Here’s the full transcript of performance speaker Dr Gary Crotaz’s chat with Jane Farnham of Great British Speakers:
00:00:00:03 – 00:00:11:13
Jane Farnham
Hi, I’m Jane Farnham from Great British Speakers, and I’m here today chatting with the podcaster, leadership and performance speaker and executive performance coach Dr. Gary Crotaz. Have I said your name correctly, Gary?
00:00:11:18 – 00:00:11:49
Dr Gary Crotaz
You have, you have.
00:00:11:49 – 00:00:15:18
Jane Farnham
Really? It’s great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:15:23 – 00:00:16:38
Dr Gary Crotaz
Thanks so much for inviting me.
00:00:16:51 – 00:00:28:57
Jane Farnham
And I’m really looking forward to finding out more about you. So before we get into the speaking side of things, it’s always good to find out a little bit about your background. So tell me, because I believe yours is quite interesting, varied to say the least.
00:00:29:02 – 00:00:54:16
Dr Gary Crotaz
It is. I’ve done a few things along the way. I originally trained as a medical doctor, did a PhD in a molecular biology lab in my late twenties, realized that I didn’t want to pursue a career in medicine, and I moved into consulting fast for about ten years and then into retail leadership, first with Mothercare and then with Selfridges group and actually started working at Selfridges in February 2020, so just before the pandemic kicked off.
00:00:54:16 – 00:01:14:33
Dr Gary Crotaz
So that was a very interesting time actually to be working in the retail space, very challenging time. And I came out of retail in the pandemic and I thought if I was coaching myself, what would I say? Do the thing you love. And the thing I love is growing and developing people. And that’s when I started to build my coaching and my speaking and my writing in in the field of performance coaching.
00:01:14:38 – 00:01:26:01
Jane Farnham
So natural progression, that sounds like we need to dig a little deeper. Give me an idea about the technical type of work that you’re involved with these days, the type of coaching work that led to this, really.
00:01:26:06 – 00:01:55:53
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I’ve always been fascinated in particular by peak performance and world class performance. And along the way, alongside my executive corporate career, I was also a professional ballroom dancer. So my wife and I trained and traveled around the world. We were up since it UK seven times in World and European championships, so that’s a part of that. There’s definitely part of that that comes through in the coaching that I do, the speaking that I do, I’m really interested in helping people to think is loads of people helping you to fix your faults.
00:01:55:53 – 00:02:20:13
Dr Gary Crotaz
And I want to be somebody who’s helping to inspire you to achieve extraordinary goals. So I work with senior leaders, I work with entrepreneurs, I actually work with quite a few actors and performers in the US, in the UK and in Europe, helping individuals and teams to really achieve their goals. And then I do a lot of work around purpose and this comes to the unlocked moments I think we’re going to come and talk about.
00:02:20:18 – 00:02:58:37
Jane Farnham
So yeah, that that’s brilliant. I mean, you must love that. And you know, you said that you absolutely love it and I wholeheartedly believe that if you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t feel like work. So I’m really with you with that. And I teach my kids that every single day, that they should be heading in that direction and doing something I love. But to work with such inspiring, creative people on a daily basis and then to try to help them, you know, even get better than they are already, That’s that’s a winning formula. So last year, you mentioned it briefly. You wrote an award winning book called The Idea Man’s Mindset. Tell me the thinking behind that.
00:02:58:42 – 00:03:22:54
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I’ve always had a belief that more people should get access to coaching and the coaching mindset. So when I started my coaching career, I sent my coaching clients off homework between the sessions and eventually I thought, hang on. I think that the homework itself could become a book. And I thought maybe I can work myself out of a job by creating a book and people can gain access to some of this thinking.
00:03:22:58 – 00:03:52:44
Dr Gary Crotaz
The idea mindset is the people who are points of transition. Maybe it’s a transition in their career. They’ve just taken on a new leadership role for the first time. Maybe they’re thinking about a career change. Maybe they’re thinking about rebalancing their work and their life and it’s a process of going through and figuring out. So your idea stands for figuring out your identity and the direction you want to be going in for a future where you’re highly engaged and you’re living an authentic life in line with your values and your sense of purpose.
