Get all the inside secrets and tools you need to help you develop your intuitive and leadership skills so you are on the path to the highest level of success with ease.  Listen in as Christine shares her journey with succeeding to great heights and navigating with neurodivergence.

In this episode you will learn:

• Mastering Authentic Communication
• Navigating Neurodivergence and Boundaries 
• Bridging Cultures Through Connection

Who is Christine Mullaney?

Christine is an award-winning podcast host, TEDx speaker, accomplished writer, and extraordinary neurocultural communication and public speaking trainer. With over 30 years of international experience, she uniquely blends her rich academic knowledge, theatrical expertise, and neuroscience-backed methods to transform how professionals communicate and present themselves.

“There’s no sugar-coating with Christine.” Her passion is evident as she guides individuals in developing natural poise, impactful presence, and emotional resonance, enabling authentic connections with any audience. Christine's clients, including high-performers in big tech and entrepreneurial leaders, frequently highlight her ability to help them “use passion in tandem with technique.” Her bespoke training programs empower individuals and teams, fostering significant shifts in confidence, clarity, and storytelling prowess.

Christine's mission goes beyond individual growth; she actively works towards making the world a more inclusively communicative place. Her clients speak on her behalf:

“…a genuinely caring coach who listens deeply and adapts to your needs, both personally and professionally, Christine has a real gift for helping people see things from new angles and explain things in a way that sticks.” If you want to feel understood, challenged and encouraged, tap into your courage and call Christine.

https://apple.co/40fCCky

https://bit.ly/4llVolr

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinemullaney/

https://www.instagram.com/connected_communication/

https://www.facebook.com/ConnectedCommunicationClub

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Are you ready to tiptoe into your intuition and tap into your soul’s message? Let’s talk 

Listen in as Jennifer Takagi, founder of Takagi Consulting, Certified High Performance Coach, 5X time Amazon.Com Best Selling-Author, Certified Soul Care Coach, Certified Jack Canfield Success Principle Trainer, Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst and Facilitator of the DISC Behavioral Profiles, Certified Change Style Indicator Facilitator, Law of Attraction Practitioner, and Certified Coaching Specialist - leadership entrepreneur, speaker and trainer, shares the lessons she’s learned along the way.  Each episode is designed to give you the tools, ideas, and inspiration to lead with integrity. Humor is a big part of Jennifer’s life, so expect a few puns and possibly some sarcasm.  Tune in for a motivational guest, a story or tips to take you even closer to that success you’ve been coveting.  Please share the episodes that inspired you the most and be sure to leave a comment.  

Official Website: http://www.jennifertakagi.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifertakagi/

Facebook: facebook.com/takagiconsulting

I look forward to connecting with you soon,

Jennifer Takagi

Speaker, Trainer, Author, Energy Healer

PS: We would love to hear from you! For questions, coaching, or to book interviews, please email my team at Jennifer@takagiconsulting.com

Foreign Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and today I have a very special guest,

Christine and I met in Malaga, Spain at a breakfast women's

meeting. And the fun thing about that was everybody had a couple

of minutes to introduce themselves. And although I am an

international speaker, it was super fun to be an international

speaker in Spain, because I went to college in Spain for four

months. I went to a semester in Sevilla, and so it was super fun

to be back and go, Oh man, I spoke on zoom in Spain, and then

at this breakfast meeting, but Christine was the actual keynote

speaker that morning at the breakfast so today we have

Christine Milani. Did I say that? Right? Melanie Milani,

no. Milani. Milan, it's, it's rather than,

but you were closer than me. Europeans are.

She is an award winning podcast host, TEDx,

speaker, accomplished writer and extraordinary neuro cultural

communication and public speaking trainer. With over 30

years of international experience, she uniquely blends

her rich academic knowledge theatrical experience, and she's

very theatrical and neuroscience backed methods to transform how

professionals communicate and present themselves and in this

world, in this culture right now, we need that more than

ever, and it's just taken us, like 10 months to get together

with our time zone changes and do a podcast interview.

Christine, thank you for being here today.

Thank you for having me. It's really

exciting to be here. I'm I'm delighted we finally made it

happen.

