People as Conversations

Over the past few years, I have extensively studied the works of a man called Werner Erhard.

Werner's accomplishments in the world of business and transformation are truly remarkable, especially the impact that the work he and his associates created had on millions of people.

One of the most fascinating ideas in his work is his idea of what creates access to performance (aka the actions we take) and empowers us to influence these.

In his own words, "seeing people as the conversations they are" is part of creating that access.

Most people think they speak and think, but they don't realize that what they say and hold as conversations in their minds is, for the most part, who they are.

Although not claiming to be true, this view of ourselves and others leaves us with a powerful key to impact performance.

You and I, for the most part, believe that we talk about the world and ourselves, not that our talking creates the world and ourselves. We think that when we speak, we describe how things are, not that our speaking creates how things are for us.

If we take the stance that our speaking does, in fact, create who we are for ourselves and what the world is for us, it would mean that changing the conversation would change the occurrence of the world and self.

Now, here is the part that connects what I just said to the topic of performance.

Our performance is directly correlated to how the world occurs for us. For instance, when I see a person with a gun running toward me, I will take action appropriate to that situation, and I will not act as if no person with a gun runs toward me.

If I perceive myself as someone who is really bad at public speaking, and I am confronted with a situation where I have to speak publicly, I will act in accordance with my self-perception as a bad public speaker.

If a business target appears to me as undoable, I will take actions that align perfectly with working on an undoable business task.

The results I achieve will be a perfect reflection of how I and others perceive me and, therefore, the actions I will take in that situation.

To create access, we first need to recognize that most of, if not all, we normally relate to as out there (things, situations, and people) are actually all happening in here (ourselves and the conversations we have about all of these).

We are at the source of all these conversations, and the kind of conversations we have creates how things are for us, which in turn creates the actions we take.

The difference between a high performer and a low performer, apart from the training they might have had, is how they see the world and themselves, and that happens in a conversation.

When the conversations we cultivate are empowering and create possibilities for people, they perform accordingly. Conversely, when our conversations focus on what's wrong, who's bad, and why we can't, we create performance in alignment with that mindset.

We often think that our talking, listening, and communicating is simply describing the world, but it is actually creating it.

Countries don't exist outside of language; cultures don't exist outside of language; families don't exist outside of language. Love, hope, inspiration, good, bad, high and low performance—doing it right, doing it wrong—all exist in the language and are conversations humans have.

This is not to say that there aren't things out there that exist independently of language, but how we talk about things and the meaning we assign them (meaning is created in language) shapes how we relate to them.

That, in turn, creates what we can and cannot do.

Think about how for years, no one crossed the four-minute mile until someone did, and suddenly it became possible as now there was a conversation for it being possible.

Consider human rights didn't exist a thousand years ago until someone thought them up and created a conversation for them.

The amazing family, culture, relationships, vision, and mission you desire are just one conversation away. A conversation about what's possible instead of why it isn't.

Trust that this is useful.

Moritz