00:03:52:44 – 00:04:07:07
Dr Gary Crotaz
So that’s the idea mindset, and it comes through to this remarkable clarity, clarity of who you are and what you think, clarity of how you make decisions about what you want to do next, and clarity of the actions you need to take.
00:04:07:12 – 00:04:10:05
Jane Farnham
So say that again Identity, direction.
00:04:10:10 – 00:04:12:12
Dr Gary Crotaz
Engagement, and authenticity.
00:04:12:14 – 00:04:42:27
Jane Farnham
Authenticity. I love authenticity. I think that is truly what you hit or you become your true, authentic self. Then you’re on a completely different path in life. And I think that’s what we should be teaching our children, isn’t it? To just go with who they are and not try to be something they’re not? I love it If this is speaking to me, I’m like in this carry, I need you to coach me. So you’ve also done a podcast. I want you to unlock moments. How did that come about? And I understand you’ve had some quite interesting participants.
00:04:42:32 – 00:05:03:28
Dr Gary Crotaz
Yeah, so I published the book in January 20, 22, and then five weeks later I got bored and I thought I needed to do my next thing. And I was thinking about the people that had gone on the idea mindset journey. And for many of them, and I was thinking of one person in particular who became my episode, one of the podcast, they would have these remarkable moments of clarity.
00:05:03:30 – 00:05:33:12
Dr Gary Crotaz
So there was a progression of their understanding of themselves, their values, their strengths, all these kinds of things. And then there would be a point where they would go, I’ve just figured it out. I’ve just figured out what’s important to me, or I can let that thing go, or I give myself permission to change. And I thought back on my own career and I thought of times when I had had those moments and V not moment is not just a another sort of emergent moment of clarity as you figure things out.
00:05:33:27 – 00:05:49:07
Dr Gary Crotaz
It’s the ones where 20 years later you think back and you think, I know where I was, who I was with, what I was thinking at that time. And so many people have then come on the podcast since then. I asked them to talk about their stories of remarkable clarity, and they’re very different context. They’re different types of people.
00:05:49:12 – 00:06:15:11
Dr Gary Crotaz
But whenever they start the story and say, I was walking down the pavement, I was wearing a hat, I was with my dog, I’m like, This is the one because it’s so vivid in their mind. And when they tune into that, it tells them something about purpose and values, because it’s the point sometimes they might have given up a high paid job to pursue their entrepreneurial ambition, or it might have been They decided to stand up for themselves when somebody was bullying them at work.
00:06:15:16 – 00:06:35:32
Dr Gary Crotaz
Or it might be that a health episode changed their priorities in life. So some of the first people I had on the podcast and I still I still like to bring what I call ordinary people with extraordinary stories. So I think there’s loads and loads of people who can tell really resonant stories others can learn from about these moments of clarity.
00:06:35:33 – 00:06:55:12
Dr Gary Crotaz
And episode number one is a guy called Sam Horton. He was an actor, not a particularly famous actor, and he and I were working together on the idea of mindset journey, and he was struggling with a particular question for 4 to 5 months probably. And the question was, Do I pursue the success rate or do I pursue the happiness route?
00:06:55:19 – 00:07:11:57
Dr Gary Crotaz
When I faced with the choice, do I go after success or happiness? And he texted me at 4:00 in the morning one day and said, I’ve got it. I want to pursue what makes me happy, even if it doesn’t get any money. Do you think that’s the right answer? And I said, very not coaching thing, which was yes.
00:07:12:01 – 00:07:19:48
Dr Gary Crotaz
And he said, Why are you so sure? And I said, Well, I’m not supposed to say that, but you’ve just texted me at 4:00 in the morning having sex on this for yourself.
00:07:20:03 – 00:07:22:19
Jane Farnham
Did you wake up in the morning and it.
00:07:22:19 – 00:07:44:54
Dr Gary Crotaz
Woke me up. It woke me up. And and that was the moment when I thought it’s an unlock moment. That’s when the name came to me. So over and over, over the last year, I have managed to attract some really, really interesting guests onto the podcast. So, for example, I had a medical doctor, Kara Coffman. She is a world leading executive coach.
