Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review.

My guest today made the transition with Have Family to move from Germany to the United States in order to contribute to not only communication skills training, but growth overall, especially using the technique known as NLP, Neural Linguistic Programming.

Please help me welcome Brigitta Hoeferle as she and I will be discussing a lot more about her work and how the work she does helps us so much.

Before I go any further, hi Brigitta.

Hi Roberta, thank you for having me on the show.

Thank you for being here.

I'm excited, especially after our initial introduction.

I know this is gonna be a really good show, but before we get into it, please introduce yourself.

Okay, my name is Brigitta Hoeferle as you already said.

A lot of people go, well, that's certainly not US or English.

Yes, you guessed right.

Brigitta is actually a Swedish name and I am from Germany.

I have no Swedish roots whatsoever.

I am through and through German.

I am married to a German.

We have two German children who are very Americanized at this point.

And our oldest daughter who's 20 moved back to Germany, to Munich, back to her roots last year on her own.

And she lives in Munich now where she was born.

Is she working, studying?

Doing both.

She's working.

She's a barista.

She's an actress.

She's a great, great lady.

Oh, that's wonderful.

And when did you move to the US.?

In 2004, so Amelie was 18 months old when we moved.

That move, Roberta, came out of, it came out of a plan somewhat when my husband and I sat together and we said, we want to grow the school.

We built a Montessori school.

We want to grow the school.

Do we want to grow it in Munich?

Which if you know anything about German real estate markets, and Munich specifically, the rates are very high.

Building a business there and scaling it can be a challenge.

And at the time when we were looking at building the business and growing the business, we hit a roadblock on finding a building that we can grow the school into.

And that's when my husband and I said, well, we've always wanted to move to the United States.

Why don't we do that now?

And an action taker as I am, I started building a business plan for the US.

And started putting a forecast together.

What would it cost to move all of our things to the United States?

Once we had a plan, we did it.

And we made the decision in December of 2003, and we moved in April of 2004.

Wow, fast action takers.

Yes, coming to the United States to build a business, that was a bold move.

We did it on our own time and time.

We're not expats per se.

You know, we didn't have a company.

Not sponsored by somebody.

None of that.

And then speaking of Montessori, I remember, I think it was late 90s.

And Bekoma, remember, if you took your kid to a Montessori school, you paid tons of money.

And they used to explain that it's because they focus on how kids learn.

Would you like to explain to us what exactly the idea of Montessori is?

Yes.

So Maria Montessori developed the methodology in the late 1940s, 50s.

She is Italian and she took in the children that were most rebellious from the streets of Italy.

And there were a lot of children that were robbing, being rebellious, being frustrated with the whole situation of not having a mom or dad or not having either one.

And she took these children in and she gave them meaningful things to do.

And out of that part of her research, she saw that when children are doing things the way that A, someone takes time to show them and then they can figure out the next steps by themselves, that actually serves something within them where they feel, I can do this.

I belong, I can do this.

And it cuts out the frustration.

So when Maria Montessori developed the methodology and then started building the first Casa de Bambini, which is the first school for children, she developed the methodology of many teachers that are teaching children one-on-one.

You know, in the traditional school, Roberta, you have one teacher and a classroom for-

35 kids.

Right.

35 kids.

And all of the 35 kids follow this one teacher.

Now if this is a great teacher, I had some great teachers and if this teacher, right, I'm pretty sure you have too.

Of course.

Yeah.

We all had great teachers and we all had some of the teachers where you're like, what the heck are they doing, right?

But the great teachers, they understand that not all children absorb information the same way.

Mm-hmm.

And not all children take the same time to absorb the information the same way.

Not all children are made to sit still the entire day.

I would say three quarters of the children overall are not made to sit still all day and lay down in a Montessori school to work or kneel at a table or stand up or move while they're absorbing the information.

So there is not one right way.

Now in order to accommodate that, that takes knowledge, that takes skill, that takes more teachers, that's a lot more work than one teacher to many children.

And that's where the increased cost in Montessori schools comes in.

For every seven students, we had one teacher.

Oh yeah, you see the ratios are very different, yes, compared to public school.

