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more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.

0:40

Hello listeners, welcome to the podcast. Here's

0:44

a brand new episode for you, and I'm going to start the introduction in just

0:47

a second. I

0:49

just wanted to say that you can find the script for

0:51

this introduction on the page for this episode. And

0:53

I'm going to start the introduction in just a second. I

0:56

want to say that you can find the script for this introduction

0:59

on the page for this episode on my website. You'll

1:01

see a link in the description. I often

1:04

do that if I've written an introduction script in

1:06

advance. I print out the script, or

1:08

at least I sort of put the script on

1:10

the episode page for that episode. So

1:13

you can always find the relevant episode page

1:15

for an episode in the

1:17

episode description. And you

1:19

can go there, and often you'll find an introduction

1:21

script or some other useful

1:24

links or other notes and things, vocabulary

1:26

notes and things. So it's always worth having a

1:28

look at that. And that is the case for

1:31

this episode. So if you'd like to read this

1:33

introduction, you can find it written

1:35

out on the episode page, link

1:37

in the description. Okay, you're welcome.

1:39

Now, let's begin, and

1:42

let's start reading through that introduction like

1:44

this. So, my

1:47

guest today is my friend Max,

1:49

who works at UNESCO. UNESCO,

1:51

do you know about UNESCO? You

1:53

probably do, I'm sure you've heard of it, but do you

1:55

know exactly what goes on there and how they do things and

1:58

what they do? So, you know... UNESCO,

2:00

that's U-N-E-S-C-O, stands

2:03

for the United Nations

2:06

Educational, Scientific and Cultural

2:08

Organization. Here are some

2:10

notes from Wikipedia. So UNESCO

2:13

is a specialized agency of

2:15

the United Nations which has

2:17

the aim of promoting world

2:20

peace and security through international

2:22

cooperation in education, arts, sciences

2:24

and culture. That's

2:27

the most famous thing they do is

2:29

protect certain world heritage sites

2:32

but that's only one of the things that

2:34

they're involved in. So I expect that that's

2:36

what they're most well known for. You probably

2:39

have heard of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In

2:41

fact, there's a good chance you've got some

2:43

in your country. Famous

2:45

ones include things like the Galapagos

2:48

Islands, Yosemite National Park, what

2:50

else? Stonehenge in England, the Great

2:52

Wall of China, Red Square in

2:55

Moscow, the Great Barrier Reef in

2:57

Australia, Halong Bay in Vietnam, UNESCO

3:01

World Heritage Sites. Now

3:04

that's only one thing that UNESCO does. My

3:07

friend Max worked there and

3:09

in this episode you'll hear us

3:11

talking about his work and about

3:13

communication in the context of international

3:16

diplomacy. Now this is actually

3:18

quite complex stuff and

3:21

normally in these situations on this podcast

3:23

when I'm talking about something that's potentially

3:26

a bit complicated, when

3:28

I'm publishing an episode like this, I

3:30

have to make certain decisions about what

3:32

to say in the introduction. How

3:35

much should I explain in advance? What

3:37

kind of support should I give to

3:39

my audience before you listen? People

3:43

listening to my podcast have varying

3:45

levels of English and

3:48

rather than slowing down and stopping to

3:50

explain every single word, I want

3:52

to give you a conversation at natural

3:54

speed but explaining some context at

3:56

the start can really help a lot of people.

4:00

There's enough wondering. If he said it's not

4:02

just because of English, either is also just

4:04

a question of general knowledge to. Some.

4:07

Going to try to inform you about Unesco

4:09

in order to help you then really get

4:11

the most from his conversations. Before I met

4:14

Max, I didn't really know a lot about

4:16

what Unesco did, and honestly I think most

4:18

people out there probably find it a little

4:20

bit of a mystery. So.

