Derek Arden: Welcome to Monday Night Live, the podcast that goes all around the world on YouTube. Tonight I’ve got Anna Lecat with me. Anna is in Paris at the moment, and Anna has traveled the world. Let me tell you a little bit about Anna’s extraordinary story. Anna was born in Ukraine, in the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, moved to China when she was 17, learned fluent Mandarin, became a translator, got a business going in China where the branding is in America, and now lives in Paris. What an extraordinary story, Anna. Welcome to Monday Night Live. Thanks for joining us.
Anna Lecat: Thank you for having me here. I’m very, very happy to talk to you.
Derek Arden: Tell us your story, starting from square one in Ukraine. It sounds fascinating.
Anna Lecat: I grew up in a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk. It is now called Dnipro. It was Russian-speaking, as you said. We had to speak Russian because of the Russification of our culture, and speaking Ukrainian was not really okay. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how minorities were treated. What happened to me was that my father kept teaching me that we have to question everything and that we shouldn’t just follow authority. Yet when I was six years old and going to the first day of school, my parents sat me down and said, “Anna, no matter what happens at school, do not tell anyone we are Jewish. It is dangerous for us.” So when I was sitting there waiting for my name to be called, and we were supposed to get up, say our name, and then say what ethnic majority or minority we belonged to, I decided that I was going to question even him, since he told me to do so. I got up and said, “Hello, my name is Anna, and I am Jewish.” I ended up being the only officially Jewish kid in a school of hundreds. That started this process where I was trying to make friends with other kids who were openly hating me as a Jew because antisemitism was supported by the system. It was official. So I decided I was going to become a Jewish friend of many. I would invite kids to our house and introduce them to my family, to our rituals, and we would read books together. They would meet my parents. All the kids went through this process from saying, “We hate all the Jews, but you are okay,” to, “It is so interesting here, we learn so much,” to ultimately, “We are sorry for what we said in the past. We love and respect you.” When I saw that this process was possible, I think it became a very formative moment in my life. For me to connect with other people, even if they hate me, stereotype me, or have some kind of bias about me, all I need to do is show up, show them who I am, be authentic, and things can happen. Connection can exist. I moved from Ukraine to China at 17. I got into a Chinese university and then built several businesses in China. My dream was always to become an American, and finally, by 30, I was able to move to America, become an American, and build a business there. Then I met a French man, who is my husband now, and we moved to France. So now I am on my third immigration. I speak all these languages and have faced many different cultures and adapted to them.
Derek Arden: You moved very quickly there. You moved to China when you were 17. Is that when you spoke Mandarin? Did you speak Mandarin before you went to China?
Anna Lecat: No. What happened was that when it was time to go to university, my mind was really set on leaving Ukraine, going to other countries, and discovering the world. That was when the Soviet Union had fallen apart, and the borders were closed. It was almost impossible to go study in other countries. We were not able to get visas to go anywhere. So I went to hand in my admission papers to university, and I asked at the admissions office, “What do I need to study here so I can get a visa to go to a different country?” They told me, “If you study English, French, or German, you will probably never go to those countries because of the political situation. But China has started a program with Ukrainian universities. Ukrainians who study Chinese well enough to get into a Chinese university and pass the exams can get a visa and scholarship.” For me, it was like, where is China? I came home to my parents and said, “I’m going to study Chinese because I’m going to China, because I want to leave Ukraine.” Everybody in my family was skeptical because there were so many ideas about China at that point. People said they only eat rice, they are poor, underdeveloped, and there is nothing interesting there. I said, “You don’t know anything about China. I don’t know anything about China. I’m going to go and find out.” I applied, got into the program, and China sent books and teachers to the universities to teach us. It took me a year to learn Chinese well enough to get into university in China. Then I went to Chengdu, Sichuan province, which is in the middle of the country, and there were maybe 20 foreigners in a city of millions of people. It forced me to speak with Chinese people and travel all around China. After a year of studying, traveling, and backpacking all over China and Tibet, I became fluent. If you speak to me on the phone and do not see me, you will think I am Chinese. There is no accent because I had to survive and figure out how to be in that country.