Exactly.

Now we've had the school for almost 20 years.

We have created our own case studies.

Now we see the children that have gone through high school, even if they have not gone through all the way through Montessori, because our school now ends at middle school.

The foundation of knowledge that they have and the confidence in their knowledge is just so rich and so deeply rooted that they're already set up for success.

Wow.

Where here in the States, Roberta, we put a lot of money in for our kids to go to university when the true learning actually happens in the early years and not in the later years.

I'm not saying we don't need to send our children to university.

It's not what I'm saying, but we got to create a great foundation.

No one would build on sand.

You have to pour a really good foundation in order to build a good structure on sand.

We need to do the same for our children.

How does that translate into adults?

If we look at the structure of a classroom with a teacher and the students, we can almost look at the structure of a team and a team leader.

You have the team leader and you have the team members that are following the team leader.

Maybe employees or team.

But it's the exact same strategy because if the team leader doesn't have the knowledge that each of his or her team members absorb information differently, have different value system, have different belief systems, appreciate a different process, that it's not everything that the team leader says, but that it's each individual team member can have some sort of ownership.

That's not on the team member.

That starts with a team leader and the team leader really relating to the team members and not vice versa.

Does that also mean that the team members must be aware of themselves enough to communicate to the team leader and say, this is how my process is if I work on a project?

Absolutely.

And whose responsibility is that to make each team member aware of that?

We cannot put that on our employees.

We cannot put that on each individual team member.

If you ever look at the knowledge pie, imagine a circle, like a pie, and a small sliver, small piece of that pie is the things that we know that we know.

And another small sliver of that pie is the things that we know that we don't know.

So we're going on that journey of learning it.

The biggest chunk of that pie are the things that we don't know that we don't know.

So if I'm hiring someone or if I am onboarding someone in my team, it is not up to them to already come equipped with, hey, this is what I value.

This is my belief system.

This is my mindset.

We're going to come back to that word later.

This is what I appreciate.

This is what I stand for.

This is how I relate to information.

This is how I store information.

99% of people don't know that stuff.

They don't even know that that's a thing.

I've studied this topic in school.

I have graduated with X degree.

I have been hired to do X responsibilities.

Therefore, that's who I am.

That's their identity.

But it goes so much deeper than just that identity of what they know.

It is who they are in their core.

I would say that would be an HR responsibility or a superior or a team leader responsibility to take time with that individual and start relating to that person.

What do they value?

How do they absorb information?

Some organizations do like an assessment like Myers-Briggs or something like that.

Right, yes.

If you've ever done a Myers-Briggs, you're going to get a report that's about as thick as a Bible.

As a Bible.

Who's supposed to understand that?

No one's reading that.

No.

Right?

So we gotta make it simple because all of that boils down to good or bad communication.

That's what it boils down to.

Right.

Bottom line is good or bad communication.

And that's the key to leadership, to running a team, to managing a project team.

It all boils down to that.

Yeah, it boils down to really a good relationship and good relationships build on great rapport and great rapport builds on great communication.

Yeah.

Yeah, I wanna go back to when you were talking about your students from the Montessori School, you said they have a deep knowledge.

Is it also a mindset thing?

Because it sounds to me like they really get to know themselves while even still in high school.

They are very deep rooted in who they are, their core values, their mindset.

And because they know that they learn a certain way, I'm sure that part of their curriculum was even learning how to communicate, as we just said.

Right, you know, the P part in NLP is program.

If we look at children growing up, there's a phase called the imprint phase from age zero to around age seven.

And during that imprint phase, the child's brain or the child's consciousness is one.

So the subconscious, the unconscious and the conscious is one.

There is no division.

When they grow older at around age seven, age nine, there's somewhat of a wall that is dividing the conscious mind from the subconscious mind.

That's when learning starts to become hard or perceived as hard because now they have to put in effort where before they just took all information intrinsically.

Right?

So children are being programmed during this very sensitive time of their imprint phase.

When there are parents, and they don't do this by wanting to do harm, these parents might do it because they just don't know any better because they have their own program from when they were growing up, but when they are scolding their child, when they are calling their child, what are you stupid?