4:22

I've decided to explain one or two

4:24

things. He is just so that you're

4:26

properly placed to understand all of this

4:28

and therefore enjoy it and benefit most

4:30

from it. Of I

4:33

don't want to say too much,

4:35

repeat myself or anything so I've

4:37

written this introduction in advance to

4:39

try keep me focused to be

4:41

informative but also efficient and then

4:44

you can just get stuck into

4:46

the conversation with my guest. So

4:48

Max works for the Uk delegation

4:50

at Unesco which has it's headquarters

4:52

in Paris. By the way, the

4:54

what delegation comes up a few

4:56

times in this episode and also

4:59

the word delegate and that will

5:01

be explained so. Unesco headquarters is

5:03

in Paris. Actually did stand up

5:05

there once, which was weird. that's

5:07

not normally what the Unesco headquarters

5:09

is for. subtly. The main room.

5:11

the big meeting rooms which is

5:13

where I did my stand up.

5:16

I was up on this stage.

5:18

That's. Not what that room is normally

5:21

for is normally for much more

5:23

serious purposes. but I was invited

5:25

there as part of a festival

5:27

in two thousand and nineteen called

5:29

Paris Talks. It was a bit

5:31

like a series of Ted talks,

5:33

all of them serious about the

5:35

future. And. then the organizers

5:37

the to as the festival decided it

5:39

could be interesting to have some stand

5:41

up comedy so that's why i was

5:43

invited to take part but it was

5:45

a pretty weird context to be doing

5:47

comedy because first of all the other

5:49

speakers had been talking about very serious

5:52

things the room as huge as well

5:54

there were people dotted around on different

5:56

tables some of them weren't really focus

5:58

some of them were like working on

6:00

their computers or even on their phones

6:03

and then I had to go up in

6:05

the middle of this fairly somber atmosphere and

6:07

try to do comedy. It was really difficult.

6:09

That's not what the room is for. Normally,

6:12

it's for these big, very serious

6:14

international meetings. Anyway, whenever

6:17

I chat to Max, if we

6:19

have a drink together or something,

6:21

I'm always really curious about his

6:23

work. And I find it

6:25

really fascinating. Hopefully, it will be fascinating

6:27

for you too. So we're

6:29

going to talk about the work that UNESCO

6:31

does and the way the

6:33

organization works, but also about the different

6:36

forms of communication that happen there. And

6:38

this, for me, as an English teacher, is

6:41

perhaps the most interesting thing about

6:44

it. So imagine nearly every nation

6:46

in the world collaborating together at

6:48

a government level on very important

6:50

projects. This, of course, includes nation

6:53

states which have different relations with

6:55

each other, some friendly, some

6:57

antagonistic. Also, you're

6:59

dealing with often vastly different cultures

7:01

with different communication styles and values.

7:04

But you've got to try to

7:06

work together with these different groups

7:08

towards a common goal. So

7:11

this involves communication at

7:13

a very high level, international diplomacy.

7:16

So what does it take to

7:18

cross these barriers of culture, politics,

7:20

economics at a state level? Diplomatic

7:23

communication is a huge part of it. And

7:26

working in this context requires

7:28

a variety of different types of

7:30

communication skills. There's persuasion,

7:32

there's negotiation, there's showing

7:35

respect, there's using pressure,

7:37

there's giving compliments and

7:39

expressing gratitude. And it

7:41

can happen in writing and in

7:43

spoken English too at various levels

7:45

of formality. So imagine

7:47

these different communication contexts. First of

7:49

all, you might have huge meetings

7:52

in that big meeting room where I

7:54

did stand up and didn't make anyone

7:56

laugh. Imagine huge

7:58

meetings with representatives. representatives from

8:01

countries all around the world, sitting at

8:03

tables with little flags on them. Right,

8:06

to be honest, I don't know if they actually do have

8:08

little flags at UNESCO, but you know, it's that kind of

8:10

thing. Right, representatives from

8:13

countries around the world sitting at tables

8:16

and everyone attempting to work together to

8:18

agree on certain big decisions. Sometimes

8:21

they don't want to do the same thing. There

8:23

are groups that are friendly, groups that have

8:25

their differences. So time is

8:27

so important because it's all being simultaneously

8:31

translated into a think about six

8:33

different languages and all of those

8:35

translators are there, those interpreters are

8:37

all there, sort of translating on

8:40

the spot, being paid. So

8:42

time is money as well. Then

8:46

there's the collaborative writing of very

8:48

formal documents in these big meetings.

