The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

Leadership Reflections: 'Unhurried Conversations' & Slow Leadership, with Leadership Facilitator, Author & Coach, Johnnie Moore: On the Power of 'Rushing Less to Connect More'

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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What if slowing down could unlock your full potential as a leader? Join us for an insightful conversation with Johnny Moore, a distinguished facilitator and coach linked with Oxford's Saïd Business School and Cambridge's Homerton College. Together, we explore Johnny’s philosophy of "Unhurried Conversations" and his unique approach to leadership, which encourages deeper, more meaningful connections. Johnny shares the wisdom he's gathered from his professional journey, including his impactful connection to fellow Coach Sam Smith and his resistance to conventional elevator pitches.

Get ready to be inspired by Johnny’s personal stories of growth through encounter groups and improv. These practices have not only shaped his professional ethos but also demonstrated the power of creating safe, structured environments for transformative conversations. Johnny opens up about his struggles with anxiety and despair, revealing how these emotions have honed his empathetic facilitation skills. Our discussion also touches on the influence of Michael Palin and the Monty Python team, whose use of absurdity underscores deeper truths about human connection and creativity.

Finally, immerse yourself in Johnny's real-life anecdotes that exemplify the art of facilitation. From avoiding a "plenary vortex" during a challenging Q&A session to exploring the value of resonance in conversations, Johnny’s stories are both enlightening and engaging. We also navigate the intricacies of personal branding and the purpose behind his company, revealing how thoughtful reflection has shaped his professional narrative. Don't miss this episode filled with insightful takeaways and memorable moments from a true expert in the field of leadership facilitation.

Tune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website.

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :)

Thanks for listening!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Good Listening To Show your life and times with me, chris Grimes, the storytelling show that features the Clearing, where all good questions come to get asked and all good stories come to be told, and where all my guests have two things in common they're all creative individuals and all with an interesting story to tell. There are some lovely storytelling metaphors a clearing, a tree, a juicy storytelling exercise called 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, some alchemy, some gold, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare and a cake. So it's all to play for. So, yes, welcome to the Good Listening To Show your life and times with me, chris Grimes, are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin. Oh, yes, indeed, and welcome to another glorious, if I may say, even though I say so myself episode of the Good Listening To Show Stories of Distinction and Genius.

Speaker 1:

This is a special Leadership Reflections episode because I've been introduced by Sam Smith, who's metaphorically passed the golden baton on to Johnny Moore. What else is possible here? Johnny is a leadership facilitator and coach, visiting lecturer at the Saeed Business School in Oxford and on the visiting faculty of Changemaker Programme at Homerton College in Cambridge too. So, johnny Moore, you are extremely welcome to the show and thank you for bearing with me earlier on today as I wrestled with old people and technology in my case. No worries.

Speaker 2:

I'm contractually obliged not to rush you, given that everything I do is under a flag of unhurried. I have to keep practicing.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and I'm just going to keep laying a bit more happy smoke at you. About 12 years ago you started hosting what you called unhurried conversations. It's a version of slow leadership, I think. As I understand it, and as you've just very eloquently put already, it's about rushing less to connect more, and I love the fact that even in imparting that I'm beginning to slow down, which is wonderful. So you're very welcome to the show. This is a Leadership Reflections episode where we'll discover and uncover your leadership lessons learned along your way in your very illustrious career of having trained on all parts of the planet, it would seem. I know you've been to the Solomon Islands, australia, africa, middle East, europe, north America and, and, and so hopefully you feel there's enough happy smoke blown at you, johnny.

Speaker 2:

That's as much happy smoke as I can cope with anymore and I'd start to panic and blush.

Speaker 1:

No doubt as well if someone doesn't have a way of connecting with you and they just meet the wonderful you as you walk and talk around where you normally go in cambridge, and they bump into you and they find you obviously intrinsically interesting. What's your favorite way of answering the question? Oh hello, what do you do? Know, it's clunky, but we've all got to find a way of either avoiding or answering that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, do you know, I think it's still clunky. I still haven't got that right, and I guess it's because I stubbornly refuse to have an elevator pitch. So what I often fall into doing and it's very lazy is I say, well, I'm a facilitatorator, and then I look to see if that means anything to them, and half the time it does, in which case job done, and half the time it doesn't, in which case I slightly elaborate and and, to be honest, I try and get off that plinth as fast as possible. Um, in fact, one of the things I've noticed when I'm working is people ask me to, you know, to do an introduction, and I try not to. I try, I try to say look, I'm facilitating. They don't really care who I am, they just want me to get on with the job so elevators pitches.

Speaker 2:

I might need to do some more creative work on those no, I don't think you do.

Speaker 1:

I completely concur with you. I I ask it as a facetious question because I know that it's the question that everybody hates, including me, actually, and I love fact. You said I get off that plinth as soon as I can and, like you, we're very like-minded and kindred spirits. I think you are an enabler, a curator of spaces, and it's all about collaboration and it's navigating through the tension with more fun and creativity, which is what you're all about. And that resonated and spoke very clearly to me too. So, sam Smith, what's your connection to him? Because he very generously said oh, you should speak, you should meet and speak to Johnny Moore.

Speaker 2:

I think my first connection with Sam was drinking his coffee when he was in the coffee business at a retreat called Yellow hosted by my friend Rob pointon, and if I remember rightly I drank his coffee but sam wasn't there, but sam had provided the coffee. And then I must have run into him at some online yellow thing, um and um hit it off with him very quickly because he's a lovely fellow and very easy to hit it off with, and I've sort of followed him since and we've had quite a few conversations and similarly, our vibe attracts our tribe.