Derek Arden: Wow. And you went on your own? You went to the middle of China on your own as a 17-year-old girl?
Anna Lecat: Yes. I really wanted to get out and go into the world.
Derek Arden: What did your mom and dad think about that?
Anna Lecat: They were supportive. First of all, they couldn’t stop me.
Derek Arden: I can see from your personality that there wasn’t a chance of that, was there?
Anna Lecat: No. But at the same time, my father had me promise that I would write to him, and I wrote to him every day. I sent him letters every day. I now have all those letters because he saved all of them. It is actually really interesting because from there on, I started this practice of journaling every day and thinking through and reflecting on myself, on the world, on what was going on with me, and how the world affected me. From there, I started falling in love with relationships, communication, words, and how words matter, how communication matters so that we can stay in connection. Looking at those letters now, through the whole year, every day, I notice there is a repeating theme. I kept saying to him, “It is amazing. I am exposed to all these different cultures. I spent a month in Tibet. I went to all these different provinces in China. And the amazing thing is that I come with me no matter where I go. I am still there. No matter how different my outside world is, my internal world is still up to me.” Recently, rereading those letters, I saw that at 17 years old, I was already realizing there is this conflict between the external and internal.
Derek Arden: What about danger? At 17, in a foreign country, a very different foreign country, didn’t you feel threatened?
Anna Lecat: At 17, I think we are so naive. I was very naive and brave. For me, it was more important to discover others. Because I spoke Chinese fluently, I could understand. Also, I was coming from Dnipropetrovsk, and it was pretty scary to grow up in the Soviet Union where I grew up. The streets were not safe. The Dnipro region is right next to the Donetsk region, which is controlled by Russia. They are coming close, but Dnipro is not under Russian control. It is under rockets every day, there are bombs there. With my street smarts from there, I was fine in China. China was actually much safer. And now China is so much safer than many places in the world. There is very little stealing, there are no killings. It is very safe to be on the streets in China, and it was already like that then. I spoke the language, I was street smart, and because my focus is to connect with others, I am very good at looking people in the eyes and reading people. I think that because I was traveling alone all over China, the skill of understanding people and being able to predict what is going to happen developed.
Derek Arden: Is Chinese body language the same as European body language?
Anna Lecat: No, not at all. That is what I had to learn. It is funny to see Chinese people look at me when I speak to them. They are mesmerized by how somebody who does not look Chinese can move like a Chinese person. When we learn different languages, the nonverbal also needs to match for us to really connect with someone. So yes, my nonverbals are also Chinese when I start thinking in Chinese or when I go back to China.
Derek Arden: There are a lot of Chinese students where I live in Surrey, in the university, and I have noticed they are not very keen on looking English people in the eye. Is that just because they are in a foreign country, or is that normal?
Anna Lecat: No, it is not done. Eye contact is not the same in Asia in general as it is in the West. There is much less eye contact. It is impolite to look people in the eyes, and that is not how they connect. Nowadays, it is very interesting because I give workshops on conflict and having hard conversations. I work in Mandarin. I go to China every three months and give workshops in Chinese. I actually teach Chinese audiences how to do eye contact because Chinese people who go and work or study in the West know that they do not develop trust fast enough because they do not know eye contact. So we work for hours together on what is going on when you look somebody in the eye. If we grow up in a culture where we do it all the time, we are used to it. But even in Western culture, looking somebody in the eye for a long time gets really uncomfortable. We do it a lot in my workshops because a lot happens. We feel a lot. We can get flooded with emotions, sensations, and discomfort. So it is helpful to work on that.
Derek Arden: You studied in China for three years and then became an entrepreneur. Tell us about that.
