Rapid Trait Profiling and the Science of Trust Building with Alan Stevens | 026

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Grand

Connection podcast. I'm Susan Jarima, your host for today and

co-founder of The Grand Connection, where we believe

business grows through meaningful relationships,

trusted connections, and collaboration. At the Grand

Connection, we often talk about our CCC framework: Connect,

Create, Collaborate. First, we connect through meaningful

relationships. Then, we create trust, ideas, opportunities, and

understanding together, and from there, true collaboration can

happen. Today, we're exploring one of the most important skills

behind all of that: understanding people. Our guest

today is Alan Stevens, and I'm so excited, Alan. I have to say

that this has been really exciting, and he's Alan is an

international profiling and communication specialist and

creator of the Rapid Trait Profiling System. Alan has

worked with organizations, including Disney Films,

Gillette, educators, business leaders, law enforcement, and

media professionals, Alan has been a wonderful collaborator

within our Grand Connection community, speaking at many

events, generously referring others, and becoming very well

loved within the community for his conversations and podcast

interviews, and I've also had the pleasure of meeting Alan

twice now in person, which always feels like the icing on

the cake when we built so many great connections virtually

first. Alan, welcome to the Grand Connection Podcast.

Thanks very much. And next time on that, I'll have

to come over and see you instead of you coming over here twice.

Yeah, it is my turn for you to come visit me,

and I'm going to show you a lot of snow, so I want to jump into

this right away. What does profiling or reading people

actually mean? Because I know we're all curious about this.

Yeah, well, first of all, when people usually hear

the word profiling, they think forensics, and they go into

panic straight away, and I go, no, it's, it's more of an

approach of being able to reach somebody to understand their

personality, so you can create a stronger relationship with them.

It's about bringing people together, not trying to uncover

criminals and things like that, because I just want to know if I

meet somebody, I want to know how to talk to them in the way

that they need to be spoken to and build that relationship very

quickly.

Well, I have to say that when I first met you, I

was a little nervous. I felt like, oh my gosh, he's gonna be

able to like know everything about me. But no, you are just a

really great person. You're here in this space because you care

about people. And how did you get into this field?

Well, mainly because I was pretty crook at

it, I went through two divorces, a lot of broken relationships,

and even business partners went to the bank out, and it was

after my second divorce I thought I need a better way of

reading people. I've been working with body language,

micro expressions - sorry, body language, I should say, not

micro expressions at that point, but body language, NLP, doing

all the different systems I could to find out how to read

people, Myers Briggs disk profiling, etc. But at the turn

of the century, I love that term, turn of the century, it

sort of makes me feel very old. That was when I realized I

needed a better system, and somebody said to me, looked at

reading faces, and I went, well, this sounds pretty interesting,

I'm going to go and find out about it. I found Paul Ekman,

who did all the research on the micro expressions, and an

English lady living in California who worked with all

the facial features, trained with both their groups. Then

realized that what they were doing needed to be put together,

and that's when I created Rapid Trade Profiling.

Okay, so you've been researching this for a

while. When did all.. how many years have you been in the

space?

Almost two and a half decades.

Oh my gosh. Well, that is a long time. That is

turn to the century. Oh, well, I've been in this space for

quite a while too. We won't talk about that right now, but it..

you know, it's lovely to have that experience behind us, and

it's fun to be able to share it with people, and I know that's

what you're doing now. So, why do people instantly connect

while others struggle?

Usually, it's a difference in our personalities,

and that we meet people. Most people, even if they struggle

meeting people, there's usually some people they connect with

quicker anyway, and that'll be because there's a similarity in

their personalities, some people just don't have the ability to

read people because they weren't taught. We have a number of

conditions in very young children that they can't

recognize facial features or expressions, and that's what we

need to be able to recognize. We can see that we know somebody's

personality, we know who they are, we know what they're

feeling, we know whether we should be around them or not,

and that's part of survival as a child, but in most cases it's

usually comes down as we're getting older, it's a lack of

being able to understand the other person, and until we can

understand the other person, we're going to have problems.

I think a lot of times people are in their own

head and not paying attention to the other person either, right?

So.

