Matthew Barzun is a media entrepreneur, author, and former diplomat. He currently serves as chair and publisher of Tortoise Media, the London-based online news service he co-founded with the former Director of BBC News. He is also owner and publisher of Louisville Magazine. His book about organizations, The Power of Giving Away Power, was published by Penguin/Portfolio in 2021. Previously, Matthew served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2013 to 2017) and to Sweden (2009 to 2011). Earlier in his career, he was closely involved in the pioneer stage of the internet publishing business, serving in executive roles at CNET. Matthew serves on the board of the National Constitution Center and has served on the boards of corporations and many non-profit organizations focused on education, civics, and interfaith relations, including the local NPR affiliate, Louisville Public Media. Matthew grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts and resides in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, Brooke, and, occasionally, their three college-aged children. He is a graduate of Harvard College.
I am delighted to welcome everyone to this very special event my name is Amry Evans and I’m the head of school for humanities here at York St John University and uh we’re really happy that you’re all able to join us today so thank you so much for coming along I
Want to start by offering a very special Welcome to our guest of honor Matthew baren who has very kindly agreed to talk to us about his hugely impr career uh he has a varied and very rich experience as a businessman a diplomat a published author and a political fundraiser and
Matthew as I’m sure you know served as the US ambassador to Sweden and then later as ambassador to the UK from 2013 to 2017 Upon returning to the US Matthew received the Marshall medal from the Marshall Aid commemoration commission created by British Parliament his dedication to strengthening us and
British relations most recently he has authored the power of giving away power how the best leaders learn to let go which is published by Harper Collins in the UK and the leadership book describes how to build cultures of collaboration by adopting the habits and behaviors of interdependence so I’m hoping you can
Hear a little bit more about that today and we’re certainly very very excited to hear more about Matthew and some of his experiences I’m also very pleased to be able to welcome two of my York St John colleagues so we’ve got Dr Chris Kirkland senior lecturer in politics and
Dr Ian horwood senior lecturer in history and American studies so thank you to both Chris and Ian for being here as well and finally a few housekeeping items for everyone so you should be able to see that the captions are on just be warned they are automatically done so
They might not always be 100% accurate so just bear with us you can switch them off as well with the button at the bottom of your screen if you wish to please note that the Q&A option is open so if you think of some questions for Matthew during the talk please do pop
Them in the Q&A and Chris and Ian will be coming back to them towards the end of the session so that you can have some of your questions answered so please do that and we are recording this session so for anyone who is missing it today or indeed wants to relive it again
Uh it’s going to be on YouTube for everybody so uh without any more from me I’m going to hand over so I will turn off my camera now but thank you again Matthew and welcome and over to the panel thank you Emory hi everybody emry thank you for that introduction greeting
Everyone is it possible emry and I know we just talked about this to switch the view so I can see the folks who are joining us today I don’t think we can I don’t think we’ve got that option I can I can certainly look into it and if so I’ll come back
Okay no problem now okay not a problem well hi everybody I wish I was there in person but we will make do with zoom um I’d love to start with a very quick exercise that I will Circle back to at the end um if you have a pen or pencil
And a piece of paper um we’re going to do a quick exercise I am going to say one word and if you could please write down the first image that pops into your mind okay so I’m gonna say the word and you’re not going to overthink this
There’s no right or wrong answer I’m going to say the word and you’re just going to either write it down or just think of the first image that comes to your mind sound good okay so the word is idea I say idea what image popped into your
Mind now we don’t have I’m G to have to ask you when we open it up at the end but uh I used to ask this question as I traveled around the United Kingdom and as I travel around the United States almost every single one of us draws the
Exact same image um and I bet many of you did today um you drew a little light bulb right a little incandescent light bulb and then almost all of us also draw the little lines emanating out from the light bulb just to prove that it is
On and again when we draw this image there’s that light bulb is usually just floating all alone it’s not connected to anything at all and I think this is kind of a visual cliche that we carry around in our heads um and of course and and
What we’ll get to at the end is that I don’t think ideas are lit up light bulbs I think at best ideas are unlit light bulbs and the things that ideas need to provide light are the same things that a old-fashioned incandescent light bulb needs which are
Two things missing from that picture we all draw and one is a source of power or energy and the second is a connection and the work what I’m thinking about struggling about writing about is how we light up the room so to speak and how we find new sources of
Energy figuratively and how we find connections to provide more light because I think too many places around or worlds uh or do not have that source of power and do not have that connection so I uh I was thinking about being with you all today it was almost
10 years ago to the day that I arrived in the United Kingdom um and I think about 10 years ago my predecessor as Ambassador joked with me right before I arrived and he said Matthew let me see here I had the London 2012 Olympics he
Said I had a royal wedding and a Queen’s Jubilee and you’re going to have the Scottish referendum what became brexit and what he was sure to be and he was right a bitterly divisive 2016 presidential campaign back home in America so sure enough I arried over
