Fierce Conversation with Luis Gonzales

Luis Gonzales is a master facilitator and a global communications expert. We have some fierce hacks from Luis today which include: How his multicultural upbringing shaped his corporate career positively Why cultures play a significant part in your communication Paying attention to one conversation at a time enriches relationships Why noticing how your intuition informs conversations is critical Plus lots more hacks Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Luis: Fierce Inc. Website: https://fierceinc.com Luis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgonzales/    Full Transcript Below:   ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   We're joined on the show today by Louis Gonzales. He's a master facilitator and a global communications expert. But before we get into conversation with Luis, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: Did you know that in every language, there are more negative words than there are positive ones. It seems we need lots of words to describe my negative feelings, but we're content with a handful of ones to describe positive feelings. Researchers have found that most cultures have words that describe seven basic emotions. They are joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt. So that's one positive emotion and six negative emotions. It's no wonder so many of us have a hard time keeping our negative comments in check. Over the last 10 years, I've been working with language and communication, and I've noticed a bunch of words in our vocabulary that are unhelpful and could adversely impact on you and your team's outcomes. In the news today, I've called out five that I think are most limiting negative words, and really could be avoided so that we don't hurt, belittle and intimidate those around us. Let's get into them. The first word is can't. When you tell somebody they can't do something, oftentimes they'll end up in believing you, whether you are right or wrong. This is particularly true if the person has come to trust you and to respect you and can often then limit people's behaviours. No, the word no is a mother and father all negative words and no can impact us down to our very core. In fact, research tells us that we rap more slowly to the word no than we do to the word yes. And that our brains respond differently when we're told no. This is a great reminder for us to use this word sparingly and to be thoughtful when we do use it. Failure as in you're a failure, is that ever really a reason to use this word in relation to another person? Until a few years ago, I actually used this on my website and I used the phrase failure isn't an option. Now I put success is your only option. And lo and behold, when people read it, they stay on the page longer. They recognize this as more of a positive enabler. It also stimulates better thinking. Positive beats negative, of course, in every situation. Wrong, the word wrong has its place. And sometimes there's no doubt that something is wrong. However, constantly telling someone they're doing something wrong or that their opinions are wrong are likely to dri