8:51

These are documents which UNESCO issues,

8:54

a bit like laws passed by

8:56

a government, although UNESCO doesn't actually

8:58

make laws, collaborating on the writing

9:00

of sentences, paragraphs where every single

9:02

little detail is important, a bit

9:04

like the way a contract might

9:06

be written. Then

9:09

you've got smaller, less formal

9:11

meetings in which different delegations,

9:14

delegations basically means representatives,

9:17

where different representatives or delegations attempt

9:19

to build support for their proposals

9:21

with negotiations and persuasion, but in

9:24

a less formal way. And then

9:26

you might have individual one-on-one conversations

9:29

or conversations in small groups between

9:32

the more formal meetings, so maybe in

9:34

a lunch break or something, where

9:36

representatives might stand up and chat

9:39

together, perhaps over coffee and a

9:41

softer form of persuasion or negotiation

9:43

occurs and the building of

9:45

relationships and alliances. And

9:48

as I mentioned before, there's the

9:50

work of interpreters who sit in

9:52

other rooms looking through windows with

9:55

headsets on, listening to what's going

9:57

on, having

9:59

to simultaneously translate what is

10:01

being said in these important meetings

10:03

from one language to another and

10:05

the quick decisions that they have

10:07

to make about how exactly they

10:09

should word things without suddenly changing

10:11

the tone of what is being

10:13

said. Interpreters are

10:15

a huge part of this. Maybe

10:17

some of you listening are considering becoming an

10:20

interpreter or maybe you already are and

10:22

in fact maybe some of you listening to this are

10:24

considering working in international diplomacy

10:26

to some extent. Even if

10:28

you don't want to become a diplomat, if you're going

10:30

to go into international business in some way, it's

10:34

very similar really and using this

10:36

kind of high pressure situation as

10:38

a model is quite a

10:40

good way of actually understanding the pragmatics

10:43

of what it means to communicate across

10:45

cultures. I've got one listener

10:47

I know for sure has been waiting for

10:49

this episode for quite a long time. So

10:52

how is language used in these different situations?

10:54

How does the language change? Now

10:56

we're talking about different levels of formality and

10:59

the pragmatics of diplomacy at this

11:01

high level. We're talking about word

11:04

choices, structural choices and so on.

11:07

Also, what does UNESCO

11:09

do exactly? How does it actually

11:11

work? What does Max actually

11:13

do on a daily basis? So

11:16

these are the things I was very

11:18

interested in capturing in this conversation. Before

11:21

we start, just a few more

11:23

details, here's some more information from

11:26

Wikipedia about UNESCO. So it was

11:28

founded in 1945 and

11:30

its founding mission, which was shaped by

11:32

the events of World War II, is

11:35

to advance peace, sustainable

11:38

development and human

11:40

rights by facilitating collaboration and

11:42

dialogue among nations. This

11:44

is really important because it just gives

11:47

you a sense of where

11:49

UNESCO is coming from. It's

11:51

really formed as a result of what

11:53

happened during World War II, which

11:56

is when nations of the world really tried

11:58

their best to completely do it. destroy each

12:00

other. To state

12:05

the obvious, it was a huge,

12:07

a huge tragedy and a terrible, terrible

12:10

moment in the history of the human race, one

12:12

of the worst things that's ever happened and we

12:14

never want something like that to happen ever again.

