Malcolm Stern: 0:47

So welcome to Slay your Dragons with Compassion, the podcast that I'm running in conjunction with my friends at online events, and it's really great to welcome my guest today, who's a friend of longstanding and, for me, a very wise man. So we're looking at what are the adversities that have shaped us, what are the ways we've become who we are and how we function, and today's guest is Matthew Spire, and very lovely to see you, matthew, and welcome.

Matthew Speyer: 1:19

My pleasure as well. My pleasure, absolutely. Yeah, malcolm, where would you like to start off If you've got a sort of starting question?

Malcolm Stern: 1:26

Yes, so my knowledge of you is that you're a profound coach. You've run a coaching organisation for many years, which you've recently sold, and you're moving towards probably not retirement, but you're moving towards a shift as well. Yeah, where I'd like to start is what, what, what took you on the road to becoming a coach, someone who really supports others, and especially major major multinationals, in their business dealing? Something must have driven you towards that direction, and I wonder what that is.

Matthew Speyer: 1:58

Yeah, yeah Well, I can almost start with your thesis, malcolm, that some of who we become and the abilities we have come through our struggles with adversity. And just looking at that in myself and other people's lives, I think adversity, yeah well, it can do different things the dragon can kill you, or the dragon can leave you crippled, or the dragons can leave you so scarred that you're kind of humping through life. So I think it's, I'm feeling it's about how these struggles play out, about what resources, what learning, what development happens or doesn't happen. And so if I were just trying to reflect on that, you know how did I get to be doing this job? You know, as a kid I thought a kid, I thought I was going to be an engine driver, then I thought I was going to be a sport car racing driver, then I thought I was going to be a dancer, then I thought I was going to be a brilliant scientist, all of these stuff. You never thought I was going to be a coach. It didn't even exist in that way. So I think, looking back, I had the luck to come from a pretty loving, inspired, creative family and thank you. You know that was a great gift.

Matthew Speyer: 3:21

However, the shadow of that was that my parents, in a sense, were very impractical, particularly with money. So this idealism led on a path to bankruptcy, pain, insecurity, and I suffered. You know, I was really unhappy as a kid and felt very insecure, and my parents split up and destroyed also what had been a happy marriage, and so I think in some ways I reacted by retreating to what felt like a less emotional space. I was quite open as a kid and I became rather cool and I relied on my logic. I relied on my logic and there was a good and a bad. If I got stuck there, I think that would have been like a corset, a very narrow one. But I think it also taught me to beware of naivety, to also make sure that the bank balance works.

Matthew Speyer: 4:33

And, of course, developing my logical sides also had its pluses. You know, they got me a certain amount of academic success and all that, and in a sense what saved me in some ways was I got a scholarship to an English boarding school, totally different culture to where I came from, and again I was unhappy. I didn't get how it operated, I didn't know how to deal with it, I was teased as an outsider at the beginning and there's no escape. You know you're just in there and you can't go home because that is home. And so, again, I think it had the potential to do bad things, but in a sense, if I think about it, I learned some of the benefits of a structured process way of doing things which English boarding schools had.

Matthew Speyer: 5:26

I learned to fight and the value of being slightly feared just people knowing if you hurt me it'll hurt you more. And I learned the power of alliances. You don't want to be alone in an environment like that. It wasn't all bad, but it had that element If you're a loner it's bad news and I became quite popular. I became much more self confident. I could stand up for things and it was really later, after university and with girlfriends and relationships, and I started getting back, you could say, my more emotional side. I was got interested in acting and you can't act well if you can't access your emotions.

Matthew Speyer: 6:14

Yes, and I got interested in psychotherapy over my dad actually, who, through his own pain, moved to that and found it fascinating, and I think it was also again a bit of a painful process, but in a way I opened up more emotionally.