Here 10 years ago and within the first week six days after getting here the Sun newspaper you’re familiar with that above the fold has a death notice for the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States and what precipitated it at the time was prime minister Cameron had asked Parliament
For the authorization of military force to deal with the civil war in Syria do you remember that we were having similar debates back home anyway Parliament did not Grant him that Authority and therefore um and the perception was that the United States would have liked that
Because that would help us maybe make a similar decision back home but it didn’t happen and so there was a gravestone on the front of the sun and it said dead special relationship age 67 beloved offspring of FDR and Churchill etc etc etc funeral to be held at the French
Embassy I mean it was funny I don’t think it’s true but it was funny and the predecessor emailed me said Well Done Matthew seven decades in the making and you’ve killed it in less than seven days now of course I don’t think the special relationship was dead then um
And I noticed that probably a couple times a year it would be declared dead because some difference would arise between the United States the United Kingdom and maybe it wouldn’t be on the front page above the fold with a death notice but there would be articles
Written that it was dead and I had a wonderful Mentor a 30-year US foreign service professional and she gave me great advice and she said when when this headline hit 10 years ago she said don’t worry Matthew do you know what the real job of a diplomat is and I had done it
Once before in Sweden but she was a real Pro and she said look think about think about a reservoir that exists between two countries and it’s a reservoir of trust and respect and understanding and your job is to leave that Reservoir just a little bit higher
Than you found it sometimes it’ll be one cup at a time sometimes it’ll be a whole barrel full but that’s the job focus on that and I thought that was wise advice um and so soon after the Pew charitable trust who does great research around the world issued a report about how young
People viewed the United States and they surveyed 40 countries think of all of what we used to call Western Europe plus Australia New Zealand Japan Brazil South Africa countries like that in every single country young people which I think was people 18 to 25 had a higher opinion of
The United States than their parents or grandparents some of it was attributed to President Obama’s popularity uh they didn’t know exactly why but that was true except for one country one country where young people had a less favorable opinion and you could probably imagine that country was the United
Kingdom so I thought well okay there’s an opportunity um how do we deal with that and so taking my mentor’s advice I knew the one thing I would not do which was I was not going to go around the country and give a lecture about US foreign
Policy I had three te my wife and I had three teenagers at home and so I knew enough about young people that that wasn’t going to be effective so instead I traveled around and I would do workshops at six form colleges and I would give them an
A5 card blank and a pencil from the embassy and I would say would you please draw for me um an image or a word if you don’t want to draw an image draw an image or a word of something that frustrates confuses um or concerns you about the
United States and what we’re up to they would write it down and then some brave soul uh would share what they had written for the group and I would write it down and so we spent 55 minutes of an hour talking about their frustrations and if that’s of Interest I
Can share with you at the end what they wrote down in the last five minutes I’d say flip over the card please and write down one word about something that inspires you or gives you hope about the United States and what we’re up to in the world and they would
And I ended up doing that all over the UK in York in Leeds in Leicester in Liverpool in cheffield Belfast um Edinburgh Aberdine you know uh Newport you name it and it was always the same it was always different kind of in a way you’d
Expect but also the same in a way and by the end of my time I had been to 200 schools and I had 20,000 A5 cards with words and pictures of what frustrated these young people about America and when I got home to the United States
I didn’t have an excuse to go do that but I loved learning from and listening to young people so I kept it going in the US uh in Kentucky where I live in Louisville Kentucky which by the way is Quinn with leads I don’t think anyone in
Leeds or Louisville knows this but I know this um anyway so I keep that up we changed it I I didn’t ask the US kids about what frustrated them about the United Kingdom I just asked them about their own country and here’s what I learned the number one
Frustration and concern they had about their own country was division racial social economic division followed closely by loneliness and then when they flipped over the card what is one thing that inspires them about their own country the number one most frequently written word was diversity followed closely by
Freedom so if you think about it diversity and division they have the same root so what they inspired the most and made them the most uncomfortable had something to do with separateness and as I dug a little deeper what you realize these young people and I think this is true of all
Of us regardless of age they wanted to stand out as their own person and be part of something bigger than themselves right how can you stand out and fit in and they felt too often that they if they wanted to fit in they had to be some subset of
Themselves um or if they were going to stand out and be an individual that meant that they had to be a loner that they couldn’t fit into something bigger um so they wanted Unity without demanding uniformity they wanted diversity without succumbing to division and I was just back in London a
Few weeks ago I started a business with a journalist um there and sure enough yet again the special relationship was declared dead this time it was because the Biden administration had authorized the use of cluster Munitions to give to the ukrainians to fight back against Putin’s aggression and by the way he’s using
Cluster Munitions against them not an easy decision for the Biden Administration and one that the prime minister of the UK publicly disagreed with and so I was asked again about this special relationship not in an official role but um and I said you know what I think there’s the misunderstanding here
