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Leadership, Laughter, and Unlocking Potential with Allan Moore · Authentic Living

• 0:01
  Welcome to Authentic Living with Roxanne, a place where we have conscious conversations
• 0:08
  about things that really matter in our lives.
• 0:12
  And now here's your host, Roxanne Durhaj.
• 0:40
  Hi everyone, it's Roxanne Durhoch.
• 0:42
  Thanks for tuning in again this week with Authentic Living with Roxanne.
• 0:45
  Today I have a colleague, Alan Moore, who has spent a lot of time in different parts of the
• 0:51
  world.
• 0:51
  And Alan, thanks for coming in again.
• 0:54
  We had a little bit of a faux pas, but we'll get into that, where Alan actually recorded and
• 0:58
  we lost the recording and now we're here again.
• 1:00
  So thanks for taking the time again.
• 1:03
  Oh, my pleasure, Roxanne.
• 1:05
  I enjoyed it so much the first time.
• 1:06
  I'm happy to come back and
• 1:07
  do decided to spend some time together.
• 1:09
  The universe helped us.
• 1:10
  Perfect.
• 1:11
  So I can tell you a little bit about Alan, we're going to just jump into what he's doing
• 1:14
  out there in the world of leadership and speaking.
• 1:17
  He's traveled over 50 countries and he's culturally fluent.
• 1:22
  He also is a stand up comic, which we were just chitchatting a little bit about.
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  And he has a master's degree in leadership and has been in leadership for basically dealing
• 1:32
  experience in environment and health and safety, which is so important today, has been
• 1:38
  always for about twenty years.
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  He speaks Mandarin and he's basically worked in Taiwan, China, obviously Canada and The US.
• 1:48
  He has a new book coming out, which is called Party Crash Your Career and Be Bold, Risk
• 1:54
  Safely, and Succeed Without an Invitation.
• 1:57
  So, Alan, thanks for spending the time with us again today.
• 2:01
  My pleasure.
• 2:03
  So tell us about what you do out there in leadership and kind of what got you into the
• 2:11
  like we were talking just before we got online and you just recently done a couple of keynotes
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  in The US and what kind of got you from health and safety, which is, and kind of living all
• 2:22
  different parts of the world to what you're doing today?
• 2:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
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  I, with the leadership question, I was kind of a reluctant leader.
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  Different companies that I worked for, different sports teams that I played for would
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  just bestow this upon me.
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  And sometimes it was some attribute that I demonstrated.
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  And sometimes I think it was actually just kind of what Woody Allen says, nine tenths of
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  success is just showing up.
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  And especially with showing up with wrinkles, people think that you know what's going on.
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  So I eventually decided I'm going to legitimize this and go do a master's in leadership.
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  With regards to the safety thing, I'm still in the safety space.
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  And I just found after years of being a safety practitioner and being in leadership positions
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  that the two are merged.
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  They're very compatible with each other.
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  And so I decided to create a keynote, a number of keynote presentations that are safety
• 3:17
  leadership based.
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  And that's kind of how I've come about that.
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  So tell us about the Mandarin, because I know last time I was very intrigued that you spoke
• 3:27
  Mandarin.
• 3:27
  And do you at times bring that into the space on stage using different languages?
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  I know Alan just shared that he, because of the comedic background, I can tell you as a keynote
• 3:38
  speaker, you're always looking for those elements within your speech to pepper it in,
• 3:43
  not to become a comedian, but to be able to do regardless of what you're talking about.
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  And of course, with safety, I mean, those can be some tough with compliance and all those
• 3:53
  things, those can be tough conversations.
• 3:55
  But to be able to sprinkle in those elements of levity is really what I think captivates,
• 4:01
  holds, teaches and delivers, I would say.
• 4:04
  So tell us a little bit about what you do on stage with some of the personas and also a bit
• 4:08
  about your background speaking Mandarin.
• 4:11
  Well, the Mandarin makes its way into one my speeches, but obviously I'm speaking mostly to
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  English speaking audiences.
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  There was a client right when COVID hit actually, I got offered three consecutive gigs
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  in China, One in Beijing, Two in Beijing and one in Xi'an.
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  And of course COVID just completely shut that down.
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  So, was going to deliver those in Mandarin.
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  So, that was pretty exciting.
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  But those drifted off and they haven't quite migrated back in yet.
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  But really, Mandarin is not a huge part of what I do on stage, but the comedy is.
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  Obviously, like you said, I like the way you put it where you talk about sprinkling it in.
