Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold
Joanne Lockwood: conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your
Joanne Lockwood: guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion,
Joanne Lockwood: belonging and societal
Joanne Lockwood: transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a
Joanne Lockwood: world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but
Joanne Lockwood: thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen,
Joanne Lockwood: challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep
Joanne Lockwood: within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning
Joanne Lockwood: coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect
Joanne Lockwood: and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the
Joanne Lockwood: conversation too. Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or
Joanne Lockwood: to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle
Joanne Lockwood: in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: Bites. And today
Joanne Lockwood: is episode 218 with the title Cut Through
Joanne Lockwood: Communication. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Dominic
Joanne Lockwood: Colenso. Dominic is a speaker, author and coach,
Joanne Lockwood: formerly a professional actor who now helps leaders and sales teams
Joanne Lockwood: communicate with clarity and impact so that more people have a voice
Joanne Lockwood: and a voice that is truly heard. When I asked Dominic to describe his
Joanne Lockwood: superpower, he said that it is storytelling and his fascination with the
Joanne Lockwood: world and the power to change it. Hello, Dominic, welcome to
Joanne Lockwood: the show.
Dominic Colenso: Hey, Jo, lovely to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Joanne Lockwood: Absolute pleasure. We met all probably six, seven years ago, didn't we, at a
Joanne Lockwood: Professional Speaking association conference? And I think I was sat next to you at dinner or something and
Dominic Colenso: yeah, I think we met in the bar and then we ended up having dinner together
Dominic Colenso: and. Yeah, it was great.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it was a fascinating evening. And then I. You told me the story about, you know,
Joanne Lockwood: I mentioned in the bio just then about being a professional actor and that was like a
Joanne Lockwood: big bomb penny drop, wasn't it? It was like. I guess you get a lot of people when you
Joanne Lockwood: first tell them that story, which I hope you're going to tell
Joanne Lockwood: now.
Dominic Colenso: I think it's always kind of a great curiosity
Dominic Colenso: inducer. I think there's something about acting and the kind of world of showbiz
Dominic Colenso: that always makes people curious. I don't want to disappoint
Dominic Colenso: your leaders, but I do also think it's just a job and we can kind of discuss that
Dominic Colenso: a little bit later on. But you're absolutely right. I started my career as a professional
Dominic Colenso: actor. I went to one of the kind of big method drama schools in the
Dominic Colenso: uk. Tom Hardy was in the year above me. It was all very kind of
Dominic Colenso: intense. The nickname of the place was Trauma Centre. Should have been a
Dominic Colenso: clue. But I then was really blessed to get
Dominic Colenso: out of drama school and straight into professional acting
Dominic Colenso: work. I did BBC period drama while I was still in my third year and then within
Dominic Colenso: six to nine months of leaving drama school I landed the role of Virgil Tracy in the Hollywood
Dominic Colenso: remake of Thunderbird. And that was, if you forgive the pun, the kind of takeoff for
Dominic Colenso: my career.
Joanne Lockwood: And maybe telling the story that they originally draft commissioned you
Joanne Lockwood: for three. For a series of three.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, absolutely. It was a big deal. We, we were genuinely
Dominic Colenso: kind of slated to be the next big
Dominic Colenso: things. So we had a three movie deal. Everyone was sort of
Dominic Colenso: hyping this thing up with the, the merchandise, the, the kind of
Dominic Colenso: advertising and everything was huge. We had busted doing the theme tune which at the time they were
Dominic Colenso: probably one of the biggest kind of boy bands in, in the UK and it was all
Dominic Colenso: exciting. So we as a, as a cast genuinely believed that we were going to
Dominic Colenso: be in each other's pockets probably for the next 15
Dominic Colenso: years. Because these things have a kind of life of their own
Dominic Colenso: normally. Unfortunately, when, when we released the first film, the box
Dominic Colenso: office in the UK was great. The box office in Japan and in Europe was
Dominic Colenso: good but it just didn't make its money in the us. The, the Americans were a little bit kind of
Dominic Colenso: confused about it. It was a British puppet series so I don't think it had
Dominic Colenso: translated ne necessarily over there. And the timing of the release was really
Dominic Colenso: bad. We were released in the US against Spider Man 2 and Shrek 2 and they bought
Dominic Colenso: the release forward rather than an Easter release, it was a summer release and
Dominic Colenso: that just meant that unfortunately it kind of sank a little bit without a
Dominic Colenso: trace. And about three or four weeks after the US launch got a
Dominic Colenso: slightly sheepish call from my agent to say yeah, unfortunately we're not going ahead back to
Joanne Lockwood: the drawing board because you. It was also the time when that
Joanne Lockwood: whole Marvel DC franchise, it was all those remakes, that was the thing,
Joanne Lockwood: wasn't it? Everybody wanted those sort of movies.
Dominic Colenso: And I mean what I love about the film is that it
Dominic Colenso: has actually really stood the test of time. So I now have a 12 year old
Dominic Colenso: daughter and when she was sort of 56 she was absolutely
Dominic Colenso: obsessed by it. And it wasn't. This sounds really
Dominic Colenso: egotistical. I didn't say, right darling, sit down and watch daddy in a
Dominic Colenso: movie. She was actually at my mother in law's house and it came on the TV and
Dominic Colenso: she saw dad as A. As a superhero. And it was really interesting because she was really
Dominic Colenso: confused at that age as to whether I had had a former life, you know, putting out fires
Dominic Colenso: on oil rigs. And so we kind of kept that going for. For a little
Dominic Colenso: bit. But her and her friends and all of their kind of peer group just
Dominic Colenso: really loved the film because it is a great feel good.
Joanne Lockwood: It's a great. I remember seeing it at the cinema. I remember enjoying it
Joanne Lockwood: immensely.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, yeah. I had a conversation with Jonathan Frakes,
Dominic Colenso: who was the director. He played Riker in Star Trek, but he's also directed a lot of
Dominic Colenso: films. And I had a conversation with him a couple of years ago and he said
Dominic Colenso: something that really kind of hit me. He said we were meant to grow old
Dominic Colenso: together. And from his perspective, he was signed up for the whole
Dominic Colenso: franchise and he really believed that we were going to be making these movies for
Dominic Colenso: years and years and years.
Joanne Lockwood: And the press tours and the. And all the.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, exactly. All of that
Dominic Colenso: craziness.
Joanne Lockwood: Franchise. You'd be having sort of spin offs.
Dominic Colenso: Exactly. And there'd be loads of, you know, dolls behind me with my face on it and different hairstyles
Dominic Colenso: and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember you saying something like there was a moment when you realised you talked about all these little toys
Joanne Lockwood: and stuff. Was it you Weren't in the McDonald's Happy Meal, that was Spider man
Joanne Lockwood: and you were in the Wendy's. Or was it something like that?
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, that was. That was a kind early warning sign as I look back
Dominic Colenso: on it was that when they came to. To do all of the merchandising, I
Dominic Colenso: think it was Shrek was Burger King, Spider-Man was McDonald's
Dominic Colenso: and we had ended up in. It wasn't
Dominic Colenso: Wendy's. What was it? It was Wimpy. That was
Dominic Colenso: it. It was Wimpy.
