How to Unlock Hidden Talent in Your Organization

What if your organization is full of capable, creative people who are quietly waiting for permission that's never coming? And what if the real cost isn't just disengagement but an unrealized potential sitting right in front of you every single day? And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that the customers and employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, my guest is Alan Moore. And today, we're going to be exploring why so many talented people including leaders are waiting for permission that never comes. Permission that would set them free. And we're going to talk a little bit about how that hesitation quietly drains motivation and momentum and ultimately, your profitability. The price of admission today is please just make sure you subscribe to the podcast. And make sure that if this is really interesting, you know people who could use the information, share it with your circle. Right? I'd love to see the business community really supporting the work that I've been doing since March of 2020. And it is entirely free. So please go ahead and make that happen. You know, we've all been told to stay in our lane. But what if your lane is the very thing that is holding you back? In most organizations, opportunity exists but it's scattered. It's unlabeled and it's rarely advertised. HR can't see everything. Managers are busy. And so, people wait. They wait to be noticed. They wait to be invited. And they wait for the perfect moment. Meanwhile, motivation gets up on their 2 little legs and they quietly leak out of your building. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, where in your business are your people waiting for an invitation that, well, let's face it, may never come? And what is that hesitation already costing you? I'd love for you to share your experiences. Go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put down your comments and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is Alan Moore, or as he prefers, just Al. Al is a safety and motivational keynote speaker like no other. He is a master storyteller whose career paths read less like a resume and more like a, well, a Netflix series. Professional soccer player, Mandarin interpreter, kindergarten teacher, exotic dancer. Yes. Now, you're just looking at him strange. Stop it. And he's an international keynote speaker. He failed grade 12. He's earned a master's degree in leadership. himself in Mandarin in a Taiwanese small claims court and won. He's worked on all 4 continents, traveled over 50 countries, and held senior safety leadership roles with Fortune 500 companies like Stanley, Black Decker, and the Wood Group. And now, he is the author of a brand new book called Party Crash Your Career and Life, challenging people to stop waiting for permission and to start taking ownership for their growth. Al, welcome to the show. It's brilliant to have you.

Thanks so much for having me, Marc. It's great to be here.

Yeah. And so, maybe let's kick off a little bit about talking a little bit about who your clients are and how do you serve them.

Currently, the majority of my work is in the safety realm. I am an international safety keynote speaker, also a motivational speaker. Just recently finished the book. So, really looking to launch the keynote You know, that's supporting that book. I've put it on stage a few times and it's really receiving a lot of great feedback. But, you know, from a safety perspective, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to use stories in order to motivate people to use their own philosophy of safety, not just using all the documentation that's put in front of them, the safety management systems, all of the fancy kind of tools that are put in front of them that are you know, meant to make them, motivate them towards safety. They should be motivated towards their own safety. On the Party Crasher side, what I'm looking to do is to motivate individuals to step up themselves.

Hmm.

You know, for example, when there's reorgs, there's, you know, mergers and acquisitions. These are scary events. And I remember, I've been through 4 major ones myself. And the first one, I was really confused. I didn't really understand. I was in Taiwan at the time. And I was working for a small company called Besco. We made pneumatic nailers. And Stanley had said that they were going to purchase us. And everybody was scared about this event for good reason. But I guess I was too daft to be scared. So, I kind of looked at it and I thought, actually, I think that there are some opportunities here. It seemed to me that what was happening was they were taking the snow globe off of the shelf shaking it upside down and putting it back. And so, the situation had changed. And it seemed like a good opportunity for me to approach Stanley and say, hey, even though you're going to cut my sales role for sure, what else might there be for me? And I've got a few suggestions. And it really worked out. And I've done that through each merger that I've been through. And it's really helped me out. So.

It's really interesting because I do find that entrepreneurs business operators, they'll hire people to fulfill a job description and then they pigeonhole their staff into that because that's what I hired you for. And when I work with people, I realize that we have a lot of people with very special superpowers in our midst. And yet, we're not tapping into that because we're constraining people to their job description. Is that a fair assessment?

That's absolutely a fair assessment. A number of years ago at a conference, I saw the president of Cirque du Soleil speak. And what she had said was that they don't hire people into certain roles. And if you've ever been to— Marc, have you ever seen a Cirque du Soleil?

I grew up in Montreal. Of course, I've seen Cirque du Soleil. That's where they trained.

Done. You got it.

You got it.

So, have you ever noticed that their stories are a little bit hard to follow and they're a little odd? Have you noticed that? Just a little bit?

They're my people. I don't care what you say, they're my people.