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  We need to talk like when I'm talking about safety leadership or sometimes I'm just doing a
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  leadership speech.
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  So I do both.
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  You're really trying to talk about the nuts and bolts, the mechanism, the gears of how that
• 5:00
  should work in a workplace setting.
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  I'm really trying to be kind of serious and talking about that in a serious way.
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  But of course, an audience is just so much more engaged if they get an opportunity to laugh,
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  they get an opportunity for levity, as you mentioned.
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  They just brighten up and I can just tell right across the room those faces that were kind of
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  like at the beginning, maybe I'm the closing keynote.
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  It's been a long day of compliance.
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  Maybe the Ministry of Minds or something has come and spoke for an hour and a half and
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  everyone's like, oh my goodness.
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  And I've got to kind of bring a little bit of excitement to kind of bring them out.
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  So the storytelling, the comedy and people love the accents, too.
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  Do these.
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  That was part of my comedic profile was the accents.
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  That's why I just pepper those in there where they're needed.
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  I don't go over the top, but where I feel they're needed, just to bring people out a
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  little more.
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  Yeah.
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  And ultimately, like to your point, like I think of when I was in the employee assistance
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  world, safety, obviously, you're sitting on those boards with, you know, health and safety,
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  occupational health and safety, labor management.
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  You know, oftentimes if you're in a manufacturing environment, bad things happen,
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  unfortunately, when accidents happen.
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  So you're talking about significant accidents that have happened and within forty eight hours
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  having someone in and 72 doing a debriefing.
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  It's really, really big stuff.
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  So to your point, you want people there are certain things you want people to walk away
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  with.
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  But in that you want them you know, I think when we play or we laugh or get light, we take
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  in that much more with messaging.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I fully agree.
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  Yeah.
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  So let's talk let's jump right into the book.
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  Talk about that.
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  And tell us about the concept of the book and kind of what are you out there trying to
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  achieve with the book in leadership?
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  Mhmm.
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  Well, basically, the book is part memoir, part self help.
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  And it's kind of tracking my journey along from when I failed grade 12, which is pretty hard to
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  fail, especially when you're taking all the easiest courses.
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  Was the school jock.
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  I was the basketball player, the soccer player.
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  I didn't care about school.
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  And I ended up failing one of the easiest courses that's available.
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  So, to go from there to just consistently be able to get into spaces where I would never be
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  invited.
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  Taiwan, going over there learning Mandarin.
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  I was never invited to Taiwan.
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  People always ask me this, Oh, did you work for a kind of a Fortune 500 company and you showed
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  you demonstrated some talent over here?
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  Or they plucked you right out of a big university and sent you over there?
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  I was like, No, I just bought a plane ticket.
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  I went over there.
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  I learned how to speak Mandarin on my own dime.
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  And I just managed to party crash.
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  Eventually, I came up with the metaphor of party crash.
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  Now, I don't try to sneak past bouncers and actually party crash or wedding crash or
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  anything like that.
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  It's purely a metaphor.
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  But I noticed as I was working with my book writing consultant, we were trying to come up
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  with a concept.
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  He kept asking me questions about the different stories.
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  And he said, oh, so you went and played semi pro soccer in Scotland.
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  You must have been invited to that.
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  They must have scouts must have flown over.
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  No, I just saw a cheap ticket to Scotland, Three Ninety Nine to Glasgow returned.
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  I and I went there and I knocked on some doors and I sat in a pub and I said, do you know
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  anybody who knows a guy who knows a guy?
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  And I just kind of party crashed.
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  And he eventually, he was like, I came up with the metaphor party crash.
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  He goes, that's it.
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  You've never been invited to anything.
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  Life as a grade 12 failure.
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  I eventually went back and I graduated.
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  Don't worry.
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  No invites were going to be extended to me in life at all from anywhere.
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  Not from trades, from universities, not from industry, nowhere.
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  So I had to party crash.
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  What I learned from it is that pretty much everybody, no matter what stage you are in your
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  career, you have the opportunity to risk safely.
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  Now I'm not talking about these massive risks where you go and buy a plane ticket to to try
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  and do your thing.
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  If you have no kids, like I had no kids at the time, go ahead.
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  But now I have kids and there's been times in my career where it's kind of gone stagnant.
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  And I'm thinking, Okay, what do I got to do?
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  I got to do something.
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  Something's got to happen.
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  Either a vertical move or a lateral move.
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  Something has to break the ice here.
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  And that's when I kind of came up with, I'm now risking safely.
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  And even Scotland was risking safely.