The we don’t do hard things together as countries whether it’s dealing with um all the issues we deal with back to World War II the Cold War all the things that we work on together um supporting Ukraine as one example we don’t do hard things together because we’re
Friends we’re friends because we do hard things together and that that that this friendship is a byproduct right you can’t make it directly and if you go back to my mentor’s advice about that reservoir of trust respect and understanding between our two countries trust respect and understanding are like friendship too
And here’s what I mean and it’s kind of a paradox but we know it in our personal lives that just like let’s be friends if I say to you trust me respect me I have just decreased the likelihood that those things will happen right I mean so if you aim directly for
Them it’ll backfire they’re only the result of other work and this I think is tricky for governments It’s Tricky for companies It’s Tricky for Institutes of higher education like ysj because you as an organization you like to directly think you can impact things but these things we really value um are the result
Of something else and in this case the result of hard work together so I do not worry about the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom um and the reason I don’t worry about it is because I know there will be differences like there are on cluster Munitions like
There always have been and that men and women from both countries will sit down at a table sometimes it’s an official table like NATO where we sit next to each other because of an accident of alphabet United Kingdom United States when English dictates the seating pattern as opposed to
French but at all these tables official and unofficial where Brits and Americans sit down next to each other not because of the alphabet but because they want to because they’ve done hard work together and so I think about our official relationship and I think we’re going to
Have a steady supply of hard things to deal with we have tables to sit around where we will hash through and work through our differences we won’t solve it once and for all but we will resolve it as best we can and then there’ll be more hard
Problems and we’ll do that hard work again resolve it as best we can on and on and on so I’m not worried about relationships between countries what keeps me up at night um and I was talking with Chris and Ian and anarie beforehand what keeps me up at night is
Not relations between our two countries it’s relations within our two countries and just because we have United in our names United Kingdom United States that is no guarantee that we will remain United and so that’s what I wrote the book about that an Marie mentioned I
Went and I thought okay with these young people’s hopes and fear ringing in my ears what are some good role models for leaders some you’ve heard of some you haven’t who thought differently about where to get a source of power and how to make connection so that people could
Stand out as themselves and fit into something greater and that’s what the book is about and uh and we can get into this in the Q&A good there’s um and I’m mindful of our time but there’s um the largest commercial organization in the history of the world was started with a mindset
About power it’s actually Visa um a very unusual uh method of how you could compete and cooperate at the same time Wikipedia was founded it went up against the one of the oldest companies in the world um britanica it went up against the richest company in the world at the time which was
Microsoft that had started a a competitor to uh branica called incarta those of us of a certain age will remember that and this service that charged nothing to users and paid nothing to contribute beat the oldest company in the world and the richest company in the world by thinking differently about power
Um and Alcoholics Anonymous the largest uh recovery platform on the planet had a similar pattern so too did did the internet itself so all these amazing world changing Innovations and the leaders of them and their teams had a different view about power they didn’t think it was something you
Should Lord over others they didn’t think it was something you should hoard to yourself and they didn’t think it was something you should divvy up in equal parcels and give out to everybody because all three of those things as different as they are they share in
Common an idea that power is a scarce resource it is limited these leaders said no no no power is unlimited and you can make it it’s infinite you can make it with other people sitting around a table if you have the right pattern and tone for how to do
That so I’ve been on the road literal Road or like this the zoom Road for two years talking to leaders of fall kinds their teams at high schools at universities at Fortune 500 companies in government all over um talking about this and listening to and learning from leaders and I
Learned two big things number one this idea of they’re all hungry for an alternative to zero some power they are hungry for these to emulate the kind of leaders I talk about in the book so that’s the good news the bad news and the second realization I had was that we
Have an energy crisis and what I mean by that is you talk to these leaders and their teams and they are tired really tired hard to overestimate how tired they are and as I dug and I am the husband of a therapist and the son of a therapist so in therapy
They used that wonderful phrase unpack so I said okay well let’s unpack what’s going on here why are you so tired and there was a phrase in the book my first book that uh that when I would follow up and ask for feedback resonated more than any others and it was pretending is
Exhausting pretending is exhausting and when I dug a little bit I found that there were really two modes of pretending that these leaders were engaged in and the first type of pretending was pretending in service of you know accomplishing the mission and it was kind of involved a little bit of
Pretending like I’ll set the goal I’ll work backwards from there I’ll divvy out the tasks that kind Of uh that kind of mission and at the first signs of real life there’s bumps in the plan the leader could say you know what this isn’t working but they fall back on that I think think bad graduation advice we were given when we were younger which is
Fake it till you make it so they fake it a little bit and then they start to change their tone of voice and they get more and more rigid and if you had to summarize and what starts out is hey let’s all be aligned kind of devolves into just toe