I know, right, like all the things that have to

align to make something like this happen. So we met in Spain,

and you'll hear in a second, as Christine talks more that she's

from Ireland, and now, once we finally got this going, she's

actually back in Ireland. So how did you get involved in speaking

and the whole neuroscience of it? Because neuroscience is such

a buzzword these days, because it's important, right? It's how

everything works. So tell us a little bit about you and how you

got into this.

Well, I'm going to throw the neuro

divergent word in there as well, because since we met, I have

accepted that I have an ADHD brain, and, most recently, also

an autistic brain, so I've got the beautiful new uncertified a,

U D, H, D category as well to add on to the neuroscience. But

it's a wonderful thing. So your question was, how did I How did

I get into speaking?

Speaking and like, training professionals,

because I just saw something in the last week about how in the

United States of America, we have to be, like, very clear.

You can't just say in America, because America goes a long way

south of the US, and also north and but, being hateful and rude

is becoming the norm and and that's unacceptable in my in my

world, but that's what I'm living in. And I think more

professionals need more training on how to be an acceptable

professional speaker. So it's very interesting to me, and I

love that like you've made it your passion. So yeah, how do

you help professionals get better and not be the hateful

people that they can be? Think it

starts with loving themselves a little bit

more. That's the first step I I am actually in the process of

developing what's what I call the Irish storytelling wheel. So

what I will be doing more of in the future is helping

professionals know their stories, and when we start to

know and realize our own stories, we begin to see other

people's stories a little differently, and we have more

compassion for them. So the start is self love, self

compassion, to then be able to have love and compassion for

others. And I do that. I do it by being very honest. If I'm

very honest, I'm quite direct. I mean, I work on a permission

basis. So part of brain based conversation training, or brain

based communication training, which I did some of my training

with, actually an entity out of the states, the neuro Leadership

Institute in New York, and it's all about permission and looking

for possibility. So where people often, and I think leaders often

do this, and often people will do it. But I can't generalize to

everybody. Is they look for the problem before looking for the

possibility. So when we coach from a brain based conversations

perspective from a learner LED or a learner centered. Or heart

centered perspective, we look for the zone of possibility.

What is it within you that you have, that I can find, that we

can pull and help you develop in yourself without me telling you

what it should be? So does that answer a little bit

yes, and it's very interesting the way you

said that, because I am a certified High Performance Coach

through the High Performance Coaching Institute, Brenda

Burchard, I think the founder of it. And one of the things is, as

a coach, you don't ever tell people what to do. You help

guide them to come up with the answer themselves. And so I love

that you, like reiterated what I already know. If you tell

somebody to do something, they may or may not do it, and then

I'll speak only for myself, and then I'm frustrated, because

when everything falls apart, I'm like, Well, I told you what to

do, like I told you what to do, and

they're looking at you going, Yeah, that

might have been the problem, yeah, because

I didn't find it within myself, right? You

tell me, or you told me in a way that works

for you, yes, and again, not generalizing as people, we can

be very good at this. One finger forward, three fingers back.

I'll never forget my dad teaching me that those three

fingers pointing towards ourselves helping other people

see their shoulds by giving them hours and and telling them in a

way that is our way to understand and that goes back to

your question, how do I help leaders? How do I help anyone

that I work with to to be a kinder, more compassionate,

connected communicator. It is to understand that the way that I

perceive the world and the way that I perceive my current

reality is different to the way that others perceive theirs, and

respecting that difference in perception and understanding

that just because my way has worked for me, it doesn't

necessarily mean that it's going to work for anybody else. So my

goal is to help people realize that and then be able to ask

those questions in a way that allows a person to develop for

themselves, to find their own shoulds, well actually, to

abolish the word should altogether and do something a

little differently, right?

Like find their own path, right? Like, I have a

friend, and she calls them non negotiables. Here are my non

negotiables, and it's kind of like it falls into that should

category, right? Like, these are my non negotiables. This is what

I'm going to do versus this is what I should do or whatever.