Well, anyways, the, the point is, is that what they would do is hold these auditions and people would come to them and do these really cool things, hanging from a ribbon from the ceiling and, you know, twirling, you know, upside down. Or another person's got a motorcycle and they're juggling chainsaws. And they would, they would say, that is so cool, I have to have it in our show. I'm not sure where, But we'll build the story around it. And I think that the point of her presentation at our conference was to let us know that our organizations can function similarly to this. Not exactly. You can't just have someone juggling chainsaws in if you're a regular typical office space. But people do have these different skill sets. For example, now I'm an international keynote speaker. I existed at the same company for 17 years and they didn't know They didn't really tap into the fact that I'm very comfortable speaking in front of an audience and quite good at it. And it's not their fault. It's not anybody's fault. But it was an opportunity. Once I realized that I have this skill, that was my opportunity to party crash. That's the name of the book. I have to come forward because that invitation is never going to be extended. They're always going to have the same people presenting. They're always going to do it the same way. They get a big check mark at the end of it. We did our quarterly meeting. It's fine. Everybody was bored but that's just the way it is. And we have to do it because we're audited from a quality perspective, or an environment, or whatever. And they didn't realize that, hey, listen, we've got everybody in the room here. Why don't we have something that kind of raises the esprit de corps?

Hmm.

And how would they possibly know in a company of 30,000? I mean, it's fluctuated between 30,000 and 65,000, this company that I've worked for. How would they possibly be able to find me? Needle in a haystack. So, I went to them and I said, hey, I've got this thing. And now, they put me forward for these internal speaking events. And I also have my speaking business on the side as well. But the individual needs to do themselves a favor and their organization a favor by coming forward and letting them know what you can do.

So, are there any myths that we need to bust From the leader's perspective, because a lot of times I'll go into businesses and leaders will be pointing fingers at their staff saying, nobody's showing initiative. Nobody is quality controlling their things. It seems like people are just going through their roles. What myths do we need to kind of shake when we think about the snow globe? Let's shake this myth snow globe. And what are things we need to point out to the leaders who might be tuning in that we're maybe talking about the wrong— we might be telling ourselves the wrong stories.

I think the generational myth is one to start off with. I wouldn't say that it's completely out of line, the things that are being said. But it's predominantly out of line. I think I work with a lot of young people and they want to be part of it. They want to work overtime. Saturday? Sure, no problem. Out of town? Sure, no problem. They're very interested in that. There's just a different key. that opens that door than the previous generation's key, which was, well, for me was my father from Glasgow would kind of insult me. And then, I'd feel like kind of a pride loss and then, I would step up. And that kind of worked for me. That's how I was raised and that's the way. This new generation, they're not reacting the same way to that. And quite often, I find I hear leaders say, they just don't care. They're not motivated. They don't want to be a part of this. They just want to do their work and go home. And sure, there's going to be people like that. But hey, in Generation X, there were lots of people like that too.

Uh-huh.

I think the distribution's the same. Leaders just need to find the key. And I think what this generation wants to do is they want to tap dance. They have skills and they want to show them off. And never before actually have young people been such a significant help in the workplace because of their understanding of IT, their understanding of AI. Honestly, Marc, when I arrived at my first construction site, I was useless. I was a walking hazard because I didn't know anything. But young people arrive at a worksite now and they actually know what to do. Not exactly what to do, but they can contribute something on day 1. And that is AI help, IT help, that kind of thing.

Is it fair to say that they tend to be a little bit more fearless because they've been exposed So, so many changing technologies so quickly in their young lives.

I think that's definitely fair. I feel it myself, Marc. I don't know about you, but I feel when I look at AI, this great big monster, I have to take a deep breath. I go, come on, Al. You don't have to be scared of this. It's the people who are going to master this that are going to be accepted into the next phase. You're not necessarily going to lose your job to AI. I mean, you might at some point. There might be that kind of paradigm shift. But the initial phases of it are the people that learn it are going to get the key to the VIP room. They're the ones that are going to retain their jobs and get better jobs and all the rest of it. So, don't freak out. My kids, they're not freaking out. They're excited about it. So, I think that energy, that optimism can be harvested by workplaces for sure.

It's really interesting that you say, you know, you're saying that People are complaining about their staff not caring and that sort of thing. I had a similar circumstance where I was working with a hotel and the general manager was telling me, oh, my dishwasher, he's so unmotivated. He's so lazy. He only does the absolute bare necessity. He shows no initiative. He has no focus. And so, as I was going through and I sat down with this dishwasher and I had a conversation with him over a cup of tea and we were talking about different stuff. And I asked him, I said, so what do you do in your spare time? He goes, oh, I'm a musician. It's like, what? He goes, I'm a musician. I said, oh, what do you play? He says, I play guitar. I said, really? How long have you been playing guitar? Oh, since I was 4. And he's like, he's part of a band and he's saving up to go to music college. And it's like, that's really amazing. How often do you practice? He goes, I practice every day. I said, what do you mean you practice every day? He says, well, 2 to 3 hours a day, every day I practice. Holy The perception of his boss was he has no focus, no intentionality. He can't keep focused on anything too long. But here's when you look at it and actually have the conversation. It is, could it just be that we've got people maybe in wrong positions and we haven't figured out yet how to motivate them?