That's right, yeah. Well, if you're having a

conversation, how often does a person who you're talking to

jump in straight away afterwards? And the reason for

that is that, well, we're all schizophrenic, as far as I'm

concerned, in our heads. We're having two conversations all the

time. While somebody is talking to us, we're thinking about how

we're going to respond to them, and then when we're talking to

them, we're thinking about what we're saying, we're not focusing

on them, and you find the people who usually wait a little bit,

moment after somebody's finished speaking, that they're actually

been listening to what the person's been saying, and in

that moment after, then they're thinking about how do I respond

to this.

It's really hard on Zoom too, because you're kind

of like watching cameras, and things are popping up around

you, like it. I find when I'm having coffee with somebody in a

coffee shop, I'm just like there, I'm right there with

them. But it's difficult. There are so many more distractions

when we're sitting at our desk in our own home, having it,

trying to have a conversation. Even right now, while I'm doing

this conversation with you, I'm thinking about how am I going to

make this a really interesting podcast, that little voice is

going in there, and I want to make sure the questions are

good, and that I'm moving on sometimes a little too quickly

to the next question before I'm listening to you. So I see that

I'm doing that myself right now.

You stop when you ask yourself why you're doing

that, because I know that you're passionate about what you do,

you're passionate about the network and the people you're

working with. So, center of mind is always going to be, how do I

get the best out of this podcast for the people who are going to

show this to? So, it's a genuine interest in other people that's

causing you to rush.

Yeah,

But when you're having a one on one conversation

with somebody, that's when you can see the difference.

So, what are people communicating before they

even speak? What happens there? Like, you know, I guess you

talked about it being in our heads.

Well, we look at somebody straight away, we're

going to look at their facial features, etc. and their body,

and all the rest of it, and we make an impression straight

away. Everybody is a profiler, everybody reads other people,

and they straight away have an idea of who that person is. They

make a judgment of them, and it's quite judgmental because

it's based on their past experiences. And so straight

away, that's what's going to happen. You look at somebody,

you've made an interpretation of who they are. It's less than a

mil a second, it's around about 300 milliseconds. But when you

look at somebody, you've already worked out whether you like them

or not, whether you trust them, whether there's something wrong

with them. It's that fast. It's faster than a second.

And I guess we don't even know what we're

looking at. This is all subconscious for most of us,

except you understand it. You've made that, you've gotten aware

of what it is. So, tell us, what are you looking for when you're,

when you're connecting with somebody?

Well, it depends on the situation. If it's on

Zoom, I'm not going to be worried about how much space

they need when we meet them for the first time, because if I

want to connect with somebody, got to make sure they're

comfortable, and there are those people like you and I are both

affable. We'll stand close to people when we meet them for the

first time, so that's fine. But there are people who are more

discerning, they need more space, and the Facebook tells us

that straight away. So, as they're walking towards us, we

know not to invade their space, because we invade their space,

they're not going to be listening to what they were

saying, they're going to feel uncomfortable, so we know how to

structure that, so the face tones is everything we need at

the moment, or well before the moment that we need it. It's

like,

so if I'm in a meeting in person, so we're

doing networking in a, in a room, and I, you'd step in and

you're too close to somebody, I guess you tend to get the

feeling they'll, they'll step back right, so you've invaded

their personal space too much there, or I guess there'd be

some sign on their face where they're looking a little

anxious.

That's right. And quite often in those enclosed

areas, in a networking room, for instance, there's not much room

to move, but you'll instead of them moving back, because they

can't move back, it's going to walk into other people, so

they're virtually stuck where they are. You'll see it on their

body language, to see it in the expression on their face. You'll

see a shift in there. You'll even see if there's no change in

light, even the pupils will change size, depending on

whether they're in fear or whether they're aroused, or

whatever it might be. So, there's so many indicators.

So, what's an indication that somebody's

aligned with you, and as a person you could trust.

Well, one of the things is their body language,

where they're aligned. They'll step in when they're talking to

you, or you're talking, they're going to be nodding. The whole

body language is going to be pointing towards you. And by the

way, it's a combination of all the body language. For instance,

folded arms used to be meaning that somebody was disinterested,

they were switched off. It could be that they're intimidated by

you, your position. They may really want to know more, but

what's the rest of the body language? So, are they leaning

in? Are they talking, nodding in response to what you're saying,

or their feet and half their body facing towards the door?

Well, then

I do pull my arms when I'm.. I do. Fold my arms

when I'm cold, though.