And I hear this so many times where parents, they don't mean harm.

I don't think even at that moment they were planning to say the word stupid.

It's just there's a lot going on with life but things just come out sometimes unfortunately.

And it does leave a trace.

And when that leaves a trace because it happens once, it happens twice, it happens three times because as children we're so innocent and this is happening all subconsciously.

We're looking at mom or dad or uncle or aunt or teacher or religious leader or thought leader.

And when they say that it must be true.

So now it becomes part of their belief system.

And that's why we're dealing with adults that have self-worth problems.

They might not even be consciously aware that they heard when they were little that they're no good but it became part of their belief system.

It's so deeply rooted.

Now on the flip side, Roberta, the good news is when that can happen subconsciously in a negative, it can also happen subconsciously in a positive.

Right.

So when we can empower our children, when we can let them have ongoing positive experiences of, hey, look, I just manipulated numbers that go into the tens of thousands and they're four years old without them even knowing what they are doing and they're just doing it very playfully with their hands, what do you think that does with them?

Huge confidence booster, yeah.

Completely.

That is not something that you can teach.

That is something that you either have by experiencing it, by adapting it tangibly in your imprint phase, or there's someone that just constantly makes you, negates you, makes you small, judges you, and that's who you become too.

So we have to decide as adults, what do we want for our children?

Do we want to empower them or do we want to make them small?

Very, very good question.

Let's go back to our favorite word, mindset.

We hear mindset a lot, Brigitta.

It almost sounds like some new gospel or some cult, but here's the thing.

As much as we all want to change our mindsets for the better, we always feel like every time somebody mentions the word mindset, we don't know what to do next to improve our mindsets.

Let me give you, I have two answers.

Now I want to start with this one.

It's a bit complex, so follow me through this.

I'm gonna give it to you step by step.

So imagine something that's happening as an, I'm gonna call it event.

Like you and I, we're talking right now, Roberta, and the listener is listening to the words that we're saying.

So the listener is taking in the information mostly auditorily by listening.

And internally, the listener is finding information that's already part of their brain that they are looking for, where have I heard something like this before?

They're looking for baseline.

Right.

Where have I heard or seen something like this before, or even felt like the way that Roberta and Brigitta are making me feel right now, where can I categorize this?

Where would this fit in?

And then they find something and they're like, oh, this is really great information.

It really goes deeper into what I've been wanting to learn.

Remember the knowledge pie?

Now they're becoming aware of, oh, that is something that I've been interested in, but I never knew how to even get to that information.

And out of that, now they're finding a baseline within as they're thinking through it.

They are creating an internal representation of the outer presentation, which is you and I talking.

So you and I talking is the outer representation, but the person listening to us, and I'm talking about an individual person because each person has their own baseline, has their own experiences, has their own value system, has their own belief system, has their own culture, has all of their own little things that only that person is equipped with.

And that individual person is making an internal representation of what they are taking in mostly auditorily right now by listening.

And through that internal representation and looking for the baseline and looking for where would this fit in, in my little file cabinet, also known as brain, so I can keep it out of that.

They are creating their own mindset.

They are setting their mind of what are they going to do with the information they have just absorbed.

Is that what we call decoding a message?

Meaning if I sit with you and we listen to somebody else at that party and they say, Brigitta, please repeat what the person said.

You will say something different from me.

And yet we were listening to the exact same person.

Yes, exactly.

And none of us are right or wrong.

It is only what we have heard and what we are able to make meaning of.

So you're right.

We're constantly decoding information and that happens in nanoseconds, then encode it and apply it.

The encoding is the representation of the presentation that we've taken in.

Right.

So we're creating our mindset and then the mindset may be to continue with the metaphor of the listener.

The mindset may be, this is great information.

I have been wanting to learn more about this.

This is exactly what I came for.

And then in return, Roberta, there's a physiology, there's a body language that shows outwards and we see that, we take that in as behavior.

So that person that just listened to your podcast and listened to the two of us talking might now go into the grocery store and they might be super happy and joyful and maybe even thinking something really cool in their head and they might have a smirk on their face or they might have their shoulders back or they might have a little, you know, skip in their walk.