Joanne Lockwood: Wimpy.
Dominic Colenso: There you go. Right. This is. This is probably. We don't quite have the position third division that
Dominic Colenso: we need right now. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: But you. You've name dropped in the past. You know, you've done work with some very well known leading
Joanne Lockwood: thespians, you know, of the stage and yeah, you've mixed in that circle and
Joanne Lockwood: it. I think you're right. From an outsider's perspective it all seems quite
Joanne Lockwood: magical and. And sort of
Joanne Lockwood: inspiring. But to you it was just a job. You just do what you
Joanne Lockwood: do.
Dominic Colenso: I mean, it's still really exciting. I mean I'd be ludicrous
Dominic Colenso: to. To downplay the kind of fantasy and the make
Dominic Colenso: believe. I remember like turning up at Pinewood Studios, which is where
Dominic Colenso: Thunderbirds was filmed. And a. Someone comes and picks you up in a massive
Dominic Colenso: Mercedes to take you there. And then they drop, drop you off and you kind of
Dominic Colenso: pull up outside the studio and there's a runner waiting to escort you
Dominic Colenso: in. And you're walking down the corridor with all of these photos of famous
Dominic Colenso: people, you know, different Bond villains and amazing actors who have
Dominic Colenso: worked there. And then you walk out onto the Soundstage and there's these
Dominic Colenso: sets that are just absolutely mind blowing. I mean, Tracy island had a
Dominic Colenso: swimming pool, so we were. We were in a big warehouse hangar, but we were
Dominic Colenso: swimming in the. We were swimming in pool when we were on Thunderbird 5 and it
Dominic Colenso: was getting blown up. You know, the gimbals moving, the whole thing's, you
Dominic Colenso: know, explosions, smoke, sparks. So it's kind of like being in a theme
Dominic Colenso: park. When we shot the oil rig rescue scenes, we
Dominic Colenso: were. We were in the backlot in a big, big water
Dominic Colenso: tank. I had like 30 stuntmen throwing themselves into the
Dominic Colenso: water. Explosions, wind machines. It's absolutely
Dominic Colenso: nuts. So it's not like any other job, but ultimately it's show business and
Dominic Colenso: there is a real business element to it. And what happened with the
Dominic Colenso: Thunderbirds franchise is a real kind of testament to that fact that if
Dominic Colenso: things don't do the numbers, then they don't get
Dominic Colenso: recommissioned. It doesn't matter how kind of feel good and excited
Dominic Colenso: everyone was about the show. It actually had to be commercially viable as
Dominic Colenso: well.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, today a lot of it is heavily CGI and
Joanne Lockwood: animated. When you did the movie, it was probably still on that
Joanne Lockwood: cusp. Some cgi, some augmentation, but a lot of it, as you're saying, there was quite
Joanne Lockwood: real.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, I mean, we, we did a lot of the kind of
Dominic Colenso: stunt stuff that in that
Dominic Colenso: nowadays. Absolutely would. Would be just
Dominic Colenso: graphics. That oil rig rescue that I described, I mean, there were
Dominic Colenso: flamethrowers and all sorts of stuff going. I just don't think they would bother
Dominic Colenso: with that now. And we were. Our dad in the
Dominic Colenso: film was Bill Paxton and he'd been in Apollo
Dominic Colenso: 13.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow.
Dominic Colenso: So when we were doing. There's a scene in it where we're kind of
Dominic Colenso: doing. We're weightless and the kind of
Dominic Colenso: gravity device in the space station is broken and we're kind of all floating around
Dominic Colenso: and they had to make us full body
Dominic Colenso: casks. So we went into. We went in props department and we're all wrapped
Dominic Colenso: in plaster so that they could make an exact kind of replica
Dominic Colenso: for our bodies. Then for the actual scene, we got into these
Dominic Colenso: casks. They had different connection points and there were strategic
Dominic Colenso: holes in our costumes. And then we were put onto a pole and kind of
Dominic Colenso: floated around. I don't think that would happen
Dominic Colenso: anymore. But interestingly, when you look, when you watch it back, it looks really
Dominic Colenso: good and it looks slightly more believable than some of the CGI that we're
Dominic Colenso: seeing. So it's an interesting dichotomy.
Joanne Lockwood: I've got a friend who works, he's got a stage automation
Joanne Lockwood: company. He actually designed the Michael McIntyre
Joanne Lockwood: spin the wheel. So his stage automation spins the wheel and he's got
Joanne Lockwood: all this. And it's called. He was an RAF friend of mine, we were both doing electronics in the RAF
Joanne Lockwood: together 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And he's done some movies as
Joanne Lockwood: well where you need to get a person from the bottom of a tower to the top of a tower
Joanne Lockwood: and he will do that stage automation that fires them up. Fires them up or
Joanne Lockwood: whatever. So, yeah, he's got an OBE for
Joanne Lockwood: it. So he's a leading authority in stage automation. So, yeah, so I
Joanne Lockwood: get to hear some of his stuff. He does a lot of stage shows in the West
Joanne Lockwood: End. He's a good source of getting cheap tickets for West End
Joanne Lockwood: productions.
Dominic Colenso: Brilliant.
Joanne Lockwood: So you finished your acting or acting finished with
Joanne Lockwood: you? Did it fizzle or did you kind of get to the end of it and think, actually, I need to wear a proper
Joanne Lockwood: living now. I've got to be an adult.
Dominic Colenso: There were a couple of things that were going on. It was never that clean
Dominic Colenso: cut. So I was also, throughout my time at drama school and, you know,
Dominic Colenso: that early part of my career as an actor, very interested in
Dominic Colenso: directing. And so some opportunities came along to
Dominic Colenso: work on shows as assistant directors and then start kind of directing my own
Dominic Colenso: stuff as well. And in parallel to that, I then started to get asked to go back and
Dominic Colenso: teach at some of the big drama schools. So I went back to Drama Centre, did some
Dominic Colenso: classes for RADA and a couple of the other big drama schools in
Dominic Colenso: London. And what I started to discover that was that I had
Dominic Colenso: got more pleasure and I felt I was making more impact from that
Dominic Colenso: kind of behind the scenes thing rather than being the
Dominic Colenso: actor. And I'd had a few really lovely jobs, really big breaks,
Dominic Colenso: lovely acting stuff on stage. But you always felt a little bit like a
Dominic Colenso: cog in a wheel, rather than having any sort of sense of
Dominic Colenso: autonomy. Really kind of stupid example just springs to
Dominic Colenso: mind. But I remember being on set for Thunderbirds and Really wanting a
Dominic Colenso: cup of tea. And as the actor, you weren't even allowed to leave your
Dominic Colenso: dressing room to go and do that. You had a runner who was there to help
Dominic Colenso: you with those sorts of things. So I asked my runner if I could have a cup of
Dominic Colenso: tea. And like, 25, 30 minutes later, still
Dominic Colenso: no cup of tea. And I'm kind of feeling the diva
Dominic Colenso: rising in me going, this is absolutely
Dominic Colenso: ridiculous. Like, I could have walked to the bloody wagon and picked the cup out of
Dominic Colenso: the pile and made my own cup of tea in three minutes, not in 33
Dominic Colenso: minutes. So you lose some of that autonomy
Dominic Colenso: for some of those really simple decisions. Whereas when I was working as an
Dominic Colenso: actor, as a director, I was able to
Dominic Colenso: really collaborate and unlock other people's
Dominic Colenso: creativity. And so for me, I was never a concepts
Dominic Colenso: director. I didn't come in and say, this is how we're doing
Dominic Colenso: things. I would sit down with my creative team, with my lighting designers, with my costume
Dominic Colenso: designers, set designers, with the actors and say, what are we gonna
Dominic Colenso: together? And I found that incredibly exciting, empowering,
Dominic Colenso: and at kind of odds to my experience as an
Dominic Colenso: actor. So that became a much bigger part of what I
Dominic Colenso: was doing. And then someone came along and said, you're into this
Dominic Colenso: storytelling stuff. Can you help our
Dominic Colenso: team? They're not very good at it. And I'm the sort of person that says yes to anything once
Dominic Colenso: I said, let's give it a go. And I was just really fascinated by
Dominic Colenso: how quickly that skill set that I developed and trained as an
Dominic Colenso: actor, as a director, just translated into what I then thought
Dominic Colenso: of as the kind of real world again, that ability to help in a way
Dominic Colenso: that I didn't have that agency as an actor was really
Dominic Colenso: exciting. And so that set me off on a whole new
Dominic Colenso: trajectory. Doing coaching courses and understanding how do I better
Dominic Colenso: translate these things that I kind of instinctively know or have been
Dominic Colenso: taught, but how do I teach them to others in a way that is accessible,
Dominic Colenso: is relevant and gets people the results that they
Dominic Colenso: want?