12:16

So UNESCO is a

12:18

project that emerged from that situation

12:20

in order to ensure that the

12:22

nations of the world try to

12:24

cooperate and work together diplomatically in

12:27

order to sustain peace, to

12:30

maintain human rights and make sure that

12:32

we all work together and we continue

12:35

talking together. UNESCO

12:38

pursues this objective through

12:40

five major programme areas,

12:42

education, natural sciences, social

12:45

and human sciences, culture

12:47

and communication or information. So what

12:49

does it actually do though? We

12:52

understand the concepts and the objectives but

12:55

how does it actually do that? Now

12:57

I find this quite hard to work

12:59

out but I've

13:01

worked out this much. So UNESCO

13:03

sponsors projects which basically means

13:05

that they give money to pay for

13:08

projects using its budget that all member

13:10

states contribute to. So these

13:13

projects are supposed to improve

13:15

literacy, provide technical training

13:17

and education, advance science,

13:19

protect independent media and

13:21

press freedom, preserve

13:24

regional and cultural history and

13:26

promote cultural diversity. Also

13:30

it assists in the translation and

13:32

dissemination of world literature, making

13:35

sure the best works of literature are

13:37

available to be read by everyone and

13:39

not just in their countries of origin.

13:43

It helps establish and secure world

13:46

heritage sites of cultural and natural

13:48

importance as I mentioned earlier. It

13:51

works to bridge the worldwide

13:53

digital divide which means attempting

13:56

to reduce disparities

13:58

or differences between developed

14:00

and developing countries in terms of

14:02

what technologies are available to people.

14:04

So essentially trying to bring about

14:06

more of a balanced situation in

14:08

terms of the access to technology

14:10

that people have. Also

14:13

UNESCO works to create inclusive

14:16

knowledge societies through information and communication.

14:18

And you might be thinking, what

14:20

is a knowledge society? Well

14:24

by knowledge societies, UNESCO

14:27

means societies in

14:29

which people have the capabilities not

14:31

just to acquire information but also

14:33

to transform it into knowledge and

14:36

understanding which empowers them to enhance

14:38

their livelihoods and contribute to the

14:40

social and economic development of their

14:42

societies. When we say

14:44

societies we mean you know civilizations in

14:47

different countries. And so

14:49

knowledge societies are societies which have

14:51

access to knowledge, information education

14:53

which they can then use to

14:55

essentially better their lives.

15:01

And UNESCO has launched several initiatives

15:03

and global movements in this area

15:05

such as Education for All. But

15:08

again how does it actually do these things? Well

15:11

as far as I can tell they create

15:13

what Max calls standard setting

15:16

documents. Now there's probably a number

15:18

of things that they do but one of the things that

15:20

we talk about in this conversation is

15:22

this creation of these standard

15:25

setting documents. Documents which

15:27

set certain standards. Now these

15:29

are not laws because they're not

15:31

legally binding. And

15:34

in fact UNESCO doesn't make laws. It's

15:36

not that kind of organization. It's not

15:38

like the European Union or something which

15:40

does actually pass legislation which member states

15:43

are bound by. They have to follow it in

15:45

some regard. UNESCO doesn't

15:47

work like that. So it doesn't

15:50

produce laws which are legally binding

15:52

but these documents are similar to

15:54

laws because they set out guidelines

15:56

on what should or should not

15:58

be done. that

16:00

the member states are able to use

16:02

these documents, these guidelines, these standards, to

16:05

help them to create policies

16:08

and laws which are applied then

16:10

in their countries, okay? Right,

16:13

so like I just said, governments

16:15

in the member states can use

16:17

these standards-setting documents to help them

16:19

form policies and laws in line

16:21

with UNESCO's overall objectives. So

16:23

they're not binding legislation, but

16:26

these UNESCO documents are still very

16:29

formally written, they're still very formal

16:31

documents. And Max tells us about

16:33

how this is done at the

16:35

various stages, referring to different communication

16:38

contexts in the process, right?