So it shows up outwards what that person has made meaning of what they just heard.

Is it related to how they were programmed before?

So when they hear this, they decode it according to how they were previously programmed all their lives and then the behavior is displayed that way.

Correct.

So there might be someone that's listening to us and they might be triggered from their experience about a word or how I said a word or by just knowing my culture or knowing your culture.

And it might have a completely negative and different effect on that person than on the other person.

Again, that had nothing to do with what you and I said.

It is how they took, how they made meaning in their own internal representation of what was said and how they perceived it.

Mindset.

That's how it is set in their minds when they hear it.

And it's only in their mind.

Like you said, they have different experiences.

They come from a different culture.

They have a different belief system.

They have a different value system, right?

The mindset is there is no one real mindset.

There is no, oh, you gotta think positive, right?

In all honesty, in the nineties, when I was a teenager and we were listening to Jim Rohn and yes, it started that way.

But I feel like over the years, we've opened up to a lot more knowledge and information on how all of this works, not just think positive.

Because imagine if you cannot, if you're trying to, but you just try to think positive and it doesn't work, how frustrating that is.

And a lot of people are going through that.

Yeah.

And that's the thing, the, oh, you just gotta think positive or, oh, you just gotta change your mindset.

Well, you know, those are words, but how the heck do you do that?

Give people something that they can tangibly do.

A lot of people want to change for the better and want to improve something in their lives.

Why do you think we always go back to our old habits?

No matter how badly I want to do it, we're gonna, I promise you, how is it this automatic going back to old habits again?

It's the programming, right?

It's our belief system and it's the programming.

Robert Dills wrote many great books.

He is one of Richard Bandler, who's the co-founder of NeuroLinguistic Programming.

Robert Dills came up with the neurological levels and the neurological levels are a great framework for change and change management.

And he visualizes it in a triangle.

Imagine a triangle and there are six bars within that triangle from the bottom all the way to the top.

So the triangle is split in six equal pieces all the way to the top.

The bottom piece is the environment.

And after the environment, if we go up one notch, is the behavior.

And after behavior, one notch is our capabilities and our skills.

And after capabilities and skills is our beliefs and values.

After beliefs and values is our identity.

And all the way at the top of the triangle is our mission and purpose.

It's why we are here and what we're here to do.

Most people, when they say, but I wanna do better, go into the gym, there's my New Year's resolution, I'm gonna go to the gym.

What they are focusing on is the environment.

I am going to the gym.

What they have not adapted yet is further up in the triangle is their beliefs and their values.

And if you are not aware of that and you're just trying to change the environment, you're never really going to hit the upper parts of the neurological levels.

Therefore you're really never going to change.

You're going to have the illusion of change.

I like to call it you're rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic because it's something that you can control.

I'm going to go to the gym.

But it's not going to be a permanent change.

No, the habit is starting to change when your behavior starts adapting, when you're adding more skills and capability.

Look, I go to the gym, Roberta, and I go to bootcamp.

Actually, I went to bootcamp earlier.

It is work.

It's never going to be easy.

It's always going to be work.

If I want to have those skills and change my behavior, the previous programming of me sabotaging, whatever it is I'm trying to improve in my life, can NLP then help me reprogram and use so that on the triangle, I start to change the upper parts of it?

Right, absolutely.

That's what NLP is known for.

Only when you're willing to put in the work.

No one can be changed against their own will.

So when someone is ready to become aware of the belief system that they have, and like I said, most people, it boils often down to the fear of being rejected.

That can be part of a belief system or the belief that I am not good enough or the fear of not being good enough.

Those are all fears that are deeply, deeply rooted, but most people, when you ask them, so do you have the fear of being rejected?

Do you have the fear of not being good enough?

They're gonna go, oh, that's not the case.

But if you really dig deep, if they really take the time and become aware of their imprint phase when they were young, they go back and start healing from that.

There are great exercises that you can do around that.

NLP cannot change the past, but it can bring some insights that you have now, the resources that you have today that you can bring back and then future pace it into the future that you can do greater work in the future.