Yeah, actually, I like that non

negotiables. I've been thinking a lot about boundaries recently,

and boundaries and control. And, I mean, I've experienced

narcissistic abuse, you know, and, and, in fact, even probably

narcissistically abused myself in some ways over my lifetime.

And so yeah, I've been thinking about permission and consent and

boundaries and control. But I like that non negotiables

instead of boundaries. These are my non negotiables. So it's not

a boundary, it's, it's just, it's not even, it's not even up

for negotiation. I love that.

Yeah, her name's Mary Goodman. She's an

absolute delight. And when she left corporate, it was like,

these are my non negotiables, and I will not break them. And

like, she does meditation every morning, she does yoga every

morning, and she's a third thing. I can't remember what the

third one is, but it was like, and then she coaches people

like, what are your non negotiables, like, what do you

have to do to create the life of your dream? So I love that, and

it's easy way to put it right, because, like, I know what I

should do. Am I gonna maybe? Maybe not. I might do it today,

but I might not do it tomorrow.

But I think that can come come in as well in

neuro divergence too, you know. So for for her, the non

negotiables are things that she doesn't change, and that works

for her. But for someone like me, it's nice to think about

having routine. And there are certain things when I look back,

say or look across, whatever way you want to look at reality, I'm

exploring the the way that reality works at the moment in a

very unusual way. But if I look across at another reality that

was my past, but that could be in my present, as mad as that

might sound, there was a year in my life, 2014 where I would say

I was at what has been my optimal in my life so far, and

then the non negotiables. Then were exercise. They were

finishing by half 10 at night. And I used to live in the city

center of Dublin, and it was about a 10 or 15 minute walk

from O'Connell bridge. So I would go to O'Connell bridge. I

smoked. A weed at the time, and I would go down, and I would sit

from half 10 until midnight on O'Connell bridge have have a

little smoke. Not not, I'm not talking about destroying my mind

or anything like that, but it was my way end of day, relax my

non negotiable, bring my book, read my book, and and in

between, whatever else happened happened. And so for me, it

wasn't that. It was rigidity. There were non negotiables

within the day. One of them was exercise, whether that be in the

gym or running, one of them was sitting down, relaxing with

myself and my book. And they could happen at any point in the

day. That worked for me with my schedule around it, and it's the

same now. So I hear a lot of people talking about, you know,

you need to have habits. You need to get up and you need to

be rigid about starting this at this time and finishing this at

this time. Dude, come meet my neurodivergent brain. My ADHD is

not going to have. It's not it's not going to have that all the

time. The Autistic so I call them parents, right? This is how

I'm looking at it. The Autistic parent is strict, the ADHD

parent is is fun and a little bit flexible. Out there,

flexible, bubbly, beautiful word. So I have, I'm learning to

try to balance the two. I'm not I'm learning to balance the two

and how the two will get on together, but to try to say to

that ADHD brain, for anybody who is neurodivergent out there,

whether self self certified, I don't call it diagnosis. I don't

believe it's a diagnosis self certified or not, that if

someone is saying to you, this is the way you must be. And you

know that, okay, I'm actually I'm going to bring it back to

the eye, because I don't like saying you, if someone is saying

to me, I must be this way, which recently has been happening.

Loads of things have been happening in there. The feeling

is that this is how neurodivergence is. This is how

the ADHD brain is. This is how the autistic brain works. This

is what you need to remember about how you felt in your life.

Hang on a second. Actually, no, I remember my life, and I

remember being okay with how I was in my life at that time.

Yeah, there were struggles. I remember those struggles. I

remember the decisions that I made that I didn't really want

to make, that maybe didn't serve me fantastically, but did teach

me things, and I'm okay with them. And for anybody who's out

there experiencing this, that it's okay to say, Yeah, you know

what? I'm delighted. That works for you. But if I try to do that

to my brain, I'm going to be miserable. So for me, it's

finding the non negotiables in flexibility. Let's use your

word. That was a great word in in flexibility with the brain.

Yeah.