16:40

Now this all might sound a bit

16:42

dry in my descriptions, right,

16:45

when I say dry, I mean kind of

16:48

like not full of the most exciting stuff,

16:53

right, it's all a bit dry, potentially a bit

16:55

flat, but it's not really

16:57

because, well, just let

16:59

me take you back to that image of the

17:02

large meeting room at UNESCO. I think if you

17:04

just put yourself in that position, you'll

17:07

start to, maybe it'll come to life, it'll be

17:09

a bit more vivid for you, a bit more

17:11

real. So let me just

17:13

take you back to that image of

17:15

the large meeting room at UNESCO with

17:17

all these representatives or delegates from the

17:19

different countries. Imagine you're actually there. Imagine

17:22

having to open one of those big

17:24

meetings, you're

17:27

gonna have to say the first words to

17:29

get the meeting started. Imagine

17:31

the mood in the room as you look out

17:34

and you see these different faces representing

17:36

the different nations. Imagine

17:38

the tone you would have to use in your speech, the

17:41

specific wording to gain

17:44

their attention and their

17:46

respect, to speak with the relevant level of

17:48

importance, to try to create

17:50

a feeling of goodwill in the room, different

17:54

delegations feel respected and

17:56

then to attempt to unite these different

17:58

nations with competing interests. and world

18:00

views. Quite a challenge.

18:04

Imagine having a specific project, something

18:06

that you care about, like maybe

18:08

an environmental project or something, and trying to

18:10

get it off the ground. Arranging

18:13

smaller meetings to try to build

18:15

alliances and get support. Taking

18:17

the time to chat one on

18:20

one with people between meetings. Crafting

18:22

emails with proposals. And finally trying

18:24

to edit formal documentation in collaboration

18:26

with other delegates in these huge

18:28

writing sessions that can last days.

18:30

So that's the world we're talking

18:33

about here. And specific things

18:35

about how we have to adapt our language

18:38

in these situations. OK? So

18:41

several other things. Just three more

18:43

things before we get started. So the first

18:45

thing is that as well as being a

18:48

diplomat, Max is also a

18:50

really good guitarist. He's a great guitar

18:52

player. And so at the

18:54

end of this conversation we couldn't help

18:56

but turn our attention to the guitars

18:58

on the wall in my

19:00

podcast. And Max plays

19:03

one of my guitars and we talk

19:05

about guitars. And Jimi Hendrix and Niall

19:07

Rogers for a little while. So we

19:09

do move from international diplomacy to guitars

19:12

and music. And if you want to

19:14

hear Max play, just stick around

19:16

until the end of the conversation and you can do

19:18

that. Secondly, in terms

19:20

of the audio, there is a little

19:22

bit of background noise. There was

19:25

a guy in the corridor

19:27

outside my podcast room doing

19:29

some work. He was sanding

19:31

a wall. You know, sanding

19:34

a wall. Sanding the paint off

19:36

a wall. So apologies. You'll hear the

19:39

sounds of normal life bleeding into the

19:41

recording slightly. So if you hear that

19:43

in the background every now and then, it's

19:46

not just like a percussionist playing along in

19:48

the background. No, it's a guy sanding a

19:50

wall in the corridor. I think it's not

19:53

too bad. But if

19:55

you hear some noise and wonder what it is,

19:57

it's a guy sanding a wall outside. Right.

20:00

So without any further ado, let's

20:02

get started. The first thing you'll hear now

20:04

is me saying that often the most difficult

20:07

part of podcasting is the very beginning of

20:09

a recording. It's difficult to know exactly how

20:11

to start and what to say at the

20:13

very start. And Max

20:15

gives me a good bit of advice which

20:18

he's learned from his work at UNESCO. So

20:21

let's now join the conversation at

20:23

that point and I'll chat to you a

20:25

little bit at the end. So now let's

20:27

get started. The

20:33

beginning of an episode is always the most difficult

20:35

part. Yeah, it's like a blank page. Yeah, it's

20:38

like, oh God, what's the first thing you're going

20:40

to say? Well, that's

20:42

interesting, isn't it? Because you actually

20:44

can... I

20:46

can help you with that because I have developed

20:49

a sort of a technique now where I...

20:51

When I take the floor at UNESCO, I

20:54

try and thank a few people before

20:57

I start talking about the

20:59

thing I want to talk about. And that

21:01

helps me because it's sort of

21:03

you're projecting yourself a little bit and

21:05

it buys you time. And

21:09

whilst you're thanking people, you're

21:12

thinking about the structure in your mind of how you want

21:14

to develop because you've only got two minutes and you can

21:16

see the countdown on the big screen in front of you.