Speaker 1:

And as soon as we connected a few weeks ago off the back of I love the fact the enigma of I drank his coffee but he wasn't there.

Speaker 2:

That could be the opening line of a book, couldn't it of a chapter?

Speaker 1:

really good drink his coffee, but he wasn't there. And and storytelling is the thing that's going to keep on giving, and I'm it's my absolute pleasure and delight to be able to curate you, johnny moore, particularly through the story scape of the good, listening to show. There's going to be a clearing a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called five, four, three, two, one. There's going to be some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare and a cake, so it's absolutely all to play for. So, just before we get on the open road of that, if I could just ask you another, um, slightly facetious question how's morale? What's your story of the day, please, johnny Moore?

Speaker 2:

oh, morale today is good, um, a minute on. Some days it isn't, but I noticed how good it was today and I think it got better and better. I went for a long swim, which always makes me feel a bit better, but this morning, for some reason, I really felt it and I did 60 lengths, which is a sign that I was really into it. Some days I'm not, and I just noticed cycling back through the rain in Cambridge. I felt really viscerally alive. So, for whatever reason, I'm feeling quite perky today.

Speaker 1:

You're very active. That's a cycle ride and a long swim.

Speaker 2:

I have eventually learned that it's very, very important for me to be active. I spent a large part of my life. Whenever people would suggest going for a walk, I would just pull a face and go. Why would I want to do that? Because I definitely used to be one of those sort of brain on a stick characters and it's taken me a long time to unlearn it. But now I'm quite ridiculously active compared to previous versions of myself.

Speaker 1:

And you're looking very svelte, trim and, yes, battered by the elements as well, because you've got wet twice in the pool and also in the rain of Cambridge as well. Good soaking. And you, you do a lot of your videos outdoors, which I do too, so whenever you're letting your thinking unfold, you do a lot of riffing, as you're walking normally by a river escape, I notice.

Speaker 2:

I, um I used to make them at home and then, on a whim, I just got this urge to try doing walking and I got a gizmo to do it with and immediately I just thought, oh, this is so much more fun. Um, I felt more alive doing the walk. I had a nice riverside walk with lots of trees around me and I realized that part of the selling point is people quite enjoy watching me dodge the hazards as I'm walking along. What you might think was noise and distraction actually adds to the appeal.

Speaker 1:

So that was quite amusing and I love the slapstick element in that and also on LinkedIn, when I was researching you, you said, as Monty Python say, we're all individuals, and that really immediately spoke to me, because my all-time living comic hero is Michael Palin, and so actually, I'm, I'm, he's. He was at the top of my tree talking about trees within clearings, which we're going to in a minute but when I first started the podcast about three and a half years ago, michael palin is up in the canopy of my tree as the pinnacle. So the day I can speak to michael palin, we've all know, we all know, we'll know that I've made it. Thank you, um.

Speaker 1:

So let's get on the open road. You talked about having trees and things to stumble over. So there is a clearing with a tree in it, and that's what this is about. So let's get you on the open road of the story scape of this. So take this where you like, when you like, how you like, as deep as you like. But first of all, johnny Moore, where is what is a clearing or serious happy place for you? Where do you go to get clutter-free, inspirational and able to think?

Speaker 2:

I stumbled into my happy place a few days ago. Actually I've been in the doldrums a bit, so I'm not perky every single day, sometimes I'm not. But I had breakfast with my friend Alison here in Cambridge and we just get on really well and about three minutes of the conversation I said stop, stop, I'm just in my happy place. I feel like a man who's been in the desert and has stumbled on an oasis and I just love this because sometimes I just find myself in conversation with someone where there's just flow and energy. It's not exactly overexcited, it's just that we say something to each other and you can watch the other person's brain engage, turn it over, savour it, chew it up, offer something back. It happened with Alison. I remember happening in New York about 12 years ago. Same experience I was talking to my friend Alain and I suddenly went oh, oh, this is what I've been missing this kind of conversation. What a great answer.

Speaker 1:

In all my 320, well, 320 odd episodes, no one has ever said their clearing is the magic point within mid-conversation. That's a great answer. So it's that moment of just sudden, abrupt happiness in mid-flow of conversation is what I'm hearing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel slightly tearful, as you point that out to me, because I think it's so easy for me and all of us to get attached to things and places, but it's in relationship that we find life, I think.

Speaker 1:

I love that, and also to the whole construct and concept of slow leadership and being unhurried and just be present. And yes, so I love that, the sort of brain resonance and chime and illumination that happens if you can suddenly pull yourself up to just a minute. It's happened, we're happy, we're in conversation. I love that. What a great answer. So I'm now going to metaphysically and literally arrive with a tree in your clearing which is a wonderful sort of mystic, almost mist of Avalon space.

Speaker 1:

It's that moment of magic when two people are connecting. So if I may barge in with a tree, I'm now going to shake your tree a bit existentially to talk about now a lovely juicy storytelling construct called 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You've had five minutes, or as long as you've needed, since you've known that you're going to be my guest, to have thought about four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention and, borrowed from the film up, that's a bit more squirrels, you know what never fails to grab your attention. And then the one is a quirky or unusual fact about you, johnny miller, that we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us it's not a memory test, so rest assured, we'll curate you through it gently. But over to you to interpret the shaking of the canopy of your tree as you see fit.

Speaker 2:

Well, it was a very interesting structure and I quite like that. I've had it for a while now because our original date was postponed, and I laugh at myself because I tend to be a bit reluctant to adopt structures, but I recognize a little bit of structure is obviously quite helpful. And I really enjoyed figuring out the four things that have shaped me. I've actually written them down so I don't forget Um, and I mean I could name 10 or seven or three, but let's go with these four Um, let's go with these four um.