So if, like I, I worked in corporate and then I

worked in the federal government for many years, and they had non

negotiables they place on me. I had to be at work at a certain

time, and I had to work eight hours a day. And I will say I

was very fortunate. Everybody was a little bit flexible on

that lunch time. I liked to go to lunch. That was a little

flexibility that we had there. But I had due dates. I had

deadlines. And so if somebody is trying to, like, navigate and

negotiate a self certified to use your term diagnosis of ADHD

and or autism, like, is it just, I hate the word just, but is it?

Is it something they need to consider a career path, or a

company or agency that will embrace the differences that

they need to work within, to not have it be a constant struggle,

battle, because I can just my one of my sisters and I teased

one time because she was like, Jennifer, I think, I think in

the end, you make more money than I do. Well, in actuality, I

didn't, because she got some amazing perks that I would have

never possibly gotten. But I looked at her and I said, you

couldn't have worked with the rigid rules like you. You could

not have survived. And and people tease me because in disc

behavioral profiles, like I'm a 96 i which is influencing

people. And so sitting down and shutting up and doing my work

was really hard. And on the C for compliance, like the highest

I've ever scored out of 100 is eight, because that's kind of

not my thing. And the instructor was like, how, how did you

survive in the federal government? Not only survive,

but thrive and do very well with compliance is not your thing.

And I went, Oh, but I wanted to be recognized for what I did

well, and I wanted the awards, and I wanted the accolades, and

I wanted the minuscule bone. We got because it was better than a

sharp stick in the eye. So I was all about it, so I could make

myself do it, and so I was able to balance that. And so I don't

know, like with the self certified diagnosis, can you

manage that? Or is there another industry or another type of way

to make a living that serves

better? Well?

That was a lot.

It's okay. I got it. I think if I, if I think

of me, I think I make good decisions without realizing it.

So I discovered through work, and this is part of the story

work that I do when I work with with clients. If they want to

learn their stories and really do the work, I do this thing

called a story bucket bucket, so you map the tapestry of your

life, and it's based on work that I did for myself. So I I

essentially went and I looked at my parents, my grandparents, my

stepmother, everybody their careers and what they had done,

and then I mapped my life and my job choices based on what I had

done and then what they had done, so I could see where

everything became the composition of my life so far.