Joanne Lockwood: That's very interesting. You say that because you can tell the difference between
Joanne Lockwood: someone who is a good storyteller and someone who isn't in so much as the trajectory or
Joanne Lockwood: the arc of that conversation is such that, you know, if someone's got a story plan with a
Joanne Lockwood: punchline and stuff off points and somebody who's just waffling and you get to the end
Joanne Lockwood: of it and go, well, what was I supposed to take out of
Joanne Lockwood: this? Yeah, I often joke with people that someone told me
Joanne Lockwood: this. Some people need a Skip intro button on their
Joanne Lockwood: forehead. So you know, they start talking. I want these people says tell me the answer
Joanne Lockwood: and then tell. Read the story. Some people want to tell you the story before you know
Joanne Lockwood: where you're going with it. And it's, it's also appreciating different people's
Joanne Lockwood: communication styles and listening styles as well, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it?
Dominic Colenso: Absolutely, yeah. It was fascinating at drama school because we, we did a lot of work
Dominic Colenso: on what was known at our school as movement
Dominic Colenso: psychology. And the founder of the school was a guy called or co founder of the school was
Dominic Colenso: a guy called Yat Malgram. And Yat had been a soloist
Dominic Colenso: dancer, he was Swedish. In the 40s and 50s he'd been
Dominic Colenso: a virtuoso, toured the world and when he retired as a dancer he started
Dominic Colenso: working with actors. You know, has worked with the
Dominic Colenso: Anthony Hopkins and you know, Sean Connerys of the
Dominic Colenso: world, but then founded, co founded Drama
Dominic Colenso: Centre. He had this methodology that helped actors
Dominic Colenso: translate characters into movement. But what I started to notice
Dominic Colenso: was that you could also kind of reverse engineer that and you could start to understand
Dominic Colenso: people and their preferences and their behaviours from what they were
Dominic Colenso: doing. And I found that really fascinating to bring that back into my
Dominic Colenso: work with businesses again, especially on a podcast like
Dominic Colenso: this. It's not about putting people in boxes, right? We're a combination of all of these
Dominic Colenso: things, but having some sort of shortcut or having some signals to listen out
Dominic Colenso: for and then test and re engineer or adapt if you need
Dominic Colenso: to. But that process is really
Dominic Colenso: useful. So I talk about head energy, people that are very much kind
Dominic Colenso: of logic based. One plus one is two need to have the kind of full working out heart
Dominic Colenso: energy. People who are about consensus and compassion and bringing people
Dominic Colenso: on the journey together. Gut energy, which is all about, oh, this is new, this is shiny, let's, let's go
Dominic Colenso: this way. And energy who are outcome, focus, direct,
Dominic Colenso: let's get things done. And that very much came from the work that we
Dominic Colenso: did as actors in terms of creating characters almost from the outside
Dominic Colenso: in. And it now allows me to have conversations with people and navigate
Dominic Colenso: those conversations much more elegant. Especially if I'm
Dominic Colenso: listening. Well, only if I'm listening to allow me to speak other people's language rather
Dominic Colenso: than just get stuck in my own way of doing things.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're evaluating the, if you like the reception style, say ah,
Joanne Lockwood: you're a foot person, you're a head person, you're a heart person, you're a gut person, you're
Joanne Lockwood: a. Yeah, yeah. And then you're you're, you're modifying your interaction to
Joanne Lockwood: them in a way that they want to. And sometimes when you're in a mixed group, you have to, you have to blend all of
Joanne Lockwood: them, don't you?
Dominic Colenso: All of it? Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: In all those little plates and then come back and that's
Joanne Lockwood: it.
Dominic Colenso: You know, when you're, when I'm giving a keynote, it's about recognising, okay, well I might
Dominic Colenso: be speaking to a group of accountants. So they, there might be more kind of head and logic people
Dominic Colenso: in the room, but that doesn't negate the fact that some of them will be real kind of
Dominic Colenso: people. People and will want that heart energy as well. And so it's about being
Dominic Colenso: flexible, it's about being open and it's about
Dominic Colenso: trying to be present in that moment so that you don't just go, right, this is
Dominic Colenso: the plan, this is where I'm going. But actually you do spot the signal and you are able to
Dominic Colenso: change.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. When does it go wrong? You can sometimes misinterpret, I
Joanne Lockwood: guess. Can you?
Dominic Colenso: I think it goes wrong when you're not in that place of presence,
Dominic Colenso: actually. I think if you are genuinely present with someone,
Dominic Colenso: you know, human beings are hardwired for connection. That's my belief anyway, that
Dominic Colenso: we are, you know, tribal animals that want to come together and help each
Dominic Colenso: other. And so if we sit in that space and we really listen
Dominic Colenso: and we're not there to dominate and assert, we can still have an
Dominic Colenso: opinion, we can still have an outcome in
Dominic Colenso: mind. But if we're really open to what's right in front of us, then
Dominic Colenso: it's actually quite difficult to get it wrong. But most of us
Dominic Colenso: aren't. Most of us go in with a preconceived idea of how this is going to work and what needs to be said
Dominic Colenso: and then the whole thing blows up.
Joanne Lockwood: So how do, how do you persuade people that that's a good
Joanne Lockwood: idea? Because it's quite often people don't want to be told that
Joanne Lockwood: it's. How do you coach that into people? What would be your first
Joanne Lockwood: step?