Speaker 2:

The first one is encounter groups. Uh, it's a group therapy process that I did 25 or maybe 30 years ago. Um, they have quite a controversial history. If you research them, you'll find out that done um unethically they have tremendously bad vibes, but done ethically and I think the ones I went to were very ethically run, they were very skillfully run. They are really amazing. And we had a group of 24 people. We would meet every week for most weeks of the year, for maybe 30 weeks of the year anyway.

Speaker 2:

And encounter work is about being very present to what's going on in the room and being willing to challenge each other, often on quite specific aspects of behaviour that we'd seen and you'd have these quite charged conversations, but in this space that felt for want of a better word safe, that was well-structured so that you could do difficult conversations with some guardrails, and people would just get encountered on really, really amazing things, like someone might be encountered just on the way that they styled their hair, which you might not think much of, but you know, they'd say I've noticed the way you style your hair and it's not quite consistent with what I hear about you as a, and I just wondered, and the person, you might think the person would go how dare you? But in fact they went oh, that's interesting. Well, I suppose I do. And then, just by talking about how they style their hair, you would unpack more of their personality and we would unpack more of how we felt about them and you start learning a lot more about yourself, about the little things that create relationship.

Speaker 2:

Um, it was actually just an amazing experience and I realized, doing this little prep for you, chris, that it really has shaped me in ways that I didn't quite grasp at the time and I think what it's given me is, for good or ill, a certain level of impatience with humdrum routines and conversations because I've got such a taste for the excitement of real I. The word that's coming out of my mouth is intimacy. I wish I had a better word, but that's the one that's popped out. It's too late now. That kind of real, human, exciting contact, yes, and it was one of the reason it was a contributory factor to me not being able to take advertising seriously anymore after it. I just I just couldn't take those sorts of slightly over over important meetings about logo sizes. I felt like they weren't interesting enough and the group dynamics were more interesting. That's why I became a facilitator and I think that year of encounter has seriously shaped me and very interesting how it needs obviously to be very deftly facilitated.

Speaker 1:

You talked about having guardrails in place, because you can imagine there'd be all sorts of unconscious bias and just suddenly noticing that someone's hair is different. So it would have to be very, very deftly and and well facilitated and and delighted for you that it was and and therefore imparted the same magic that you've passed the golden thread of in your own work as well. It's about curating spaces that enable others to truly connect.

Speaker 2:

It's a real paradox, isn't it? I just think it's a paradox of safe, but not so safe that nothing happens. Yes, I think I saw something this morning that priya parker has a phrase which I quite liked um hospitable but charged enough. Charge for something for there to be growth and challenge and excitement, but hospitable enough that people don't feel like they go too far on a limb yes, so there's still safety implicit within it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a bit like those three concentric circles I like, of comfort, risk, panic. No one wants anyone, that's a good way of putting it. We're all going to do much better if we spend our lives risking something. Yeah, to connect. So it's a lovely currency and elixir of connection, which is the through line already that I'm getting Wonderful. So that's a delightful first shapeage. What's next?

Speaker 2:

Next is improv. This was about 25 years ago as well. I was in a quiet patch with work classic freelance life so I had some time on my hands and someone had mentioned this guy to me His name is Denzel Myers and said he just told me he was very interesting and made him sound interesting. I thought no more about it, but I saw an email that he'd sent out saying, oh, I'm going to this conference about improv in organizations in November in San Diego and I thought, oh, I've got nothing better to do. I think I might go. I might find out who this Denzel character is. An improv that sounds interesting, I'll go. So I booked the flights on a whim um, about 10 days away, and I then I thought, oh, maybe I should find out what this improv is. So I found an improv acting workshop in Islington, where I was living at the time, spent the weekend with Sprout Improv, found it really fun and interesting and exciting. I mean, I knew what improv was, but I've never done it and the conference was just amazing.

Speaker 2:

I remember a specific moment where a guy called Izzy Gazelle was running a session on improv. What a great name, izzy Gazelle. It's a great name, isn't it? I remember him, somebody at the back of the room chuckled, and I remember him very deftly saying oh, that's interesting. Tell me about your laughter. That's a teachable moment. He said, and that was when I went.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I see, yes, improv is this thing of noticing and it has a connection to encounter work.

Speaker 2:

Funnily enough, it has this thing about you start with something that you might pass over as small and inconsequential, but if you dwell on it, unhurriedly, I suppose, you start to unpack the way everything's connected to everything. So it was kind of like another angle on the same um finding principle, of sort of finding aliveness, I suppose. And I was just going to add that what I think I've now realised about improv is improv is often associated with that game show Whose Line Is it Anyway? Which is, if you like, a comic and manic form of improv. But what interests me is sort of slower, less manic improv, and not necessarily comic. It's just this capacity to notice that we have more choices moment by moment than we realize, and the key thing is not to drive a narrative but to connect with your, your part, your scene partner in a show, or with your colleagues if it's at work through the elixir and magic of yes and yes and yes, and as a mindset sign of yes and or yes and I suppose it's yes and or being affected.

Speaker 2:

It's just attention to small things and noticing your responses and, to use your word from earlier, a kind of curating of your experience, if you like, by slowing down, down enough to pay attention so that the improv shows I might have enjoyed 20 years ago were probably the manic funny ones, yeah, and the ones I enjoy now I have a different quality to them of they're more slow and they're more spontaneous and they're more intimate yes, and were you aware that I run a comedy improvisation company in Bristol called Instant Wit?