Matthew Speyer: 6:34

I almost reclaimed an earlier part of myself and moved to Germany, met my wife, fell in love and, interestingly, to finance my psychotherapy training because I didn't have any money as I said, there was no family money to make a living somewhere I started organizing the training and I actually found that I quite enjoyed that mixture of the depth of the psychotherapy and just making a training organization, you know, involving maybe 100 people and you know, and structures and deals and work, and I actually liked that interface or those two sides and I and at 30, I got actually elected to a startup of a European Association for body psychotherapy and again, I think I got elected early because people trusted me to have a spirit to represent this new and alternative therapy, but they also trusted me to get things done and to deal with conflicting interests and to that mixture of diplomacy and assertiveness which you sometimes need to get a whole body of people together.

Malcolm Stern: 7:54

It's interesting that you use this word trust, because I think that's one of the things I've noticed about you. I've worked for you within organizations like the European Central Bank and other multinationals and I think what I see around you because you have a team of coaches that you've managed and and run that that there is an enormous amount of trust. And I think the other thing is that you you are that rarity as well, where you have a very strong logical side, but it's it's mixed with a very, um, clean emotional side. There's a sense that that there's a that you meet people quite well emotionally.

Matthew Speyer: 8:33

Yeah, it's this strong intellectual side also thank you, malcolm, and in a sense you know, and cycling back from that to your initial question, how came I became a coach and set up and then built up a coaching company which, as you said, I said I sold recently. It was in a sense, it was trying to have some kind of a marriage, and even sometimes a happy marriage. Of these different sides, I felt in myself this more yeah, I feel most moved by people, their cares, their loves. What moves us as humans? And there's also I want to succeed in the world, I want to create structures at work, I want to make things happen on a slightly larger platform than just within a soul, but also among souls, within a soul, but also among souls. And there's something about the, about the slightly relentlessness of business which I like. You know, either people buy it or they don't. It's a very, very direct form of feedback. There's no flattery in that. They buy it or they don't buy it. They buy it again. They like it, it's valuable, or they don't consider it valuable. And there's something I like in the directness of that exchange.

Matthew Speyer: 10:01

But you said something about trust and I think this is something very important for me. I'm not quite sure I got to that point, but it's a belief, almost. I believe that trust is extremely valuable and I believe it's slow to build and fast to destroy, and I believe that with what I call non-naive trust, great things are possible and it's possible to enjoy things a lot more. So I like working with people where there's mutual trust and it's effective, and at the same time I think I explained a bit about some of my background. Mistrust is also important because we need it to survive, but it is my, I suppose, deliberate endeavor to create a spirit of as much appropriate and realistic trust as is possible, and I feel better in it and I am convinced it actually works better. And I'll just give you an example.

Matthew Speyer: 11:11

I finally sold my business, and I sold it a few months ago to a group called the Global Coaching Group, whose motto, by the way, is connecting business and soul. So it's actually the value system worked very well for me, and it's not that easy to sell a very immaterial thing. There were no warehouses, there was no machinery, so obviously we had our contracts and went to a notary and all that. But what made it easy was we trusted each other and respected each other. Nice, and actually that was really a very nice confirmation of the fact that the way I try to do things no one's perfect pays off also in that sense, because, yeah, they were buying something immaterial, but I trusted them and they trusted me both.

Matthew Speyer: 12:07

And trust is not to try and cheat. Trust is in competence, yes, trust is in judgment as well, you know, and even trust is in strength. I think there trust is a fascinating you know. I think in ourselves, in our personal dealings, but also in work dealings. The many facets of trust and how to build them and what destroys them have always fascinated me, and you have been a part of the sense of our work and that you've been involved with Malcolm, a valuable part of it's interesting because I also think you were in the zeitgeist that that business has changed.

Malcolm Stern: 12:46

I've just interviewed a lovely woman called amy elizabeth fox the other day on this podcast and she runs an organization called mobius leadership and she's very much about allowing vulnerability to be part of the leadership model and recognizing that leaders are that, the old style of leader. This, this um, is quite destructive. This sort of know all sort of you know powerful leader, and actually there's something about emotional intelligence that I believe you've tapped and you've you've attracted to you coaches who are emotionally intelligent, who will also be able to do that, and businesses seem to welcome more than the basic structured training these days.