And by the time I was 38 I had had 38 jobs in 23 companies on

five different continents. So Ding, ding, ding, ding, there's

the ADHD, but it's also autism, because the different things

that I did all fed my interests and my desires and my

excitement. I the reason I moved and changed every time was

because I went, Oh, I want to do that. I'm interested in it and

and I think now I haven't done a huge amount of work on this yet,

because this is quite new for me. It was really only the end

of last year was my mom. You know, it's not true, but maybe

about two years ago, one of my best friends said to me, you

know, you're not able to sit down and stay down the first

time you sit down. And that got me onto the ADHD, oh, maybe then

last Christmas, my mom had had a conversation with one of my

sister's best friends who is certified or diagnosed,

whichever word you want to use, what? And that's, that's, this

is personal to me. Obviously, I know that there are people who

who need diagnosis because they can't function in the world that

is not designed for them. So I'm not trying to negate anybody

who, who uses the term diagnosis, who needs or wants

diagnosis, who? And I will probably at some point when I

can certify or get diagnosed, as the world would like me to call

it. So no, I just want to make that very clear, I respect

everybody for where they're at with themselves. This is where

I'm at. Mom said to me, you know, you could have a chat with

her, because I think some of the stuff she said about ADHD, it's

really it's making me a bit aware about maybe where your

brain might be at. So i i getting that confirmation from

my mom allowed me to begin looking at ADHD. Now, I had

already done all of the online tests for autism, best test

results I've ever got in my entire life. I aced them and and

then there's, there's not so much out there for doing it on

ADHD, because it's different. It's it's a spectrum. It's a

disorder as opposed to, or it's seen as a what do you call it? A

psychiatric dysfunction as opposed to a disorder? They're a

little bit different. But when I looked at it, I started to see

industries, and I was in the ELT industry for a long time, the

international education industry, English language

teaching. And I mean, I love my English language teaching peers,

and I'm not saying anything negative about you all, but I

reckon it's probably a very high neurodivergent industry, because

we're all, we all have to have degrees, minimum bachelor's

degrees for Ireland anyway, many have Masters, many have PhDs in

a variety of different areas, hugely theatrical, often in in

in history, In very fact based, riveting in areas of research,

but we get to go into a classroom every day and do

something different and use our knowledge to shape a lesson in a

way that motivates and inspires people to want to be engaged and

to learn, and so we facilitate. So going back to your question,

do I think it's important to recognize and choose industries

and companies that will be supportive of us in neuro

divergence. Yes, I do. I acknowledge that that is very

difficult for many at the moment. I know people. I know

people who don't want to find out for themselves for sure.

That they're neurodivergent, even though they suspect that

they are. And I say neurodivergent as opposed to

neurodiverse, because everybody is neurodiverse. We all have

different brains. Divergence is different to diversity. And then

I know people who who are certified or diagnosed, but who

don't want to tell their employers because they're afraid

of the reaction or the response that they'll get. So I

understand that I'm I don't know. Maybe it's part of my

neuro divergence and how my brain works. I'm telling you.

I'm telling whomever wants to listen, because I don't know.

Maybe there's a part of me like like in my TEDx talk, right? I

said everyone has a story that, if shared, can create a ripple

effect so great that it changes the direction of the herd, and

it can help people find the courage to share theirs. So I'm

still willing to stand up and say, This is me. If you don't

like me and you're not comfortable with me, that's not

my problem. It might not be a problem for you either, but

it's, it's whatever you need to deal with. I don't need to deal

with that. So we're probably not going to get on off you go, and

that's okay. Yeah, Am I answering your questions

before we can be friends with Yeah? Well,

yeah, and, but I think it's an idea of very few people were

ever fired when I worked for the federal government. It was a

very difficult, arduous process, even if somebody needed to go,

and it was because you needed protection, right? Cuz, in other

industries, you didn't necessarily have protections.

But after I left, I was talking to somebody, and they were in a

corporate position, and they said, Well, I had to let

somebody go today, because they need to go somewhere else where

their talents can shine, and it's not going to be here. And I

thought, Wow, that's a really nice, gentle way to put it. And

I'm sure the person ended up technically resigning rather

than being fired, because it of the you know, what's attached to

the firing versus resigning on like, putting on a resume. I was

fired from that job, but it was like, that's a really nice way,

because there's a place for everyone and there's a place for

everyone to shine, but if you just keep slogging away and

struggling with where you are without finding the benefit. So

for me, I don't, I don't think I I'm, I'm not certified in

anything, as far as you know, neuro divergent or ADHD or

anything like that, so I don't think I do. Um, maybe I do, and

that's going to be an interesting find out, but I was

able to work within the parameters of the government

because I knew where my shortcomings were, but I also

could, like, make it work. I could, I could do the things,

but I can see how for somebody else, they may not have that

ability, or it might be just entirely too hard, that it's the

stress is just too great, but I love that we have so many job

opportunities now, and in the entrepreneurship arena, so many

possibilities, right? You create your own

my internet just dropped there for a second.

So you said, I love that we have so many job opportunities now, I

think, yeah,

we have so many job opportunities, and being an

entrepreneur like you can find your lane and and stick in your

lane. So when, when you're talking about the professionals

you work with, and the conversations to get it back to

something really tactical for our audience, like, what can I

do to communicate more effectively, to have an

engagement and an encounter that is more positive for both of us?