00:07:44:54 – 00:08:04:59
Dr Gary Crotaz
She founded the Harvard Institute of Coaching at Harvard Medical School. And she said to me, I can tell you the moment that if it wasn’t for this moment, we would not know each other. And she she was talking about talking with a mentor early in her career. And she said these three words came into my mind and the three words were, don’t hold back.
00:08:05:04 – 00:08:31:52
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she said, Whenever. After then I was faced with a choice in my mind. I said, Don’t hold back. And and it took her to the bold move. And now she chooses to work with quite challenging coaching clients. Actually. She travels around the world. She’s she’s written massive selling books. Another person that came on the podcast with Dr. Rice coaching, and she was ranked the number one emergent management thinker in the world last year.
00:08:31:57 – 00:09:00:58
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she said a mentor had said to her, do something important, not just interesting. And it shifted her thinking from doing great work to what I really want to do to make an impact in my life and there was somebody who came on my podcast is not famous. She used to work for me and she was working in digital retail and her husband was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer at the age of 40.
00:09:01:02 – 00:09:17:22
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she said he’s okay now, you know, as he is on, he’s been successfully treated. So it’s a good outcome to the story. But she said in that moment, her thinking changed from I’m always putting off the thing I really want to do because I think there’ll be time and I’ll do it next year. I’ll do it next year.
00:09:17:27 – 00:09:40:23
Dr Gary Crotaz
And suddenly she went, But maybe there isn’t time. And she sat down with her husband and their two young children. They decided, even though he was about to go into chemotherapy for his bowel cancer and even though they had two young children, they were going to start up an online fashion business from home, you know, boxes throughout their home and alongside them both having jobs.
00:09:40:28 – 00:09:59:02
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she just said we decided that if we’re going to do it, if we want to do it, she could do it. And that business is now really successful. They’ve got 65,000 followers on Instagram, and it comes from that moment. The moment wasn’t the moment when they decided what to do next. The moment was the moment when they said, Maybe that’s not always time.
00:09:59:11 – 00:10:19:30
Dr Gary Crotaz
Therefore, I should think about what if it’s now? And I think when I talk to people who listen to these stories, so many people come back and they say, That resonates with me, that made me think differently. Doesn’t mean I’ve got all the answers yet, but I’ve got permission to change and really that’s the power of the unlock moment for me.
00:10:19:34 – 00:10:26:17
Jane Farnham
I certainly think I’ve experienced something recently along those lines. Have you experienced that personally?
00:10:26:22 – 00:10:52:45
Dr Gary Crotaz
I have. You know, sometimes people experience more than one in their career. The one that I think back to and I often talk about is when I was in medical school. So so I went to medical school, you know, after after A-levels, like, like people do. And I was 27. I’ve been at medical school for seven years of an eight year program, not really enjoying it, but not really accepting that I hadn’t wasn’t enjoying it.
00:10:52:49 – 00:11:13:28
Dr Gary Crotaz
And I remember being in the corridor working on the corridor exactly where I was. And the thought that came into my mind was, You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. That was my own moment and it just gave me permission to think I could explore a different path than continuing on into my first hospital jobs and working as a doctor.
00:11:13:40 – 00:11:32:39
Dr Gary Crotaz
I didn’t know then whether I should stay or whether I would do. I didn’t know what else I could possibly do. But the unlock moment, with the permission to think differently. And from there, over the course, the next year, I started to explore different routes and I realized that the things I loved about medicine were not common to medicine.
00:11:32:43 – 00:11:48:56
Dr Gary Crotaz
There were other things that I could do that I would enjoy doing more. And over the last what is it now? Three, 20 years since I graduated from medical school, I’ve never looked back. And it all comes back to that moment. If you don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to, you have agency, you have control, you have choice.
00:11:49:01 – 00:12:07:46
Dr Gary Crotaz
And if it doesn’t work out, that’s on you too. So I’m a great proponent of if you’re going to jump from one place to another, then jump with both feet and don’t dip your terrain and think, well, if I don’t like the water very much, I’m going to step back into the thing I did before. You’ve got to go and commit if you’re going to make these kind of changes.
00:12:07:51 – 00:12:40:16
Jane Farnham
And do you think available? Have you seen a change, especially for the last few years with this resonating with people and people making these big life changing decisions more and more? Because I think I certainly have, because we were stuck in it in a in a place for so long around COVID. And I think that’s kind of made people really think about what their futures are. And it’s giving people time to pause, which we don’t normally get. We don’t normally get time to pause. We’re going to move from one thing to another. So I have. Have you seen that similar thing?