Very, very possible, Marc. And people like that, when I serve as a leader over teams, I try to understand what everybody's little special trick is. I want to know that someone is a guitarist. I want to know— there was a guy on my team I discovered that he was actually a professional lacrosse player. It's like, what?

When?

How?

What?

And he played for the Calgary Roughnecks, like a really high level.

Wow.

Yeah, like that. And I discovered it fairly early. I was pretty proud of myself. And actually, this is probably 4 or 5 years ago, I discovered it. He's now moved on to coaching. And I spoke with some leaders a few days ago and they had no idea because they're not asking. This isn't just about work. You're with these people more than you're with your family. Now, we don't necessarily have to make the dishwasher the lead guitarist over the facility because that's not really— that might not be a job that's going to bring in any kind of revenue or value to our customers or anything like that. But there might be some skills associated with that that we can harvest. And bring this person to a new position. Or it may just be a thing at the current time. We don't have anything in the organization. But it might just be a nice thing for a leader every once in a while to go by and just say, how's the band doing? You got any gigs coming up? That's great. What style do you play? Is it kind of a Spanish thing? Are you rock? Or what's your genre? What's your favorite band? What's the best concert you've ever been to? Just a little bit.

Just care this much.

That's it. Just, just a little bit.

Yeah.

And that person turns around and, and they feel that their value is, is different. It's, it's like when I was playing soccer, I was also working at, uh, I was working at a pub and I was kind of, I was a waiter in the pub and I was probably the weakest waiter. I forget orders and I was slow and everything. And, you know, some people would kind of judge me. Alan Moore is a weak waiter, therefore not a Not a very capable guy. That's who Alan Moore is. But some people that I worked with, they knew that I played for a local professional team, and that factored in. And when they would sort of speak to me, they would speak to me on both sides. They would help me with waiting tables and maybe try this, maybe try that. How'd the game go last weekend? Who you got this weekend? Where you at? And it would make— like, my value was raised a little bit beyond the the mundane or something that I'm clearly not great at yet.

So, for people tuning in who say they've been blaming their staff for a while, how does untapped talent show up behaviorally within an organization before people disengage and leave? Like, are there any early warning signs?

Well, I would think that a leader needs to be able to tell The kind of the nonverbal, at least the nonverbal. If it's that subtle, sometimes it's not that subtle. Like for example, I lived in Taiwan for seven years. It is extremely subtle. This is this is a a nation, a little small nation that loves as hard as they fight. But they that the fight is within, the storm is within, and and they they maintain face, and it's very difficult to tell if someone's doing. Is someone's happy, someone's not happy. In America, Canada, UK, places where I've lived as well, it's a lot easier to tell. There's some nonverbal tells. Sometimes, there's verbal tells. There's little backroom conversations that are going on, things like that. You can kind of tell that someone's maybe not as happy as they'd like to be. And your fireside chat at the end of the year, There's sometimes it's right in your face. I'm not happy. Sometimes, it's non-verbal. But really look for those clues and don't ignore them. Try and deal with them. Try to because of course, employee retention is one of the most challenging things that we have in the workplace right now. Yeah.

So, I'd love to dig into some strategies of how leaders can start kind of turning the tide on this. And we'll get to that right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business Make your business a star with the new book Lights! Camera! Action!, business operational excellence through the lens of live theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com.

Welcome back. Alan, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book?

Mm-hmm. I'd love to. I'd love to, Marc. Yeah, this book is basically a collection of my personal stories. And there's a lot of really, really strange ones. Your introduction outlined quite a few of them where I would kind of transition from unusual places, you know, kindergarten teacher to an exotic dancer, that kind of thing. I was a Mandarin interpreter. So, I put these stories in there. And what I do is I put my story, then I have another, an OPS, an other person's story. It could be someone from entertainment. It could be someone from the world of sports. And they're also party crashers. They saw that there was never going to be an invitation to be in the space that they felt that they deserved to be in. So, they found a way. For example, there was a figure skater. that had turned 40. And she had suffered an injury in her mid-20s and her figure skating career was over. Now, somebody that's already 25 is old in figure skating. But this person, 40 years old, they trained their way back. They outtrained everybody. They outworked everybody, found a partner, found a coach that was perfect for what they wanted to do, and said, we're going to relaunch this, and became a world champion. So, It's not necessarily, you know, that's in the physical domain, but it's a book that's telling young people or people of all ages, whether it be young people or people, you know, middle age, old age, doesn't matter, that if you want to get into a certain space, the chances of you being invited to many of these spaces that you want to be in might be very low or not exist at all. You're really going to have to party crash. And so, each chapter's kind of got my story, another person's story, And then a lesson that there's a takeaway.