So I use, well, I created a model that I

call neuro cultural communication. And it's based on

four aspects of awareness, awareness of self so the brain,

awareness of others, brains. That's the first awareness

point, cultural awareness, linguistic awareness, and when

we blend all of them together. So self awareness, cultural

awareness, linguistic awareness, what's my fourth one? Other PhD,

self another, yeah, but I've got four in there, language,

culture, the brain. There's another one. We'll move on. But

to relate. To the question you asked me, first, become aware of

yourself, what biases may trigger in you when you engage

in certain communication with others. Second, how can you

mitigate them in advance of a communication engagement,

because when I'm learning more and more and realizing more and

more, is that the neuro divergent brain and neuro

divergent communicators because of this so called social

ineptity, or inability, or lack of social communication cues and

awareness we prepare for our conversations where neurotypical

brains do not I do not see this as a deficit. I see it as a

positive and so what I'm saying to the so called neurotypical

brain is prepare, be aware of yourself. Be aware of what the

biases are, consider how to mitigate those biases in advance

of the conversation. Learn about the cultural profile of the

person you're engaging with. So if you're coming in to speak to

me and I'm Irish and you're you're Indian, for example, or

you're French Canadian, how you communicate with me will be

based on your culture as a French Canadian or your culture

as an Indian. But if you consider in advance, oh, wait a

minute, maybe the Irish don't communicate in exactly the same

way as us, then you can think about how to map your

communication onto a conversation or an engagement

with them, and that's what I do as a culture coach. So I use

something called culture active, which is one model of culture.

It's actually used in a lot of universities in the US. And I

also use the Culture Map, which is Erin Myers. She wrote, she co

wrote the book with the Netflix CEO about culture in the

workplace. And so we sit down and we pull up a map of

communication across the cultures that the person is

engaging with. And it's fascinating. Like, let's talk

about persuasion, for example, and presentations, because

presentations in public speaking and using the voice as an

instrument is the key thing that I do when, when you go into a

presentation, say, like, if I'm coming out of America, right, I

work with a massive Corporation in America. They're they're

multi billion dollar in the tech area and global and and I work

with their European and their their Singaporean teams. So what

I do is I help them to understand how to communicate

with Americans, because it's, it's different in

different parts of the country are different,

also,

absolutely, Oh, absolutely, a Bostonian and

a southerner. I mean, come on.

I literally, I'm in Oklahoma, which somebody

said, what are we? Because we're really not the South, but we're

definitely not the southwest, but we're not the Great Plains

like Oklahoma and Texas kind of we're like our own little carved

out part of the world. And a friend was here said, I checked

myself up just thinking about she goes, I could never live in

Oklahoma because I don't think I'm nice enough. Wow. And I was

like, Oh my God, that's so funny, because everything is

pleased. Everything is Thank you. You go to the bank and

they're like, Thank you. Have a nice day. I was in Ohio. This

woman is a multi millionaire, and she went to get a couple

$100 out of the bank through the drive through teller. And that

gal, that teller, didn't say good morning. Didn't say thank

you, didn't say, Have a nice day. And my friend pulled away,

and her family's from Oklahoma, and I went, Oh my gosh, how can

you even have your money at a bank with such hateful people?

And she was like, oh yeah. In Oklahoma, they would have said

please and thank you. And what else can I do for you? And I was

like, yeah, yeah.

So this is a perfect example. Can we, can we

use this as an example rather than presentations or anything?

So see that and coming away and saying, God, how can you have a

business run with people who behave like that? Right? Let's

take, let's look at Spain. You and I come over to Spain. We go

into a restaurant, and we are used to really fast service.

Yeah, you when I walk in the door, you you greet me straight

away. You put me in my seat straight away. Within two and a

half minutes, I have a glass of something in front of me, then

I'm holding the menu. Within five minutes, I have ordered,

possibly I've got a little bit of bread or some olives or

something like that, because you need to make sure that I'm going

to stay in the restaurant. Then we go to Spain.

That's not how it works.

So it depends which part we're in and

and like so if you're in Malaga city now, it's going to be

faster because they've been westernized a bit, but, but in

other parts, or in smaller towns you go in, you might sit there

for 10 or 15 minutes and. Might have to remind them that you're

there, and then you think, or we think, Jesus, how could you run

a restaurant like that? That's terrible service. It's

disgraceful. Altogether. It's so slow they don't care about their

customers. There's no interest, nothing who's right or what's

right and what's wrong, fair enough, but that is a perfect

example of cultural biases, biases coming up. So I have an

expectation of how you should behave based on what I have

learned about behavior throughout my life. If I have

never traveled, if I have little experience of being abroad or

international experience, then my expectations, of course, are

going to be even even more skewed towards my culture and my

upbringing and and I may be negative towards you then and

mistreat you or be rude to you because you don't meet my

expectations. Tony demalo says this in his book awareness. Was

it I'm going to annoy myself now, because you didn't meet the

expectations that I had of you, that I didn't express to you

something along those lines. And that's that's what it is, and it

take it then into the workplace. Workplaces are now Global and

International, and every single day we have to communicate with

people from multiple countries all over the world. Is that

noise coming from behind me or from behind you? Is it okay?