I do got damaged shoulders, so I'll stand there

with my arms folded as well.

Yeah, yeah. So you got your, the folding in, you

know? You notice stuff on their faces too. I remember when we

met, we were, we actually sat in a coffee shop, and you, you

people walking down the street, you were, you were profiling

them for me now. How do you do that? That's pretty amazing,

like they weren't even that close to us.

Well, I'm picking up the pic ticker indicators on

the face that I could see. For instance, if they're walking at

a distance from us, I can see the proportion between their

upper body and lower body. I know straight away whether that

person needs to be able to sit if you were talking to them, or

they need to be on the move, so I'd know what sort of career

would suit them. Would it be a receptionist? Would it be

working in construction, working outside? So some of those things

I can see straight away.

Okay,

as they get closer, there's other

indicators, because everything is stored on the face as well as

the in the body as well, but main thing is in the face

because everything we feel we express outwardly, and so if

you're concentrating and thinking in a certain way, the

end result is like the moment you're concentrating, I can see

those little vertical lines start to appear, so you're

thinking about how exact this thing is, you're looking at the

detail that we're talking about, so I know that you're focused on

getting

Leaning in a little bit too, so that means

I'm interested that that happens,

So just on the face as well, I've got that as

well. So then you've got, as you said, your person's leaning in,

is their body facing towards you when they come up to you, but if

they're at a distance, I can tell you where they get to us,

where they need to sit down. If we have a long conversation, or

do we need to get up and walk around if they arrive 20 feet

away, I can see straight away where they need space when we

first meet. So I'll walk up, stop if I need, know they need

more space, and I'll stop, and I'll put my hand out to shake

hands. They will set their own space up where they're

comfortable, so I've gotten rid of that issue out of the way.

Then I know straight away from their face, while we're talking,

how much information do they want to take in? Is it got to be

in a certain formatted order, or can I bounce around the place?

Have they got a dry wit where somebody who will joke and

everything goes, or do I have to be very careful about being

politically correct about things? Because I've got a

couple of mates when we start talking, we throw all sorts of

stuff around, and we're laughing, but we're also careful

about who's around us, people with the opposite trait may take

offense to what we're saying, so we're mindful of that as well.

This is where this really helps, being able to not only have a

conversation with somebody but be respectful of the people

around you as well,

So you're actually being aware of everything going

on in the room,

That's it. Yeah,

Sometimes we're pretty loud. We've got a loud

family looking around a restaurant and see these little

schmuck looks at us. Right,

I first met one guy, and we met in a coffee in a

hotel in a bar, and there were about 60 tables in the place,

and people sitting at every table. I think between he and I

with joke, this is the moment we met each other. We just really

clicked, we were laughing and everything, because we made more

noise than the whole 60 tables put together.

Usually, that, that you're pretty quiet,

normally, aren't you?

Yeah, well, with this particular gentleman, we

just clicked really fast, but normally, yes, because I'm

always thinking about, like, when we met for the first time,

I wanted to know about you. As far as I'm concerned, I didn't

need to know about me, I wanted to know about you. You come all

this way, so I'm giving you that respect as well. It's all about

consideration for the other person. It's not about using it

to manipulate somebody, but how do I really show the deepest

respect for that person. How do I build a strong relationship

with them? Because I look at everything, well, if I'm in

business, I look at everything as a strategic alliance, and to

have a strategic alliance, because I don't believe in

competition. I look at all my competitors as strategic

alliances, so I'm going to build a strong relationship with them.

Yeah, so I just kind of want to know, we do a

lot of one on one calls in the Grand Connection, and so we're

getting it on a Zoom call, like, what, what would be some

technique somebody can can apply to make their calls go better

from what you teach.