Matthew Speyer: 13:27

So I think you were you were right in the in the forefront of that, from what I can see thank you, and I mean, obviously it's a lot of luck in life and, um, you know if, if one, it's a luck and it's finding the opportunity, you know if, in a sense, okay, this is a little bit, okay, this is what I have become or this is what I am Now, who's going to pay me for it? And who's going to pay me for it? Because if I find someone who pays me for it, it allows me to put my energy and my life into doing it. Otherwise, I'll be distracted because I need to earn a living by something else which is not really central to who I am and what I want to bring into the world. So that's, who will pay me for it. It's not so much a desire to be terribly rich. I'm not motivated by that. I want to have enough money, but not to be distracted by having to earn money another way from what is really important.

Matthew Speyer: 14:27

Now, that whole thing of how leadership has changed and is changed and the understanding of how businesses are run, what we expect from a business, corporate social responsibility and so on, play in a role. And, yes, I think my work is also a child of its time and that change At the same time. A theme that's fascinated me this last decade is looking at the global stage, and that is the raise, the continual rise of the authoritarian man as leader, and not the military junta version where they say I've got the tanks so I win, but I've got the votes, so I win. And it's an interesting, sometimes scary, but it's a fascinating phenomenon. Something I've at least been struggling with, without having an easy answer, is what does that mean for our conceptualizing of leadership within organizations? Because in a sense, the pictures of leadership in the big stage of the world are in a process of change. I could say regression or progression, depending on your or you could say evolution.

Malcolm Stern: 15:47

even you could actually say that.

Matthew Speyer: 15:48

You could say exactly evolution.

Matthew Speyer: 15:50

And if something evolves, that evolves, which evolves, and in retrospect, depending, it'll say it's good and bad. You know humans say it's great that humans evolved. Probably the other people didn't like it. But you know it's always a perspective question. So anyhow, without having an easy answer to that one, it's a theme that fascinates me and that's maybe why I've been using terms like non-naive trust or appropriate vulnerability. So I think in this move towards leadership, there's this sort of optimizing, maximizing dynamic and moving too far in that dynamic. Then vulnerability the danger is that vulnerability doesn't only look weak within a particular out-of-date framework, but is weak within a particular way of fighting battles, and that's a shame, because vulnerability is something worth fighting for, but you've got to win that fight if you believe in it. So anyway, you know it's a complex relationship, but it's something that in myself, but also in the world I see, but also in the world of work that I'm struggling with, you know, and then working with I think that's an area I've been fascinated by, which is which is that actually I?

Malcolm Stern: 17:17

I started writing a book called the wisdom of vulnerability at one point yeah, that very delicate line that you've just described. Vulnerability can be really weak, can make you look weak, appear weak to your colleagues, to the people you manage, and you've lost something. But non-vulnerability so there's the other extreme of that becomes someone I don't trust. I don't trust, because I've seen something in them that's human in some level.

Matthew Speyer: 17:45

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Malcolm and um, you also mentioned the. The related but slightly different theme of. So one is the emotional vulnerability, the other is was the more cognitive aspect, knowing and not knowing. And in a sense it seems kind of obvious to me with the massive complexity, with an increasing complexity with which we're working, mostly we don't know. So it's important that we know enough about what we know and we don't know and can communicate about it realistically. Otherwise our communications about our knowledge are a load of junk. It's like some old fashioned idea. You should present yourself as someone who knows everything in order to have authority?

Matthew Speyer: 18:39

No, it's not realistic. Yes, at the same time, people, in their searching for leadership, have different degrees of security in themselves about being led by someone, the degree of openness about their not knowing that inspires the confidence they want to have in a leader. And there are different traditions and patterns mixing themselves and one can't just assume those who follow should think the way I do, because they often don't.

