Positive influence and heartfelt resilience
in times of adversity.
How Do You Lead In A Crisis?
Ryan Bridge & Amanda Gillies interviews Elias Kanaris for The AM Show on TV3 in New Zealand about his latest book: “Leading From The Stop: Positive Influence and Heartfelt Resilience in Times of Adversity.”
Leading from the stop.
Aucklander Elias Kanaris considered it a small triumph that he’d managed to sort out what could have been a serious wardrobe malfunction in the nick of time.
It was the 11th of September, 2001 and he was boarding a flight from London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare. The international businessman and speaker was known for his impeccable dress sense so the tie was absolutely vital.
“Back then everyone was still wearing suits in business class” he says with amusement.
But 24 hours later, grounded on a plane in Newfoundland, Canada as terrorists changed the face of history, he’d forgotten he even had one on.
The shattering events that started just 4 hours into flight UA929 would go on to strip away passengers’ ideas of what was important in life and, for Kanaris, then build them back better. The now father of four came away from his five days sleeping on a stretcher in the Salvation Army church (wearing the same suit and tie) with lifelong friends and an untold threshold for facing and adapting to adversity. He quietly built this experience into his business for years with the aim of injecting others’ thinking with the kind of resilience and mental agility he knew was possible with the right mindset.
However, as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approached, he knew the story he’d wanted to tell had to come out in full, to a much wider audience…..
There’s nothing wrong with the plane…
Nothing could have prepared anyone for the tragedies that were about to unfold. Halfway through his flight, just after the crew cleared away lunch, Kanaris’s world would be abruptly changed forever. Was it the panicked look on the faces of the crew as they scurried around the plane or the horrendous sound that alerting him to an issue (a noise was caused by a combination of jettisoning fuel, in anticipation of their imminent touchdown, and the premature deployment of the landing gear to slow the speed of the plane)?
The announcement by Captain Mike Ballard reassured the passenger, telling them there was nothing wrong with the plane. He added that due to a “significant incident in the United States,” all airspace had been closed. As a precaution, the plane was being diverted and would be landing in Gander, which was in Newfoundland, Canada. To be honest, no one had any idea where that was.
24 hours on the tarmac…
Kanaris’s mind started to race. What was that ‘significant incident’?
The first thought was that the President of the USA had been assassinated.
That was quickly overtaken by another thought – maybe there was a nuclear attack on to US soil. Arching his neck to look past his fellow passenger who occupied the window seat, he wondered if he would be able to see a mushroom cloud through the window out to the horizon?
Thankfully, he couldn’t see anything. The next 30 minutes were spent preparing the plane for an unscheduled landing. The crew cleared away all the remnants of their lunch, eradicating any evidence of normality in this flight. What was supposed to be an eight-and-a-half-hour flight had been cut by half.
A hush fell upon the plane; passengers and crew alike assumed a sombre attitude. Soon the tell-tale signs of descent were felt as the barometric pressure drop caused me to swallow. My ears ‘popped’ and the discomfort in my ears disappeared.
Support from the community
Nothing could have prepared us for what was about to happen. 24 hours on the tarmac as they put together immigration and security at the airport.
38 planes descended in less than 90 minutes. A town that woke up for breakfast as 9,000, ended up having dinner for 16,000. They had pulled out all stops to ensure that there was food available for us upon our arrival. They had raided their pantries, their fridges and freezers to lavish home-made food and hospitality on us.
What a lot of the passengers thought was going to be a short stopover, ended up being a 5 day exploration of what it means to be resilient in the face of adversity.
“Human kindness will always overpower hatred and on the day when the world was shown the worst of humanity, we somehow were able to show the world the best of humanity.”
— Claude Elliott., Mayor of Gander (1996 - 2017)
These stretchers, provided by the Canadian Army, became our beds for five nights.
It wasn’t salubrious.
A fellow passenger, Bob Smith, who, like me, was originally from the UK, wrote: “We were greeted at the door by a jovial lady saying, welcome over and over. I learned over the next few days that she, and the other Sally Army people, really meant, welcome.”
During the day, the Red Cross brought in green camp beds and extra blankets. These were placed into rooms down in the under-belly of the church. I walked into a room which I later found out was their nursery. There were camp beds on the floor and some of them were already spoken for. Thankfully I found the last empty one and claimed it as mine.
The day started to drag on and someone brought a TV into the sanctuary. With its rabbit ears straining to pick up a signal, it was turned on. Most of the room became mesmerised, watching the footage of the planes slamming into the twin towers. I only watched it once and then left the room.
I didn’t want to watch the horror anymore. I was preoccupied with the need to write my report about the trip in Europe and what I had learned. Work HAD to take a priority. All I needed was somewhere peaceful and quiet. Taking my laptop from the nursery, I entered the main hall, that had been set up as a congregation centre and makeshift restaurant during the day. By this time, dinner had long been served and the space was cleared and almost empty. Sitting close to me was a lovely lady, knitting needles in hand with a cup of tea by her side.
She smiled at me, and I smiled back. Conversation seemed laboured at first as she asked me what I perceived were mundane questions about my family. Was I married? Did I have kids?
At the time all I could think was, “Hurry up, lady, I have to get this report done!” I never did get her name, but in 2018, when I posted an article that I wrote that referenced this experience, a Pastor at SA, Melanie Dawn Rideout, thought that she might have been Melva Warren.
I suppose that she represented a good cross-section of the local Newfies. She seemed content with who she was, and where she was. I suspected that she hadn’t travelled much.
Eventually something had to give…
Despite trying my best to kill the conversation, I eventually gave up on my report and shut down my laptop. I drew closer to her and entered the conversation. She was a lovely person and all she wanted to do was to love on me. By this I mean that she wanted to let me know that others, like her, cared about me and she was here if I wanted to talk.
Around 1 am, I thanked her for the conversation and bade her goodnight and went down to the nursery. While I thought that I was being considerate to the other tenants in the room, I must admit that the camp bed squeaked each time I sat on it or turned on my side.
Despite my best efforts, it would appear that I was still too focused on my work. I got up early the next morning and snuck out of the room, thinking that I wasn’t disturbing my fellow roommates. It turns out that I was as Bob went on to share in his article…
“On the second night around 1am, someone came into our room and laid down on the stretcher/cot next to me. He thought he hadn’t woken me up. Then at around 5am, up he gets and buggers off. Apparently thinking he hadn’t woken anyone up. The next night he comes in again at around 1am and leaves at about 5am. Now you have to remember it’s dark and my eyesight even with my glasses isn’t that good, so I didn’t know who it was. But I did decide that if it happened again I was going to get up and follow this ‘Will-o-the-Wisp’ to find out who he was and where he was going. I mentioned it to Kifah that morning and he’d seen this chap as well. Do you know who it was? Course you don’t. Turns out it’s none other than Elias himself. No wonder he had time to build a web site. He has several hours a day more than most of us.”
— Bob Smith
WANT TO GET HOLD OF THE BOOK?
Retailers are starting to stock the book. Go to this link to find out more.
Contact
For media enquiries, please contact my media manager Teresa Kruse from Media Pro:
Phone
+1 (416) 727 8145
For speaking enquiries, please contact my business manager, Charlotte Raybourn from Charlotte Raybourn, Speaker Management:
Phone
+1 (913) 890 3246