The line and so if you had to summarize that kind of pretending in one word it is patronizing and the tone these leaders take is patronizing which as you can imagine doesn’t make their team feel very good and so there Begins the second kind of pretending which is pretending to boost
Morale and so if a leader is told that their top down tone of voice and top down methods aren’t working they think ah I’ll do the opposite I’ll be bottom up and so they have all hands meetings and they listen to all the ideas and that usually creates um a different kind
Of pretending where at first it might feel good and they really want to listen to people they might even go on a listening tour you see our politicians all do this but pretty soon instead of wanting to really listen to people you just want people to feel heard and that’s
Different and so you got of pretend that all ideas are equally valid even though you think they aren’t but you think you’re not supposed to say that and pretty soon the mission starts to slip and then you go back into the other kind of pretending and that’s the cycle that I learned
That these leaders are in between patronizing and if you had to summarize that second kind of pretending let’s pick the word pandering so patronizing pandering chastising cheerleading same idea and they cycle in a given day in a given week in a given year between those two modes of pretending
And it’s tiring them out and the and when they really get tired they say you know what I’ll just sit it out right so if we have to have another p word from pandering to patronizing it’s it’s a little harsh but I think they get into pouting just pout and sit it
Out uh and that’s the kind of trap that they are in pandering patronizing and pouting fight out hug it out sit out and what I’m working on this new book which is there is an alternative and it’s an alternative to how to escape that exhaustion trap and I think of it um one
More image for you if you picture one of those 2 by two grids you know those things I’m not going to draw it for you but you can draw it for yourself so draw like a x like that and on the northern part write the word tension and on the southern part write
The word no tension and over here to the east you can write the word constructive and over on the west write the word destructive right so tension no tension constructive destructive and if you frame it that way it’s kind of a simple map and you can see that in that upper
Left hand corner you’ve got destructive tension that’s where p rizing lives that’s where lots of cable news the worst of Twitter is there when people get tired from that they think I’ll do the opposite that’s where top down lives they go down to the opposite construct sorry uh constructed
But no tension that’s where pandering lives and they go back and forth between those as we said and then when they get frustrated they go to the lower left and really tired sit it out no tension destructive and that’s where you can vent feels better for a little bit
But here’s the problem you’re venting but there’s no ventilation and you start hanging out with other people who have all the same complaints you have that’s supp to be like an echo chamber where you breathe your own exhaust and breathing your own exhaust is no cure for
Exhaustion so if you take the upper left the lower left and the lower right that forms your kind of triangle of sadness and of course the way to escape it is to be in that upper right hand quadrant which is constructive tension which is how do we deal with
Difference we don’t Dodge difference down here when we’re pandering we don’t discount uh difference up there when we’re patronizing and ignoring people and making people conform and we certainly don’t demonize difference which has happened when we sit it out and only hang out with people who agree
With us we need to deal with it and deal with it constructively and that’s what the leaders that we emulate and have built world changing environments do it’s what the United States and the United Kingdom do when they are sitting around a table together and my hope and
I’ll end it here is that we can find more places whether it’s in York or in Louisville or in leester leads or any of these wonderful cities and towns in the United Kingdom in the United States where we can gather at a table together with difficult things to work through
And we bring a pattern and tone of how to deal with difference constructively and if we do that it will not only re-energize ourselves it will provide a source of energy and a source of connection that can light up these cities and towns as it were and that’s
What I’m focused on and working on now and would love to open it up now for Ian and for Chris and for others to share your reactions to that and would love to hear from you thank you thank you Matthew thank you thank you very much uh for that uh before I
Bring it bring uh Ian in i’ just like to remind everybody that the Q&A function is open please do get your questions in we try to get through as many of those uh as possible uh so please type them in alen uh read them out and uh ask Matthew
To answer them I’ve been told nothing’s off limits uh so uh please do get those questions in uh thank you o over to you Ian um uh hi Matthew uh uh I if I may I’d like to uh I’ve got a couple of questions off the bat which I I think
I’d like to ask uh and if I may I’d like to go back uh I think to the early part of your talk and and back to your experience as a as a diplomat uh especially a diplomat uh in the United Kingdom um the obvious question would be a
Question about U the special relationship and and what happened to the special relationship good or bad around about the time uh of the Obama Administration and and your work as a diplomat in the UK but I don’t think I’m going to ask about that because it seems to me from your
Talk that actually to a large extent we’re on the same page with regard to the special relationship my my feeling about it is that um I’m not altogether sure why don’t you call it a special relationship but uh because you know sometimes criticized as that’s a term which just kind of
Explains a British neediness uh that has to be kind of fulfilled by kind words from American politicians every so often but it does seem to me that over the years still the case that we we we obviously have uh more shared interests than not shared interests and we obviously have such a a
Reservoir of history and shared culture together that I I I you and in fact you asked early on um before we started this you asked about um you know what was it that people didn’t worry about it might be useful to find that out and well it