Anna Lecat: I started my first business after first wanting to become a researcher. I decided to study all ethnic minorities in China. There are 55 of them, and that is fascinating. Growing up as part of an ethnic minority, I was fascinated to understand how ethnic minorities in other countries survive and thrive. I visited every one of the 55 ethnic minorities in China. That is why I was so fascinated by Tibet, because Tibetan survival is a whole different story. I wanted to become a researcher, and then I went back to school for a master’s degree. I studied in Budapest, Hungary, at Central European University, and I got a degree in diplomacy and international relations. Recruiters from the United Nations came to recruit from our school, and I was so excited. I thought, “I can be a diplomat. Look at me. I speak all these languages, and I am so obsessed with connection. I can be a good diplomat.” And I was told by people at the United Nations, “If you want to have immediate impact with your character, go into entrepreneurship because there you can have more control. If you work for nongovernmental organizations, you might work for years and years on something, and then it is still up to member states.” So I did not go into diplomacy. I went back to China and started my first business there. It has been really interesting. I still have business in China, and there was actually a new culture shock for me when I started doing business in China because I learned that we have different sets of morals. I did not know it was possible. I grew up thinking we have one set of morals. I found out that is not the case. That opened my mind even more. Instead of judging people by what I think should be happening between humans in business, I should know what they think and operate within that. I would still make decisions based on my morals, but I would be less frustrated and less angry, and much calmer in my decision-making process if I understood that people grew up with a different set of morals.
Derek Arden: How different are the morals? We need to know this.
Anna Lecat: For example, I grew up being told that it is not okay to lie. You always need to tell the truth. In my first business negotiations in China, I caught somebody in a lie, and I was so proud to point it out to them. Everybody in the meeting just shrugged, like, “Okay, let’s keep going now that we know the truth.” There was no big, “How could you?” There was no shaming. Then I asked about it, and they said, “Well, this is business savvy. Figure it out.” You figure it out. Think harder about what is going on. Pay more attention. That was good to know.
Derek Arden: Is China fairly similar to America in that then, in a negotiation? Is it okay to lie? I ask that question to my audiences in the UK and get a very mixed reaction.
Anna Lecat: When I moved to the States and started doing business there, I found it so much easier to do business in the States than in China. I could not believe how upfront people were about business, what they wanted to do, and what they wanted to achieve. I noticed this in my own experience, so I am not generalizing. I did not do a study on this, so this is just from my experience. In my own business, talking to a customer in the United States, asking them why we were doing this, what they wanted to achieve, and how much they wanted to pay would lead to three very clear, straightforward answers. As long as I could provide the service exactly how they wanted it, if it matched their purpose and I could provide it at the price they asked for, we would succeed with that customer. There was no need to think further. It was very straightforward because my customers were much more focused on productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, moving along, competing, and winning than anything else. In China, negotiations were much more complex.
Derek Arden: What was the product you were manufacturing in China and selling into the U.S.?
Anna Lecat: It was actually a service. We promised American companies that we would produce their products in China while protecting their IP. We promised that their products would not be copied in China. So we set up the whole operation guaranteeing that their intellectual property was protected. It was a supply chain management company. We were industry agnostic, and still are. The company still exists, although it is much more difficult to run the business now because of the tariffs. It did not matter to us what we were producing. What mattered was that it was important to protect the IP. We worked in machinery, electronics, medical devices, safety devices, and fashion. We guaranteed protection, and we were able to protect it. This company has now been in business for 25 years.
Derek Arden: How many people did you employ?
Anna Lecat: We had 50 people in the office, and we worked with hundreds of different factories.
Derek Arden: And this was your business, and you were the entrepreneur?
Anna Lecat: Founder and CEO, yes.
Derek Arden: Congratulations on that. That is fantastic. Tell us about the work you do on conflict and the workshops you do, because when we first spoke, you were in Malta. Last week, you were in Dublin. Tell us all about that.