Well, one of the things I always do, whether it

be a live one or on Zoom, when I'm meeting somebody for the

first time, I want to get them talking before they ask me about

what I'm doing, you know. If I'm in a networking, do for

instance, I'll actually say to somebody, "Tell them my name,

because that's respectful. But then, before they get a chance,

I'll ask them, "Well, you know, you're here today, how can I

help you? Why did you come here today? And get them talking

about that, if I'm on a Zoom call, I've met somebody on a -

we've met through LinkedIn or somewhere like that, or

somebody's introduced us. First thing I'm going to do, I'm going

to do some research. First of all, I'm going to look at their

profile, find out a little bit about them, and this is where AI

can be quite helpful. You can get their website or their

LinkedIn profile and. Say, right, just give me a summary of

this person, and it will tell you the key points, and you ask

it a couple of questions, so you, when you talk to that

person the first time, you can say, look, from what I've been

realizing about you, I can see that you do these things, what

got you into this, why are you passionate about this, and now

you've got them talking about them,

Yeah,

And once you've got that conversation going,

you've, you've also then got the expressions on their face,

little twitches and micro expressions, they call them,

which will tell you how much they're getting involved in

this. You can see,

We just had a previous episode with Shannon

Granger, and she talked about her deal flow framework, and D

is is discovery, which is what she just talked about. So, Alan,

you're doing it. You probably didn't even know that I'm going

to introduce you to Shannon. You guys need to meet. I told her

about you, and you, you take the LinkedIn profile, you get a

summary, you're ready, you've got some good questions,

probably some very good open-ended questions. Now you're

having this conversation. What are you watching for in their face?

Well, I'm looking for the expressions, changes,

etc. See, at the moment, where you're sitting, if we, because I

know that you were, you know, we were interested in what we're

doing, so I'm looking for changes in size of the pupil,

for instance. If I notice they get smaller, because I know that

I can see the light through your windows, so yours are small at

the moment, because of the light, but if I'm talking to

somebody now, I know the what the benchmarked them, and so if

there's a change in the size, I know the interest level, that's

how it's going, it's going up or it's going down. I'm looking for

the way you're looking at the screen, for instance, if I can

see that some of the like the these little lines appearing or

the different muscles on the face moving, I know what you,

how you're thinking is this that, yeah, you're thinking

about, well, this is really interesting. What can I ask

about this? I'm looking for all those indicators that are on the

face, and your face is, you will just give away everything that

we need to know while you're having that conversation.

Well, I didn't know it'd be an open book.

There's a lot of people out there who believe

they're not an open book, but the people who believe that they

can tell stories and get away with it, that they can pick up

lies very easily. Well, there's a bridge in New South, in

Sydney, on that, that I'd like to sell them, because you

generally find that people have that high opinion that they're

the easiest ones to convince the other way.

So we talk a lot about trust at the Grand

Connection, connect, create, collaborate. The second part,

create, is really creating trust, really creating those

relationships that create ideas, opportunities, but it all is

this relationship you're building of trust. Now, in a

conversation, when you're watching people, how do you

sense through the skills you have, if this is a person you

can trust,

It'll be in the way in which they've answered

the questions as well, because it's also the para language. So

we're looking at the facial features that tell us their

personality, then we're listening, we worked out what

words we're going to use, the structure of them, you know,

they're going to be in a structured order, bounce around

the place, etc. How much detail and all the rest, but then

listening to the other person, the paralanguage they're using,

the body language that goes with it, and the expressions we put

all that together and you start to see shifts. You're looking

for changes, and so once you start to see a change, you go,

okay, what? Why? What did I just say then? Why was that? See, a

micro expression, a little twitch on the face. I might be

talking about something, we're going really well, but I

mentioned something, all of a sudden, there's a little twitch

on the one side of the face. I know what I just said, hit your

contempt button, and so I might have been too jovial about

something, and that's then hit your values, and so I might see

that little twitch, and I go, "Ah, I just said something

wrong. Then, so I can then go back, and I can correct things.

How would you correct it?

Well, again, depends on what I've actually

said, and how severe it's going to be. It might be a full-on

apology,

I guess. You could clarify, and would you say

something like, like, did something offend you, or would

you actually come out and say something, or would you just try

to sort of weave it back in? And,

Well, I might, about, you know, yeah, what I

just said was really totally wrong, that was stupid of me, or

something, or whatever, and steer it down that direction, so

I can sort of make an apology, or correct myself without

telling that I've just realized, you know, that I picked it up on

their face.

Yeah

This is something I've realized that I just didn't

know. I've just been silly. I just been, yeah, we've been

having a good time, and I just went a little bit overboard, and

that was inappropriate. Sorry about that type thing.

Well, you see a lot of that when politics creep

into conversations, because you don't really know people's

political preferences, and you'll see these little twixts,

and you go, okay? They are the other side, or I'm just gonna be

careful in here. I'm gonna be Switzerland.

