Tolerance and bring fun to life | Jacek Trybuchowski | TEDxAmerican School of Warsaw
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP3uzRhMEN4 Video ID: WP3uzRhMEN4 ============================================================ Transcriber: Anastasia Nova Reviewer: Jiwoo Park Good afternoon. I don't know what time is 11, so probably. Good afternoon. My name is Patrick I. For 25 years I've been working with people, developing people. And my journey starts with tolerance. Starts when I was a small, small child. I was born and raised in the small, small city in Poland, and I was raised by my mom and my grandparents. And at that time, I didn't realize this was my first lesson of tolerance. I live in the house where everything was open. My grandparents create the atmosphere where we had a all the all the time people in our house, people that had a different beliefs. They they were coming from different cultures. Uh, and I really enjoy, I really absorb no one told me that this is what I need to understand, what I need to learn. But this was the time where I started slowly realized that this is the environment where the first lesson of tolerance was coming to to my, to myself. And, uh, this was, uh. This was one till I was 18 years old. I was living in the communist country regime country, and I live in the in the house, which people had a smile on their face. People really enjoy my grandparents. They had a they lived through two wars. So they they lived through first war when they were kids. And then the Second World were they have their own kids and they have all the reason in the world to, uh, have a less tolerance, let's say, to other people, because they attack their countries, they had to move for 25 years from one place to another. In 1945, they moved as far as possible to the west, escape from the from Russia. And but I never heard anything from uh from them wrong uh, towards other people. They never blame anybody for anything. They never said how their life was difficult. Uh. As I said, they have all the reason to do so. They even have in their house people from Germany, from Russia, people that were enemy before. And they treat them as a host and they treat them greatly at their house. So. So this is the environment where I, where I live for the first 18 years. And I, I didn't realize how valuable this will be in the future for me then I want then I went to this external world and I didn't like it. I didn't like that. I didn't have my freedom. I couldn't speak at school. What I think I was not able to explore myself, learn about myself as you do in this school, which you should greatly appreciate. So I. I had a two dreams actually, I had two goals. What I would say today one was become the famous soccer player of the world. And second, I want to leave this country of regime. I want to leave where most of the people would like to go. I want to leave to America to United States. Unfortunately, I didn't become the best soccer player in the world, though I have a lot of connections with the soccer even until right now with great players as well. However, uh, I realized my second dream or second goal. I went to us and exactly on my 18th birthday, I was flying to Detroit and I, I went there for four years and it was not so easy as today, you would think. You just go and buy the tickets and fly in eight hours. You're in New York or Chicago. At that time, we were on the other side of the curtains. We were in the regime, uh, place. And so probably one per 100,000 people were receiving visa to the United States. I used a little bit of a psychology when I went to the consulate in Poznan to get my visa, and I was I succeed. People didn't believe that I got visa, I got a visa. So I was so happy. So I went to United States and this was my second lesson in my life where I learned more tolerance. I, I love to, uh . Being explorer to freedom. I'd love to be part of this society. I made a lot of friends. Some of you are from us, so you know what I'm talking about. Uh, but I realized after four years that the center of universe moved from probably from US to Central Europe in early 90s. The changes start happening here. So I decided that I need to come back. I need to do something here. I need to, uh, share my knowledge, experience that I gained there and build this better world here. So I came back, I got lucky, I on the first month. When I came back, I met some crazy Americans that at my age that they had a crazy dreams of, uh, change the world and make the world better here in Poland, in Central Europe. So we start and we didn't talk about the business. We didn't talk about money at that time. We just were talking about this. You know, how we can make the life better, how we can make the life better of people who lives here. And this was music to my ears. I said, great, and I didn't look at my paycheck, how much money I was making, but I knew I was doing something better. So. Surprisingly, I will start working. I start working in the restaurant industry, we start developing the restaurants. And so I was like thinking, what's restaurant has to do with the tolerance, making life better, making this world better. But and I, as I've been saying for for 25 years, I've been developing people. I learned very quickly that I can as soon as I understood myself better. This was the breaking point for myself. Uh. I