Speaker 1:

had we made that I was I'd forgotten, but you did tell me, yes, and so that's, that's another extraordinary, wonderful connection point and coincidence of the fact we have that currency in common. And have you heard of paul zed jackson, who's a wonderful? Uh, who hasn't?

Speaker 2:

heard of paul zed jackson. He was. He was there in san diego all those years ago. He was definitely one of the people you know.

Speaker 1:

He was the he and I were the token englishman at this otherwise quite american event yes, and because paul z jackson introduced me to the whole world, I have a lot to thank him for, and in fact he's previously guested as well, and I now run a company called instant whip that I've been running for about 35 years, co-running with a wonderful person called stephanie weston. Yes, we, there's lots of stuff in common here. This is lovely. It's going to. I'm going nom, nom, nom, nom nom.

Speaker 2:

No, we're horribly enmeshed with each other, chris, we are. You're going to have to watch out we don't get completely entangled here.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and number three, please. I've got a bell, but I forgot to get out for when I get stuck in a rabbit hole. If this is it, it's cashier. Number three, please. Uh, we are.

Speaker 2:

So, yes, shape it's number three no, ring your bell and then I'll come in.

Speaker 1:

My timing's a bit off today that that was my fault with trying to funny around, with trying to change the technology and, you know, trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

Speaker 2:

Here we go shape it's number three please, I like that bell um as I, as I listened to them, I I felt like taking slightly more risks.

Speaker 2:

So the number one, the three, the third thing is oxford, where I went to university. Um, and I always feel a bit cautious about this because I don't want it to sound like, oh, look at me, I went to oxford because I think the curse of these sorts of institutions is the elitism that they, they drill into you. Um, and when I say the oxford shaped me, it was for sort of good and ill, because my experience there was, was I was in a way kind of classic, awkward grammar school boy struggling a bit at this then very public school dominated institution, and I had it was the best of times in the worst of times um, but I can't deny that that has influenced me. It's influenced the way I think, um, I um, you know, I think the place where you do your early adulthood has sort of deep resonance for you. Whenever I go back there I can feel stuff stirring in me. Um, it's sort of a nostalgia, and some of it is pleasurable memories and some of it is quite traumatic memories and anything.

Speaker 1:

You've ended up in Cambridge as well and you're attached to business schools in both environs actually yes, attached slightly loosely, I would say.

Speaker 2:

But yes, I decided I kind of wanted to go back to a studenty place when I left London and I thought if I went to Oxford people would accuse me of going back in time. Yeah, so I thought I'd go to Cambridge then. Same difference, love that.

Speaker 1:

Same difference, wonderful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course they're similar and different. It's quite interesting. They're very, very similar in some ways, but actually quite different in others, I think.

Speaker 1:

And reading behind the lines of where you're from, because it's perceived as being a sort of public school environment, you strike me as being slightly Alan Bennett-y, in the sense that you might have come from a more working class background to then suddenly do social mobility through education. I hope that's not too judgmental, but it's what I'm noticing.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm not. I'm not probably as as Alan Bennett, but I think there's a stream of the likes of us who went there from state schools who never quite fitted in, and I suppose that's part of the shaping that Oxford has given me. It hasn't been a ticket to the higher levels of the establishment. It's actually played into a pattern that I have of often feeling like the little child and outside the shop window, breathing onto it, not quite able to kiss, in the sense of there's an in crowd but I can't. I want to be but I can't. I can see them but I can't quite join. And and I think a lot of those of us who went to Oxford from that kind of background left feeling we'd never quite made it. I always had this feeling that there was a script that some people had been given in Oxford but no one had bothered to tell me.

Speaker 1:

The script of privilege, if I may say, is one way of interpreting that. But also I have discovered that one of the best testing grounds and proving grounds for facilitators as enablers is their capacity to be outliers outside looking in. So I love that idea of you breathing frost onto the glass but actually being able to actually curate them once they've come out of the shop in a space that is a facilitated space yes, I think one of the things I hope I'm good at as a facilitator is I'm quite good at imagining what it might be like to feel excluded.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I appreciate with Oxford it's like levels of privilege that we're comparing, but I think I've always when I'm running things I'm always sort of aware of. Does everyone feel like they can join in with this?

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

I'm aware that some people might not want to play a game, so I try and make it possible not to. Yes, I try and account for all the different levels of energy in the room, because I know what it's like to feel, to feel excluded.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and the worst type of training or coaching is when people feel like they're sort of horses at the vet receiving medication. I think it's always much better if people have got a choice or an option to get involved, to participate or not that's a very powerful metaphor.

Speaker 2:

I might borrow that one I am captain.

Speaker 1:

Analogy metaphor, as indeed you. I'm loving this, thank you. We could be on to shape it.

Speaker 2:

Number four, please so I thought carefully about this one and I thought I might talk about um anxiety and then I thought, no, actually I'm going to say it's despair. I think that's. I think I don't want to cop to that. That's something that has shaped my life a lot. It's very. It's not possible, is it, to know for sure how one compares my internal experience with the internal experience of anyone else. But I think I'm one of the more anxious people anxious and neurotic people in the world. I've always had to manage levels of panic and anxiety and catastrophic fantasizing, and I often feel something that I think a lot of people would call despair. And I think with the passage of time I've got slowly got better at accepting despair, something that's never going to completely vanish from my life.

Speaker 1:

And is that about just your perception of the human condition, or are you talking about sort of a depressive tendency? Or just because I love the fact it's framed as despair? So just tell this, just just unpack a little bit of the story behind the story, your use of the word despair.