Well, this is where it's wise now. They said

religion, sex, and politics - don't talk about those three.

Yeah, no, keep them out of your conversations

if you can. I mean, it does come up, but especially. With the

global community here, you know, we do get politics coming up in

it, but it's only after you get to know people. I think I would

not bring that up in a first conversation.

That's it. But I always say it goes back to one

of my first rules, and that is, you got two eyes, two ears, and

one mouth. Use them in that proportion, and when you're

using your mouth, ask every possible question you can think

of, and then once you've done that, ask one more. It's always

a case of I've asked a lot of questions, and I'm going to say

to somebody, well, from what you've been telling me, this is

what I understand. Have I got it right? The beautiful part of

that is, if you have got it right, they will say yes, and

they know that you've been listening, you've been focused

on, so you've got trust, if they say no, that could even be

better now, because we're into a full depth conversation, not

just me talking to them, but now having a conversation with them,

where they now explain to me what I got wrong, and they know

at that point I'm truly invested in understanding them and

building a relationship, so by asking questions before you make

statements, it's like somebody says something and it pushes one

of my buttons. I'm not going to respond in kind. I'm going to

turn around and try and understand what was it you were

trying to really say. Then

we did a episode on Chris Voss and how he, he's,

he's a negotiator for the FBI and has written a book on on

communication skills, it's really, you can use it and apply

it to all parts of your life, but asking impactful questions

like that makes such a big difference, and I'm trying to do

that more in my own life practice. Yeah, great. So great

tip there. So, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes

people make in networking conversations?

Well, well, first of all, when they get into any

network, and that the whole thing is networking is about

building relationships, it's not about selling. How often do you

hear people come in and the first thing they do is talking

about their business, and it's all about what they can do for

people, etc. You know, when I go into a networking do in a group

for any, as I said before, is first thing I to do is ask the

other person about them, what it is that they do, etc. Get them

talking about that. Why are they passionate about doing that?

What, who do they help, how do they help them? And then how can

I help them help other people. And so we're looking at doing

that, so it's about building that relationship, but most

people I've been into chambers of commerce back in the 90s when

I first started my first business, and I'd ask people,

and that who came here to sell, all the hands would go up, and

they go, and who came here to buy, not one hand, and the end

result was I went right, so you've come here to talk at each

other, not to each other, and so, and I remembered a friend, a

lady who became a friend over a long time, a period ago. I met

her, she said, when she first met me, and it must be about 15

years ago now, she said, the first thing you did when you

came up to me is you told me your name, and then you asked

me, How could I help you? And she says, I've never forgotten

it.

Yeah,

And that's how our relationship started. That's one

thing to remember. It starts in the first instant. It's not

something that you know all of a sudden happens down the track.

It started very early in your first connection with somebody,

because, as I said before, in less than a second, they've

decided whether they like you or not, whether they trust you.

They just look at your face, and all of that is based on their

past experiences. So, it's bias.

Yeah, amazing. And it's primarily subconscious, all

this stuff.

Yeah, exactly. So, it's like a micro expression

when that happens around you. Somebody says something,

something, something happens unconsciously. We react, and we

have an expression on our face. Then our conscious mind steps

in, and that expression changes, and that can be as fast as a

fifth of a second down to 1/5 of a second, virtually the click of

the fingers. It's that fast, but our eyes can pick it up.

So I guess a technique for trying to build

trust is to be very present, be in the moment, and channel that

compassion towards the other and true interest in the other

person, and they will feel

That's it. What helped me in doing this was

realizing that I needed to practice with having

conversations with people and focusing on them without having

an agenda of, you know, talking to people who were not involved

in a sale, they weren't possible clients or anything like that. I

found a thing on online, which is now closed. It was called

Lunch Club. That was a great place to go and meet people and

have a chat, people from all over the world with no agenda

other than to meet them and find out about them, that's since

closed, but there's another one that opened up, and I'm now on

that one as well, called V Me, and I was on there last night

with a gentleman who's English, living over in Denmark, and we

were just laughing so much, we had a great time, you know, so

at the end of that, by the time we'd finished the conversation,

and the way I was watching him, etcetera, I know I can trust

him. I know his passion for helping people, etc. I decided I

needed to get this out to more people who could go out and

deliver it to more people again, because I can only train so many

in a lifetime. But if I train those people and they go out and

train others, it's almost looking like, you know, network

marketing, where you work with so many people, they don't work

with so many people, and they go out with so many more people,

and I believe that's the way that we should all be doing it,

leaving the world in a better place than we found it.