00:12:40:21 – 00:13:10:30
Dr Gary Crotaz
Huge. It’s hugely huge, both for people in the workforce and also leaders becoming much, much more aware of the power of purpose driven leadership, purpose driven working. So, you know, people like McKinsey have done research recently, you know, after the pandemic that says that something like four in ten workers are thinking about leaving their positions in the next 3 to 6 months, is massively more interest and in changing what people are doing from before the pandemic.
00:13:10:30 – 00:13:31:49
Dr Gary Crotaz
But the reasons that people are wanting to change is because they don’t feel that their place of work is giving them the things that they want, including more meaning and purpose in their work. There’s a US organization, Betterup, which is a big kitchen organization. It’s the one that Prince Harry is on the board of, and they did some research recently and it said that nine out of ten workers would now trade money for meaning.
00:13:31:49 – 00:13:50:26
Dr Gary Crotaz
So they would be happy to take a lower salary in order to have work that was meaningful. And they said to them, how much lower salary, How much sense, Harry, would you sacrifice if I could guarantee to you that your work would have meaning that resonated with you? And the answer was about 25%. This is a really significant impact.
00:13:50:31 – 00:14:11:38
Dr Gary Crotaz
And so and you see this particularly with Gen Z now, you know, leaders are having to think about how do I connect with purpose in my organization? How do I help my people to figure out what it is about the work that that matters to them? And it’s not that you should think that all other organizations have got this purpose and people are inevitably going to lead.
00:14:11:51 – 00:14:49:48
Dr Gary Crotaz
There’s lots of organizations that do quite, quite ordinary things, but they create a culture of deep purpose and a great example of that is the WD 40 company who make the famous releasing oil and the chief executive and chairman of Riley, the chief executive and Chairman of WD 40 Company for 25 years is a man called Gary Rich, and he came on the Unlock Moment podcast when he started leading that business 25 years ago, their employee engagement score was 55%, and when he left it was 93%, which is higher than St Jude Children’s Hospital in the US.
00:14:49:53 – 00:15:11:13
Dr Gary Crotaz
And he did it by creating a culture infused with purpose, even though the products that they sell is not an exciting, purpose driven product. But he talked about, well, what difference to we made to people that we help do this, what difference we made to people by creating a company that you love being a part of, It feels like family.
00:15:11:18 – 00:15:30:12
Dr Gary Crotaz
They took away the word manager. If you have direct reports, then in WD 40 Company, you’re called a coach and your role is to set up the team to succeed and then get out of their way. They took away the word mistake and they replaced it with the word learning moment. If things go wrong, it’s a learning moment.
00:15:30:12 – 00:15:48:27
Dr Gary Crotaz
How to explore the learning movement. And so there were very particular things they did to create a culture that connected with people’s meaning and purpose, and it dramatically impacted their engagement and that dramatically impacted the performance of the business. And by the time he left, the value of the business was something like ten times what it was when when he joined.
00:15:48:39 – 00:15:54:31
Dr Gary Crotaz
It’s a hugely successful company and you would never know about that story if it wasn’t for him going around the world.
00:15:54:36 – 00:16:28:58
Jane Farnham
It almost, you know, and you’re imparting that to a whole team of people that then will take that into their families and lead by example. So it’s always I love I love those stories. I make my hair stand on endless loop, ultimately. And so do you think then the moment is something that you can make happen, or is it just that you’re open and more? I suppose you’re inviting things in and then you’re quite open minded, or is it something that, you know, you can just say, right, I want to do this?
00:16:28:58 – 00:16:50:12
Dr Gary Crotaz
And I think it’s the latter. I think for the for the ones that really shift your thinking and really shift your choices, the definition of the moment is it is a remarkable, unexpected moment of clarity. But the people who have them are ready for them. So they are not in a fixed mindset. They’re in a growth mindset. They’re learning every day.
00:16:50:16 – 00:17:11:01
Dr Gary Crotaz
They are open to uncertainty. They’re conscious of the risks they might be prepared to take on their understand if the compromises they be prepared to take. And there’s a there’s a chapter of the book that I’m starting to write for, the memoir I’m bringing to life, the stories from the podcast and the chapter is going to be called Alone with Others.