Dominic Colenso: So what I normally try and help people identify is what their kind of go to
Dominic Colenso: is. Again, this is not a psychometric test. But on instincts, when you're
Dominic Colenso: under pressure, where, where would you tend to
Dominic Colenso: go? And then what normally is the big aha moment is we then say, so who, who do
Dominic Colenso: you find it really difficult to communicate
Dominic Colenso: with? And what, what you'll tend to find is that those
Dominic Colenso: people. This is a kind of four box model. The people that you find have most
Dominic Colenso: challenge with are on the diagonals from you because they're, they're, you
Dominic Colenso: know, they're, they're the most different to, to where you
Dominic Colenso: are. And as soon as you notice that, then you go, oh, right, yeah, that makes a
Dominic Colenso: lot of sense. That's why I find Susan really challenging to, to have a
Dominic Colenso: conversation. I remember a few ago a lady joining our team and we always share
Dominic Colenso: this model and concepts with people because we always ask people, how do you
Dominic Colenso: like to be communicated with? Do you, do you prefer to have text messages or
Dominic Colenso: voice notes? Would you rather have an email? Just so that we're kind of, you
Dominic Colenso: know, giving people what they want and what they
Dominic Colenso: need. But we explained this to this employee and she turned around to me and
Dominic Colenso: she said, oh my God. She said, I wish I had been told this 30 years
Dominic Colenso: ago. She said, I had a boss for 15 years who I just was always at odds
Dominic Colenso: with. And it's now just abundantly clear to me that we wanted the same
Dominic Colenso: thing. We were just communicating from a completely different
Dominic Colenso: perspective.
Joanne Lockwood: That's a really insightful way of putting it. We do all want the same
Joanne Lockwood: thing. We all want positive outcomes. We all want happy life. Nobody wakes up in the morning, wants to be a
Joanne Lockwood: dick. It just something, something happens, you know, and one person's dick is another person's
Joanne Lockwood: friend. You know, it's just, it's your perception of that person and whether,
Joanne Lockwood: as you say, we're doing those polar opposites and how we find a way of meeting in the
Joanne Lockwood: middle. Yeah, it does imply or require
Joanne Lockwood: the other person to be also receptive to try and lean into you as well as you having
Joanne Lockwood: to lean into them. Because it could be quite exhausting if you're always.
Dominic Colenso: I think so. I mean, my kind of advice to people
Dominic Colenso: is that it, I think always easier to walk over to where someone else is,
Dominic Colenso: put your arm around them and try and bring them over to where you are together than it is to drag
Dominic Colenso: them kicking and screaming to where you are. And if you want to
Dominic Colenso: influence, then unfortunately the onus is on you to put in that
Dominic Colenso: effort. Now, long term, in a relationship, if you're working with a colleague
Dominic Colenso: closely and there's a. This continual conflict and misalignment,
Dominic Colenso: then we need to have a candid conversation about why that's
Dominic Colenso: happening. But in the moment, if I am trying to get sign
Dominic Colenso: off on a project from a leadership team that I don't interact with very often, or if I'm
Dominic Colenso: trying to close a sales deal with a prospect that I
Dominic Colenso: haven't had very much interaction with, then it's going to be to my
Dominic Colenso: advantage to be more flexible and to not insist that they flex,
Dominic Colenso: but actually to. To stack into those shoes.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it's who's got the high ground, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? It's who. If you're in a leadership position, you have the responsibility
Joanne Lockwood: to do the walking. Also, as an employee or as a
Joanne Lockwood: subordinate, you also have the responsibility to lean in. But the onus is really on the person who is
Joanne Lockwood: controlling the conversation, as you're saying there, to walk over to
Dominic Colenso: them or, you know, or the person who wants the outcome
Dominic Colenso: most. There's a kind of classic example of this from, from my
Dominic Colenso: life. I live up in Yorkshire now, but when I used to live in London, I was on the
Dominic Colenso: board of a children's charity in Westminster called Westminster Boating
Dominic Colenso: Base. It was a charity that put kids on the 10 sailing and
Dominic Colenso: kayak. And it was a really small organisation, a couple of permanent members of
Dominic Colenso: staff and then this, this board of advisors. And each year the onus basically
Dominic Colenso: fell on one of the board members to roll up their sleeves and help the
Dominic Colenso: organisation run their big summer project. And so this particular year I was in
Dominic Colenso: the hot seat and I had found a whitewater kayaking centre in the south of
Dominic Colenso: France. And that was my kind of thing back then. So I was really
Dominic Colenso: excited. The facilities looked fantastic. It was beautiful, you know,
Dominic Colenso: sunshine, croissant, like, what more do you
Dominic Colenso: want? And we would genuinely do, but always dealing with inner city kids who
Dominic Colenso: very rarely left London, let alone left the uk. So I made a big pitch in a board
Dominic Colenso: meeting to have this place as the location for the next big
Dominic Colenso: trip. And I showed some photos of shiny, happy people having fun and I was really
Dominic Colenso: enthusiastic and told some great stories. And I'm thinking this absolutely
Dominic Colenso: nailed this. And so I finished my presentation and I said, any
Dominic Colenso: questions? And there was a guy on the board called Nigel, and Nigel was a former
Dominic Colenso: accountant. And Nigel put his hand up immediately and went, yeah, how much is it
Dominic Colenso: going to cost? And I went, well, I mean, I don't know because I haven't, you
Dominic Colenso: know, we don't know how many kids are going to
Dominic Colenso: come. It's, you know, just an idea at this
Dominic Colenso: stage. Well, how many instructor hours will we
Dominic Colenso: need? And again, Nigel, I couldn't possibly tell you because I don't know how
Dominic Colenso: many kids are going and I don't know how long we're
Dominic Colenso: going. How many miles will the minibus drive? And I'm like, are you
Dominic Colenso: kidding? Me, I have no idea how many miles the minibus would
Dominic Colenso: drive. And we basically got into a sort of stand up argument in this particular
Dominic Colenso: board meeting because I just couldn't believe why he hated children so
Dominic Colenso: much. Like, why are you going to be on this board if you're going to block all of
Dominic Colenso: this? And of course, the moment I walked out, I went,
Dominic Colenso: oh. I completely failed to speak Nigel's language, to anticipate any of
Dominic Colenso: Nigel's needs to think about the project in the way that he would think about
Dominic Colenso: it. So over the intervening weeks I wrote, I got a
Dominic Colenso: spreadsheet. I'm terrible at spreadsheets for, like, if it's this number of
Dominic Colenso: kids, it's this number of hours. If it's this number of kids, it costs this
Dominic Colenso: much. This went on Google Maps. How far is the minibus going to
Dominic Colenso: go? And I sent all of this stuff to the board in
Dominic Colenso: advance. At the next board meeting, the chair said, has everyone had a chance to
Dominic Colenso: read Dominic's report? Everyone said, yes. Any
Dominic Colenso: questions? Nigel put his hands up. I think you'll find that there's a mistake in
Dominic Colenso: column C. Yeah, okay, Nigel, there's a mistake in column
Dominic Colenso: C. And then the chair said, so who's in favour of this going
Dominic Colenso: ahead? Nigel was the first person to put his hand
Dominic Colenso: up. Nigel actually drove the minibus to the south of
Dominic Colenso: France. Right. So it wasn't that Nigel didn't like the project or didn't have
Dominic Colenso: the vision for it or hated kids. He just didn't understand it in the way that he
Dominic Colenso: needed to understand it.