21:19

You've got a microphone that sounds like... where your voice

21:21

sounds like a sort of a 1960s record.

21:28

And so by the

21:31

time that you've thanked everyone, your thoughts

21:33

are a lot clearer, your heart rate

21:35

has stabilized and

21:39

you're able to actually make sense. Let's

21:41

try that. Thank you everyone for tuning

21:43

in to this episode of Luke's English Podcast. Thank

21:46

you very much for listening or watching if you're watching

21:48

on YouTube. And also I'll take

21:51

this opportunity to say thank you to those

21:53

people who have supported the podcast recently

21:55

in various ways, including sharing

21:58

the show. telling your friends about it

22:01

and also sending in donations as well. People actually

22:03

send donations in to the show in order to

22:06

support the podcast. So if you are one of

22:08

those people you are keeping this podcast

22:10

alive and also I must say thank

22:12

you to the premium subscribers as well

22:15

because they are the, I suppose the

22:17

major, the main stakeholders for this whole

22:19

project. Anyway, right, yeah, I thank people

22:21

now. Thank you as well

22:23

for being here Max, although normally that's the

22:25

sort of thing you say at the end

22:27

of an interview. So listeners, viewers, I am

22:30

talking to Max, my friend Max who

22:32

works at UNESCO and

22:34

we're going to talk

22:36

about UNESCO and also

22:38

about the sort of

22:40

communication, the intercultural communication

22:43

that is involved in the work that

22:45

you do. So,

22:47

hi Max. Hi, thanks Luke,

22:49

thanks for having me and yes, so

22:53

I work for the permanent

22:55

delegation of the United

22:57

Kingdom at UNESCO, the UK

23:00

permanent delegation to UNESCO. So on the

23:02

one hand you have member states who

23:04

are sort of the shareholders, the

23:08

contributors and

23:10

then on the other hand you have the

23:12

secretariat who are UN civil servants and

23:15

who are the delivery arm

23:17

really of the

23:19

whole operation. We are

23:22

there to sort of steer,

23:24

guide, we provide funding most

23:26

importantly and shape

23:28

the policies that the organisation

23:32

adopts. Yeah, so you

23:34

work for the permanent UK delegation

23:36

at UNESCO which is based here

23:38

in Paris. Yes. There are

23:40

permanent delegations from how many countries?

23:42

So currently we've got 194 countries

23:46

at UNESCO. Permanent? Yeah, permanent

23:48

delegations. I say currently because

23:50

the US has just rejoined and

23:54

we have rejoined. Rejoined, yeah.

23:56

They left in about the

23:58

end of 2018. under

24:00

Donald Trump and then now they've returned and

24:03

we hope they're going to stay. But

24:06

the elections are looking a little bit... Well

24:10

the forecast is not exactly positive so we'll

24:12

see. The presidential elections, the US presidential elections.

24:15

That might have an impact. But

24:18

we don't want to think about it. We

24:20

want them to stay. Yeah, that's

24:22

a little bit down the road as

24:25

well, although I'm sure it's a major

24:27

concern at this stage. Yeah, because basically

24:29

if Donald Trump wins then he'll take

24:31

the US out of UNESCO again. Possibly.

