our brain. Yeah. I love that, the leap of faith. You know, it's sort of, I had a friend of mine who speaks about, he's the creative director at Christopher Newport University, and he talks about the leap of faith. He's a scholar in medieval mystics, and he talks about, you know, like hard work, everything. This thing can only get you so far, but in life, you have to hear the, you have to hear the, calling. You have to hear that voice say to you, this is the thing. And it, it won't make any sense,

but that's the leap of faith you have to take if you want to really become the best version of yourself. There's no sense for it. There's no real evidence for it. There's just that leap of faith. Maybe you could talk about the story that you tell yourself when you find yourself in these four different transitions. It's like a death and a rebirth almost. Yeah. So, so my latest, You know, the leadership consulting and the trusted, I'm concerned myself a trusted advisor and coach. But at some point through that work, I had clients that sort of loved what we were teaching,

but kept saying, well, we're going to read this, or how can I give this to my family or whatever, my wife? Well, A, practice with them, be, you know, practice with them, right? But I, seed was planted in my mind that all the things I learned about the ontology of language and linguistics and the work of Peter Senge's book, the fifth discipline of advocacy inquiry, all those things were out there, but they were all not together combined or not consolidated.

it and I and I thought you know what I want to write a book that's accessible but sort of connects all these dots there it's the spiritual it's the conversational it's the power of words it's the tools it's the practices it's the meditation it's all these things combined right that give us awareness and emotional intelligence and then ways to be well so I had that idea and then guess what I had a big story in my mind that I wasn't a writer. I mean, I wrote plenty when I was in architecture school and had to write papers. And now I was studying the ontology of language

I wrote, but I still had a story that I wasn't a writer. But this notion of the book just would not let go away. So I finally said, oh, fuck it. I'm just going to, you know, I got to do it. And I did burn through a couple editors

that I hired to help me write it and that never worked. And then I had to finally say, you know what? I can do this myself. And I went back and I started all over again and I wrote it myself without a ghostwriter, without an editor until, of course, an editor later on for copywriting. But that's an example of listening to that call. Yep. You know, it was scary because I didn't have faith in myself.

And I had to just, there's a story I had to bust. I had to bust that story, right? Yeah. Yeah. So each one of my transitions was a calling. It was like I was in music, but I was working in an architecture firm, and I loved what I saw, and I was like, fascinated. And I ended up going to architecture school.

It was never on my radar screen, right? So sometimes the things that are on our radar screen and they pop up, we got to listen. Yeah. All of them sound like aspects of language. To me, music is a language. Architecture is a language. And when we talk about the environment, sometimes I feel like the environment we live in,

the actual, our relationship to the world around us is a language. And if you listen, whether you meditate or maybe some of people, maybe you take psychedelics or you have a relationship with psilocybin, or maybe you're just in tune with nature. You have a favorite song or whatever it takes for you to be more aware. I believe that the world is constantly trying to talk to you and nudge you and push you in the direction of becoming your best self. And you said it right there so beautifully. Like you just said that I could do it myself.

I think that that is the lesson the world is trying to teach us. You can do it yourself. Do you have the courage to take the leap? If you're in the sound of my voice, guess what you do? You can do it yourself, right? Isn't that a language? Don't you think? Yeah.

Well, it's it's creating a new story. And it's, you know, and it's creating a new story that doesn't say, oh, it's going to be a piece of cake. I got this figured out. It's creating a new story like, I can do this. And I'm willing to do the hard work. Yeah. I'm willing to, you know, do 110 drafts that look like crap, you know. But because the book wants to be written.

Yes. Right. That actual desire is there. And you follow that. And then you have all the hard work. It took me four years. to transition from architecture to the world of language and leadership. To just retool myself, you know, until I took the leap of faith, you know.

Yeah. Two young kids, no income. Totally. Yeah. Six years of architecture school. Yeah. Was it necessary? When you look back at it and you see the progress and see whether it's music

or architecture, do you look back at those as sort of like classrooms? Like was that necessary to be where you are now? Yeah, you know, it feels to me like none of those were conscious, rational decisions on my part. They were like life unfolding, you know. Had I not been involved in music so well, I mean, so I was really quite, I was from an early age, music was my life. Had I not had that experience where I really wasn't making a lot of money, I had to get a job to support myself, right?