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  I had saved up all kinds of money.
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  I'd worked on the oil rigs at that time.
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  Before then, I'd saved up all kinds of money.
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  And a $399 to Glasgow, whether I fail and I spend two months there, I get to see a couple
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  of cool castles, I come back, it's fine.
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  So, everything I've done, people go, Woah, you must be really risk averse.
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  Woah, you get up on stage and speak.
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  No, no, no, no, no.
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  I'm terrified to speak.
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  I was terrified to go over to Scotland.
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  I don't want to make a fool of myself.
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  But the thing that gets me is like Les Browns.
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  When he talks about the ghosts that are around your bed, your deathbed, saying to you, I came
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  to you in life.
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  I told you what to do and you ignored me.
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  And now here you are on your deathbed.
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  So for me, it's those two opposing things.
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  Whenever I feel too much fear over here, I think about what Les Brown said and I say, I
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  have to do it.
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  And that's what it's about.
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  And it's really about risking.
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  And I think a lot for different reasons, like you said.
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  Like, I probably took a different route than you, right?
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  Like, I did everything early.
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  But I wasn't the you know, I think of the I went to already academically inclined school.
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  I had to do well, but then I coasted, right?
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  Like, I was a teenager.
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  And I'll never forget this, and I remember this is embarrassing, but I might as well tell you
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  because this is in alignment with what you're talking about.
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  Every year, our report cards was a book and it would be handwritten, I'm dating myself, and it
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  would be sent to the house.
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  Now there was six of us, right?
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  Six children.
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  They were all coming from different schools.
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  Older sister and I were in the same school, but we would retrieve it from the postman you know,
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  and then hide it sometimes because we thought if we got it too early, that would impact,
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  well, quote unquote, our summer in Trinidad to be summer holidays anyway.
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  And I remember that was a big thing for us.
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  This is funny because my siblings would laugh about it, right?
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  And sometimes you're like, Oh, this is good.
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  I should tell my parents I might have a better summer.
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  But I remember in Trinidad, it's GCEs, which is British from London.
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  And we wrote exams and you did the formal exams, right?
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  And we do a mock exam before we do the actual exam, right?
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  Which is like the real thing.
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  And I remember I did my mock exams and I think I did okay, nothing great.
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  And my principal and any of the girls listening to this that know me would giggle, she wrote in
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  my book to my parents.
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  She said, Mr.
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  And Mrs.
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  Ramatah, I suggest you take all that money that you're going to spend on Roxanne and for the
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  world.
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  That was written in my book, honestly, Ellen.
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  And I'm like, I'm now 16 years old, right?
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  And I remember that burned in my head, right?
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  So, you know, of course, I'm 21 years old with my first degree and I see her.
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  I see the principal in Toronto.
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  And I make a point.
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  Now we're petrified of her as teenage girls, right?
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  Because she was so strict.
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  And she woke me up.
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  She basically said, You you're coming from a privileged family, basically.
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  I think inadvertently as an adult now.
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  And I made sure I went and I caught up with her and I said, By the way, I'm Roxanne Rauwouta,
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  and she just looked at me and she nodded in that notchalong way.
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  I go, I just wanted to let you know I got my degree.
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  She goes, Lovely.
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  But it's so interesting, like some of these little stories, right?
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  Because I'm not that was harsh in retrospect, but I really, as a 16 year old, that I had
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  acumen, it woke me up.
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  Right?
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  Like I really, really challenged myself, like you, in different ways.
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  Like you said, you kind of realized coming out of grade 12, like, I got to do something here.
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  And with her little tap to be, here I was 21 years old with my degree in a different
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  country, all that stuff, doing what I wanted to do anyway.
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  So sometimes those little taps, to your point, gives you the opportunity to make changes.
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  Do you find that when you're talking to people like that and, you know, you're talking about
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  the ghosts kind of around your bed or my story even or even yours, that a lot of people come
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  up to you after and say, Oh my goodness, Alan, I so could see myself in that story?
• 13:44
  Absolutely.
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  So almost everybody has this type of story.
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  There's very few LeBron James's.
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  There's very few Adell's, Madonna's, whoever Oprah's.
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  Well, actually even Oprah.
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  No, Oprah had to party crash too.
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  She's not the great example.
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  There's so few of these people that are just where the beam of light shines down.
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  By the time they're 12 years old, we all nod and go, yeah, this one.
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  There's so few of those.
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  They're less than 0.0001.
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  So the rest of us kind of have to party crash.