24:34

Possibly. Well, we don't want to think about

24:36

that. Okay, let's not talk about it then. So

24:40

I'm going to ask you the question that

24:43

people always ask you when they meet you

24:45

at parties or other situations. So

24:47

Max, what do you do? So what do I do? My

24:51

job is I'm the deputy permanent delegate

24:53

so I'm sort of the number two

24:55

of the delegation. It's almost like the

24:57

deputy ambassador. And

24:59

I support my ambassador for

25:02

all the political topics,

25:05

the subjects. I also make

25:07

sure the delegation runs smoothly

25:09

so I have an operational

25:11

role as well, make sure

25:13

that everything gets done on time,

25:15

that we don't miss deadlines because we've got a lot

25:17

of deadlines, a lot of consultations

25:19

where we're asked by UNESCO what does

25:21

the UK think about this policy and

25:23

if you don't... If

25:25

you don't provide feedback,

25:28

you miss a chance of influencing that

25:31

process. And

25:33

also, I've got

25:36

two or three priorities in terms of

25:39

the subjects that UNESCO does. I

25:41

focus on education, safety

25:44

of journalists and media freedom, which is

25:46

a really important one when

25:49

it comes to fighting disinformation

25:51

and ensuring that journalists can

25:53

continue to do that important work. And

25:56

then I also... I've

26:00

been there for a while. I

26:02

have an important role

26:05

in helping the UK understand the

26:07

budgetary process of UNESCO, which is

26:09

a difficult

26:12

adventure, actually. You

26:15

have to navigate perilous

26:18

seas sometimes to

26:21

understand how to get

26:23

a decision done on time. When is

26:25

the most efficient time

26:28

effective for the speak,

26:30

to understand the budgetary process? Yeah,

26:33

my God, I've just got so many questions

26:35

about this, just to try

26:37

and understand the nature of it. So you

26:39

said that you are a

26:41

deputy to the UK

26:43

delegate or delegation. Delegation,

26:45

yeah. So two words that I would like

26:48

to be defined, delegate and

26:50

delegation. Can you tell us more

26:52

about those things? So delegation can be two things.

26:55

You have a delegation of colleagues

26:58

who are based in the UK who will

27:00

come to UNESCO to do a specific meeting,

27:03

and they will be experts in their

27:05

fields, education, science, culture, and

27:07

they will come to UNESCO to deliver

27:10

the UK view during a discussion or

27:12

during a negotiation. So this is a

27:14

group of- This is a group of

27:16

one, yeah, it's one individual or a

27:18

group of individuals coming to UNESCO from

27:20

the UK. And that would be typically

27:23

just the word delegation. Right, so

27:25

a person or a group of representatives

27:28

and when they come to UNESCO, they come

27:31

into the large meeting room today. They would

27:33

come to, well, it depends. Sometimes some meetings

27:35

are in a smaller room, but it's not

27:37

to say that they're not equally important. And

27:41

then sometimes

27:44

they come into the bigger rooms. So

27:47

I mean, the word delegation implies

27:49

that you are representing

27:52

the UK or

27:54

you are speaking on behalf of the UK. Yeah.

27:57

And you are people who come as

27:59

delegates. as a delegation. They are who?

28:01

I mean, you said they were sort of

28:03

specialists or experts? They can be a number

28:06

of things. They can be, usually,

28:08

they can be officials, so government

28:10

officials. But we also have, UNESCO

28:12

is an organization that has a

28:15

big range of stakeholders. They have

28:17

a lot of experts from civil

28:19

society or academia and

28:21

geos who also contribute to

28:23

the conversation. UNESCO's

28:26

policymaking is very long

28:28

term, so you

28:31

usually have multiple rounds of conversations. Civil

28:34

society does a round of conversation.

28:37

Academics have their inputs and

28:39

then you have the final decision taken by

28:41

government officials. So it's

28:44

a sort of a step-by-step

28:46

process. What's

28:49

the end result? Because I

28:51

understand, right, so I understand parliament,

28:53

right? I understand government, which is

28:55

where MPs have been voted for,

28:58

sit down, discuss new laws, vote on them,

29:01

and those laws go through a process and

29:03

then they get passed. New laws are made,

29:05

right? And those laws are then applied in

29:07

the UK in various

29:09

different aspects of society, right? So,

29:11

you know, tax or policing or

29:14

whatever the policy is.

29:16

UNESCO is this organization

29:19

with representatives from

29:21

192 countries. 194 countries at the

29:23

moment. And you meet these delegate representatives from

29:30

the different countries you meet to

29:32

discuss and sort of make decisions

29:35

on a variety of different subjects

29:37

like educational journalism, culture, sciences.

29:39

What's the end of the process then? So the

29:42

end of the process can be a standard-setting

29:45

document, for example, very much in the same

29:47

spirit that a law would be created, but

29:49

it's just that we can't do

29:53

binding laws in the same way because it's international

29:55

law, so it doesn't have the same binding nature.