Malcolm Stern: 19:30

There are different models of leadership, aren't there as well? And I think what I've become interested in is this whole concept of servant leadership, where leading comes from a place of we're not looking to aggrandize ourselves, but we have work to be done, and I think that's probably an area that you've probably explored to quite some depth as well.

Matthew Speyer: 19:55

Yes, how can I put it? So if I were to give a caveat, just a personal one, sure, yeah, I think doing things or taking risks or leading is always. It can be very joyous and satisfying, but you always get hurt in some way because things don't work out. People don't like what you do. You try hard and it fails, and so on. If you try, you fail and you succeed and there are certain sort of personal, I can do it, I want to prove myself, I think I'm great helps, or I want to be seen and admired, or whatever.

Matthew Speyer: 20:42

Helps give a certain up to a point, a certain robustness vis-a-vis the pain of it as well. At the same time, my deeper satisfaction, what I mostly strive for, is when I can get people together who have ability, give enough structure or almost not, give even less me giving, create something, be a catalyst for direction and structure and energy to align, and then I think, amazing, most magical things happen. And just so. It sounds almost a bit mystic, but in a way that's part of how I've tried to run my business, partly because I love the feeling of it and partly because I think it can work. Well, it does work.

Malcolm Stern: 21:36

Yeah, it does work, and you've also managed to gather people around you who share your vision, because you wouldn't want technicians particularly. You would want people who have heart and soul but also have the skill, and that's a really fine line, isn't it?

Matthew Speyer: 21:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. So I've sometimes self-critically asked myself could I have set it up a different way? Yeah, probably, but in a sense it was often quite a gut feeling. Okay, this person, different methods, different personalities, but this person has a spirit there which I think will fit not in the sense of fit in, because the round hole is made for round pegs, but fit in the sense of this will join together with others in a creative, productive, satisfying way and that will allow us to create genuine and surprising value for our clients, who will then pay us and keep the commercial dream of it running, the curiosity about humanity in their deep individualism and in their roles at work.

Malcolm Stern: 22:58

Yeah, in fact, one of the things that's really fascinated me has been the whole concept of Sangha, the Buddhist concept of keeping company with others of like mind. Absolutely as we were talking just now, I suddenly got that you had actually created a sangha, something I was happy to feel part of. I mean, we could look at it at a minimal level and say it's like a family grouping. There was a sense that we got together regularly as coaches under you and got to like each other. I mean, we liked each other because there was a sense of, of shared value and um vision yeah it.

Matthew Speyer: 23:39

You know the for me, malcolm, when people have said that they've found, as well as you know, some pieces of work which was interesting and decently paid, they found a sort of home or a place they feel at home, or that's nourishing, or they feel connected, those were really, really gratifying moments for me and I felt like, yeah, you know, yeah, that's what I want, that's what I want and yeah, I don't know if I can say more to that, but I suppose it was always the business I was doing I really wanted it and sometimes succeeded more, sometimes even less, but in total it did work was to create something where people come together, where that coming together creates something which goes out into the world, which really influences deeply leaders who have a lot of responsibility, and that changing and helping them grow a spirit which satisfies some of our needs for belonging and for expression and for agency in the world.

Matthew Speyer: 25:01

Yes, and the moments you know and it wasn't all of the time you know plenty of frustrations and there's plenty of just hard work and there's plenty of fiddling around with stuff that doesn't work, all of that and not losing determination or faith when it's difficult. But those moments were for me when I felt oh yeah, that's it, we're at that sweet point. It won't last forever, but yeah, this is work and being together at its best.

Malcolm Stern: 25:31

I think that's really interesting, because I think what I can see is that you are creating relationship and I think, at the end of the day, we're looking at trust being the basic ingredient of relationship. Yeah, I'm wondering what led you to sell your business. I mean, you're not. You know you want to retire and you probably do want to take your foot off the pedal a bit. Yeah, I'm wondering what led you to sort of go.