Occurs to me I don’t think I worry about the special relationship because I think that’s pretty much fixed at at least in well into the long term as far as I can see but but I am struck by the fact that that during your period as Ambassador in the
UK people suggested in just the way that you you’ve said well the special relationships dead it took a number of of knocks uh and a couple of things that occurred to me was I think one thing was there was a uh as a result of the the
Great Recession as as people tend to call it these days there was a a kind of austerity well it was an austerity budget in the UK but that included an austerity defense budget which I suspect didn’t go down that well with the United States uh and then there is also that
Issue which you mentioned about David Cameron’s inability to carry Parliament with him about the Syria issue and then of course there’s brexit which uh you know clearly was not uh not a policy which uh President Obama was entirely enthusiastic about and of course also about half the British population wasn’t
Enthusiast enthusiastic about it either but what what I do wonder is what is your take on what these things did to to Britain’s status aside from the special relationship um how do you think Britain’s Global status fared at the time of the Obama Administration and then maybe subsequently yeah sure um thank
You I mean here’s the just the first part first or you know me I love images right so picture the most simple Vin diagram of two circles overlapping and not fully overlapping by the way does everyone know where ven diagrams it’s uh it’s John ven the mathematician from
Hull um maybe Grimsby I don’t know I I once confused the two and I won’t I won’t make that mistake again although maybe I just did um anyway uh I have used a lot of vend diagrams in my day think about everyone on this Zoom think about in your own personal professional
Life one circle is people you need to deal with for whatever reason Child Care your work you know okay those people another circle is people you love to work with and so it’s pretty magic if the people in the overlap of people you need to work with and like to work
With and I’m not saying the US UK are the only people in that overlap when you talk about countries but there’s lots of countries we have to deal with that we don’t love dealing with there’s a bunch of countries we love to deal with we don’t really have to deal with that much
So that’s one simple way of framing um how the countries get along um but again I had this disagreement with a wonderful brilliant British journalist who we were together when uh prime minister sunak had just come back from meeting with President Biden in Washington and they had announced you’ll remember this I’m a
Little blurry on the timing maybe it was June um that they were going to sync up on AI regulation do you remember this there was some announcement about something and this smart journalist sort of said H um great it’s the UK um being into regulation I wish we’d be into
Innovation and it was clever I mean it was sort of like a okay I I I see the difference but I um lovingly I hope challenged him and I said well wait a minute those aren’t mutually exclusive and think about the United Kingdom and the United
States and the thing just to go way back I mean from Magna Carta to our Declaration of Independence to your Unwritten Constitution or written one we have been innovators in regulation and regulation is not nothing is you look around at some of the stuff that could concerns all of us about
Deteriorating norms and methods around democracy around the world even at home it is precisely because we haven’t lost the energy and the excitement to mend and amend rules of a game we love right it would be weird if you devoted your life to the laws of cricket
And then you didn’t and you didn’t love Cricket right or that you love to play cricket but you hated the rules it’s like well Cricket is only the rules I mean or else you’re just a bunch of people running around on grass so somehow we’ve gotten confused and we
Think that the rules of the game and the game are different like this is what we signed up for and mending and amending them is the hard work that we need to do and the differences we have and Ian you named a number of them aren’t again they’re not differences we
Should Dodge we should discount or demonize the only source of growth and the only source of energy is different if everybody agreed all the time you don’t go anywhere think about a loving spousal or you know partner relationship you don’t solve it once and for all how depressing you have issues difficult
Ones you resolve them you evolve as a result of having resolved them as best you can in dark pencil and then you resolve them again and you evolve and you resolve and evolve and that’s what our countries do together it’s what we need to be better at in our towns and
Cities resolving and evolving and not getting locked into this solve it and maybe the final image I’d leave you with is this terrible phrase and I probably said it a thousand times always in sort of a patronizing tone of voice and and British and American diplomats say this
There is no daylight between the United States and the United Kingdom as it relates to fill in the blank commitment into 2% spending for NATO defense budgets blah blah blah uh anything and think about that for a moment what a ludicrous standard of agreement no daylight between us as if we are
Monolithic think about a British and American soldier in World War II standing shoulder-to-shoulder there’s daylight between them a loving couple on a dance floor there’s daylight between them I mean any image of partnership you can think of there is daylight between them and it would be creepy and ineffective if there
Weren’t we don’t need monolithic things we need daylight between us thank you uh if I could uh just extend that a little bit um then uh um as I uh suggest well I don’t think I put it like this but some people put it like this at the
Time that that that Britain was kind of resigning its status as a as a global power um and I I wonder what you thought about that whether that was the case at the time or it has continued to be the cas I mean I just don’t see it that way
Um back to the point on AI regulation I think about um and and I think I I love sport I think I’m not alone on this Zoom certainly our two countries love Sport and and I don’t mean sport as a diversion from difficulties that we have
To deal with in our daily lives I mean as a microcosm as I mentioned of um mending and amending rules of a game we love if you love The Game you know the game needs to change look how the rules of football have changed and Cricket just to pick two Americans can