We're not gonna change the past, but you do have choice of what you're going to do in the future.

So the imprint of ages zero to seven, as you said, is usually how as adults, that's the autopilot we live in.

Eurocommunications skills trainer.

How does that translate to challenges when it comes to communicating?

Let's go back to the team leader.

If you have a team leader that easily gets triggered, if someone talks back to them, cause they have a better idea or they might have a better knowledge in the whole process, but the team leader gets, it happens.

I mean, that's why we have teams.

And it's not just one person, right?

Who knows everything.

Exactly.

If the team leader gets triggered and it happens, it's a reoccurring pattern that would be a great insight to look at when did that happen the first time?

And maybe it is something that that person has been modeled over decades from parents, family or bosses and start becoming aware of that.

And then as they are aware of, oh, this is actually what's happening.

Cause when they're heated in the moment, when emotions are high, intelligence is low and everything goes out the window.

So you cannot grab that pattern in the moment that it's happening.

Yeah, you can reassess it at a later time when everything is kind of mellowed out and go, okay, so Mr.

Team Leader or Mrs.

Team Leader, when we're in this situation, what has come up often is if someone offers a different scenario or different solution, how do you perceive yourself in that moment?

So rather than telling them what's happening, ask them, how are they perceiving it?

Then they might think back and they go, every time someone says something and has a better idea, I feel like I'm not good enough.

Well, but I'm the team leader, I have to have it all together and everything is falling apart because someone else has a great idea.

So you're getting information, you're getting insights of their internal representation of what was happening.

And through that, they might become aware of, man, this is happening over and over and over again.

How can I change that?

How can I?

So you notice the pattern.

And then you change out one little piece in the pattern.

A pattern, imagine domino pieces.

If you push over the first one, the rest of the domino pieces kind of follow.

Right.

That's often when we're in a situation like the team leader and the outcome is, hey, let's find a great solution, how we can work together and put in this process as a team.

But the team leader then gets triggered by something that that trigger is that first domino and everything just kind of falls into place, but it's not going in the direction that they wanted it to go to.

It's not taking all of the domino pieces and throwing them out.

It is looking at which little domino piece do we have to rearrange so it's actually flipping over in the direction that everyone wants it to go to.

Let's go with that example that I was talking about.

It would be perhaps rather than the team leader just blowing a fuse and trying to keep it all together and micromanaging, which a lot of team leaders do, they go into micromanagement to keep it all together.

A great opportunity for the team leader would be once they realize what they're doing to take a deep breath.

Once they realize they're being triggered, just take a deep breath.

Okay, this is what's happening.

Now I know before they take the next step or the next word or the next action, a breather would help them to kind of diffuse the emotions going high, right?

And to keep the conversation going and see, okay, so me as a team leader, what can I do next to actually get to that outcome that we all decided that we wanna go to?

But, Roberta, what often happens is that HR comes in, points fingers and says, but you're not doing it right.

That doesn't solve anything.

All credit to HR, by the way.

I know they do a great job.

This is not dissing HR at all.

It is giving more tools.

That moment to breathe, we have you realize how even with couples, there's a scrubbing match and you say things you're gonna wish you would take back afterwards.

Sometimes what they do is one person would leave the house just for five minutes because they don't wanna say things they're gonna regret.

Yeah.

I teach a lot of individuals and teams.

And I like to say, I'm gonna give you a gift and the gift is silence, especially nowadays.

We are so quick to fill in the space, trying to make it what we want it to be, whatever the situation is, where often, like you said, take a walk or take a step back or take a step to the side, take a breather, allow silence.

What I'm not saying, Roberta, is allowing silence treatment.

That is very different.

In fact, remember when we spoke at first and I said the first time I had about NLP was back in the 90s, I had a friend, I was in my 20s and she said to me, you're a people pleaser, you need to do something about it, otherwise life is not going to be good for you.

And she practiced a session on me, it was a few minutes, but I don't know what she did, I just remember closing my eyes and there was a moment I cried.

And you know, when you cry sometimes, sorry to be disgusting, snow comes out of your nose.