00:17:11:05 – 00:17:31:36
Dr Gary Crotaz
And it’s that sense that, yes, you’re surrounded by people who care about you, who support you, who might be able to mentor you, who might help you develop, but ultimately in a really positive way. It’s about you and the people that I see who have those unlocked moments of the people that say, I just decided for me that this is what I wanted to do.
00:17:31:40 – 00:17:41:58
Dr Gary Crotaz
And they take that ownership. They’re not looking to somebody else to change their life for them. That’s a really important part at the heart of it. So this huge piece around accountability and ownership.
00:17:42:03 – 00:18:07:23
Jane Farnham
And responsibility and just, yeah, owning something and not relying on others to make you happy, you have to bring your own fulfilment in this world. This is I just I love chatting to you. And so after the envelope moment, what happens? Is it like an epiphany? Is it some kind of moment or is it just like you were talking about clarity? This is something that you physically say or just something in the mindset.
00:18:07:28 – 00:18:35:19
Dr Gary Crotaz
I think it’s it’s it’s holistic. I think it’s the whole thing. What’s interesting with unlock moments is sometimes people take action straight away. Sometimes it might be months or even years before change happens. So I was talking to a guy called Dr. Richard Usher Banjo on the podcast was published a couple weeks ago and he is the chief of staff and director of Organization Transformation at Intel Corporation in the US and he’s a world leading coach.
00:18:35:24 – 00:19:00:54
Dr Gary Crotaz
And he said, I knew in my mind in my late teenage years that I didn’t really love analytical chemistry, but it was another ten years and I went through doing a PhD in it before I figured out that I really wanted to work on the growth of people. So his unlock moment was ten years before he took action, but it was still the moment he looks back to and he says, That’s when I knew I didn’t necessarily act at that point.
00:19:00:59 – 00:19:21:31
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I always talk to people and you know, when I first talk to them, I’ll say, What was your moment? And they’ll say, This is the time when I quit my job. And then I was saying, When did you know that that was what you wanted to do? Oh, that’s different. And tell me exactly when you knew. And then they think about it and you know, when it’s a true and not moment because there’s a pause.
00:19:21:36 – 00:19:41:31
Dr Gary Crotaz
And then at the end of the pause, they’ll say, Yeah, I remember this person said this one thing to me. Michael Chabon came on the podcast. She’s one of the most famous coaches in the world. She was the public face of Gallup organization. She worked there for 14 years and set up all of their strengths coaching for 15,000 now strength coaches around the world.
00:19:41:36 – 00:20:09:07
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she came on the podcast two weeks after leaving Gallup, having been there for 14 years. And she was talking about her original decision to go to Gallup shipping in the broadcast media industry in the US. She was on a great past to to pursue success. Then she said, My only moment was it was a rainy day. I was sitting in traffic jam at a stoplight in Nebraska in my Toyota Camry, and on the Jeep in front of me.
00:20:09:15 – 00:20:29:07
Dr Gary Crotaz
You get the specificity and the Jeep in front of me. There was a cover on the wheel in the back of the car. And on that cover it said, Life is good. And I thought, mine isn’t. And then she thought, But it should be. But it should be. Given that I’m pursuing the career, I’ve always wanted to do, opportunities arising in front of me.
00:20:29:07 – 00:20:47:08
Dr Gary Crotaz
Everything is going right, but I don’t feel life is good. And she’d never considered working for the Gallup organization, didn’t have a background in that kind of thing. And serendipity happened an opportunity came around for her to help out in a little bit of a project, and that was the beginning of what turned into an incredibly successful 14 year career that.
00:20:47:13 – 00:21:05:45
Dr Gary Crotaz
But she brings it back to sitting at a stoplight in the rain in a Toyota Camry looking at the Jeep in front. And so for me, I think that there’s something in tuning in to that moment when you really knew that tells you something about purpose, to think about the actual decisions you made and and and the steps you took.