Relate to the football soccer part we’re we’re clueless about Cricket um but actually it’s growing in America in exciting ways um but if if we if we talk about sport I think we can find things find more helpful patterns for how we think about what it is to
Lead and I think sometimes I those characterizations I think are a are a um a sort of lording power over people view of what matters in the world nobody likes to have power lorded over them nobody and what that really is is just bullying and look our country’s been a
Bully your country’s been a bully in our history I get that that is not us at our best um hoarding power to yourself is no better um so I think the UK I I think people who write off for reduce the UK’s role are are being shortsighted and
Silly because it is an incredible engine of creativity of um of so many things and just I mean and you know the yeah and and I mean think about the the Back to Football just this it’s it’s the world’s game that you I mean it’s the thing that everybody loves pulls
Into their country does it does it in its own way um and I think on a series of things back to AI regulation there’s an amazing role that the UK can continue to play in a whole range of um areas thank thanks again Matthew I’m I’m
Sure I agree with you although I’m not sure the rules of cricket changing for the better uh although I still watch I still watch 2020 even though I don’t like the idea uh but if I can Chris could I just ask one more question okay thanks um clearly uh you’re an
Optimist uh Matthew uh and um you know you talked about uh getting away from you know patronizing and and pandering and pretending and and trying to operate in that useful space on your on your diagram on the top right in the top right corner um how do you think that’s likely to
Uh how possible is is it that that kind of optimistic view will play out in the United States where I think there are just as there are in the UK very serious political problems which at the moment seem to have kind of divided the United States down the middle totally I mean
I I um I struggle with the word optimism I think I think I know what you mean I’m certainly so if you think back to that grid I think optimism is caricatured sometimes very deservedly and sort of co-opted not co-opted but it is it is um often the
People most likely to use that word are people dwelling in the lower right hand corner of sort of group hug why can’t we all get along they’ll carry signs literally or figuratively that say we need Bridges not walls what unites us is greater than what divides us and I think
Well I don’t know all you leave that rally you’re going back to a home with four walls and a roof you like those walls walls have a role um Bridges have a role You Can Build a Bridge to Nowhere that’s useless and you can have walls that are
Destructive but you can have walls that are really helpful and bridges that are helpful we should judge them by their fruits um I think optimism is also misunderstood as sort of why can’t we get all get along and to the point I hope I made earlier it’s like I don’t think how
Boring if we all get along it’s dead it’s like if you solve something once and for all it’s like a disected frog in in high school biology class it’s accurate it’s precise it’s dead we need vibrant we have to deal with difference constructively and seek out difference and integrate difference into
A bigger conception and then integrate more difference and so there’s this wonderful woman we didn’t have time to get into but I’ll give a very quick highlight she many people here would have heard of Peter Ducker who is probably the number one quoted leadership Guru of the last
Century and Harvard Business bus review did a they asked 200 it was a bunch of Brits Americans Australian business gurus all around the world who is your Guru and they published the list of gurus Guru number one was Peter Ducker not surprising what was surprising was couple years before he died he revealed
That he had a guru and she was nowhere on that list and her name was Mary Parker fallet 1868 to 1933 a gay woman from Boston where I grew up born right after our civil war and he said she had every good leadership idea he said came from her but she’s been
Erased from history and she had this very practical advice that I think Ian gets to your question and she said look there’s four outcomes from a meeting and only one of them is worthwhile and this this maps to the little grid too bad outcome number one you try to win the
Meeting like you come in with an idea fully formed and try to get get everyone else to say yes she’s like well that’s stupid why is anyone else there bad outcome number two you acques and you say well Chris seems really fired up we’ll let him or anarie we’ll let them
Win the day it’s like no no no why are you at the meeting bad outcome number three is compromise which many of us were told is a good thing and she said I don’t think so and if you get biblical for a moment I think King Solomon it’s
Sort of compromised in the half a baby sense it’s fair but dead um so she thinks compromise is just little mini victories and mini acquiesces so the only reason she thinks we should ever gather around a table actual table or a zoom table like today is to make something together
Co-creation is the fancy word and if you make something with another group of people something it might strike you as mundane but it’s actually magic which is you make this thing it might be a product it might be a product road map it might be a decision it might be a
Determination doesn’t really matter but the act of making it with others you didn’t enter that meeting with that thing in your mind fully formed but you’re leaving that meeting with that thing you made is for always part always part of you you are Forever part of it
So you’re just a little bit changed as a result of that interaction and that’s how you can get into this resolve and evolve mindset and that’s what I think each of us can bring to our next meeting is that pattern and tone of seeking out difference and trying
To make something out of it so I think of it I WR I used to write a little cheat sheet at the embassy I would say I think three things that we can bring into our lives based on Mary Parker fallet this amazing woman who’s been erased spent a
Lot of time in London by the way um three things expect to be needed right no one else can be you expect to need others that’s why you’re having a meeting and then the third one is expect to be changed so expect to be needed expect to need others expect to be