And so that happened to be that I was a low totem pole person in an architecture firm, pulling brewprints and doing errands, right? Had that not happened, I wouldn't have been introduced to the incredible sort of, artistic and design parts of architecture that again they opened my eyes so that like all of a sudden there was like oh there's a whole world i didn't see before yeah you know and then that led me go well you know what i'm this little poor boy from pennsylvania but i i can go i can move to boston and go to architecture school everyone thought i was nuts i mean literally my friends and not all my family But so I had to overcome that.

Oh, that's ridiculous. You know, architecture. I had to overcome that and take the leap of faith. But it was that incredible attraction, right? That I couldn't turn down. I love it. I love the way you said back. My wife and I were just recently talking about life

and the direction you're going. And sometimes we talk about motivation. But motivation, sounds like a push to me, but you described it as an attraction, like something is pulling you towards it. Can you, maybe you can talk about that for a moment. Yeah. So I think one, I think motivation probably follows, you know, it's like, but the attraction is, so when I move from architecture to studying language and then getting into consulting and leadership stuff, the reason that happened was that one of one of my partners who was an alcoholic when we grew from a small firm

to a medium-sized firm his behavior became a problem and we were four guys sitting around doing stuff that wasn't a problem but it became a problem for our clients for our staff we didn't know what to do and so we hired in a couple consultants to help us what do we do about this And we burned through a couple of useless consultants. And then a woman whose name is Linda Reed came in. And she, the way that she engaged with us, she met with us individually, she met with us a group. She helped us untangle this web of our stories,

because we were all locked in these negative stories and anger and blah, blah, blah, all the things that come with those kind of conflicts. She helped us untangle that and see, did work with, each of us individually, work with us as a group, and put it out the other end. I was like, I was like flabbergasted. Like, how the hell would she do that, right? And I've always had a spiritual and psychological

and philosophical interest, I mean, as far as what I read and my thinking. And what she did felt so like that. It was like she just, she just pulled together some psychology and philosophy. But it was all things. all through our conversations. And I just was so attracted to it.

I couldn't let it go. We became friends. I learned from her a little bit. We did a little bit of work together around mediation in the building industry, because I knew the building industry, and she knew the mediation stuff. And that put me on a journey. I couldn't let go of this incredible sort of like,

wow, this is magical stuff. And I wanted to learn the magic, you know. And so I did work with her. I did mediation training. I did the ontology of language. I did a body mind therapy program where I understood body mind therapy. Yeah. And then four years later, I gave my partnership back and I jumped ship.

But it was that incredible sort of attraction. Yeah. It's so mesmerizing to me. Chuck, I told you before the show like an hour was going to feel like five minutes. It feels like four. Like I have, I literally have 25 questions here, and I think I ask one of them. So, but that's, that is the mark of a great conversation is that I, I just, I'm so enthralled by it. And for those in the sound of my voice, Chuck's new book right now coming out that he has is the, it's already out.

Now you can get in the stories. There'll be a link down below the art of conscious conversation. I would recommend everybody within the sound of my voice, go down and check it out. Reach out to Chuck yourself if you want to. He was an amazing individual in the book. It's got so many cool mnemonic devices and tools and guidepost to help you understand things. But before I let you go, Chuck, where can people find you? What are you coming up and what are you excited about?

Okay, so people can get an introduction, a PDF introduction to the book on my website. There's just a link to give your email and then you can get a PDF of the introduction. And on my website also, they can write me a note. you know, if anyone's interested in starting a conversation or interested in work, they can get me there with my email. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. I'm on threads Chuck underscore Wisner. And currently, you know, I'm doing more individual work with people than I am corporate work that shifted with COVID. because virtual reality now I can work with people from all over the world. And I'm also, because of the book, I'm doing a lot of podcasts, which is anybody else out there that wants to have me as a guest. I'm doing it just because I want to get the word out there about the book.

And that's important to me. And then also I'm doing speaking engagements so I can sort of condense the material and then give people a hit on how they could. change a culture or how they could change their corporate sort of work through conversations. Yeah, well, I would recommend, like I said, people go down, check out the book, reach out to you yourself, and it's mind-blowing to me. You'll have to come back and maybe we can have a panel of people because, like I said, we just kind of scratched the surface and there's so much more about culture and spirituality and linguistics and the evolving nature of meaningful conversations that I would love to

talk to you about. So let's plan for a part two coming up here in the future. I'd love it. There's plenty more to talk about it. Okay. Well, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody else who was listening and hanging out with us today, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a beautiful day. And that's all we got, ladies and gentlemen, aloha.