It's not coming towards you? Okay, okay, grand. I just I hear

a rumbling noise, so just in case it's interfering, that's

alright.

Well, that whole restaurant analogy I love,

because when I got on the plane and left Oklahoma to go to

Seville, Spain, also known as Seville, I like I was going to

go, and I was as soon as I graduated college, I was going

back to Spain, France, wherever I was never coming back. And I

was there a whole semester, so four months, and I had travelers

checks back in the day. That's how you travel with money. And

you would go to the bank and you'd cash them in. So I left

early for school. It was a long walk from where we live to get

to the school, and I left early to go to the bank, and I got to

the bank right at nine o'clock when they opened, and I should

be able to cash my traveler's checks and get to school by 930

and being late was kind of a big deal, like you did not show up

late to class. Okay? I literally stood there looking in the

windows. I could see all the employees and the managers, the

whole cluster drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at the

back of the bank. It was like, not very wide. It was narrow,

but it was really long, and and, and they finished all their

cigarettes and all their coffee before they finally opened the

door, like 1012, minutes later that I'm like, How does this

economy not collapse? How do you do this? But then, after I had

been there for a while, and then went to France for the summer,

they all had these five week holidays, and everybody was off

for five weeks in the summer. And they would go on these grand

family vacations for five weeks. And there would be a little sign

in the door closed for summer vacation. You know, come back on

this day a couple places I never got to because I didn't get back

in the one week they were open when I was there. But those are

the kind of cultural differences, and obviously they

survive. France and Spain are still going. They're still

going. They still have people there. It's still working.

And then may they not be too westernized,

because they're beautiful cultures to be in, yeah, because

you can go slow. And that's what I needed. I've just spent the

last three years in Spain, well, on and off, coming between

Ireland and Spain, and I needed it even my pace. When I arrived,

I moved so fast, and I would ask people all the time on the

Promenade, until eventually I realized I was walking at the

same pace as them, and life had slowed down. But it's

interesting what you talk about there, like in this the Culture

Map and in culture active. So we would call what let's let's

generalize Latin American and Spanish kind of cultures, multi

active, so they're in that red, talkative, emotional gestures,

all of that connecting. They're that type of culture. And then

we would move down to America, Germany, Ireland, towards more

linear aspected cultures. And then if we think about the

Culture Map, we have time, and how different cultures deal with

the time, so there's flexibility of time, and less flexible with

time. So I mean, Germans would be the stereotypical

international country that is quite rigid with time. You were

right. On time, and you leave on time,

and their trains are amazingly on time. There you go,

yeah,

yeah. And then, and then you have the

other side, where the India? Well, I mean, when are we

starting 10? It was, we said, 10 o'clock, but your might start at

11, you know. And and Spain is like that. There's flexibility

of time that you can arrive a little late, and as you said,

you can open the bank at 12 minutes fast because you need to

finish your cigarettes and coffee. So it's fascinating. So

if we go back to that question you asked, How can I be a more

aware, conscious communicator? It's aware, it's it's take a

step back, realize, and I this is gonna sound harsh and might

make me unpopular, but America does not rule the world, and

that communication around the world is really different to how

Americans communicate. You are one of the most direct countries

in the world. The context is so low in America that that the

coin is completely flipped. When you go to a country like China

or Japan, they are high context. The word no doesn't exist in

Japanese. And so if you ask a Japanese person to do something

and they can't do it, the answer that they may give you may make

you think that they are saying yes, but what they're saying is

no. So they might say it could be difficult, but that it could

be difficult means no, we can't do it, and you're expected to

read the room. It's called Kai. Actually, it's a Japanese

concept, when you can read the room and read the space and and

understand that what I'm saying in my response is no, but I

cannot lose face for the group or for myself holistically, by

saying no. So I'm not going to say no. I'm going to trust that

you're intelligent enough to realize that I'm saying no and

and that's it. It's it really comes with self. Start with the

self. Look at yourself. Look at how you communicate. Look at

what triggers you. I have a document that I use in line with

what's called the scarf. So the scarf comes out of it. My Tony

Robbins uses this as well in a different way. He's got seven

drivers. The scarf has five. The the human drivers of behavior.