Network marketing to make the world a better

place, that's great. Just paying it forward and having other

people share your legacy, very lovely approach to thinking of

this, and so valuable for our world right now I want to just

jump back, just as we sort of end off. This is part one of two

parts, some skills that we can take away today. So, what could

we do with our face, or anything we're doing to be seen as more

memorable and trusted in conversations, because we, we

feel like we are, but sometimes people don't take what we do the

right way, and maybe we're not presenting ourselves in the best

way.

See, it's not so much what we can do with our

face, because, as I said before, micro expressions happen in the

unconscious section when something said, or that happens

around us, before our conscious mind steps in. So, if we're

trying to think about keeping our face in a certain way, our

body's going to give it away. We can't control everything, so

it's virtually comes from within, not from without. It's a

case of, well, how do I actually really show I'm genuine? Well,

it's simple: be genuine. That's what it comes down to. The

bottom line is, go. Okay, I'm getting a conversation. Yes, I

want to improve my life. I want to improve my business, etc. But

knowing well, there was a saying there before. I know Richard

Branch and a whole bunch of others have used it as well, and

that was, if you want to look after your customers, you got to

put your staff first, because when you put your staff first,

they're the ones working with the customers, and you're

actually putting your customers first by putting your staff

first. It plays with people's minds when they try and start

thinking about

Got me all messed up, but I'm going to re-listen

to it, so I'll be fine on the second round.

So, if we do that, then the end result, we focus on

the other person, we're going to grow our business faster, we're

going to get what we're looking for faster, because we've built

that relationship, so forget about what I want right now.

Other than the one thing I do want to do is build a stronger

relationship, that's the only focus I've got. So, therefore,

everything I do from there goes on to the focusing on the other

person. How can I listen to them genuinely? So, if I want to

appear that I'm listening to him genuinely, I've got to be doing

that in the first place.

All this ties in so well with what we're doing in

our neuroscience of communication self-mastery

program, because we're learning how brain network switching can

be used to calm yourself, tap into your salient network, but

to be used in a fast and efficient way, to be focused,

but yet stay calm and connected to the values that are part of

what's important to you, and connect with what Ray calls

neuro resonance with the other person in the room too. So, if

you're both doing it, and she teaches us how to do mindful

conversations, and I don't know if you have met Ray yet, but I'm

sending you an introduction to her as well. So another intro

for you. This is what we do with the Grand Connection. You're

going to have a fabulous conversation. That's what we're

doing, is we're practicing these mindful conversations, how to be

present, how to be very mindful, so we're actually sharing those

values beforehand and during the conversation, and of course it

makes all the difference in having a very good conversation

where you're building that trust, you're communicating

effectively, and you're leaving in a place where both people

have moved towards a better relationship, for you know,

collaboration, strategic alliances, whatever it is, maybe

it's just, you know, getting along better at family dinner,

you know, whatever

Exactly.

There's so many places that this comes into

place in your life. Oh my gosh, this has been really amazing.

How does stress change the way we communicate?

Well, stress is going to our focus, then goes on

ourselves, the stress that we've got, etc. Now, from the point of

view, having the stress yourself, and that this is going

to impact on how you talk, how you listen, because you're going

to be focused on what's bothering you. But if somebody

else has got the stress, this is where you can really step in and

be really helpful, because if you recognize that they're

getting stressed, etc. Well, one of the things signs of stress is

in the pupil, sorry, in the iris itself. Irises can actually

shrink in size. There's a medical condition for it, but

there's also, if somebody's really stressed, the irises will

start getting smaller. There used to be a saying that if

somebody had BD eyes, you couldn't. Trust them. Well, the

thing is that somebody who's got those really small irises, those

that look like beady eyes, they're going through one of the

highest levels of stress. You know that their life is, they're

feeling that it's rubbish, it's crap, it's never going to

change. They can be within the point of being suicidal, etc.