And I opened my eyes to grab a tissue, she said, close your eyes, I said, I don't want people looking at me like this.

She says, exactly, that's why you need to sit in this moment, have strangers see something coming over your nose, so that we kill these people pleasing.

Like I said, it was my first introduction to it.

I haven't been in touch with her since, she's an LP practitioner, but she was actually curing me of saying, don't take silent treatment.

That it doesn't mean you're humble.

You know, some of us grew up in religion and they say, oh, be humble Brigitta, turn the other cheek.

So no, we're not promoting that at all.

Nope, nope, I find it passive aggressive.

That's also a pattern.

Passive aggressiveness is a pattern that is modeled often by parents and bosses and it's not support.

It's not pretty.

It's just not.

There's no productivity at the end of it.

No, truly not, truly not.

And I appreciate your friend and fellow master practitioner for allowing you to be in that moment because it had a huge impact.

You're still talking about it happened in the nineties.

Trust me, it was not pretty.

And that's the other thing.

We are so afraid to sit in discomfort.

I think that's when it hurt the most at the time.

We are afraid even now to just sit in discomfort.

It's too uncomfortable.

Even though we know it's gonna pass.

Is it uncomfortable or is it unknown?

If we would know what is behind that known wall, boundary, it's actually more comfortable once we step out of it.

We don't know what's happening next.

So that's where the, I'm gonna put it in air quotation marks, being uncomfortable comes from.

It's rather unknown rather than uncomfortable.

We talk about it a lot.

We say, oh, I prefer the devil I know, because at least I know what I'm dealing with.

That's why we'd be in bad relationships.

That's the devil you know.

You're in a bad job.

That's the devil you know.

It's the devil's I know.

I've learned a system, a coping mechanism, bad as they are, uncomfortable as they are.

Because the thing that I don't know is a little scary.

There are different personality types that value risk.

And there are personality types that are more risk averse.

Then there are cultures that are more risk averse.

And there are cultures that are more actionable, right?

I personally come from a very risk averse culture.

Germans, per se, are rather, you wanna calculate your risk as a German.

The United States is, hey, let's just go for it, right?

We also wanna be mindful that we're not putting each German in that category and that we're putting each American in that category.

Because by, you know, oh, you gotta change your mindset, we try to simplify humans.

We're humans, we cannot just be simplify.

We're pretty complex creatures.

It's the mental shortcuts we take just to make life easier.

Like, oh, all South Africans are like Rupert.

Yeah, there's no such thing.

Right, we kind of put this topic over each culture, but then we wanna be mindful that each individual communicates and stores its information as unique as their fingerprint is.

And when we can realize that and we can appreciate that, especially as leaders and team leaders, then we can appreciate in getting to know who are we really working with?

Who is the person across from you?

Brigitta, please tell us something that I might have forgotten to ask that you feel like our listeners are gonna seriously benefit from what words of wisdom would you like to live with us today?

I wanna give you this success formula.

Thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to your results.

Thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, actions lead to your results.

And when you can become aware of what are you thinking and is it serving me to the outcome that I desire, my results, then keep that thought.

And if it's not serving you to get to the result, maybe you wanna catch that thought and think a different thought that will evoke a better feeling that will get you into the actions to have the results that you desire.

Words of wisdom from Brigitta Hoeferle from Germany who now is based in the United States.

This has been an enjoyable conversation.

I love talking to you.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

And before you go, where can we find you on the interwebs?

So very simple, Center of NLP.

When you Google Center of NLP, my face will probably ping up or you can Google my name, Brigitta, B-R-I-G-I-T-T-A, last name Hoeferle, H-O-E-F-E-R-L-E, Brigitta Hoeferle.

I'm the only Brigitta Hoeferle in the whole wide world.

So you'll definitely find me.

Exactly.

Both on Google and on YouTube.

As soon as you write your name, it pops up because you're the only one.

Thank you for sharing wisdom with us today.

That was Brigitta Hoeferle of the Center of NLP, a keynote speaker, TEDx speaker, and a communications skills trainer.

Thank you, Brigitta, and we will be with you next time.

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