Changed and if we bring that into our lives I think we can get into this habit of making and that’s where power and energy back to the unlit light bulb that’s where you get power make power together and connect it and light up the room I hope you’re right thank you thank you
Thank you thank thank you Ian and thank thank you Matthew for that uh we we we’ve got some questions coming in I I’ll try and get through as many as possible I am very conscious of of the time element um we we got a couple of questions sort of about the opposite of
Uh what you’ve been talking about opposite of that uh quadrant if you like with democratic government or or political parties in elections trying to use division to to win elections or or or to stoke up tensions uh and we can think of uh Donald Trump and fake news
In the US we can think of uh the so-called culture wars in the UK um and essentially Matthew the the question I’m I’m going to ask I’m to paraphrase some of these is what should our response to that be or what do you think the the response to that uh should be please
Sure um two two thoughts um for sure that is happening um I um our red and blue are switched in America and the UK but for the purposes of this comment it sort of doesn’t matter because it’s not party political but if you think about red and blue not getting
Along um and I’ll talk about my country’s capital in Washington DC I once got a similar question of like well okay with so much Division and each side saying awful things about the other can you imagine them sitting at a Mary Parker fallet style table and working through their differences
Constructively and I said look I’ll never give up on that that seems fairly difficult to imagine right now but I said here’s a here’s I think much less hard to imagine except at what what the truth is and I I can again speak to America but I’m I’m sure it’s true here
I mean sorry there in in the UK as well some of the nastiest meetings take place when just the blue team or just the red team is sitting at a table with themselves so the pattern and tone we take and trying to win the meeting and division within a tribe so to speak
Um the better pattern could start right there forget red and blue getting along what if the blue team or the red team Embrace difference constructively Embrace tension constructively the way that we’re talking about that doesn’t seem like a crazy thing to ask um and if it could begin
There that would be a good thing and and I love Sport and here here’s a you can we can translate it for York and for the UK but I grew up in Boston Massachusetts so we love baseball not cricket and there’s the Boston Red Soxs and the New
York Yankees and they hate each other okay a very famous rivalry so there is a men’s public restroom somewhere on interstate I 95 between Boston and New York and next to the mirror someone has scrolled in ballpoint pen Yankees suck and someone scratched it out and wrote
Red Sox suck and they scratched that out and wrote yany suck okay can you imagine so it’s like 18 inches of this back and forth bickering on the bathroom wall Along Comes A guy I assume it was a guy he circles the whole screed in green Sharpie and then he writes in green
Sharpie and we all love baseball now there’s kind of like a split moment where you’re like oh like but there’s something kind of condescending and not very useful about what Mr Green Sharpie did and if we go back to our grid for a moment the Red Sox Yankees suck stuff is upper left-and
Corner kind of tribal destructive tension right Mr Green Sharpie comes along and says group hug we all love baseball he’s sort of pandering he’s down in the lower right I think in an answer to this person’s question what I think we ought to do because he didn’t Mr green Sharpie
Didn’t settle anything in fact if you went back back there I think there would be further commentary on where Mr Green Sharpie can put his pen because of that kind of condescending tone I would go back with a purple just to pick a diplomatic color a purple
Um Sharpie and I would write and this is kind of an obscure baseball reference so forgive me should the American League which is the league they’re both in should the American League eliminate the designated hitter rule question mark now all of a sudden you’re going to the upper right hand quadrant you’re I
Don’t know It’s Tricky what do you think you could have Red Soxs and Yankees fans finding themselves on the same side of wanting to eliminate it or on the same side of wanting to keep it they would be engaged in mending and amending rules of a game they
Love so I think it’s at that altitude dude not way up high and Abstract where no one really lives or down in the trenches of trench warfare but pick our heads up just a little bit about manying and amening rules of the game we love in
That case an actual game but in our democracy the arrangements we have to make to deal with disease and um uh immigration and all the things that we are never going to solve once and for all but we can do our best to try to resolve dark
Pencil thank you thank you uh I I I notic there’s some people with their hands up uh unfortunately we don’t have the function as far as I I know to take uh verbal questions from the audience but if you type questions into the q& a function I will uh disseminate them on
On your behalf uh so hopefully for those with the with the hands up we will uh get to them um I I want to turn now to your uh experience as a as a Diplomat and and I’ve got a question here asking uh what
Do you feel uh from your your time as uh ambassador to the UK or or your wider role in The Diplomatic Service uh had the biggest impact and why without a question I think if I heard that correctly in my diplomatic time and you know I was I got to work
With these amazing career Foreign Service people who do it for 35 years every 3 years they move themselves and often their families all around the world doing this great work British system very the same we have a strange one where people like me are parachuted in from outside of diplomacy um about
25% of our ambassadors are like that so whenever I answer a foreign a diplomacy question I like to remind that I’m a I I was very proud of the work I did I learned a lot but I’m a you was sort of an amateur Diplomat asked to go do this uh
Role by far the most impactful thing I did was the 20,000 A5 cards with 18-year-old British young women and young men and the big learning I got and I would I would make all those responses into a word cloud you know what you know so the most frequent word would be the