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  And one of the things is that you're taking that initiative yourself and in your story,
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  that person, that principle that came up to you, they actually become an ally.
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  They're a little bit of a gatekeeper to somewhat.
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  And when you can impress upon them by kind of showing the world by getting off out in front
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  of Netflix, off your couch and out there into the world to be seen by somebody like that,
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  they become your ally.
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  Sometimes, if you're lucky, they become a mentor.
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  But even if it's a one day thing, like in your case, they can say, no, not that path, that
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  path.
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  And somebody of that, like that's a subject matter expert, right?
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  Believing, seeing something in you and believing in you and pushing on the path.
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  So really, a party crasher, you have to get out, be seen and kind of put yourself in front
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  of the Simon Cowells of the world, so to speak, because they'll say nah, or yeah, or over
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  there.
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  And I think a lot of times, like you think of where we are in the world right now with all
• 15:18
  the fear and everything, right?
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  It's real.
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  It's real.
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  But that could be debilitating if you think about it, right?
• 15:24
  If you think of the new generation coming in now to the workforce, I forget how old your
• 15:30
  children are, but my son is 23.
• 15:33
  And you'll hear the kids around that age saying, You guys had it so good.
• 15:39
  I don't know if you've heard that, Right?
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  You got out of school.
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  You know, you got jobs.
• 15:43
  You know, you have people that go on.
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  They worked for companies for thirty, thirty five years.
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  They come home with pensions.
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  We don't have those opportunities.
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  So that whole concept of party crashing, I think, makes people think it through.
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  Because really, I think we're in a phenomenal time.
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  Yes, we have a lot of geopolitical things moving around.
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  Yes, I'm not negating that.
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  But that whole concept of that you gotta kind of, I don't say you gotta step off the
• 16:10
  sidewalk.
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  You might get smacked.
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  Who hasn't been smacked?
• 16:13
  But you gotta get up again and dust off and kind of start going.
• 16:17
  But when you're talking to the, when you're in there or out there speaking, coaching, or in
• 16:21
  the different conversations that you're having and you're speaking to a younger person, how
• 16:25
  might you deliver this concept in a way that makes them think through things a bit
• 16:30
  differently?
• 16:32
  Yeah.
• 16:32
  Great.
• 16:32
  Great question.
• 16:33
  I have two teenage daughters.
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  One's 18, one's turning 16 in July.
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  And so, they're going through this kind of process right now.
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  And the one thing that I tell them is, don't worry.
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  There are so few party crashers out there that they've allowed this avenue for you to be the
• 16:51
  one.
• 16:52
  And generation by generation, and I don't like judging generations, I'm not really into it,
• 16:56
  but there are certain things that kind of there are certain threads and themes and themes.
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  And one that I found with party crashing is in my generation Gen X, there was very fewer and
• 17:08
  fewer party crashes.
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  Boomers, baby boomers, tons of party crashes.
• 17:11
  People like yourself coming over to a different country being like, Okay, I got to figure this
• 17:16
  out.
• 17:16
  And you have no choice but to figure it out.
• 17:18
  And so you have to party crash.
• 17:20
  But I tell young people, I'm like, you got an amazing opportunity as everybody's looking for,
• 17:25
  you know, this is kind of a work life balance and I want a beanbag chair or I want a
• 17:30
  treadmill at my workstation or whatever it is thereafter.
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  You have this opportunity to be the one and only party crasher or only a handful of party
• 17:39
  crashers.
• 17:40
  If you execute on this plan, you really don't have anybody standing in your way.
• 17:45
  For example, I played university soccer here in Canada and I was probably the fourth best on my
• 17:51
  team, maybe fifth.
• 17:53
  And I was like, well, nobody else on my team went to Scotland.
• 17:58
  If they had of, and if every other university team went to Scotland or England or Germany or
• 18:03
  whatever, then there wouldn't be an opportunity for me.
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  Big thanks to all the people who are more talented and more intelligent than me, there
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  are so many, for not actually pushing the envelope and party crashing, thanks to them.
• 18:16
  No, because
• 18:16
  it's all But that was like, I call it feeling up in a way, right?
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  I would say that academically, I was pretty smart.
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  But some of the girls that I went to school, one's a pediatric surgeon, the other one's a
• 18:28
  judge.
• 18:29
  And this is me.
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  I'm like, well, I'm not going go into medical.
• 18:32
  I don't think I want to be a lawyer.
• 18:34
  I don't want to become a nurse or an engineer.
• 18:37
  What do you do?
• 18:37
  Right?