Nice, nice. And so, when we're thinking about this idea of being party crashers, I mean, obviously, I'm looking at it from the perspective of leadership. But employees themselves become party crashers. However, them working within an organization, if somebody wants to be a party crasher, you do need leaders who have the humility to think, I don't know. I don't have all the answers. They have a strong ego that when somebody pushes back slightly with an idea, they're not like, wait a second. If I want any ideas, I'll tell you what it is and then you can tell me what it is. Right? And so, this whole idea and I love your acronym WWPCD. What would a party crasher do? What does that look like inside of an organization?

Yeah, absolutely, Marc. What you just spoke about is called psychological safety. Right? You've probably heard that term. It's a real buzz term right now. And it's not towards safety itself, not hard hat, earplugs, safety glasses. It's not that kind of safety. It's the safety that you feel to speak up. And so, from a leadership perspective, you have to check in with you and your team and make sure that you have a psychologically safe worksite so that if somebody sees something, even on day 1, they're out of the orientation and they see something from a quality perspective, a customer, engagement perspective, whatever it is, they feel safe to express their opinion without somebody biting their head off or scoffing at them. So, absolutely there's the psychological safety needs to be in play. That's the first thing on the leadership side. That's what they have to set in place, set in motion. On the individual side, realizing, recognizing that people are not necessarily going to pick you out. We have these— leaders have these biases. And I think that it's It's probably a mirror-based bias. That person, oh man, they really remind me of when I was young. And let's give them a shot. And I think that's a rising star. Maybe they have a couple of attributes. Maybe it's the way they look. Maybe it's the way they talk. Whatever it might be. Or they're a sycophant and they agree with everything that the leader is saying. And the leader just loves that. Whatever it might be, they're not necessarily going to see the majority of the worksite. So, the individual themselves, it is incumbent upon them to let the leadership know what their motivations are. Quite often, we have these fireside chats or the year-end chat and people just kind of sleep through them. They go, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you want me to say? Make it go away. I don't really care. And I always tell, you know, I used to tell my team members. I'd be like, no, get up for this. Even if it's with me, get up for this, right? Prepare the night before. Challenge me. Let's go overtime on this. If we schedule an hour for this chat, push me. Push me to an hour and a half. This is your opportunity to tell me exactly what you want to do and then challenge me to try my best to make it happen within 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, whatever I think it might take, whether that be training or mentorship or putting you in certain situations that make you feel uncomfortable, seeing how you do, going back to the drawing board, whatever it might be. Challenge me to set up a plan for what it is that you want. And don't be vague about it. Be very, very— be as specific about it as you can. And whether it's a position that you see within the organization that you want to shoot for, or if it's a position that you want to invent. I've done that a couple of times. A lot of people don't even know that that's an option. That's an option. I lost my sales job when Stanley came in. They're like, "We don't need you selling to our competition." So, and then it got awkward. We had an awkward moment. I went away, had my little chat, which was typically a "We don't need you anymore," chat. And I said, "Look, you've got all these 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 they didn't like; 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? And a lot of them, their English wasn't great. And I I said that to the company. I go, "I can be that person. I can be the foreign liaison." I even gave it a fancy name. And they were like. Great idea! Boom! You know, you don't know unless you ask. Well, you certainly know if you don't ask. The answer is nothing, right? So, you have to put yourself out there as uncomfortable.

Yeah, it feels like really that this is basically a 2-sided conversation because to your point, you came up with something. You saw a lull in the market. And you suggested how maybe you could fill that lull. 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 coals 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 somehow.

Yeah, I think that the first thing is adopting the philosophy of WWPCD. I know it's, you know, my wife laughs every time I say it. And I just, you know, we'll be in a, you know, we were 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. And I'm like— she's like, 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." It's just it's not today. I didn't get the sleep I need. I just I'm not 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 would I wouldn't take that step out of ten opportunities. It'd be 0 for 10. And now, I'm probably taking it about 6 for 10. And 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 with that.

Yeah.

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. That's it.

So, do you have a framework for how one would show up asking the question, what would a party crasher do?