Anna Lecat: The workshop is called Loving Conflict. I wrote a book about it, also called Loving Conflict.
Derek Arden: Show us. And where can we get that book?
Anna Lecat: Amazon, or anywhere books are sold. It is also on Kindle. I lead a very interactive workshop where we learn how to have hard conversations, and I use tango as a metaphor. I am a tango dancer, and as I teach people how to move, lead, and follow in tango, we talk about how to listen, how to question, and how to connect with people. It is a very somatic way of learning how to conflict better. It started with my research on conflict. I wrote a book and developed a framework. Then I noticed, as I started teaching it, that a conversation about difficult conversations is itself difficult. People think about examples and go into, “I don’t talk to my mother,” or, “I cannot work with my business partner anymore because we are so polarized.” So I wanted to bring in an element of fun, interaction, and movement with the body so that we can relax into it and notice that yes, we can connect with another human if we pay attention to ourselves, if we breathe, if we co-regulate with them, and if we listen to them well. I do this in French, English, Russian, and Mandarin. I travel all over the world, and big conferences and companies hire me to work with their teams. They set up retreats and invite me for four hours or for a whole-day retreat, and we dance and talk about hard conversations.
Derek Arden: How did you get into that? It sounds very different from what you were doing in China and the U.S. in your business. Then you switched into conflict. Is that in your DNA because you were born in Ukraine?
Anna Lecat: I think first of all, it is in my DNA as an entrepreneur to keep reinventing myself. Maybe I am naive, but I don’t really think things are not possible. I notice that there is something I want to share with people, and I start building. I go and make phone calls, I try, and I offer. Specifically with conflict, look, I am in the middle of several major conflicts in the world right now. I am Ukrainian, and there is a war in my country. I am Jewish, and I have family in Israel, and there is a conflict in the Middle East. I have business between China and America, and there is a major trade war between these two countries. Every day, I am having these conversations. My husband is French, my mom is Ukrainian, she lives with us, and my kids speak all these different languages. It is constant for me: what happens when we come from different cultures, different political views, or we look different? How do we connect? It seemed like a natural development for me to think about it. How was I able to go through three immigrations and connect with people, build businesses, and have amazing friends along the way? Is there some kind of secret sauce? I wrote a book and kept trying to tell people about it. Then I noticed that instead of standing on stage, there was one day when I was giving a keynote and I looked around. Everyone was sitting there, and I thought, oh my God, they are sitting there. I got down from the stage and said, “Can we have some music? Can we have interactions with each other? Can we talk? Can we bring microphones and ask people what they think?” It became very interactive. From then on, I realized that because I am so obsessed with connections, I am actually a very good facilitator. I can feel the room, and I know who wants to talk now. So I go and give them the microphone and ask them a question. I think my whole life of traveling and connecting led me to this.
Derek Arden: Come on then. What is your secret sauce?
Anna Lecat: My secret sauce is that I listen ready to change my mind.
Derek Arden: And what would you recommend for the three conflicts you have talked about that are going on in the world now? They seem to have got a little bit out of hand, haven’t they?
Anna Lecat: What I do in my own life is this. When the war in Ukraine started, I couldn’t speak to Russian people in my community here. I was already living in France, and I couldn’t speak to Russian people. I couldn’t hear the Russian language in the house. We said, okay, we are going to only speak Ukrainian from now on. We are going to forget Russian culture. We were seeing Putin and aggression everywhere, even in Russian songs. I grew up singing Russian songs and reciting Russian poetry. But the fact that I was writing a book about connecting with people different from us influenced me. I thought, okay, I can’t do this. I cannot just erase a whole ethnic group from myself and from my life because there is aggression from their political leader. So I started listening to the Russians on my street, my neighbors, asking them questions and listening ready to change my mind. I ended up realizing that they are also afraid for their survival. They also care about their families. There is always common ground, even if there are some major things we disagree on. Some Russian people changed their mind. Some shared that they do not support the regime, that they will do everything possible to change it, and that they will do everything possible to help Ukraine. They gave money, time, and jobs to Ukrainians who were coming in. I feel that I was willing first, and then able, to listen to them and build a bridge. The same happened when the conflict started in Israel and Palestine. There was a group we put together with people who supported Palestinians and Israelis, and we talked once a week on Zoom. It was incredibly difficult. It felt like open-heart surgery every time. We were all crying. It was unbearable. And yet it felt so necessary for us to talk because we were building a bridge. I am not saying these bridges can resolve conflicts and wars. However, they can if many of us are building the bridges. Again, I am naive here. I am just going to continue doing what I am doing, hoping there will be some impact.