Joanne Lockwood: Brilliant. Love it. I don't know. Do you watch the Apprentice? Do you watch Dragon's
Joanne Lockwood: Den? It always surprises me.
Dominic Colenso: I have not, not recently, but, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't watch that often, but it always surprises me that the contestants or the people turning up for their
Joanne Lockwood: pitch, it's like they've never watched the series before in their life, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? It's like, you know exactly the exercises in the
Joanne Lockwood: Apprentice. You know, this is a, a low cost, high profit, turnover type
Joanne Lockwood: thing. This is potentially a high investment, low return type
Joanne Lockwood: scenario. This is about marketing design. You think, if you've never watched this programme,
Joanne Lockwood: why are you on it? They're making the same rookie errors you type in Dragons
Joanne Lockwood: Den. You know they're going to ask the numbers, you know, they want to know what you've done last
Joanne Lockwood: year. They can smell if you start waffling and they buy from people in Dragons Den,
Joanne Lockwood: they invest in the person. So you need the bubbly
Joanne Lockwood: stuff. But you need to have your business partner has to be the numbers person or whatever it may
Joanne Lockwood: be. And it's exactly what you're saying there. You have. You have to recognise
Joanne Lockwood: the personalities in the room and the information they
Joanne Lockwood: need. And a lot of people. I bet. I bet if you actually did a poll with people in that board
Joanne Lockwood: meeting who actually read the report, everyone went, well, I
Joanne Lockwood: just. I just.
Dominic Colenso: But Nigel did. I guarantee.
Joanne Lockwood: Exactly. And I've chaired boards, I've sat on things. And you know full well that 90% of people in the
Joanne Lockwood: room haven't read 90% of the stuff. People just turn up and they're flicking through it on
Joanne Lockwood: the desk in front of them as we go through the reports. And you know that people are like that, but you know that
Joanne Lockwood: you've got the data there, you've got the information there. So if someone does challenge, if
Joanne Lockwood: someone does say, you go, actually, that's all covered. We've got that
Joanne Lockwood: here. Brilliant. Thank you. And there's that governance chain, isn't it, you
Joanne Lockwood: need.
Dominic Colenso: Absolutely, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: So have you ever thought about going on Dragon's Den?
Dominic Colenso: I'm a great believer in doing the things that
Dominic Colenso: you. You say you'll do. So I have entered pitch competitions in the
Dominic Colenso: past. I haven't entered Dragon's Den and don't particularly have an idea for Dragon's
Dominic Colenso: Den, but I do think it's important commercially, if you're going to say to someone,
Dominic Colenso: I'm going to show you how to develop and deliver a persuasive narrative, that
Dominic Colenso: you've got to have evidence that you can do that yourself too.
Joanne Lockwood: I've recently conducted a survey out into the market to corporate organisations and I was
Joanne Lockwood: determined that I was right. I was gonna do it my way and do
Joanne Lockwood: this. And I put it out for peer review before I launched the
Joanne Lockwood: survey. And a few people said some things to me that, because I could tell their brain worked
Joanne Lockwood: completely differently and they said, well, there's too much waffle up
Joanne Lockwood: front. I need to get into the data, into the questions quicker or the questions are structured
Joanne Lockwood: in certain way. And I thought, and I thought about it for a while and I thought, actually,
Joanne Lockwood: you're right. Now I think about it, I've gone into, let's explain too much up front rather than
Joanne Lockwood: get people invested and start to move forward. So that really
Joanne Lockwood: helped. And when I produced the report, people said, well, what's the
Joanne Lockwood: point? What am I taking away from this? Where am I into? And I realised I needed
Joanne Lockwood: a. A good, strong executive TL;DR at the top. And then if you, if you want this, go to page
Joanne Lockwood: 10. If you want this, go to page 5. If you want this, go to page
Joanne Lockwood: 15. If you just want to read the whole report, start now sort of
Joanne Lockwood: thing. So what you can do is you can you signpost exactly where people need to be and that's
Joanne Lockwood: really, really sort of focused my mind in think about
Joanne Lockwood: these. You know, you talked about all your different personality types or listening or
Joanne Lockwood: thinking types, making sure you are ticking these boxes in whatever you're
Joanne Lockwood: producing. Not even, not just verbally, but also written and website
Joanne Lockwood: navigation.
Dominic Colenso: I think it's absolutely vital In Cut Through I talk about the intersection of
Dominic Colenso: simplicity, emotion and energy. And that's the bumper
Dominic Colenso: sticker moment. You know that that's how you get your big message down into something
Dominic Colenso: that really makes people lean in. And I find it on my own YouTube videos as
Dominic Colenso: well. Spent a lot of time thinking about how do I, how do I craft
Dominic Colenso: that opening pitch? Because you've got five seconds
Dominic Colenso: to capture someone's attention before they swipe onto the next thing and, and then
Dominic Colenso: you've got to, then you've got to tell them what the problem is that you're going to solve
Dominic Colenso: for them and then you've got to get some credibility in so that they believe that you're the right
Dominic Colenso: person that is to answer that problem or question for
Dominic Colenso: them. And then you've got to kind of give them a roadmap of what you're going to cover and you've got to do that all in
Dominic Colenso: the first 20 to 30 seconds. And I was, I was looking at
Dominic Colenso: my stats and I was working with a coach at the time, a YouTube coach,
Dominic Colenso: and I kind of messaged him and I said, look, this, this is
Dominic Colenso: terrible. I'm losing. I've just looked at the retention stats from my latest video and
Dominic Colenso: I'm, I'm got 70% of viewers are staying with the
Dominic Colenso: video at the 30 second mark. So that means that I'm losing 30%
Dominic Colenso: of people in the first 30 seconds. Like this is absolute
Dominic Colenso: disaster. And he went, no, Dominic, that's world
Dominic Colenso: class. We're so distracted as, as human beings that we
Dominic Colenso: won't give stuff 30 seconds. It's like test it
Dominic Colenso: out. If you're list to this podcast, you know, think of your social media behaviour
Dominic Colenso: this afternoon or this morning or whatever time it is for you. How long did you spend with the
Dominic Colenso: things that you saw? It will be milliseconds on some of
Dominic Colenso: it. So if we want to cut through, if we want our audience to really pay attention
Dominic Colenso: We've got to be much more mindful about that first sort of
Dominic Colenso: hook.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I spend a lot of time on Sunday mornings on YouTube, on my
Joanne Lockwood: telly. So when I'm eating with cornflakes on the sofa on Sunday mornings,
Joanne Lockwood: I flick through something, I'm losing myself down AI rabbit
Joanne Lockwood: holes. I look at YouTube, you know, going viral, how to do this, how
Joanne Lockwood: to automate stuff. And I've got a few people that I follow quite regularly when their
Joanne Lockwood: content comes on, I want to watch it because I know that they speak to me,
Joanne Lockwood: but there's other people. I go, well, you're off going, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, I'm never gonna stick with you. So. But in a
Joanne Lockwood: way. But that person who I've just swiped off of may resonate really, really well
Joanne Lockwood: with a different type of person, someone else. So you can't be everything to everybody, can
Joanne Lockwood: you? No.