Well, yeah, absolutely. I have a questionnaire that I've developed and it's an online questionnaire and people can fill out the questionnaire. At the end of it, it will show you what kind of party crasher you are. And then, it will give you suggestions on some of the areas that you need to work on because the 5 different types of party crashers are quite different. And so, what we do is we recognize our strengths and recognize our weaknesses and try and migrate towards those weaknesses. So, it's giving you little points and little tips. Like if you're this type, you really need to watch out for this. Like I'm the unqualified believer. I'm like, okay, let's go. Paralysis by analysis. Let's clear away the murky waters and just go right at it. And that's worked out for me very well in life. I, you know, it's led to a lot of great opportunities. But it's also a little bit of look before you leap. There's been some failures. You know, sometimes with party crash, sometimes there's a party and sometimes there's a crash. And I've experienced that crash. Like the first time I taught English in Taiwan, I thought, how hard can it be? I tried to fake it till you make it. I made an absolute fool of myself. And I got asked to not come back to that school, right? So, look before you leap. So, that's what I have to be wary of. I have to make sure that, do I understand the complexity of this situation that I'm walking into? And so, I try to increase that muscle. And so, that's basically the framework.

So, for the people tuning in, could you just let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if they want to work with you?

Absolutely. LinkedIn is one of the best places for us to chat. I love to chat on LinkedIn. I'm posting there fairly frequently, once or twice a week. And of course, on my website, there's a contact form that can be filled out. And that is simply alanjamesmoore.com. And that's the best way to get a hold of me.

Okay. You mentioned that there are 5 styles or 5 types of party crashers. Could you summarize them for us?

Well, Marc, they were just recently developed. I actually inked them yesterday. So, we're still kind of working on the names of it. But one is the Unqualified Believer. And that's mostly where I'm at. I'm just like, I don't have the qualifications, but it's okay. I'm going to go for it anyways because life is short and you just got to do it.

Yeah.

And I don't want the ghosts around my bed, my deathbed, saying, hey, we came to you and you could have done something about us. And we're going to the grave with you. And that's kind of my thing. Another one is an ally builder. And so, that's— I lean into that a little bit more now. I've been a bit of a loner at certain times. And so, I joined CAPS, Canadian Association for Professional Speakers, in order to collaborate with people and help them and learn from them and share things with them and all that kind of stuff. So, that's an ally builder. So, an ally builder is if you think about that wonderful moment with Susan Boyle, the singer, the Scottish singer. And I'm trying to think of the guy who tells you you're not good enough. Simon Cowell. And so, she's on Britain's Got Talent. And I'm sure many of your viewers have seen this moment.

Yeah.

I watch it probably every 3 or 4 months because it just lifts me up. And she stayed at home with her mom and her cats and just sang in the choir. And that's where she was. And she was unseen. Imagine having that voice and it just resides in a tiny little community in Scotland where like a handful of the choir knows that it exists. And they don't even know how fully it exists because it's a choir. So, it's distributed. Unbelievable. And she finally said— her mom passed away and she said, this is my promise to my mom. going to give it a go. And so, she built an ally in Simon Cowell. She had to be seen though. She can't do it from her couch or her choir. She went out, went to the audition, and she built an ally in Simon Cowell. Simon Cowell then took her and produced her album and sold 100 million copies worldwide. She sang for the Pope and all of these things that she never would have dreamed of. So, Ally building is very important. We have to recognize that we can't go it alone for the entirety of our little journey, right?

Mm-hmm.

There are people who know our journey. They're experts in it. Like in CAPS, there are many people like yourself, Michael Kerr, these kinds of folks. They are the ones who understand the journey. So, we have to expose ourselves to them. If there's an opportunity for speaking at CAPS, you go there. You take that opportunity so that they can see you And then they can guide you. They can say, hey, this is what you did wrong. You might want to work on this. Or they can say, hey, look, we really like what you did. And if you can convert them into advocates, into mentors and then into advocates, someone who might in a secret room say, you know, you really might want to consider that Alan Moore. He sounds like he's the right one for your event. And that's what people have to do. That's another type of the party crasher. There are other ones that are a little bit more introverted and analytical. They're going to prepare and prepare and prepare. And then, when the moment finally does come, they're ready for it. Like Eminem, the rapper Eminem, is an example of that. He prepared, he prepared, he went to underground, what they call battles. Where he would kind of chicken out and run away. Then, he came back. They would make fun of him for chickening out. But he would write and write and write. And now, these rap battles, they're supposed to be off the cuff. But they've got a lot of planned stuff in it and a little bit off the cuff, right? But he had so much planned material ready for when that moment happened. And when, oh, look in the crowd. There's somebody who knows somebody. And he was prepared. So, there's these main kind of different party crashing archetypes. And you just find out which one you fit into. And then, when you finish off the questionnaire, there is like I said, there's guidance on how you can— things to watch out for, things you can improve on.

Well, so I really love the metaphor of Susan Boyle because I think that's a perfect example of having people in your midst that you underqualify. based on what you think you know about them. And then, once you give them a chance, they step up. But for leaders, what role does forgiveness play when people try and they stumble and they hesitate and they trip and they— right? Talk to us a little bit about what leaders need to do in order to meter that, to adjust to that, to adopt maybe a different Absolutely.