• 18:38
  There's me, and then I found my path.
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  I want talk to people and help people.
• 18:43
  I wonder if they have a degree in something like that.
• 18:45
  You know, and back then, and I'm talking back in my first degree was 1987.
• 18:50
  That was like a concept, especially in The Caribbean too.
• 18:53
  Not that people don't speak, but it wasn't as open as North America or Europe, those types of
• 18:57
  things.
• 18:57
  And then I just stumbled forge, to your point.
• 19:00
  I was like, Okay, well, I'll see what's available out there.
• 19:04
  And then I go to school, go to U of T, get a psychology degree, and then went on further.
• 19:09
  But you're right, because at first I'm like, don't fit.
• 19:12
  Where do I fit academically?
• 19:13
  Because this was so academically streamed.
• 19:16
  But then realize now, all these years later, that there is a path for each one of us, but
• 19:20
  it's like being brave enough to say, I wonder if I can.
• 19:25
  And worst case scenario, you find out there's nothing there for me and you deviate and go to
• 19:29
  a different path, right?
• 19:31
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 19:33
  And that's another thing I tell my kids, like my daughter, I'm very proud of her decision.
• 19:37
  She's decided to go into the electrical program at the Southern Alberta Institute of
• 19:42
  Technology.
• 19:42
  A great school, great program.
• 19:44
  But I told her, said, that might not be for you.
• 19:47
  Especially when you get out there on a residential site that's half built, you're
• 19:51
  pulling wire and minus 40.
• 19:52
  You might find that's not for you, right?
• 19:55
  Yeah.
• 19:56
  You know, I worked in minus 40 on the oil rigs and I was like, this isn't for me.
• 19:59
  I did one winter and then I moved on.
• 20:01
  Tell young people, I say, I was 43 when I found out for sure what I wanted to do.
• 20:08
  And that was being a keynote speaker.
• 20:10
  Forty three.
• 20:11
  And I went and I tried all kinds of different things.
• 20:14
  Trial and error, trial and error.
• 20:16
  And some people get lucky.
• 20:17
  My wife, she knew she was a teacher by the time she was 15.
• 20:20
  She got out of school, did her four years, boom, into teaching.
• 20:23
  And she's the most marvelous teacher ever.
• 20:26
  So, knows.
• 20:26
  Lucky her.
• 20:27
  But for the rest of us, you just have to keep crashing in.
• 20:30
  And with each crash, it's not a waste of time.
• 20:34
  There's this kind of sunk cost fallacy that goes on in our heads.
• 20:38
  I spent four years at this degree.
• 20:40
  I did a Bachelor of Science.
• 20:42
  So I got to go in the science stream.
• 20:43
  Not necessarily.
• 20:45
  That science that you built things while you were doing that.
• 20:49
  You built time management skills and the ability to do things that you weren't
• 20:53
  comfortable with and to talk to a professor into maybe getting a retake on a test.
• 20:58
  Whatever you did, you can apply that to the next one.
• 21:01
  And you go and crash there.
• 21:03
  It's not the right one.
• 21:04
  You go and crash there.
• 21:05
  You're building.
• 21:06
  These are little building blocks.
• 21:07
  And by the time I was ready to get on stage, I had all these building blocks, all these
• 21:12
  stories that I could fall back on.
• 21:14
  So, it really is a journey.
• 21:18
  And I think it's listening.
• 21:19
  I often, with my son's name is RJ, I'll say RJ, this is when we talk now, right?
• 21:24
  Because I'm steeped in my career and started the cycle and I was lucky to be able to have
• 21:28
  found something.
• 21:29
  So in my 20s, was in frontline trauma with the police.
• 21:32
  And then I went along, then went into corporate, loved speaking and training
• 21:36
  corporately, then went on and flipped over.
• 21:38
  But of course, the speaking business with keynotes and stuff, that's a whole other
• 21:41
  iteration from corporate.
• 21:43
  He said, Mom, how did you end up there?
• 21:46
  I say to young people or to him when he will allow me to have a perspective, I say, Follow
• 21:53
  the pebbles in the road, I said, Because I can tell you all the things I've tried and I can
• 21:58
  tell you what I didn't like.
• 22:00
  And what all it allowed me to do was to say, So I didn't I taught grad school.
• 22:05
  I liked it?
• 22:06
  Yeah, not so much.
• 22:07
  But when I did corporate teaching, I loved, loved it, right?
• 22:10
  Because there were experiential teaching, those types of things.
• 22:14
  So I said, when you're starting off, like to your point with your daughter, just go out and
• 22:18
  try it.