And so by recognizing that, instead of pulling away from

them, which is our normal thing, when we see those small eyes, is

to actually see if we can build a relationship with them, find

out what's going on, because if you're genuinely connected to

other people and want to be connected to them, you will then

focus on those things, you'll put whatever you're feeling at

the time, that little pushback that you're getting inside of

yourself when you look at somebody and go, "Hang on, this

is not the true story. There's something else going on here.

It's not that I can't trust them. The fact is that they

don't trust anybody else because of their stress levels, and if I

pull back, I'm just confirming that for them. But if I come

forward and have a bit of a conversation with, see if I can

help them and understand what's going on, and if I can help them

through that, that can change their lives, and just in helping

somebody else change their life, it changes yours as well.

I know you do a lot of work with helping people

change their lives, don't you? What are some of the charities

you're involved in? Do you want to share a little bit about

that?

Well, I started the Campfire Project. It's not a

charity, but it's a, it's a safe place for men and women from all

over the world to tell their stories. I started out

originally with only interviewing men, but had women

in the group from day one, because I wanted the women to be

able to hear how men could speak when they felt safe to do so.

And I didn't interview the women first, because I knew if I

interviewed the men, the women first, the men wouldn't start,

they'd feel intimidated because women are much more open and

more natural, and the guys have been taught, especially us baby

boomers. We were taught, "suck it up, push it down. You also

don't cry now. I get some, a man on the screen with me, and I can

see them holding back tears, and they start to tear up a little

bit. I would just say to you, "that's crying, that's crap.

I'll show you how to cry if you like. Yeah, this is an example

of it. You know, because the strength is not in holding it

down, the strength is in showing the courage to be able to let it

out. And so, with that, having those conversations with those

people, I bought them, had one on ones, then brought them into

panel discussions. Then the women said, well, we love these

guys, we've never heard men talk about their emotions so deeply

or so wisely about how to improve society, so they want to

get involved. So I then started interviewing the women. We've

had panel discussions, we've covered everything you can think

of. We've had menstruation, menopause, does size matter in

the bedroom, all the different toxicities, and anything you

want to talk about, we'll talk about. We've never had any

bigotry, sexism, or racism. The group now has the highest score

when it comes to inclusion worldwide. When you look at what

makes an inclusive group, it also ticks five of the United

Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which is pretty high as

well. And then, with that led on to the camp, sorry, the Campfire

Project led on to the business of Smiles, which is a charity

with socks, and I know you've got a pair,

I know. I don't have them with me right now

There we go

But yes

I got the black ones as well, and there's a

story behind those, but we go out into the public and we talk

to people on the streets, they could be politicians,

professionals of all forms, people living on the streets.

We'll sit down next to them, we'll have a conversation with

them. We usually give them a pair of socks and thank them for

doing the best they can. And when they say, "What the hell

are you talking about? We go, "Or do you make the best

decisions with the information you have? You don't just

obviously go out and make back deliberate bad ones. You make

the best decisions you can with your family, your friends, if

you're at work, your colleagues, and everything. I go, yes, of

course, we do. And we give them a pair of socks, and we tell

them the story of the socks, and usually that leads into a

conversation where they tell us their life stories. And we

handed it, we've handed out 10s of 1000s of those socks, and had

10s of 1000s of conversations with people, and in that, you've

got no choice to listen to somebody, and this has been the

best education for me to walk my talk. If I'm telling other

people, you need to pay your attention to other people on

this. I've talked with people who have, like, males who are

trans transitioned to females, females who have transitioned to

males, all the different religions, cultures, etc. And

I've never had a boring conversation yet. When somebody

opens up and tells us their life stories, etc. or why they, why

they're doing what they're doing, I can understand them.

I'm not looking to see whether I agree with them. I'm looking at

understanding where they're coming from, what's happened in

their life. That understanding then gets rid of the judgmental

side of things, and I can then look at them and to go, okay,

well, and in the conversation, if I don't think they're doing

the right thing, I can ask questions that gets them

thinking, well, maybe I'm not doing the right thing, and all

of a sudden they're saying to me, "Oh, well, maybe I should be

doing this instead. I haven't told them anything, and they've

worked it out themselves, so they own that answer that

they've given me,

I. Oh, Alan, I mean, I know what you're doing

is absolutely fabulous, and you're such a generous grand

giver in your community and in our community. I want to kind of

end back and circle back to AI, just at the end of this part

one. Okay, in our world of, you know, that's in an AI world now,

the world is changing very rapidly. Why are human

connection skills becoming even more valuable?