Derek Arden: I don’t think you are naive at all, but we will debate that later. Finally, what about America and China and the tariffs?
Anna Lecat: I cannot do anything about tariffs. However, my conflict right now between my Chinese company and my American clients is not with tariffs. My problem is all the propaganda. When I speak to my American clients about my Chinese team nowadays, there is zero trust. There was already not much trust, but now whatever comes from China is completely mistrusted in the States, and vice versa. When I speak to my Chinese team, which I have hired and trained for years and years, now there is doubt about any fact coming from there. We have engineering teams working together, and it is a nightmare to bridge right now because of everything they see on TV and in newspapers. That is where I work most: to explain and to say to either Chinese or Americans that they are in an information bubble, in an echo chamber, and they are only getting information that confirms their beliefs. It is very difficult and uncomfortable for people to step out of it. That is where I sit every day. Every conversation in this conflict is about what is real, what is actually happening. I bring news from China, for example, and talk about that news to my American clients or teams, and vice versa, to see if they would consider that there is a slightly different reality on the other side.
Derek Arden: Anna, how do you fit all this into your diary when you are still bringing up three multilingual children?
Anna Lecat: You mean how do I fit it into my schedule?
Derek Arden: Yes. What does your schedule look like, and how do you do it?
Anna Lecat: I exercise a lot. I have a lot of energy, and this work gives me so much energy. Every time I have a call with a client or do a workshop, I come back with so much extra energy because I feel so aligned with my purpose. It feels so right to be doing it. Every time I see that there is a possibility of a bridge, it gives me energy. Last week, there was a man who said he does not talk to his 14-year-old daughter, that communication is completely broken. We worked on it. There were 150 people in the room, he was in the hot seat, and we all worked on it. He left saying, “I know exactly why I am going to talk to her. I know how to do it.” Other people who had successfully bridged breakdowns of communication with their teenagers shared with him how they had done it. So he knows it is possible, and he left saying, “Okay, now I know. I am going to do it.” For me, thinking that I did something to affect a father talking to his teenage daughter, I do not want to sleep. I just want to keep going.
Derek Arden: I understand that, but you are also running a business between China and America at the same time. You must be doing that when you are on the cycling machine on Zoom in the gym.
Anna Lecat: I also delegate well.
Derek Arden: Well, Anna, we have nearly run out of time. Hold your book up for us again so that we can see it clearly. For anyone watching this on YouTube or listening to the podcast, it is Loving Conflict by Anna Lecat. Anna, tradition is that you give us one last tip from your experiences going forward for 2026 and 2027. What would that tip be?
Anna Lecat: Listen ready to change your mind. I think that if we do not do that, we do not have permission to have a conversation because it is not a conversation if we are not ready to change our mind.
Derek Arden: Listen ready to change your mind. Anna Lecat, thanks for joining us. Can I ask members of Monday Night Live to give Anna a round of applause in the normal Monday Night Live way? Thanks so much for joining us, and I hope you will join us again at some stage. Thanks to Patricia Frit for introducing you to me. She coached you on your TED Talk in Graz. That is the connection.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. She is amazing. That is what it is all about: connections. Thank you. Thank you so much.
You can find out more on Anna’s website at annalecat.com.