• 22:18
  What's the worst that can happen?
• 22:20
  You're gonna go, dad was right.
• 22:22
  Maybe I should have thought about the temperature a bit, but she's gonna learn how to
• 22:26
  work in that environment.
• 22:27
  It's going to be a lot of male dominated kind of environment if she's going into that.
• 22:31
  She's going get skills from being around that environment to what it means to be a female in
• 22:35
  those environments.
• 22:36
  She's going to learn lots of different skills to be able to function I'd probably apply that
• 22:40
  and go somewhere else, or you never know, she'd be staying in it.
• 22:43
  But I always say it's we don't know when we're 21, right?
• 22:47
  Like, do you know?
• 22:48
  You think you know, right?
• 22:49
  And now you look back and you go, boy, I thought I had everything figured out.
• 22:54
  And now at this point, I realize to your point about party crashing, it's really about like
• 23:00
  you're like testing things to see, okay, this is good, this is not good, oh my goodness,
• 23:05
  never again, Or I want a whole lot more of this.
• 23:10
  So I wonder with this concept, Alan, and I love the concept, if we think about different
• 23:14
  environments, like corporate environments and things like that, how do you or do you, or
• 23:19
  maybe something that you're thinking about doing, give this concept to leaders.
• 23:25
  Because I think if, as a leader, right, if you're leading teams or business units or
• 23:29
  whatever, you're trying to bring out this out of everybody around you.
• 23:33
  Right?
• 23:34
  You're wanting them to tinker, to play, to make mistakes.
• 23:40
  So how do you kind of teach those concepts in leadership?
• 23:43
  Because I think that would be a fascinating approach on how you bring that out in others.
• 23:49
  Yeah, that's a great question.
• 23:51
  And I think that a lot of leaders, modern leaders, they think they want this.
• 23:55
  They think that they want somebody who's just entered their organization to be innovative and
• 24:00
  to bring their talents to the forefront.
• 24:03
  And I think they think they want that because they've probably been to that Cirque du Soleil,
• 24:08
  the former president of Cirque du Soleil, where they talked about how they set up their shows.
• 24:13
  I don't know if you've ever have you seen one of their shows?
• 24:14
  Oh, I've been to several.
• 24:16
  I love
• 24:17
  them.
• 24:17
  Marvelous.
• 24:20
  Sometimes.
• 24:20
  Yes.
• 24:21
  Apparently I went to, you know, when a speech that was the former director, I can't remember,
• 24:26
  Cirque du Soleil was going around the circuit doing the speaking business and said that she
• 24:31
  interviews people and says, what can you do?
• 24:34
  And the person comes in and say, I'm a contortionist.
• 24:37
  The other person comes in, they say, I'm on a motorcycle with no hands juggling chainsaws.
• 24:41
  That's what I do.
• 24:41
  Then they try to, they're like, that's so cool.
• 24:43
  It has to be in our show.
• 24:45
  And they try to build this weird story around all of these interesting people.
• 24:49
  The person on the ribbon who's upside down spinning around.
• 24:52
  And they just that's why the story is a little bit odd.
• 24:55
  And her point was your organization should function like this.
• 24:59
  When a person comes into your organization, you say, who are you?
• 25:02
  What's your special gift?
• 25:03
  Are you a keynote speaker?
• 25:05
  My company, I've been with the same company for sixteen years.
• 25:08
  They didn't know that I was a keynote type speaker or even a speaker of any description
• 25:13
  until I did it as a side gig and started my business, which they approved of.
• 25:17
  And they're like, wow, oh, I didn't know you could do that.
• 25:20
  So, it's about I think that leaders, challenge to leaders is not only saying that you want
• 25:26
  that, but saying that you need that from your employees.
• 25:31
  Going in there, I mean, you've been hired to do this one thing to, I don't know, sample the
• 25:35
  soil in Fort McMurray.
• 25:37
  That's your thing and I need you to do that thing.
• 25:40
  And do it forever or something.
• 25:42
  Or if you show leadership, maybe we'll put you in leadership.
• 25:45
  But it's this thin column and that person actually might have this incredibly broad skill
• 25:53
  set that you wouldn't know about.
• 25:54
  And that might be super applicable to your company.
• 25:57
  I mean, maybe they should be in sales.
• 25:59
  Maybe they're completely in the wrong thing.
• 26:01
  Business development.
• 26:02
  Or maybe they're meant for HR.
• 26:04
  Maybe like, what are you doing out there?