Well, being able to recognize whether, like

looking at an image of somebody, for instance, especially videos,

deep fake videos, it's knowing to be able to pick up some of

these indicators, they're going to get so good that you won't be

able to pick up the difference, that's going to be one of the

issues, but the tone of voice, etc. I've heard a conversation

where the woman would go to a phone call from what was

supposed to be in one of the bottle shops, you know, a wine

outlet, talking about her special one, the one that she

really loved, they'd come in and everything, call that a special

price on it. She's talking back to the thing, saying no, I can't

afford it. My husband's telling him I'm spending too much money.

At the end of it, the sales conversation went right along

really nicely. At the final point, she ended up getting a

credit card out and buying some of the wine, and we found out

the voice she was talking to was totally AI, and so it's going to

get that good, so it's going to get harder and harder, but the

more skills you've got, the longer that's going to take

before they can then have that advantage over you, where you

don't know the difference.

Yeah, I wonder how long it's going to take before

they catch up, like it is the AI way better than it was a year

ago.

Exactly, it's getting to the point where yes,

you meet people on Zoom, and things like that. If they're in

your local area, it's going to be a face-to-face at some point.

It has to be,

Yeah, yeah.

If they're overseas, we're going to have to

find other ways to qualify and make sure they are who they are.

And this is where, okay, checking websites, other things

like that, looking at backgrounds, seeing how long

they've been in the market, etc. all of that will give you an

idea of, are they a real person, but in the conversations you'll

have with them on Zoom, for instance, yeah, you'll be able

to pick up whether they are a genuine person or not, as in

their attitude, their beliefs, what they're telling you,

whether they've been truthful,

And the people you know who know them, and you can

get that through some of the connections in a community.

People know each other, yeah. And, and it's also like when

money's crossing, crossing hands, like you know, be careful

of the fakes with with somebody trying to urgently get you to

give you some money for some reason, and stuff like that. So,

lots of things to be aware of. We're going to do another

podcast episode on that, as the cyber safety now in an AI world,

I think that would be a really good episode. So, this has been

a fascinating conversation, because communication and

understanding people really are at the heart of networking,

referrals, collaboration, and building meaningful

relationships. In part two, we deeper into emotional

intelligence, collaboration dynamics, self-awareness, and

we've touched a bit on that already, and building stronger

relationships in business and life. Alan, where can people

connect with you and learn about your work?

Well, there's always best places. Find me on

LinkedIn, you'll be able to see a lot of posts up there as well,

because, as you said, I like to keep educating people, and you

can find me very, very easily, but my website's probably the

best, and that is Alan stevens.com.au for Australia,

and Alan with 1l A L A N, and Stevens with a V,

Stevens with a V, and you have a free gift.

Yep, if they put the link into your show notes,

if you like, there's a short course, we only take them 28

minutes to go through, but it will give them a couple of

traits that they go out and look for in people and test them for

themselves, because when I grew up, my mother used to always say

to me, Alan, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, no

matter who the person is, you know, Gordon Ramsay, or anybody

else standing in front of you who's a chef, and all the rest

of it, you don't know how good their thing is until you put

your set teeth into it and taste it, and so it's the same thing

with what I can talk about this stuff, I can be very convincing,

and everything goes, but you do not know how good it is until

you test it for yourself, and once you test it for yourself,

that removes the critic, as far as I don't know if these things

work well, test it for yourself and get your own knowledge,

prove it to yourself,

That's exciting. So, grab Alan's free gift, and

then come to a grand connection too, because you can practice

some of the new skills you learn from his course in our

community, because that's what we do. We're here to practice

with each other to get clarity around our offers, clarity

around what our communication styles are, and of course become

trusted connections where we can help each other grow in our

business. So, if you'd like to experience a Grand Connection,

go to Grand connection.ca You can grab your free guest pass

and come to three events as a guest, and we also have a Grand

Growth bundle at Grand Connect. Action.ca forward slash gifts,

and it's filled with tools and resources to help you grow

through connection, clarity, and collaboration. And here's one

simple action for today: become a little more curious in your

next conversation and focus on truly understanding the person

in front of you. Until next time, let's connect, create, and

collaborate.