00:21:05:56 – 00:21:28:41
Dr Gary Crotaz
That’s not that is to do with the clarity you’ve already found. I want to I want to get people to really hone in on on that clarity. What does it mean for them? And then in organizations, people can start to talk more about what’s really important to them because they start to understand it better for themselves. And the best conversations on the podcast are the ones where they haven’t figured it out yet and you can hear them in the conversation.
00:21:28:46 – 00:21:47:58
Dr Gary Crotaz
This particular one I’m thinking of with a coach, and there was a something like a 15 second silence in the middle of the conversation and my podcast editor said to me, We should shorten that, you know, you know, he’s going to hang around 15 seconds. And I said, No, I want people to hear that it’s being thought about in the moment.
00:21:47:58 – 00:22:09:25
Dr Gary Crotaz
That’s incredibly powerful. And the beauty of a podcast is there’s no time limit. Nobody tells me what questions I got to ask, you know, all of those kinds of things. In a journalism interview. You can get away with new stuff in a podcast. So I think that’s a really powerful thing that you can hear the thinking going. And I’m hoping that people listening to the podcast are thinking for themselves.
00:22:09:30 – 00:22:19:00
Dr Gary Crotaz
Oh yeah, that’s that was me that made me think differently. That made me open to an idea that I’ve been close to before. That’s what I want to do.
00:22:19:04 – 00:22:42:15
Jane Farnham
So I’m getting the idea of the content and what you can bring it back into into change. But on a corp level, obviously you go and you talk to companies. So tell us a little bit about your speaking work. Do you have a set of talks that you do and all that? Do you have so many or do you just adapt every every one to each organization that you talk for?
00:22:42:19 – 00:23:12:36
Dr Gary Crotaz
That’s a great question. So so I’ve got an eclectic background. I’ve worked in my corporate roles as a director of group strategy, as a customer director, chief customer officer on executive leadership teams through transformation and change and huge organizational change in organization. So I’m very fluent in that kind of space. So the three I’ve developed sort of three core topics, and then I always shape the narrative for the needs of the individual organization.
00:23:12:37 – 00:23:40:57
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I meet with them in advance and understand their needs and their their issues to make sure that that is something that’s really going to resonate for their audience. The three topics that I’ve developed to talk about one is the unlock moment. So it’s about purpose driven leadership. It’s bringing to life some of the stories from the podcast that we just talked about and helping that to tune that into the needs of the organization in the team, particularly in the context of of trying to inspire people to a really engaged and purpose led culture.
00:23:41:02 – 00:24:11:22
Dr Gary Crotaz
The second theme is around creating a world class performance culture so that lots of people talk about a high performance culture and they talk about how do we create high support and a high challenge culture to get to that sort of top right quadrant of high performance. What I am layering on top of that is what I learned from traveling around the world with some of the world’s best dancers and sportspeople thinking about how do we become the very best in the whole world at what we do.
00:24:11:27 – 00:24:38:54
Dr Gary Crotaz
And I call that the ultra high support, ultra high challenge model. So it’s not for everybody, but it’s for people who are really trying to strive for something that they think nobody else is going to be able to take right now with Egypt and how dramatically fast industries are shifting. Organizations are going to win in this, are going to be able to pivot on a dime and shift really fast and be the first to market with with new products.
00:24:39:09 – 00:24:54:36
Dr Gary Crotaz
And to do that, they’re going to have to bring everybody together, give them absolutely everything they can possibly, possibly need, and then challenge them with goals that when people first hear them, they’re going to go, That’s nuts. There’s no way we can do that. And we saw it right at the beginning of the pandemic. That kind of mindset.
00:24:54:41 – 00:25:27:15
Dr Gary Crotaz
The third is around the coaching culture building the coaching culture and organization. So how do you help your leaders to shift from a boss mindset telling people what to do, measuring them against those targets and telling them off with that and turn it into coach mindset where you let go of you having all the answers and you invite your team to bring through their own ideas and take on their own accountability and study after study has shown that’s a much more effective and productive way to run a team and frees up the senior leaders to do the big thinking they need to do.
00:25:27:19 – 00:25:47:36
Dr Gary Crotaz
Now, here’s the caveat. I’ve been talking to people about those three topics over the last 3 to 6 months, and in every single case people have said, the one I want is the ultimate moment. And in my mind I was going. I thought that they want the one with more tangible outcomes around high performance and and and coach style leadership.