• 26:06
  Sampling the soil.
• 26:07
  You're a people person.
• 26:08
  Everyone loves you and you understand people and you're a listener.
• 26:11
  You're in HR.
• 26:13
  You know what I mean?
• 26:13
  And I think leaders want to be that person who they think they want that.
• 26:18
  But I don't think they actually execute in that way.
• 26:21
  If that makes sense.
• 26:22
  Kind of scary though, right?
• 26:23
  Because you may have such we want diversity because we know diversity of thought brings
• 26:29
  innovation, right?
• 26:30
  But sometimes you're like, woah, Alan's so different, right?
• 26:34
  I think the more you get to know someone, I talk a lot about authenticity, but once you
• 26:40
  drill down, like I think of your story compared to mine, grew up in Trinidad And Tobago in a
• 26:45
  rural village, went to, like I said, an all girl high school, played the steel pan, toured
• 26:50
  Canada at age 13.
• 26:52
  Right?
• 26:53
  All these things.
• 26:54
  And then when you kind of drill down and find out who people really are, which is what I
• 26:58
  think I hear you saying, they might be the person that's testing the soil up there, but
• 27:03
  they have an identity and a thought map or values and beliefs, and you brought them onto
• 27:10
  the company.
• 27:11
  If you could drill into that depth and breadth of who that person is, like with Cirque, like
• 27:16
  when you look at it, I sit there and go, the brain of the person that came up with these
• 27:21
  concepts blows my mind.
• 27:23
  But if that's what they're drilling into, if other leadership environments come up with
• 27:28
  that, what could they achieve?
• 27:30
  Could be fantastic.
• 27:31
  Right?
• 27:32
  Yeah.
• 27:32
  And wonderful for their organizational their organization and wonderful for the people.
• 27:38
  The people to say like, yeah, I'm gonna be I'm gonna party crash this thing.
• 27:42
  I'm gonna try and figure out a way.
• 27:43
  Because sometimes an introverted person, how are you going to know that they're meant to
• 27:47
  speak on stage?
• 27:48
  How are you going to know that they're meant to be in business development or whatever facet or
• 27:53
  even be a leader for that matter?
• 27:54
  You might not know.
• 27:56
  So it's kind of empowering the leaders to look at their people that way.
• 28:00
  Their year end fireside chat, professional development review, whatever you want to call
• 28:04
  it, is geared towards that instead of being geared towards what went well, what didn't go
• 28:09
  well.
• 28:10
  I mean, you both know what went well.
• 28:11
  What are your three objectives for the next fiscal year?
• 28:14
  Why
• 28:17
  do we keep doing this?
• 28:19
  Ridiculous.
• 28:19
  It's so silly.
• 28:21
  I've done about 16 of them now and this is absurd.
• 28:23
  So, empowering the leaders, empowering them to be party crashers to let them know that, hey,
• 28:29
  I'm here.
• 28:29
  We want people to be this way.
• 28:31
  Or even if be like an open I just think you talk fireside chat.
• 28:35
  If that concept of if I had nothing to lose and I was in this psychologically safe environment,
• 28:42
  in my position, how would I party crash?
• 28:46
  Right?
• 28:46
  Like, what could you pick out of someone's mind?
• 28:50
  That could be completely absurd, but you could probably get a lot of potentially amazing ideas
• 28:56
  that would come from people when they're just like, oh, instead of having the annual
• 29:01
  Christmas thing, you have a safe kind of environment where we're just going to play,
• 29:06
  right?
• 29:07
  Which I think of party crashing as almost like playful thoughts, which playful thought brings
• 29:11
  innovation, and that people would just bring something that you would never think about.
• 29:17
  And then what would that do to your competitor?
• 29:19
  If you had that kind of environment, with that openness of thought, you might probably usurp,
• 29:23
  you know, and speed ahead that much more.
• 29:26
  So Alan, tell us about the book.
• 29:29
  Tell us where it's at.
• 29:30
  I'm sure people are like, I'm going to start party crashing, or I have been party crashing
• 29:34
  and I want to know where I sit on, you know, where I fit in this book.
• 29:38
  Tell everybody about the book, when it's coming, where they can get it, all those types
• 29:42
  of things.
• 29:43
  Yeah, you bet.
• 29:44
  I just went through the I'm going through Friesen Press.
• 29:47
  They're taking the book over the finish line.
• 29:49
  The manuscript is done.
• 29:50
  It's received
• 29:51
  the It's received the first evaluation from the editor.
• 29:56
  And so now it's going into content edit and then the artwork is being added.