Matthew Speyer: 25:58

I think I'm going to take another different step in a different direction now yeah, um, so, as ever in most of the important decisions in my life, I can give a go at describing it, but I don't quite understand my own mysteries. So I have a logical facility, which I'm proud of and so on, and I use it mostly if I know what I want, to try and think out of how to get there or to analyze a situation, and I do that. I like doing that Sometimes, I feel I am good at it, I think in some respects. However, knowing this is my woman, knowing this is what I'm going to do now, knowing I'm going to start inspire. It was, I think I told you once it was a feeling I had after my mother died.

Matthew Speyer: 26:50

There was something about a spirit which I wanted to put into one. I thought, okay, I want to do this, then I have to think about how to do it, blah, blah, blah. And this was, in a sense, even more vague. It felt like, yeah, I'm going to continue with the coaching, so I'm going to continue that freelance, but I'd love to have maybe 10 years, I'm healthy and have a certain energy and have enough money not to be concerned with the question of does what I do earn me enough money, because I've already got it, I'm 66.

Matthew Speyer: 27:29

And to in a sense follow my nose and not define exactly what I'm going to do, and I call it emerging and at the moment I don't know what will happen. But one thing that draws me is trying to formulate, to try to use words with the freedom of not knowing exactly what they will be for or who will be buying them and the other you probably can also see some of my comments the whole political, social dynamics of the present. I've always found them fascinating and I'd like to have more time to in some way engage with them, understand them more deeply, maybe play some active role, I don't know. And so I felt like, yeah, I could do another 10 years of that and it's good work and it's a great vehicle, and sometimes I miss it.

Matthew Speyer: 28:26

I miss going. It's my offer. No, I don't have it. Okay, I sold it. I made the decision, but there was a sense. Yeah, let's just make that space. That's your gut feeling.

Malcolm Stern: 28:40

Let's do it powerful, and I think when we do know, when we have got it all mapped out, it's a whole lot less satisfying than when we go. Well, I've made space for a path to open. I know some of the features I want to bring into there. Yeah, see, I have to trust that life is going to lead me in a particular direction and I'm going to be inspired, which is the name of your company. I wasn't deliberately doing that, but I just that's really, that's really powerful the inspiration to make change well it's.

Matthew Speyer: 29:16

It's scary at the same time. I mean, it was a bit scary even calling my company, inspire play on my name, matthew Spire because I thought you know I've got to deliver inspiration. You know Monday morning, you know when I'm wondering where I can get my second coffee, and you know, sometimes you is and sometimes you ain't. But at the same time I have enough faith and that faith is a sort of personal faith, yeah, faith in myself, but it's also much more strongly than that. It's a faith in inspiration will find me from time to time when it wants.

Matthew Speyer: 29:54

So I don't have a sort of I'm not specifically religious, but I think in all the major crises and questions there's always been this sense of look, at the end of the day, you're pretty small and you're part of something massively larger and occasionally have glimpses of its form. That's about. As you know, that's a great gift and I am an agent. I will do active things, but I'm also just a piece of foam on the waves. You know it will do things with me, and so in a sense, my job is to sort of read the wind go with it, and it's sort of an interplay between that okay, there's something much, much bigger and my determination and will, and I won't give up. And it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating interplay of those, those forces I think that's true.

Malcolm Stern: 30:57

I think that there is sort of something that, again, I'm not specifically religious, but I do feel that there's guidance in following in, in learning to pick up the signals, yeah, following the trails that open for us as well. So I think the mixture between the intuitive and the intellectual that's that makes us profound beings yeah, yeah, um, yeah, definitely.

Matthew Speyer: 31:25

There was one other thing I was thinking about is, you know, you've taken this metaphor of slaying dragons as a metaphor for, you know, our struggling with the adversity that life tends to throw at us, and one comment I made earlier was that it can also destroy us. It's about what supports us, and I think support comes from a larger source. Support comes from our fellow humans, from relationships. Support comes from a willingness to feel deeply what is to be done, and sometimes I was just thinking about it before our conversation I thought sometimes our way of the successful fight with one dragon can be the child of the next dragon.