00:25:47:45 – 00:26:10:10
Dr Gary Crotaz
And they’re very welcome. I love to do those talks. I thought that the unlock moment would feel not corporate enough for corporate organizations with with, you know, sort of a specific target kind of culture. But actually they recognized so strongly that that people are looking for purpose and meaning in what they’re doing. That’s the one they every single one of them wants to unlock moment.
00:26:10:24 – 00:26:14:26
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I’m figuring out how I can bring that into whatever I’m talking about.
00:26:14:31 – 00:26:54:02
Jane Farnham
Well, I suppose in a way, if you’re talking if every single person, if you’re delivering a talk and you’re helping every single person in that business to have that moment, it’s like, whew, that’s powerful stuff. You know, it’s all very well to have key takeaways and to learn how to develop your skills and to but to have all have that sort of epiphany in how and what you want to do is, is is quite, I would say, very powerful. I have learned so much. It’s been so lovely talking to you and I’m so excited about marketing to our clients. But before you go, I’m not going to let you go any further because I really do need to know more about your dancing background.
00:26:54:07 – 00:27:13:25
Dr Gary Crotaz
So I well, I started dancing when I was a very cute four year old. I became less cute over the years, but I started when I was very young and I actually gave up in my twenties. I felt like had done everything I was going to do. And then I met my wife because she caught me at my desk when I was at work and said, I’m looking for a dancing partner.
00:27:13:30 – 00:27:46:00
Dr Gary Crotaz
And it was the beginning of a journey that was ten years. Took us around the world. We competed in 14 different countries in Russia, in America, all across Europe, and ended up representing the UK at the World Championships. And I remember in Moscow actually walking out onto the competition floor and we went the very best in the world, but we were it was the most amazing thing to walk through the doors of these boardrooms around the world and and just be in close proximity to people who were just extraordinarily talented and skilled at what they did.
00:27:46:04 – 00:28:10:57
Dr Gary Crotaz
And we learned so much about that kind of mindset. You know, you be in the studio at 1:00 in the morning and people were training and they were saying, well, our competitors are not training right now and we’re making ourselves better and better at what we’re doing. And I probably use as much from my dance experience, the dance world as I do from my corporate experience when when I’m coaching senior leaders.
00:28:10:57 – 00:28:31:57
Dr Gary Crotaz
I talk to somebody recently actually on the podcast who’s a world leading coach, and we were talking about moving, moving your thinking. And I said, here’s the thing. If you are perfectly balanced as a dancer, you don’t move because you’re standing on your foot to move. You have to knock yourself off balance and then that causes you to fall.
00:28:31:57 – 00:28:49:45
Dr Gary Crotaz
And then you throw up your leg and your foot and you catch your weight. That’s how you move. If you’re sitting going, I want to be in a different place. The first thing you’ve got to do is come off balance and that’s going to feel uncomfortable and then you’re going to catch your weight. And it’s in the catching of the weights that you find your new balance.
00:28:49:49 – 00:29:00:24
Dr Gary Crotaz
And she went as exactly what I do with my coaching clients. So there’s something about the translation from the dance world that I think is very evocative for people and I love talking about it.
00:29:00:28 – 00:29:03:22
Jane Farnham
And finally, your favorite dance?
00:29:03:27 – 00:29:21:11
Dr Gary Crotaz
Well, I’m very English, so I always liked things like the foxtrot. That was for English style of dance. But then we did a lot of training in Italy and they’re much more passionate and fiery, so they got me much more interested in things like the tango. So we we love doing tango around the world as well.
00:29:21:16 – 00:29:35:35
Jane Farnham
Like Geneva. What a fascinating career and obviously some really positive speaking topics there for anybody to engage with. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
00:29:35:40 – 00:29:38:10
Dr Gary Crotaz
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation.
00:29:38:15 – 00:29:51:28
Jane Farnham
Well, if you’d like to put Gary as a performance speaker for your team, then simply contact myself or Steve at Great British Speakers on 01753439289 or you can email bookings at bookings@greatbritishtalent.com.
You can also catch the Great British Speakers Podcast series on your favourite podcast platform:
Spotify, Apple logos and links etc
Dr Gary Crotaz performance speaker at Great British Speakers