Dominic Colenso: And I don't think you should try.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah.
Dominic Colenso: And the more consistent you
Dominic Colenso: are. Authentic is a really kind of overused
Dominic Colenso: word, I think. But, but essentially if you can be more
Dominic Colenso: you consistently and there's a range, you can turn some things
Dominic Colenso: up and turn some things down. But people need to know
Dominic Colenso: that when they're having a conversation with you, when they're reading an email from you, when
Dominic Colenso: they're watching a video that you've created, they need to know what they're
Dominic Colenso: going to get and then if they like that, fantastic, they'll stick with
Dominic Colenso: you. And if they don't, there are hundreds of other people that they can go and have a conversation
Dominic Colenso: with.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I did a producer video learning series for a large car manufacturer and I'd
Joanne Lockwood: never developed a whole load of e-content or e-learning
Joanne Lockwood: before. And they had some specific guidelines on their LMS
Joanne Lockwood: about. They didn't want lots of little modules, they wanted big
Joanne Lockwood: blocks. Because my original plan was to do it in 10 minute chunks and then have a
Joanne Lockwood: quiz between them. Take that. I got always the end of the project and you project
Joanne Lockwood: manager took over and said, well, it's too much, we don't want that
Joanne Lockwood: much. We want it this, you've given us it in half hour blocks and we actually want
Joanne Lockwood: it in smaller chunks. That's what I said in the first
Joanne Lockwood: place. And then they sent me their L&D design guide for video
Joanne Lockwood: content. I went, if you'd have sent me this at the beginning, it'd be so much
Joanne Lockwood: easier.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And I just felt like I was, I kept saying to them, you know, almost like rewind saying,
Joanne Lockwood: look, this is what you said to me a year ago. And this is what you said to me. Now, can we, can we get the design spec
Joanne Lockwood: locked in, please? Can we, can we? Yeah, yeah, we agree on this. And I think that
Joanne Lockwood: that highlighted that different people have different perspectives. And I knew that if I
Joanne Lockwood: deliver a training course, if I deliver a workshop, if I deliver a, a keynote,
Joanne Lockwood: people just remember how you made them feel in that moment or the information that
Joanne Lockwood: partake. But when you committed to, to video or commit it to audio, it's an
Joanne Lockwood: evergreen product, suddenly people, different people would, will feed back different
Joanne Lockwood: things about it. Oh, it was to this, it was too, that it wasn't enough of
Joanne Lockwood: this. And could you do it differently? And people feel they've got more commentary on it, whereas
Joanne Lockwood: if you just do it live, it's gone, it's done.
Dominic Colenso: Oh, well, next time, I mean, I get some horrific
Dominic Colenso: comments on some of my YouTube stuff, stuff that I put out 10 years ago,
Dominic Colenso: and you just think, wow, like, I'm so sorry that you're having such a
Dominic Colenso: bad day that you felt the need to reach out across the world and give
Dominic Colenso: me three sentences of vitriol. There's plenty of other content for you to
Dominic Colenso: watch. You don't have to watch my stuff.
Joanne Lockwood: No, I remember, I think it was a Brene Brown interview when she,
Joanne Lockwood: she used to take it to heart when people were giving her the thumbs down or negative comments and she
Joanne Lockwood: said, well, it shows that people are listening and engaging. If you're not getting
Joanne Lockwood: 30% dissent, you're not making an
Joanne Lockwood: impact. You need to have that dissent in the room to show that you've
Joanne Lockwood: challenged people's thinking.
Dominic Colenso: I love what she says about that as well, that she, she basically, I think
Dominic Colenso: it's. I don't want to paraphrase it badly, but she talks about being in the arena and that if you're not in the,
Dominic Colenso: in the arena, it doesn't matter. You don't need to listen to people that aren't in the
Dominic Colenso: arena. I think that's really powerful.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember Chris Evans, the broadcaster, he always said that, you know, you have to be like
Joanne Lockwood: Marmite. Half the world has to love you and half the world has to hate you in order to know that you're making a
Joanne Lockwood: difference. And being in the arena, there's no room for people who are just bland and
Joanne Lockwood: spam. In my view, you've got to be something.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And people don't pay for me too. They're paying for thought leaders, they're paying for
Joanne Lockwood: people who have opinions and influencing an original thought, aren't
Joanne Lockwood: they? That's where it comes out.
Dominic Colenso: But I think even in the workplace this doesn't just apply to people that are
Dominic Colenso: creating content, this applies to everyone who's having a
Dominic Colenso: conversation. The more you can get your voice out into
Dominic Colenso: the world, the more you can let people know what it is that you, you stand for, the
Dominic Colenso: change that you want to create or the ideas that you have, the more influential
Dominic Colenso: you're going to be. And yeah, your boss isn't going to say yes to everything, but he's going to say yes to
Dominic Colenso: nothing if you don't actually put those words out into the
Dominic Colenso: room.
Joanne Lockwood: A lot of what we've talked about for the last 20 minutes is effectively the grounding of emotional
Joanne Lockwood: intelligence, isn't it? It's that self awareness, self reflection, modifying
Joanne Lockwood: and then trying to build longer term relationships. That's what we'll talk about here. And it is learned
Joanne Lockwood: behaviour. It's not something that you're born with. Okay, some people are maybe more innate through their lived
Joanne Lockwood: experience, but you can develop these skills if you care
Joanne Lockwood: enough.
Dominic Colenso: It's interesting. I wonder whether it is something that we're born with
Dominic Colenso: and it's something that we put up barriers to because children are
Dominic Colenso: incredibly emotionally intelligent. A baby will cry to tell you that it
Dominic Colenso: needs its nappy changed 3 year old will try and push mum and dad's mobile
Dominic Colenso: phone out of their face to get attention without having the language to
Dominic Colenso: talk about it, addiction or anything like
Dominic Colenso: that. I do think that there's a kind of coming back to that's important as
Dominic Colenso: well. And sometimes we need to learn the skills to help us come back to that
Dominic Colenso: state. But again, it's just that ability to stop and connect on the human
Dominic Colenso: level, which I find fascinating. And that's essentially what my whole
Dominic Colenso: training as an actor was, was built on. It was about understanding who you
Dominic Colenso: are being comfortable with just being in front of an audience, being
Dominic Colenso: metaphorically naked, not necessarily physically naked, but could you
Dominic Colenso: stand there and allow people to see you and to not have a narrative created
Dominic Colenso: around that? One of the exercises that we did repeatedly in the first and
Dominic Colenso: second year of training was a song
Dominic Colenso: exercise. I don't know where this memory has come from, but going with
Dominic Colenso: me. And we used to have to stand in front of the group and you could sing
Dominic Colenso: anything. It could be baa, baa black sheep, but you would just sing a
Dominic Colenso: single vowel. So it'd be like ba all the way through full breath to the end
Dominic Colenso: and just make eye contact and connect with that one person and then move on
Dominic Colenso: to the next person and then move on to the next
Dominic Colenso: person. You weren't doing anything. You weren't being a
Dominic Colenso: character. You were just making sound and looking someone in the
Dominic Colenso: eye. And it was the most bizarre, powerful, weird, wonderful
Dominic Colenso: exercise. Some people you'd look at and you would burst out laughing,
Dominic Colenso: you'd move to the next person, you'd have tears streaming down your
Dominic Colenso: face. And it was an emotional connection experience, stripping away all
Dominic Colenso: of those layers. Now, that might sound very odd in a business context, and
Dominic Colenso: let's kind of roll back on what that actually
Dominic Colenso: means. But I think that level of vulnerability and openness is actually
Dominic Colenso: where magic really starts to happen from a communication
Dominic Colenso: perspective. That's where we say we see you and you see
Dominic Colenso: me.