think I lost. I'm okay. So the breaking point in my life was when I rose my self awareness to the highest level that I could understand myself better, my impact on other people. Uh, and uh, you know, nowadays it's it's called emotional intelligence, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with. But at that time, there was no such a vocabulary. There was no such a definition. So but I knew that something is going right, and I knew that I'm learning myself. I know I'm improving myself. I've been getting a lot of feedback from from other people. Then we quickly start growing the business throughout the Poland and outside Poland. So I start thinking, uh, is this the really job I want to do? You know, building the restaurant, uh, sell chicken pizza or Starbucks, whatever, which we were doing and, uh, and we came from a very small restaurant. This was restaurant. This was the business that, uh, had a one restaurant when I started in 1993. And we when we end up, we had over 2000 restaurants across the board, across the world in, uh, pretty much on all continents. But when I understood myself, I learned that. The real joy. And that's what became my mission later on was helping the people to grow and develop people. Something obvious. So many people, so many cultures in today's world are. But how do you turn this? How do you turn your life, your job, into something that you love? And I, I love to work with people. I really love developing people, and I, I realized that. This is not about growing the people, developing the people, but it's giving them the space to grow and develop. And this is very important. This is very important that I they count every country where I go where we develop the business. And I heard a lot of feedback from the people. No, you can't you can't do this. You can introduce those value. You can't change this because this country has a different culture. Thanks God I never listened to those people. I work in Poland. I work in Czech call center, Europe, Balkans, China, US, Germany, Austria, you name it. Every country where I go, I learn. And I met great people, people that wants to be appreciated, people that want to be listened to, people that want to grow, develop no matter where I went. And there is no barriers. There's there are barriers are it's in our head only. And we build a great company. We build a great company for 25 years that I'm very proud of. And, uh, but I was so lucky to to have this chance to explore, explore myself to different culture, to different countries. It took me about 30 years to understand and learn 50 plus cultures that I've been involved by traveling, uh, developing people. And you are so lucky here because this school has, uh, what, close to 70 nations? You already getting this exposure today? Maybe you don't even realize on day to day basis, but for you, it's very natural thing that you are working and you're living, uh, you study with this group of people, and this is what tolerance is about. You don't see people different, uh, different culture, different religion, different, uh, sex. There is a the people here are one team I have. Uh, I know what I'm talking about. I have my daughter going to the school. We talk a lot about how the school is different from any other school. You earned a very privileged situation, being being able to get such exposure, being able to have friends from different parts of the world. So. Bear this in mind for a second. I will, I will make a call to action in the end. But what I'd like to say that I found my own way. Uh, to bring more tolerance to the world. I had those three lessons. I. I got the first lesson from home from my, uh, grandchild, uh, grandparents, my mom. I had a great lesson from us when I went to get exposed to the society there. I went and started working with a great company that spread the great values and had appreciations for people, for people development, for people growth. So this became my obsession, my mission, really, to work with people, to create that space for the development of the people. And this is my way of helping changing the world and make it more tolerant. I know it's just a little thing because I can't influence the whole world, but I think everybody it's important for every one of us to find this, find this way how I'm going to influence the world, how I’m gonna change the world, how I’m gonna build more tolerance, through what actions, through sports, through music, through your job. You’ll find your own way. So I'd like to make a call to action. So I'd like to hear from you guys because I think when you finish this call, you're getting a lot of great grades, certificates, but also that you are natural ambassador of tolerance. Do you have very little schools in the world that has so much different society in one place? So you're learning this it for you? It's very natural thing to to build and have and feel this more tolerance among yourself. So when you go and leave this school, you need to naturally go and spread this great news, great feelings among other people. And that's your job. You need to find your own way. So are you ready to become the ambassador of tolerance of the world when you leave this school? I didn't hear you. Are you ready to become the ambassador of tolerance when you leave this school? Yes. Excellent. Okay. Thank you very much.