I think the person who is willing to risk gets maximum points for being willing to risk. If we are going to say one thing about young people in general, especially young people, is that it's very difficult for them to risk. It was difficult no matter what generation you're from. Young people, it's difficult to risk. New people to your organization, it's difficult to risk. So, if somebody risks and they fail, that's a fantastic moment for you to say, okay, look. This person's got a little bit of moxie. And moxie is something that we can really work with. Honestly, as a leader, I don't know. It's very difficult to work with apathy, right? It's very easy to work with enthusiasm, with bravery. Those are things that, okay, that we got a foundation. We can build a house around this. So, what I would do as a leader In those cases, and what I've done when people do fail, they failed in client meetings and kind of high-pressure moments that they were given. And that's okay. It's not like the end of the road. It's the beginning of the road. It has to be the beginning of the road because all you're going to do if you condemn them or even go quiet on them and say, hey, good one. Lie and do that kind of white lie thing and then not bring them back into the fold. is the other members of the team are going to go, oh, I see. So, you risk, fail, you're out. Got it. I think I'll just stay right here. No.

Right.

The moment has to be, look, you went for it and you get maximum points for that. That is awesome. Here's a couple of things that you might do in that situation to improve. Here's what I saw. You kind of went this way. I saw where you were going there. But I think that maybe when you're dealing with this type of client, you leave that one to the end or you leave it right out. It's about understanding your client a little better. And you can do that by talking to people like me before the meeting. Okay? And so that— but we're going to give you another shot. 2 weeks from now, we got another meeting with a different client, very similar. And I want to— let's revisit this. Let's get you ready for that. I have complete faith in you. And you show that to the team.

Right. Oh yeah. Sorry, Alan. It really plays into my philosophy that in today's relational age, managers need to become coaches more than they need to become managers of people. To your point, it's recognizing what somebody did well. It's recognizing what they could improve on. But then, being there as their coach because the propensity back in the '80s is you made a mistake, you got fired. Well, if you made a $5,000 mistake, you just learned a $5,000 lesson. Why would you throw that investment out the door?

Exactly, exactly. I mean, I was talking to a client today and they were talking. They're from a gas plant and it's a safety, very safety-sensitive kind of site. And they were saying that one of the key things that they need to do is have people be endowed with the decision-making ability in kind of failure. When there's complexity in the system, there's unexpected changes. When there's failures in the system, and what decision are they going to make to minimize? I mean, these are complex systems. They're not predictable. And what they do is that they allow these people the room to fail so that they can learn. And it's exactly what you just said. This person now has this invaluable information that they can carry forward. And if it's a $5,000 mistake, I mean, that pales in comparison to what it costs to onboard a new person, especially a specialist. Our company, they say it's probably between $25,000 to $35,000 to find a new person, to onboard a new person. And are they going to stay? Plus, they're green. So, you need somebody else to accompany them. On their journey, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, absolutely.

What's one small low-risk way that leaders can encourage party crashing behavior at work? Because I think it needs to come from the top first.

I would say that a speech whenever you've got those opportunities. Like yourself, Marc, when we speak at these events and especially, I speak at safety events. You know, or even where safety is just a, you know, a small part of it. There's HR involved. There's leadership involved. And it seems like a lot of the leaders are wanting to express the statistics from last year. This is how we did. And this is where our forecasts are. And I appreciate you being in support of, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? They, you know, some of them, they're going to hurt their shoulders and throw their shoulder out. You know, so I think that that's an absolutely wonderful moment. Even if the CEO may be brilliant, it may be difficult for them to express that kind of thing. Maybe there's somebody on staff or maybe, and to your viewers, if you hire Marc or hire myself, maybe that's something that you want us to express to you as well. I know that as a party crash speaker, that's one of the main things that I express. But if leaders can express that, it will be like gold. To say that this is a workplace that features psychological safety. Just like Ray Dalio when he used to say, you are not allowed to hold a dissenting opinion that you do not voice. That is gold. I've had a CEO say that probably about 10 years ago and it stuck with me. It was like, okay, that's how you want this to play. And people became more bold and they spoke up. And it's a little ticket. So that whenever anybody, a supervisor or someone kind of scoffs at them, they say, oh, were you not at the quarterly meeting? Were you not at the town hall where the CEO said, if you have a dissenting opinion, you have to voice it? It's just a little ticket that you carry around. And when it comes from the top, it's got major power.

Yeah. And imagine the ammunition you arm yourself with when you have the brainchild of 35 or 40 employees coming to you, giving you basically a ticket of ideas. of different ways of being able to perceive a certain situation. It's like, oh my goodness, like this is a real pot-stirring moment.

