A speaker describes using his position as the only North American at a Taiwanese company to volunteer as a liaison for visiting colleagues. He developed a personal mantra, WWPCD (What Would a Party Crasher Do), to push himself into uncomfortable social situations and build confidence as a trainable skill.
You don't know unless you ask. And I said, look, you've got all these Americans that are going to be coming over from the different departments trying to set up, whether it's HR, health and safety, environment, whatever it is. Why don't I greet them and take them around? I'm the only North American in the company. There's 200 people there. I'm the only one that's from North America. The Taiwanese, they didn't know where to take these guys when they came in, like at night. Where do we take them to eat? What do they want to eat? What do they want to talk about? A lot of them, their English wasn't great. And I said that to the company. I can be that person. I can be the foreign liaison. I even gave it a fancy name. And they were like, great idea! So, you have to put yourself out there as uncomfortable.
Yeah, some people aren't that intuitive. So, some people will see a situation like that and just feel helpless. How do we start kind of coaxing the flame, coaxing the So that the ideas can start coming to the surface and we could start ending up with solutions and stuff that's not about laying people off but finding out, let's get them to work within their superpowers.
Yeah, I think that the first thing is adopting the philosophy of WWPCD. My wife laughs every time I say it. We're at a big Christmas party. There's 1,000 people there at the Telus Convention Centre downtown. And oddly, I feel comfortable on stage. I don't feel comfortable going to a table and interrupting a conversation. And it's very strange. I'm kind of an omnivert, right? I'm an introvert and extrovert. And at the door, my wife is the same. She's like, you got to lead. Well, maybe we could find someone we know. And I said, no, we got to meet somebody new. That's what we got to do. WWPCD. What would a party crasher do? And she rolls her eyes and she says, oh, we got to do this. And I said, yeah, that's how it goes. So everything that makes you feel uncomfortable You just go WWPCD, and you just sort of go. And sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'll say it, and I'm like, "No, not today. I didn't get the sleep I need. I'm not in the flow. I'm not feeling it." And I sometimes fail. But definitely with this kind of philosophy, out of ten times before I had it, I wouldn't take that step. Sometimes I wouldn't take that step out of ten opportunities, and now I'm probably taking it about six for ten. And, you know, sometimes it's 7. And it built, right? And it built from 1 out of 10 to 3 out of 10 to 4. You know what I mean? This is a muscle. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. They're like, oh, I wasn't born with that. And well, guess what? I wasn't born bold. I certainly wasn't born bold. In fact, my parents used to work on it all the time. So, why can't you be more like your sister? My sister's super bold. And I'm not. I was meek and shy and I couldn't make eye contact. And I spoke quietly. People always asked me to repeat myself. And I just kind of built that muscle like you do when you go to the gym. And people have to start with that. Let's go 1 out of 10. Let's go.