Speaker 2:

It feels like the best word I can use to describe what I often experience. I often wake up in the middle of the night with this wake up and just feel very anxious. Very easy then to start thinking about mistakes and things that might go wrong in the future and things that are wrong in the past and get lost in a kind of rumination. That's very unsettling and, you know, sometimes that has felt. There have been times in my life when I felt absolute deep panic. You call it panic, call it despair, almost sort of feeling like helpless, sort of existential angst, and I I'm sure that quite a lot of us do.

Speaker 2:

These are difficult times. We do feel it at times and I I think I'm learning the the wisdom of I can't chase it away. I have to find a way to respond to it. Um, and actually what I, what I found myself doing, just joining the dots here a bit, is I'd realize I'm gonna have to improvise tonight. The things that calmed me down last night aren't working tonight, so I'm gonna have to use my improv muscles and try, try shit out, try moving, try thinking this, try not, trying not to think.

Speaker 2:

Uh, you know, trying, talking to myself in gibberish, I pull out my improv repertoire, if you like, to see if I can find a thing that allows me to settle down. And I think, just as I talked about knowing what it's like to feel excluded, I think knowing the sort of darker, shadowy emotions, if you want to call them that, and being willing to be with them, I think means that I'm reasonably good at sensing when people in in around me, in groups, might be feeling some distress and then being able to adjust to it, you know, in a reasonably competent and empathetic way that's so very relatable, um, in that's spoken to me in so many different ways, because I I too, at four in the morning, have my deepest pockets of existential angst and the world is totally out of kilter and and that's that.

Speaker 1:

That's very relatable and I love the fact that you're able to then trust your inner genius to find sort of slightly wibbly ways out of the maelstrom by gibberish gobbledygook and trusting your inner genius, this morning of I'll go for a long swim and a soggy bike ride and the world will right. Wonderful, the great shape it is. Thank you so much. Anything else you want to say about that? I I only, in case I interrupted you about your lovely, uh, description of despair um, I think that might be enough.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to wallow in it, I want to contain it.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, let's leave it there. Let's do more gibberish. So now, uh, we've shaken that part of your tree.

Speaker 2:

Now, it's three things that inspire you, johnny moore well, the first one is going to get you saying that thing about how many things we have in common, because I've written here michael palin, um, and indeed the whole monty python thing, but palin is the epitome for me of a capacity to bring a sense of absurdity, uh, in order to see truth. I mean, that's the great thing about absurdity. It actually you actually bring, makes us aware of something that is true, by puncturing a ritual or routine that actually doesn't have life in it and making it look ridiculous. And what I love about michael palin is is he's so good-natured, um, and I I think I share some of that quality of mischievous humour and I think I've got better at being more like Michael Palin and maybe a bit less like John Cleese on a bad day, in the way that I bring that mischief into the world, if you like.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love that you've said that. And just to explain also, he's like Stan Laurel, but now a reincarnation of that humility, kindness, warmth.

Speaker 2:

Yes, because he doesn't take himself too seriously, does he? Except when he does, which is also quite fascinating. You know, there's that very famous TV episode after they brought out Life of Brian, where he takes on the Bishop of Southwark and you can see he's quite unusually indignant and it's quite nice to see that side of him occasionally as well.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I love that you've cited michael palin as being one of your influencers fantastic thank you.

Speaker 2:

Next, uh, influencing um, resonance is what I was thinking. It's something I've noticed more and more and more and delight in, um, so resonance is something that I often experience in conversations where, for example, I say something that I'm thinking and then another person in the conversation might just be slightly recapitulating what I've said, and sometimes they recapitulate it sort of word for word, but of course in their own voice and with their own somaticness and body expressions and stuff. And I go, oh, that's really good, what I've just said now sounds more important because of this person sometimes repeating it in their own words. But sometimes, even when they repeat it in my words, it adds something to it and I go, oh, that's that resonance. I can feel it in my heart, or I feel tearful. It's almost like a thing I've known, expressed rationally. I can now feel more deeply because it's been passed to and fro in I was talking earlier about in relationship.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's what I think is so, so important about conversations that we so easily dismiss. We think, oh, it's all about adding information to things. No, no, I think it's about so much more than that. And so moments of resonance, I I often get very excited when I feel them um, because they feel very heartening to me yes, and I.

Speaker 1:

I love the app, the amplification that's implicit, where something gets resonating and it becomes a third thing. That's bigger than the two of you that first stated it had it reflected and then it's grown even more. I love that lovely.

Speaker 2:

And now a third influencer this just came to me the other day and it's quite a small thing, but I noticed I just delight in spring seeing small kids with their parents. I mean, often at the weekend at the pool there's a lot of family stuff going on. And I just noticed, delighted to see this huge bloke, holding by his hand a little tiny person, walking in that slightly a toddler-like way, and I just find that I'm not a parent. I just look on that and I just oh, little boy, so delightful, little girl, so sweet. They're so full of you know the joy and spontaneity it's hard not to be. I don't even know if I'm influenced by it, I just know that I look and I go.

Speaker 1:

Isn't that delightful, oh that's lovely and if I may ask, not being a parent, was that a deliberate thing or just how life panned out? Or?

Speaker 2:

I think it's kind of how life panned out. Yes, yeah, lovely.

Speaker 1:

Two things now, and this is where, borrowed from the film Up, we're going to talk about. Oh, squirrels, you know what never failed to grab your attention, irrespective of anything else that's going on for you in your wonderfully delicious, hectic life. What are your squirrels? Or monsters of distraction?