Oh, absolutely. Those are consultants that you've already paid for and they're bought in.

Right.

People complain about complainers and I'm like, I think complainers are bought in. I just look at it from that perspective. Sometimes, it's like, oh yeah, okay, all right. If you got rid of the hazelnut in the coffee center and you replaced it with this, okay, fine. But when you have complainers about real situations about your workplace and how you can get better, you actually want that. That's somebody that has passion, not apathy. So, learn to kind of flip that into a different viewpoint for sure.

I love that. I love that. Hey Alan, I'd like to get into some most common challenges leaders face when they try to improve the situation. So, I'd love to talk about cautionaries and pitfalls. And we'll get to that right after this.

When you're delivering an important speech to a huge audience, it's easy to lose your place or go way over time. Give yourself an advantage with the Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app. No more checking your watch or calling for time. The Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app keeps you on track with easy-to-see timers, even changing color for visual prompts during your speech. And you can set Set audio cues to practice or set it to vibrate so you don't even have to look. Be the pro you know you are. Download the app at speakerpresentationtimer.com.

Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Al and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or someone you know might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference, Drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Our contact information is in the show notes. So, be a party crasher and give us a call. Hey Al, how can leaders spot and nurture someone who's got this life force even if it doesn't fit their job description? Like, how do we pinpoint the magic superpowers that people It's not easy for sure.

It's not easy. It's about collaborating with human resources and making sure that human resources stays on their original track. And what I mean by that is sometimes I find in large organizations, human resources is functioning in an upwardly serving mode and not An omnidirectional mode, especially in large companies because they get they get showered with all of these processes and documents. And when you actually go to see them and knock on the door and open door policy, and you discover that they're hmm they're hmm yes it's nice to see you. They're not really it's not really nice to see you. They really need to be about about the people having HR personnel that are learning about the people and identifying. Different talented people, whether it be in the coffee station, a casual conversation in the hallway, whatever it is, and serving those people up to the leadership team. That is one of the core responsibilities I feel of HR. And them having an open-door policy so that we can go in and discuss like, where might I be able to take my career? Because getting with the C-suite, especially in large organizations, Getting together with them is very difficult. You might get lucky at a Christmas party. That's why everybody should go to the Christmas party. Don't miss out because that's the only time you're going to maybe get them. And wouldn't it be great if they had a couple drinks in them and you get to sit at the same table or something like that? Anyways, that's beside the point. But yeah, that's what I feel the structure should be. The culture should be leaders should be talking to HR and saying, look, we want to consistently have a leadership succession pipeline going on or a superstar succession pipeline going on. Whether it be the— it doesn't always have to be a vertical maneuver. It could be a lateral maneuver. I mean, this person just might be more suited in a lateral role that would make them very happy. We could retain them and someone more suitable could fit their role or something like that. Maybe their junior member could step up and But that's a double win. How fantastic is that, right? So, just alignment of the culture and the values towards that end.

For the people tuning in, when they think about like my biggest fear is that we will get people tuning in who are kind of like policy of the month people. They'll get a new idea. They go, oh, this sounds like really good. Okay, for the next 30 days, this is what we're going to do. Can we talk about some cautionaries and some pitfalls as we try to change our culture Because I believe that even with everything we've been talking about today, the number one thing we have to work on is trust. We have to be able to reinforce the trust. So, to your point, if you don't have a safe environment where trust, the virtue of trust is very high, then people trying this, it probably won't work very well.

No, absolutely. Rome wasn't built in a day. These policy of the month things, they are exactly that. They're just policies of the month. And at a large organization, I walk by the safety board, the notice board, and you'll see them and you kind of, yeah. So, making sure that you have, that you're building all of those different things at the same time. You can't just sort of say, okay, we're all party crashers now and let the party crashing begin. You have to be operating with those other things that I mentioned concurrently. HR being reset. It doesn't have to be a public decree. It can be in private. It can be a meeting and saying, look, we're going to try and do this Party Crasher thing. But certain other things need to be moving at the same pace at the same time so that we're garnering that trust and people don't think it's just a flavor of the month. This is what we're going to do. This is a mantra that we're going to adopt. Now, maybe you tailor it to your own organization. Maybe it's something that your organization, the origins of it, or something that you sell. It doesn't necessarily have to be Party Crasher per se. But adopting that kind of psychological safety, HR trying to identify people, like actually trying to identify people through what I call action listening, not just active listening. So, you're taking actions on what people say. You don't always have to do everything that they say. They say, oh, we need 15 fume hoods. Throughout the facility. Well, okay, that's gonna— that's a capital expenditure of maybe $700,000. Maybe that's not gonna happen this year. It's not in the budget. But trying to take small actions on what people say, bringing it forward at a meeting, maybe asking them to bring it forward at a meeting. Maybe they don't feel comfortable with it. You say, hey, do you mind if I just mention your name and I'll talk about it? Is that okay with you? And people are like, whoa, they're listening?