So the scarf stands for status, is your S, C, for certainty, a

for autonomy, R for relatedness, and F for fairness. And most

humans are wired towards fairness. They want there to be

fairness. Now there are some who are pretty low on the fairness

mark, but most want fairness. But otherwise there'd be one of

those that are the key driver. You've met white men that are

CEOs, they generally are pretty high up there on the status.

Now, I'm not saying all men, right, that's again, we'll never

say that everything is for everybody, but if you understand

that you're highly driven by a need for status, you mentioned

this earlier on for you, that you wanted that recognition when

you were working in corporate, so that you were able to

maneuver yourself and and incredibly adapt yourself in a

way that allowed it to work for you, so that you got what you

needed. You met your human drivers, so you knew, I need

that recognition. I need to be seen for what I'm doing. So I'm

going to adapt myself in a way that allows me to be seen. If we

take that to a leader, to someone who's listening today

and who wants to be a better communicator and better to be to

be a more connected communicator. What's your need?

Do you have a high need for certainty? And if you do, then,

when you're speaking to somebody who is ambiguous and doesn't

give you a feeling of certainty, what's happening inside your

body, are you feeling uncomfortable? Where is that

feeling? What's causing that feeling? They're not giving me

the certainty that I need in this conversation to feel

secure. So what do you need to do, instead of getting upset by

the fact that they're not giving you what you need recognize, ah,

maybe they're somebody who who doesn't need a high degree of

certainty so they don't offer it. So maybe you need to say to

them, look the way that I operate. I need data. I need a

bit of statistic here. I need this to be clearer for me. So

before you come to this conversation, would you just get

a few figures ready? Because I'm going to need that to feel

comfortable and confident in it. And when we're aware of these

things and we communicate them with the person in advance, we

can have better conversations and not have meetings that go on

for an hour, that tick boxes but don't actually achieve anything,

because that's fairly common, too.

Christine, this has been an eye opening,

enlightening conversation for me, and I love it, because we do

get frustrated with other people in you know. It's not setting

parameters, it's not setting expectations or sharing them,

and also not doing any of your homework. When I was at school

in France, a friend a fellow student's parents came over, and

her mom was livid because they didn't have ranch dressing for

her salad. And ranch dressing was fairly new in the US at that

point in time, but her mom was livid, like she didn't know

there were going to be differences. She had had not

considered that there'd be differences. I love this

conversation. All your contact message information will be in

the show notes. If anybody wants to follow you on social media or

reach out. Christine, do you have any final thoughts for our

audience?

Oh, I can't hold this in, so I'm asked there

for a second to not interrupt you. I forgot about ranch

dressing. I haven't had it in years. It's got such an

incredible flavor. Thanks for reminding me about that. I don't

know when I'll have it again. Is there anything else? Well, find

me at hiberno stories, because I am shaping how to teach the

world how to tell stories like Irish anarchies. And there are

prescribed methods for storytelling that I see all over

the world. They're like 10 different ways to do your story,

the hero's journey, the why, the this, that, the other My goal

with teaching you how to tell stories like The Irish is that

you will only ever need one model, and you can adapt all of

your stories to this as long as you know them. The final message

would be, take a breath when you get triggered. When you're

having a conversation with somebody, look for their zone of

possibility and reach into it, because there is one in every

single person that you speak to

that was lovely. Thank you for being

here. Christine,

thank you for having me, and I'm looking

forward to having you with with me on mine. Awesome.

I'm Jennifer Takagi with destiny for success,

and I look forward to connecting with you soon. Bye.