Speaker 2:

Yes, they're both wonderfully trivial things. Onion soup If I see onion soup on the menu anywhere, I often look at a menu and go is there onion soup? I mean, probably not if I'm a Mexican and I go, ooh, and I've become a bit of a sort of I wouldn't say exactly a connoisseur, but I'm very attentive to onion soup and whether it's got real flavour or not, because often it's a bit bland and we're talking cheese and croutons and the whole, the whole experience, yeah, the whole nine yards. I remember a meal in an otherwise very disappointing trip to the caribbean which wasn't remotely as glamorous as I expected. The highlight was the phenomenal onion soup we stumbled on at some restaurant, somewhere, I think. I remember nothing else except for this fabulous onion soup and how so?

Speaker 1:

for some reason that sticks in my mind there's a delicious irony that it wasn't in france, because that's where you'd expect french onions. No it wasn't.

Speaker 2:

No, it might have been a french island in the caribbean.

Speaker 1:

I can't remember it was the thing I most enjoyed in fact actually the only thing I ever enjoyed in the chain that used to be cafe the fact you could go in and have an onion soup. So that's very relatable. You talk about resonance. I'm just feeling much resonance in so much of what you're saying, which is my instinct all along in thinking Johnny Moore is going to be a wonderful guest, so I love that. Two wonderful squirrels. Thank you for that. And now a quirky or unusual fact about you that we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us there was a second squirrel. Actually, you know what? I had big people with children in my head then. So sorry, you're quite right, you've got a second squirrel.

Speaker 2:

So big people with children would make the initialism BPWC right. Yes, whenever someone uses a phrase phrase there's a part of my main goes does that make an acronym? It and I just, or technically, an initialism if it doesn't make a turn itself into a word. I'm constantly going when someone says something I like oh, does that make a? How does that sound if I turn it into an acronym, bpwwc? I love that. People with children oh, it's a BPWC moment.

Speaker 2:

I remember when I was in advertising and I was much more of a yuppie and I was much more avaricious when we ran into problems with a client and we couldn't think of anything else. We'd just say to each other BTBL, buy the bastards lunch. And we would buy them lunch. My partner at the time was very good at being jolly at lunch and I wasn't, so I just let him run the show. And what we found often was at the end of a really jolly lunch where we scrupulously didn't talk about work at all. They'd be inventing by the time coffee came around. They'd be inventing things they could buy from us. Be inventing by the time coffee came around. They'd be inventing things they could buy from us.

Speaker 1:

So we we called it btbl, btbl, and I can't remember the acronym b, big bpwc, bpwc. Yeah, thank you for the. Was that a squirrel then? Was that where you went?

Speaker 2:

that was my second squirrel my tendency to create acronyms out of things no one's ever said that either.

Speaker 1:

This is wonderful. Thank you for questioning, for challenging me. Hang on a minute. I'm missing a squirrel. I've done some research for this. Your squirrel has been restored. Bless you, and thank you for the two acronyms. I love it. Give me the one about lunch again.

Speaker 1:

Let's buy them lunches a buy the bastards lunch btbl btbl, and may that help all of us get more work in future by btbling our more tricky clients. I love that. And now, um a quirky or unusual fact about you, johnny moore, a leadership facilitator, that we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us unless you listen to one of my videos.

Speaker 2:

Um, I once took part in there's a slight python connection to this one I once took part in a flying circus over vancouver harbour. Literally, I was sitting in a little uh, prop plane in a in a circuit of planes flying over a firework display. Wow, is it vancouver harbour or victoria harbour? One of those in you know, in british columbia, although the kicker is, and they said I put this in one of my videos. That sounds fantastic. Actually it was a very disappointing experience, but I sat in the plane thinking this will make a good story, but actually I'm a bit meh, I'm not really. I'm not really feeling it.

Speaker 1:

It's not as good. It's not as exciting experience.

Speaker 2:

As I can make it sound, it was a precursor of of social media, in a way yes, and how did you get in the cockpit in the first place?

Speaker 1:

that's an unusual thing to find yourself in a flying, so it's the wrong story, but I learned to fly a long time ago.

Speaker 2:

I got my private pilot's license and I I then took a holiday in british columbia to have a go at flying float planes.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's resonant too. I wanted to as soon as I was in Vancouver and wanted to be one of the island pilots as we went to Salt Spring Island.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was extremely incompetent. I mean, I wasn't that good at PPL. Float planes are very difficult things. They're very, very different from a regular plane. I did see some amazing sights, though. I had some amazing flights sea planes are float planes.

Speaker 1:

That's the same thing, isn't it? Yes, yes, sorry, yes, yes, I didn't. That's more technical.

Speaker 2:

They're called float plane thing I learned about float planes, number one. Number one is about float planes is because they've got these giant things in the water, they need very long takeoff runs, uh-huh, but their landing runs are shorter, so you have to be very careful not to land in a lake that you can't subsequently take off from. Good advice, that's that turned into an acronym. Can't substitute. No, it's too long for an acronym, but there's a. There may be a wisdom in there.

Speaker 1:

Are you very fond of four-letter acronyms then? Uh, they need to be short enough that I can remember them and you've heard the joke about what a tla is, haven't you t-l-a? No, that's a what. What a three-letter acronym. Thank, you yeah, there you go. Sorry I've disappointed both of us with that, but anyway one of those you need one of those sound boards with that.