Joanne Lockwood: But I think going back to something you said, that you've got to be kind of really comfortable in your own skin to let it go
Joanne Lockwood: in that way. You're holding a bit back, and that's where the inauthenticity comes
Joanne Lockwood: in. If you're holding it back and you're hiding behind something, but
Joanne Lockwood: it. Yeah, being truly naked and truly you, that's where
Joanne Lockwood: vulnerability. Yeah, that's exactly it, isn't it?
Dominic Colenso: That is the heart of vulnerability and I think the heart of
Dominic Colenso: awareness. And it's not going to be possible with everyone
Dominic Colenso: different. It can be much more open in my conversation with you because of our shared
Dominic Colenso: history and shared experience than I would be maybe if I'm on a podcast with someone
Dominic Colenso: that I've never met before, but having an awareness of
Dominic Colenso: that. Not to judge it and say that was wrong or that was right, but just to go, oh,
Dominic Colenso: interesting. I am able to be me in this
Dominic Colenso: context. I'm not as much me. I'm putting up some barriers in this
Dominic Colenso: context. And I think with that noticing, with that understanding, things
Dominic Colenso: start to drop away. And again, it's all about
Dominic Colenso: choice. It's not saying you have to be vulnerable and naked in front of everyone,
Dominic Colenso: but if you want to be, you should be able to be.
Joanne Lockwood: It's less cognitive load being yourself, isn't it? That's the other
Joanne Lockwood: thing. If you're. You're having to layer on all these
Dominic Colenso: extra things, all of this stuff, who am I meant to be today? Like, wow,
Dominic Colenso: that's. That's, That's a lot of that.
Joanne Lockwood: Can I say this? Can I say that I think that maybe we're both privileged, that we
Joanne Lockwood: are. Are in a world where we, we can speak our mind. People pay us to speak our
Joanne Lockwood: mind where we're. We're not. They're trying to reserve. But if you're working maybe in a layer in corporate
Joanne Lockwood: world, then you have to sanitise your views and opinions to fit in with the
Joanne Lockwood: corporate speaker. But then we've got things like psychological safety. Can you speak
Joanne Lockwood: up? Can you have a. Have a say in these things? And does the environment let you do
Joanne Lockwood: that? Do leaders welcome your contributions?
Dominic Colenso: Yeah. And I think if you are in a situation where
Dominic Colenso: you're. You don't feel able to do that in one context, then I think
Dominic Colenso: it's really important for your own mental health and wellbeing that you
Dominic Colenso: find a context where you can have that
Dominic Colenso: conversation. So if you can't have that conversation with your boss, then can you have that conversation
Dominic Colenso: with. With a colleague or with HR or with whoever you need to
Dominic Colenso: have that interaction with to be
Dominic Colenso: able to bring yourself to
Dominic Colenso: work? Because we spend a lot of our time not at
Dominic Colenso: leisure, but at work. If we're going to be doing
Dominic Colenso: a job, then as much as we possibly can, we should be enjoying
Dominic Colenso: it. We should be getting, getting something back from it.
Joanne Lockwood: Can spend more time with your work colleagues than you do with your
Joanne Lockwood: home. Family.
Dominic Colenso: Family, of course you do.
Joanne Lockwood: You spend eight hours of sleep, eight hours at work, and three or four of those hours driving or
Joanne Lockwood: commuting or watching telly. And then you're only actually spending three or four hours talking to the
Joanne Lockwood: ones you love.
Dominic Colenso: They love. Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: You talked about children having that level of emotional intelligence and that they
Joanne Lockwood: can they spot things like that. We got a new puppy back in October and
Joanne Lockwood: she's what, eight months old now? And she instinctively knows
Joanne Lockwood: that she hasn't had any attention. She'll come and she'll climb up on you and sit on your shoulder while
Joanne Lockwood: you're on your phone going, and start licking your ear, going, come on, come
Joanne Lockwood: on. You spent too much time on that phone. Give me some attention. Give me a cuddle or I need to go
Joanne Lockwood: out for a walk right now. It's like, okay, okay. And
Joanne Lockwood: it's. I found it really beautiful that she's now interacting
Joanne Lockwood: with me in that way and distracting me to help my own mental
Joanne Lockwood: health. And I think that's underrated that what children and animals can
Joanne Lockwood: do.
Dominic Colenso: Absolutely. We've got a golden retriever and I've got a bit of a bad back at the moment, so
Dominic Colenso: I was having a bit of a stretch this morning and he was literally trying to get
Dominic Colenso: underneath me because he wanted a walk. Don't do
Dominic Colenso: that. Do something with me. But what I love about
Dominic Colenso: watching animals and kids is their ability to drop thought,
Dominic Colenso: you know, the dog will be kind of sat down,
Dominic Colenso: mooching, and then you'll walk towards the back door and straight away be like, oh my God,
Dominic Colenso: excitement, let's go. You know, Nell's the
Dominic Colenso: same. She, she can be in one imaginative world at one moment and then
Dominic Colenso: in a completely different imaginative world in another. I don't know what
Dominic Colenso: happens. Be interested to understand the kind of neuroscience behind it but,
Dominic Colenso: but that we suppress somehow that ability to
Dominic Colenso: imaginatively move from one situation to another situation as
Dominic Colenso: adults. And we often try and keep ourselves in a thought that
Dominic Colenso: exists and stay with the stress or the anxiety of the moment rather than
Dominic Colenso: just going, okay, that's happened. But here I am right now
Dominic Colenso: having this conversation or drinking this glass of water or looking out of this window and we
Dominic Colenso: have much more agency, I think, to make those choices than we necessarily give ourselves
Dominic Colenso: credit.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I was just thinking about AI Chat
Joanne Lockwood: GPT for if you like. And it's context window has this sort of kind of,
Joanne Lockwood: you have, I don't know, 500,000 characters and then, and then it starts to forget stuff
Joanne Lockwood: that went on before and you can find that the conversation drifts or the
Joanne Lockwood: momentum drifts or it actually forgets tangibly whatever it's talked
Joanne Lockwood: about. I think maybe as we get older we've got so much context
Joanne Lockwood: when stuff in our head, paying this bill, paying that bill, worrying about this, worrying about
Joanne Lockwood: that, worrying about that. We just keep picking and choosing the last 5,000 words
Joanne Lockwood: something in our head and we forget
Joanne Lockwood: that. Chilling. Having fun, finding space for ourselves, finding space for others
Joanne Lockwood: gets buried in that lack of context. There's only when we maybe get this big nudge, I don't
Joanne Lockwood: know, illness, something fundamental in life shifts
Joanne Lockwood: us. We go, hang on a minute, I need to purge my context here and go back to the basics and
Joanne Lockwood: find it again.