Biggest and I would just carry it around in my suit I wore suits and ties back then um and carry it around and I would show it to Secretary of State John kery I would show it to President Obama when he came to V I’d show it to every single
Person um and it was two-sided one had all the things that frustrated them about America so remember I said I have 20,000 index cards here at home 10,000 of those cards have the exact same drawing on them so the wordcloud has one word that is bigger than anything and it is
Guns so 10,000 of these students drew a nearly identical handgun and that’s just so it was Guns racism police brutality those were I could be um at a uh majority minority School in East London I could be at Eaton or Harrow I could be in Belfast it’s always the
Same um guns racism police brutality and then what I colorcoded the card and so guns racism police brutality healthare was for would all be in red and then Israel Palestine would be in blue surveillance Edward Snowden would be in Blue uh those kinds of things and so it was
Kind of subtle but the red were things that we think are domestic issues and blue are things that we think diplomats like me ought to be talking about because their foreign policy issues and I say great look we can make that distinction what is foreign and what is
Domestic but that’s not what that’s not a difference you know domestic policy is foreign policy because that’s what’s concerning you know in if 18-year-old British people um uh you know if we start to pull apart and don’t understand or aren’t committed to try to engage with other’s differences um you know that’s really
Where the future of the special relationship lives and so that to me was a great reminder oh and by the way let’s spend only five minutes of the hour talking about the happy stuff which by the way was diversity opportunity Freedom food sport music great but you learn much more talking about
Differences I mean your gun culture and our gun culture could not be more difficult and I don’t think British people are ever going to understand gun and and there are things we’ll never fully understand about you guys and that’s fine you know we’re not trying to be one
Circle we just need to be a vend diagram with plenty in the overlap sure thank you thank you I I appreciate uh the the the time constraint uh with with this so so at least might be a a short answer and I also appreciate uh before uh we we were
Talk as a panel a mat you said you don’t really have a a great deal uh to say on on the current conflict in the Middle East but as you can imagine we we we’ve got a lot of questions on this and and I think it would be remiss of me if I
Didn’t um answer the I’ll try and summarize these um together and and I think the one the one I’ll go for is uh is there anything that could have been done looking back on this uh from a historical uh Prospect was there anything that could have been done in
This uh region during your time during Obama’s uh presidency to um maybe reduce the tensions in the Middle East or or or to produce them oh you just froze Chris but I think I got the um look I don’t know um Ian am I still coming through sorry I sorry
I cut there um to produce a different outcome was it was essentially what I was uh getting out um I don’t know I don’t know I mean the it’s not my area of expertise that part of the world there are lots of people better um I think I’m reminded of
When I went to go serve in Sweden um a wonderful seasoned uh Swedish Diplomat came up to me I think I’d been there one month and he said you know you Americans all you want to talk about when we have these official meetings is the war on terror the war on
Terror and then the war on terror and he’s like look I get it they struggled with the same fears um that that we all did in the United States and United Kingdom but he said you know what um we can worry about more than one thing at a
Time and I wish you would talk more about Russia and what’s going on over there um and they of course I think that you know Sweden and Russia has have fought 300 Wars in their history together right it’s like wow okay so and based on where they’re located they
Never took their eye off of what’s going on there um and so it is uh I think it is really important to um and the visual I have is in each of us it’s easier to sort of point fingers out there to leaders like how are we in our own the things we
Control if you remember I don’t know what driver’s education is like in the United Kingdom but um the sweds take safe driving very seriously um and so I got to go see the Swedish safe driving school and it and they have head-mounted displays of everyone driving and it is
Crazy what people do in a car they have like real life people who are basically just reading their phones and their laps while they’re driving and so it shows you a little red X every place uh wherever they’re looking and so it wouldn’t it surprises no one that if you
Are distracted driving and you’re looking in your lap and not at the road it will kill you right no surprise there here’s what’s surprising if you do the opposite of of that and you look at the road ahead and only the road ahead that’ll kill you
Too and it’s called tunnel vision so if you focus focus focus focus and that little red X never moves from the front where you’re looking it’s incredibly dangerous and so what we were told when we were 16 17 18 is very true in in our
Lives today which is you need to keep by all means look at the road ahead of you but then check the rear view mirror the side view mirror way down the road a little to the left that little red X which shows where your eyes should be moving every two
Seconds and that I think in our foreign policy we tend to get we can be distracted drivers and then we overcompensate and we get incredibly focused and neither is helpful how we need and by the way what they call the safe driving is called engaged driving um and that’s I think
Each of us as Citizens or if you’re in leadership positions being able to sort of take that same language and body language of being aware but not overly focused and not distracted thank you thank you very much and and apologies for uh cutting out while while I was asking that question
Um I I think we have come to uh the end of uh the uh discussion uh I’d like to thank Matthew uh for being very generous uh with his time for coming to speak to us today and and and uh for engaging uh on issues of uh leadership I’d also like
To thank uh Ian horwood for acting as uh discussant uh in the panel and I’d like to thank everybody uh for joining uh this seminar uh thank you everybody and uh hope to see you again at of these events soon thank you thank you Chris thank you Ian thanks emry thank you everybody