Speaker 1:

Actually, I've got a hooter here because I'm doing a live show of this in a couple of days time, where I'm organizing a piss up in a brewery by interviewing the MD of the Bristol Beer Factory here in Bristol. So I did have a hooter, but not, uh, one of those things that go wah, wah, wah, we have shaken your tree. Okay, now we're going to stay in the clearing, going back to the construct, and we're going to move away to talk about alchemy and gold. Now, when you're at purpose and in flow, johnny Moore, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here? Purpose and in flow, johnny moore, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

Speaker 2:

I. What I think comes to mind are what I call tiny moments of facilitation, where I just respond to the smallest sort of thing I'm noticing and just find a way of responding to it. I mean, often the trick with facilitation is not to do too much, but the moments where I decide to do too much, but the moments where I decide to do something interesting. And to give an example, I was at a gig a while ago where I was notionally facilitating the day, but there's a big chunk where I wasn't really facilitating. It was all predetermined. A presentation was going on, something had gone wrong with the timing and they were all thrown off kilter and they sort of didn't do what they were planning to do and they stumbled into being into a q a session and I was sitting at the back. It was none of my business. But I started to feel fidgety because there was I could sense this q a was getting to what I call a plenary vortex, where two or three people were talking a lot and everyone else was kind of starting to sink and wondering when their coffee was coming. And I just felt fidgety and I and it's almost like before my brain decided my body made me fairly quietly move from my chair around the back of the room down the side to sit halfway down the side towards the front well, nearer the front than the back, I suppose because I just felt like maybe I'm gonna. And then my client who'd been inadvertently chairing this Q&A noticed me and then we made eye contact and she said, oh, I think I'm going to let Johnny host this because I think he's got more experience, which is kind of what I wanted.

Speaker 2:

So I then went up into the chair and I thought what am I going to do? And I just did a little thing, because my concern was somebody was being very persistent with the question. They were interested in. The speaker was engaging with them. They were both enjoying themselves. Everyone else was getting a bit bored and I could feel like everyone's getting, like I was feeling a bit fidgety. So I just thought how can I do that? I said so I'm just going to pause.

Speaker 2:

I can see that you've got a bit more to say, so we'll come back to you. Uh, I also sent one to other people. Uh, could you raise your hand if you also want to join in? So yeah, okay, and I imagine I don't know. I said, but maybe some of you are concerned that we do get to coffee on time. Big sniggers from the room, ah, okay, so I'm right about that. So look, here's what we'll do. We've got 15 minutes, we'll get to coffee on time, we'll come back to you, we'll make sure we include you and we good, and then the rest of it. I don't think I said anything.

Speaker 2:

I just sort of looked at people, made little gestures to them and I just sort of deftly reversed what I think could have been a plethora vortex into something manageable, and I loved about it because it was. I was figuring it out as I did it. I didn't go in, I didn't sit in my chair thinking, oh, there's seven steps to execute here. I just felt my way, one step at a time, and it and it's like a moment of coming out of the background and into the foreground and it's those, those are. That's the fascinating thing about facilitation is the choice about when to move forward and how.

Speaker 1:

And when to vanish and let people get on, and I was going to use the word definitely just before you said it, thinking how deft that was that you sort of, I suppose, recontracted with everyone's willingness to give up the next 15 minutes of their life in a way that everybody became happy with. Lovely, the art of facilitation, right there with you, johnny Moore, fantastic, I'm going to award you with a cake next, and now this is first of all. Do you like cake, johnny? I've lost my cake. Where did I put it? There is a cake here somewhere which I need to find again. There it is. It's a cake, do you know?

Speaker 2:

it's not my favourite thing. Cake Donuts yes, have a donut. I've never quite got that thing about. What are those little cakes everyone goes on about? They're not fairy cakes, are they? They're a new thing that people have been into. Little funny cakes oh, cupcakes, cupcakes.

Speaker 1:

I've never got that they're too sugary, exactly anyway, I love the fact that you're tough crowd. You don't want cake, cake, you want a donut, so a donut yeah donuts and indulgence donuts are us instead. So let's be indulgent then. Now, with the final suffused metaphors of the storytelling thrust within this. Uh, you get to put a cherry on your donut now, metaphorically. And what's a favourite inspirational quote?

Speaker 2:

first of all, that's always given you sucker and pulled you towards your future the nearest. I could come to this and it's not exactly a sort of soaring one, but it's a very astute observation from a brilliant, brilliant and somewhat unneglected improv guru called viola spolin, because she was one of the great founders of improv but she doesn't get as much press as keith johnson, who was the other big guru and she wrote a book about she, what she learned from teaching kids drama, and it's full of wisdom, and she has this quote which I wrote down it is highly possible that what is called talented behavior is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing just say that again.

Speaker 1:

I just think it's worth reframing highly.

Speaker 2:

It's highly possible that what is called talented behavior is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing, which speaks, which is a lovely slow improv insight.

Speaker 1:

I think yes I was going to say it speaks beautifully to your slow, you know, unhurried conversations. Raison d'etre lovely. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given, johnny?

Speaker 2:

so I I thought about this and I realized the trouble with advice is mostly I'm not, I'm not able to listen to it unless it comes with perfect timing. Um, it's not very helpful to me and I actually went away and thought I actually think I might have misheard because I went with the question what's the advice I'd give myself?

Speaker 1:

yes, go there so with the gift.

Speaker 2:

So I went there and I thought well, just to be difficult and a bit like saying I don't like cake, I, if I could go back in time, I would go back to when I was in Oxford, but I wouldn't give myself any advice. I'd wait until I was asleep and then I'd lie down next to myself in bed and I'd wrap my arms around me to give me some deep existential comfort, because I think that's what I needed more than advice, and I can't help thinking that a lot of us probably need that more than advice a lot of the time.

Speaker 1:

And that's such a wonderful solution, potentially in your own framing of that, for your own despair existentially, in the dead of night you need to give yourself a hug because it's going to be okay it is.

Speaker 2:

It is often something like that. It's like a sort of somatic either being hugged or feeling some um capacity to hold myself lovely will often be what I need, rather than thinking any longer.