Matthew Speyer: 32:30

Yes, you know, just as starting, let's say, from politics or a bit of an obvious one, you know, for Great Britain's narrative not being conquered in the Second World War had also to do with the fact it was an island and a fighting island.

Matthew Speyer: 32:48

Okay, it's true, and part of the myth With it was a danger then of becoming insular, from my perspective, in an increasingly global world, because you identify then with what saved you and won you the fight then.

Matthew Speyer: 33:06

So, as I said, with my own path, a little bit moving from the emotional to the rational, or we move from the over-rational to the vulnerable, and each of those is an incredibly important movement but carries the seed of the next dragon to be wrestled with. Yes, or industrialization helped many people get away from poverty, but its seeds are new dragons which we're struggling with, yes, and so I think, on the larger scale, but also on the microcosm of each of our lives. And so, even if I don't quite know what it is yet, probably some of the things which I developed and helped me succeed in building Inspire. Some of them will be my, what I take with me in the next stage of life, and some, I don't know yet, which I will inevitably have to let go of or transform to do whatever I'm going to get up to, and that's the sense I have of it.

Malcolm Stern: 34:25

That is great that you're doing that when you're still young enough to be able to enjoy whatever the fruits of this next part of your incarnation are going to be.

Matthew Speyer: 34:34

I hope it stays that way and stay fit and healthy, which is, with 66, becoming a little bit more, a little bit less to be taken for granted.

Malcolm Stern: 34:45

Yeah, and I think that's always. The winged chariot at our heels is our ageing and the inevitability of old age, disease and death, as the Buddhists would put it.

Matthew Speyer: 34:56

Absolutely yes.

Malcolm Stern: 34:57

Yes, so we're coming towards the end of our podcast together and I always ask this question at the end, which is the particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are. And particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are, and I think you've alluded to it as we've gone along, but if we can try and encapsulate that in sort of in one paragraph, well, a great question, and a great question has many possible answers, but I'll just try and give one new step.

Matthew Speyer: 35:30

I also know fear and it's fears. Fears Because I like to succeed. I'm afraid of failure Because I like to be liked. I'm afraid of failure Because I like to be liked. I'm afraid of rejection Because I like to be admired. I'm afraid of being looked down on, and many others.

Matthew Speyer: 36:31

So there's this moment of, there's always these moments of fear whenever I do something new and exciting, that gives it the excitement that it's not without fear. I think I probably wouldn't even like a life without fear, I wouldn't choose it. But when I've let the wrong fears get the upper hand and not risk something, that's a slow pain, and when at least I've tried, it hurts if I, if it doesn't work, but there's always yeah, but Matthew, you gave it a go, you tried, and then I can sort of breathe out and see, okay, what's tomorrow going to bring. So, and sometimes we don't, even I don don't, I'm not even aware of my fears. You know there's always 101 good reasons to avoid doing something. So it's also about being aware when it's a fear. Even when is it a useful fear? Because fear is also there to protect us, and when is it a fear which is getting in the way? So that would be today's answer.

Malcolm Stern: 37:46

That's a good answer for today, because I think that also goes with, because what I noticed as you were answering that was some vulnerability, and I'm not saying you don't show your vulnerability, but I'm saying you don't hang out, with vulnerability sort of seeping out of you, but there is a sort of a sense that you don't know everything, that that you're also privy to the things that beset us as human beings. Oh yeah, yes, exactly, oh yeah, and you're a powerful leader and that's lovely to see. So thank you very much for taking part today and it's really good to have you as part of our programme here and much appreciated, matthew and thank you, malcolm, very much for your questions, your presence and your support.

Matthew Speyer: 38:34

Thanks a lot.