They're going to give me credit? Me? Little old me? I get credit?

Well, you know, and you tell them too. This is not the— you know, it's not a fairy tale. You tell them, listen, that might not happen. But what you told me, I feel is a very valuable initiative. And I'm going to carry it forward. And I want you to keep bringing it up and be relentless about it and share a story about an initiative that you had. And 4 or 5 years ago, I wanted to Get this certain initiative in place. And you know, year one, year two, year three—nothing. Year four—we got it. So just be patient with me. But I'm going to bring it forward and show some evidence that you've brought it forward. People want to be listened to, and if if they're not after you know four, five, six, seven times, well, this organization is just that way. And yeah, I'm I'm looking around. I've got my LinkedIn on. We'll see. Yep.

And it's amazing that we could become somebody else's Simon Cowell, right? We can have that allyship to be able to support it and be able, as opposed to the politicalized system of silos and department heads and all that sort of stuff, is all of a sudden, that's when we talked I talked about building trust. The number one way to build trust is for us as leaders to become trustworthy first.

Absolutely, yeah. And that's pretty hard to identify in yourself too. So, that's a very difficult thing. But I think that action listening is one of the key things that you can do. Building a little list of different things that have been suggested. And maybe it's a rough year. The revenues weren't what you wanted them to be. So, we're going to pick a couple off of that list, 2 or 3 that have kind of a more of a lower cost to them. We're going to put them in place. We're going to thank the person who did it. We're going to give them whatever it is, a little bit of gratitude. We're going to do it publicly if they're okay with that just to show people that when you tell us things, we do listen and we do take action.

So good, Al. Hey, this has been absolutely fantastic. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Absolutely, Marc. So LinkedIn, that's where I love to hang out. I love to have conversations on there. If you write to me something about what you heard in this podcast episode, I will answer you as soon as I possibly can. It usually doesn't take more than 4 or 5 hours for me to answer. That's one place where I love to chat and hang out. And also on my website, which is alanjamesmoore.com. You can find out about my keynotes, my workshops. You can find out about my book. And you can contact me. There's a contact form on each of the pages right at the bottom if you want to connect in a different way. If you want to schedule a call, a 30-minute discovery call, or just chat, I'm open to all of those options.

Love it! As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that Inside of all of us, this is going to possibly sound a little bit cliché. But I'll try and make it sound a little bit novel if I can. I think that we're built for certain things. Like I love that old saying from William Shedd, a ship in port is safe but that's not what ships were built for. And we're not built to be kind of miserable, sitting at our kiosk or our desk and sort of going, This place doesn't appreciate me and doesn't see me. None of us are built for that. There are many of us that end up like that. But none of us are built for that. And being like that, you may feel like you're kind of punishing your organization, maybe punishing your supervisor. And that may feel a little bit good. But the person who's going to suffer is you. Your organization will suffer too. So, mission accomplished if that's what you're after. But you will suffer far greater fate than the organization will ever suffer. They'll get on. They'll get on without most of us, to be honest, right? Especially the big ones, right? 65,000 people, they're going to get on with it, okay? So, try and find out what it is that you were put on earth to do and satisfy those things that are within you, whether it's competition, taking on challenges, confronting your fears, All of those kinds of things. Really look inside yourselves. We've got a bit of a break coming up here. Sorry if this is going to air after Christmas. Then, I've kind of ruined that timeframe. But anytime you have any kind of break, the weekends, do a bit of meditating on this subject. Find out what it is that fires you up and just go do that at work. Even if your supervisor is not expecting it from you or not asking it from you, Just do it. Insert yourself into those things. Challenge yourself. Fire yourself up. A Lamborghini is not meant to go through a school zone, right? You can see it. You can hear it firing. It wants to run. All of you want to run. Know this, every single one of you, and start running.

Brilliant! Thank you so much, Alan. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing your passion. This has been brilliant.

Thanks, Marc. The pleasure has been all mine.

Hey, if you have any questions about today's episode or maybe you're thinking, hey, I could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Alan or with Marc. Well, good news. If you're looking for me, you can snag a spot on my calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com and you're all set. If you're looking to hang out with Alan and get some of his brainstorm, into your organization, his contact details are in there as well. And as always, I am at your service. If you haven't done so yet, please make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Follow me on social media because that's where you're going to get all sorts of nuggets each and every day. And then, once a week, you'll get the notifications when I bring you fresh new content on this podcast. I want to thank you so much for being here, investing your time. I hope it was of value to you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe. I hope you stay healthy. And I hope you dare to be the exception. Bye for now!