Speaker 1:

Thinking more about what I could do very interestingly, my daughter came home recently and and pointed something out however we're feeling. However we're feeling, to add on the tag at the end of it and that is okay now is a really lovely way of calming, soothing and making sense of the world existentially, because it's it's, it's. It's good in the brilliant times and it's good in the worst of, as you said, the Dickensian. It was the best of times, yeah, most of the times.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to file that under BPWC.

Speaker 1:

Pardon me, big people with children yes chapter two the brilliant things they say yes, she's, she's 25 and is a wonderful, wonderful, gifted primary school teacher, and so that's wonderful I'm a longer acronym now bpwac.

Speaker 2:

Big people with adult children johnny.

Speaker 1:

This is delightful. We're ramping up to shakespeare shortly. Uh, to talk about legacy, but just before we do that, this is the pass the golden baton moment, please. Now you've experienced this from within. Who would you most like to pass the golden baton along to, in order to keep the golden thread of the storytelling going?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think you should talk to my relatively recent but good friend, mark McCartney if you haven't already.

Speaker 1:

Do you mean Matt? Oh sorry, oh sorry, there is a matt, sorry, go back.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, it's not matt, it's mark. Um, this mark is when I've spoken to mark mark mccartney yeah, who is I? I think he has an absolute genius, um, for what viola spolin pointed to a huge capacity to experience and he's able to sort of sit with the full range of feelings and be curious and open to them, which is, I think, just you know. It's a delightful and quite remarkable skill and you often hear people described as good listeners, but I think he's demonstrably a really good listener. He runs his own podcast. His title, I think, is what Makes a Good Life, so it's a kind of beautiful philosophical inquiry and he's one of my. He's another happy place person to speak to. Very hard to have a conversation without Markv. That isn't delightful and mind-expanding.

Speaker 1:

What a great accolade to project towards him, and thank you so much. That's a real gift. And now, inspired by Shakespeare and all the world's esteemed and all the better-weather-weather-weather-players, we'll talk about legacy now. So Jonny Moore, leadership facilitator, author of Unhurried and all about unhurried conversations, how would you most like to be remembered?

Speaker 2:

Remembered. Part of me goes well, I don't care, I'll be dead, you can think what you like. But if I were vain enough, I thought well, I'd probably like to be remembered with joy and a degree of bafflement.

Speaker 1:

What a great thing, with joy and with bafflement. That's a sublime epitaph. I think if you haven't already written that down, you should write it down.

Speaker 2:

Here, lachis, join me. I'll just throw one thing in because it triggered a memory from Oxford In my first year, when I was there the first two weeks I just wanted to go home. Every night I rang home and said bring me home. I can't cope. I don't understand all these confident public school boys. And one of the reasons I survived is the guy in the room next to me was a guy called Gordon Milne, who was a delightful guy. He was a public school boy, as it happened, and he kind of really got me without ever saying anything, and he'd occasionally open the door to my room and just say progress by stealth, john. Progress by stealth, which I think connects to joy and bafflement. I've always had that. I've always had that. I've always been quite interested in biding the time and then surprising people.

Speaker 1:

Where can we find out all about you and your wonderful work?

Speaker 2:

uh, johnny moore, on the old hinterweb on the hinterweb uh, johnnymoorecom, spelt with as many letters as possible and uh, you know, or if, or, if that's too difficult to remember. Unhurriedorg is where I put a lot of my stuff about unhurried, and if you go to either of those you'll end up in all the other bits and pieces that I do wonderful, as this has been your moment in the sunshine, in the good listening to show special leadership reflections.

Speaker 1:

A series strand episode. Is there anything else you'd like to say, johnny?

Speaker 2:

I was thinking I better make sure I put I've had enough sunblock on, because I tend to burn in the sunshine. Um, uh, I think I'm absolutely done it was. It was a play, it was fun, it felt very alive, um, which is good, because finding aliveness is a big thing for me, so I felt very alive doing it.

Speaker 1:

Chris, thank you I will take that as a very generous compliment. Thank you so much. That was lovely. Oh, thank you, um. So, uh, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Uh, thank you also, johnny, for bearing with me with the various technological that was going on during being in that. But it will go live and it will go blamming out to all the social media platforms, as promised. Uh, yes, so tune in next week for more stories from the clearing.

Speaker 1:

I've I've been Chris Grimes, but most importantly, that's Johnny Moore, mr Unhurried Conversations and his book Unhurried. Thank you very much indeed. Good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening To Show with me, chris Grimes.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed gift an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how care of the series strands at the goodlisteningtoshowcom website, and one of these series strands is called Brand Strand Founder Stories For business owners like you to be able to tell your company story, talk about your purpose and amplify your brand. Together we get into the who, the what, the how, the why you do what you do and then, crucially, we find out exactly where we can come and find you to work with you and to book your services. Tune in next week for more stories from the Clearing and don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts. So, johnny, we've just been giving each other a damn good listening to. Could I get your immediate feedback on what that was like to be curated through this journey?

Speaker 2:

I've forgotten. You had that catchphrase and I still like it A damn good listening to. I think that's fabulous.

Speaker 1:

What was the question how was that for you being given a damn good listening to through the curation of this structure?

Speaker 2:

It was fun actually. I really enjoyed the structure. I thought the structure I said I'm ambivalent about structures, but I really. The structure allowed me to rehearse for this, but not in a way that I thought I got very, you know, unspontaneous. It allowed me. I've kind of, kind of saved with the whole process actually, um, and now I'm feeling a little overstimulated, so it'll be good to sort of go for a walk now and just walk some of that off, and then I look forward to hopefully not cringing too much when I see the finished product.