Dominic Colenso: But I think there are opportunities to do that all the
Dominic Colenso: time. We had a power cut the day before yesterday and it was about 2:30 in the
Dominic Colenso: afternoon when the power went out and I was like, oh, it started
Dominic Colenso: really. We, we live in the countryside, there's no bloody mobile phone
Dominic Colenso: reception. So I had calls booked in for the afternoon and I needed to let clients
Dominic Colenso: know that I probably wasn't going to be able to have the
Dominic Colenso: conversations. And so I kind of tramp up the path with my mobile phone to send
Dominic Colenso: these messages and then I suddenly went, hang on, no one's
Dominic Colenso: died. Actually, it's a beautiful sunny afternoon, so if I'm not going to have
Dominic Colenso: those calls then I might as well walk the dog and So I managed to get some mobile
Dominic Colenso: phone reception, sent a couple of emails saying, really sorry, you're going to
Dominic Colenso: have to reschedule this for tomorrow, and took the dog for a walk and had
Dominic Colenso: a. Had a lovely time. But I could have easily. And I, and this is me, I know myself
Dominic Colenso: well enough to know that I could have easily spent two and a half hours, like,
Dominic Colenso: desperately standing on one leg trying to get some sort of mobile phone
Dominic Colenso: reception to do something, being pissed off at the world for sending me this
Dominic Colenso: power cut. And instead I went, I'll have a nice walk with the
Dominic Colenso: dog.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I bet you were thinking, power's come back now,
Joanne Lockwood: shame. But in the old days, you just spent the next two hours resetting all the
Joanne Lockwood: clocks on the microwave and the cooker and, and now they just rethink and you haven't got to worry about
Joanne Lockwood: that. I don't even think our microwave has a clock on it
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. It's just. Yeah, it is, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? And I think we've got to. I think what you're saying there is we've just got to find more time for ourselves to be more,
Joanne Lockwood: More aware of the drawers on our time and what the priority should
Joanne Lockwood: be.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, well. And you don't get into that space of creativity if you're just constantly going from
Dominic Colenso: one thing to the next. And creativity isn't drawing a picture or writing
Dominic Colenso: a song, creativity is having that next great business
Dominic Colenso: idea or finding a new way to articulate the business case for the project
Dominic Colenso: that you're working on, or finding a different approach to have
Dominic Colenso: that challenging conversation with someone. But we have to give ourselves space to find
Dominic Colenso: that. And I'm saying that as much for myself as I am for anyone listening,
Joanne Lockwood: I definitely do that to myself. If I've got something I'm working on, on
Joanne Lockwood: or big or is it a challenging conversation. I always think of it as I put it in a sort
Joanne Lockwood: of subroutine in the back of my head. Let the grey matter just process it, you know, give it a couple of
Joanne Lockwood: CPU cycles occasionally bring it out, no, not quite baked
Joanne Lockwood: yet. Put it back.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And then when you're actually in a situation where you've got to deliver something, a keynote or a conversation or,
Joanne Lockwood: or start developing something, you can bring it out and go, okay, that's pretty much
Joanne Lockwood: there. Now I'm just going to put the icing on. That's done.
Dominic Colenso: Fun.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And. But that requires the brain capacity to have that sort of close your
Joanne Lockwood: eyes, blue sky thinking that chill out. Because if you're constantly high
Joanne Lockwood: cortisol, really stressing and worrying about
Joanne Lockwood: everything. All that creativity side, all that thinking
Joanne Lockwood: side. Just get. Doesn't get any. Any time again switched
Joanne Lockwood: off.
Dominic Colenso: Yeah, absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: And I'll often be sat on the sofa and my wife Maria will look at me and go, what do you think
Joanne Lockwood: about? I go, nothing. What do you mean you think about nothing? I'm
Joanne Lockwood: not. I've just. This is. This is my. The front part of my brain going, I'm
Joanne Lockwood: disconnected. The back part of the brain is doing all the work, but I have no idea what it's thinking
Joanne Lockwood: about. I just know it is. Yeah. And I'll go, I've got this great
Joanne Lockwood: idea. But the danger of me is that if I have too much thinking time, I just keep
Joanne Lockwood: finding shiny objects and my brain will start going, oh, we can do
Joanne Lockwood: this. And I'll. I'll give it enough time. But I never finish it. I never finish
Joanne Lockwood: it. I never finish it. And I keep finding that. And that's my challenge is finishing
Joanne Lockwood: and not starting. And, yeah, I need the stress hormone to kick in to
Joanne Lockwood: allow me to finish stuff. And that's why I'm desperately doing stuff at the
Joanne Lockwood: moment. Yeah, Dominic, it's been
Joanne Lockwood: fascinating. I can't wait till next time we meet in person for a coffee
Joanne Lockwood: somewhere. But how can people get hold of you and tell us about your
Joanne Lockwood: book?
Dominic Colenso: So my latest book is called Cut through the Pitch and Presentation Playbook,
Dominic Colenso: available in all good bookstores. First book was called Impact how to be more
Dominic Colenso: confident, Increase your influence and know what to say under
Dominic Colenso: pressure. If you want to get hold of me, connect with me on
Dominic Colenso: LinkedIn. Dominic Colenso. My website is dominiccolenso.com and if you like
Dominic Colenso: communication tips and tricks videos, then head over to YouTube and subscribe to
Dominic Colenso: my YouTube channel over there. Again, dominiccolenso.com I'm going to do
Dominic Colenso: that.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm gonna go to YouTube because I want to see how engaging your first 30 seconds
Joanne Lockwood: are.
Dominic Colenso: Send me nasty comments. All right, Jay.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, you've put a lot of thought into the. The arc and developing the
Joanne Lockwood: content. Actually, regardless of the content itself, I want to see your style
Joanne Lockwood: and from a trained actor and see how that works. Because I lack confidence
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes in that story arc in trying to get
Joanne Lockwood: that. That hook and yeah, that first six seconds you say the swipe antidote and
Joanne Lockwood: then the rehook at 15 seconds, at 30 seconds or whatever to keep people hooked to
Joanne Lockwood: the end. It's a real technique, isn't it,
Joanne Lockwood: Dominic? Thank you. It's been a blast.
Dominic Colenso: Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on the as
Joanne Lockwood: we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest
Joanne Lockwood: gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the
Joanne Lockwood: cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a
Joanne Lockwood: chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our
Joanne Lockwood: ever growing community driving real
Joanne Lockwood: change. Share this journey with friends, family and
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that
Joanne Lockwood: matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share
Joanne Lockwood: there? I'm all ears. Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice
Joanne Lockwood: heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a
Joanne Lockwood: promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge,
Joanne Lockwood: inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world
Joanne Lockwood: one episode at a time. Catch you on the next
Joanne Lockwood: bite.