• 30:00
  I'm going to add some photographs and stuff.
• 30:01
  It just kind of brightens up the stories and things like I've got the cover done.
• 30:05
  So it's just about putting the finishing touches on it.
• 30:08
  And this process, I think, takes about two and a half to three months.
• 30:12
  Hard to believe, but just to cross the T's and dot the I's.
• 30:16
  And so I think this book should be by, yeah, probably about June, this book should be
• 30:23
  available.
• 30:24
  And I believe we're going to probably have it on Amazon, at least, if not Kindle possibly as
• 30:29
  well.
• 30:29
  And I'm going to do an audiobook.
• 30:32
  I wasn't going to at first, but enough people have asked me for that and said, Hey, I don't
• 30:38
  do the reading.
• 30:38
  I have long distance trips every day, forty five minutes into the city.
• 30:41
  Scotty, you got to have an audio book, I'm going to do that too.
• 30:44
  Fantastic.
• 30:44
  Closer to when you get there, maybe you'd come back and talk a little bit before it comes out.
• 30:50
  Obviously, other than that, you speak, you do different things.
• 30:54
  So tell the other services that you offer and where people get ahold of you there in the
• 30:58
  interim till the book launches.
• 31:01
  Absolutely.
• 31:02
  So I've got a side business where I am a keynote speaker and I usually a closing keynote
• 31:08
  speaker.
• 31:09
  I bring a lot of energy to the stage.
• 31:11
  If you've got one of those kind of conference days that's been going on and on and on and on,
• 31:15
  I come in and I just bring the stories and the humour, the accents and the kind of make you
• 31:22
  think, really make people think.
• 31:24
  And I also have the interaction too.
• 31:26
  It's not just me as a talking head up there.
• 31:28
  So if you're interested, AlanJamesMoore.com is where you can have a look at all of my videos,
• 31:34
  my demo reel, information packages, brochures about my different keynotes.
• 31:39
  Or I love to chat.
• 31:40
  I love to go on LinkedIn.
• 31:42
  I always call it the adults table because no one's throwing insults at each other.
• 31:46
  I can't take it.
• 31:48
  Silly Twitter or whatever, X or whatever.
• 31:50
  I can't take this nonsense.
• 31:51
  So I hang out on LinkedIn.
• 31:53
  And yeah, same thing.
• 31:55
  Alan James Moore, look for me there.
• 31:57
  Hit me up.
• 31:57
  Start a conversation.
• 31:59
  I love to chat about safety, leadership, motivation, party crashing, whatever.
• 32:04
  And voices.
• 32:06
  And voices.
• 32:07
  Yes,
• 32:08
  I have voices in my head.
• 32:10
  Alan, thanks so much for being here.
• 32:12
  For everyone, thanks for hanging out again.
• 32:14
  What am I taking away?
• 32:15
  I think the concept that I love that Alan's coming up is you can always party crash.
• 32:21
  Just think about he talked a little bit about when you feel like you're a little bit kind of
• 32:25
  maybe steady or maybe a little bit stagnant.
• 32:28
  Like when you think, I need a little something to start to kind of look around.
• 32:33
  And it doesn't even I think sometimes we think it has to be your professional life.
• 32:37
  It doesn't necessarily have to just be your professional life.
• 32:39
  It could be any part of your life and think, maybe how could I party crash that particular
• 32:44
  part of my life to add a little bit of, you know, kind of chutzpah to what kind of is going
• 32:48
  on out there.
• 32:50
  So for everyone, my book, Aroir, Return on Relationships, is available.
• 32:54
  But if you wanna know how authentically connected you are in relationships, go to
• 32:57
  roxanneverhodge.com for such quiz.
• 33:00
  We'll send you back a little minute report with some next steps if you wanna further enhance
• 33:04
  your skills.
• 33:05
  Alan, again, thanks so much.
• 33:06
  And for everybody, thanks for hanging out with us.
• 33:08
  If you like this episode, make sure you go on there and give us a review and so we can feed
• 33:13
  that back to Alan so he knows what an amazing job he did.
• 33:16
  Alright.
• 33:17
  Take care, everyone.
• 33:18
  We'll talk to you soon.
• 33:19
  Bye bye.
• 33:25
  Thanks for tuning in to Authentic Living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive,
• 33:31
  healthy change.
• 33:32
  Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach.
• 33:36
  To work with Roxanne, visit roxannederhaj.com/blueprint.
• 33:42
  We'll see you next time on Authentic Living with Roxanne.