29:58

Standard-setting, yeah. document, a document

30:01

which sets standards. Yeah, exactly. But it's

30:03

not binding law. So it

30:05

can be. It depends. You

30:08

have multiple levels of sort

30:11

of, you have a

30:13

convention which is the most legally

30:16

binding document where countries

30:18

actually ratify those conventions and

30:20

make those into their own

30:22

national laws. I see.

30:24

And that would be exactly the

30:26

same as the

30:29

process that you just described. UNESCO

30:31

often feels like a parliament actually. Yeah.

30:34

When we sit in those negotiations, we

30:36

take the floor and we try and

30:38

change the text that's on the screen.

30:41

Actually, we do live editing in the

30:43

room. Really? It's quite extraordinary process actually.

30:45

Yeah, we've got a screen. You're

30:48

looking at two screens in front of you, one

30:50

in English and one in French. And

30:53

as we're adopting the decision

30:55

paragraph by paragraph, we're

30:58

changing a comma. That could

31:00

take an entire day. Wow. Yeah,

31:03

like should there be a comma or should

31:05

there not be a comma here? No, but

31:07

seriously, a lot of the time we

31:11

actually change the language

31:14

for the better. Sometimes

31:16

it's difficult because there's not much we

31:18

can do. There are

31:21

a lot of countries who are in a

31:23

majority. There's a majority of countries who want

31:25

that particular formulation. So you have to

31:27

pick your battles. I

31:30

think I want to come back to the definition

31:34

of delegation because I think we missed...

31:38

I didn't tell you about the

31:40

permanent delegation, which is another

31:42

category. The

31:45

permanent delegation is effectively

31:48

the ambassador of myself who are based

31:51

here in Paris permanently. And

31:53

that's the majority of the people that I

31:56

speak to and they are

31:58

the permanent... representatives of

32:00

their countries here. But

32:04

we are supplemented by delegations

32:07

who come from our capitals

32:09

or various... Your permanent delegations and

32:11

visiting ones? And visiting delegations. Right.

32:14

Okay. I see. I

32:16

see. All right. All

32:18

right. So you then specifically, you said you

32:20

kind of meet the... you liaise with the visiting

32:24

delegates and so on. That's right. But

32:26

then in this big meeting room or the smaller

32:28

ones where, for example, you might have these texts

32:30

of where you're literally amending

32:33

the text as you go. Yeah.

32:38

Are you actually speaking in that

32:40

situation? Yeah. So if,

32:42

for example, countries are

32:45

trying to change the text in

32:47

a way that is inaccurate

32:53

or is trying

32:55

to just sort of

32:57

delete important references to various pieces

33:00

of international laws that we fundamentally

33:02

believe in and that we think

33:05

are an important achievement and important gains

33:07

over the years. And if countries just

33:10

don't want to recognize those and want

33:12

to sort of have a problem with

33:14

those particular regulations or

33:17

international laws or international conventions or

33:19

UN general assembly

33:22

decisions or human

33:25

rights declarations, for example, our

33:30

aim is to try and protect that

33:32

language. So, yeah, we will

33:34

intervene and try and protect references

33:37

to various pieces of important... Okay.

33:41

So I'm just trying to imagine this situation where you've

33:43

got a text. This isn't one of the many things

33:45

that you do, of course, but in the situation where

33:47

you are kind of

33:49

trying to rewrite or write from

33:51

scratch some sort of, as you said,

33:53

a standard

33:55

declaration, right? A declaration or something like

33:58

that. Do

34:00

you really have at least 194 people working on the same document?

34:06

You could. During

34:09

the general conference, which happens every

34:11

two years, every country is

34:13

allowed to speak, take the floor and amend

34:15

the text. But

34:17

then every six months we have a more reduced forum

34:20

called the Executive Board. It

34:24

doesn't always feel very executive because it's

34:26

58 countries. Within

34:29

that space, you only really have

34:31

about 20 countries who really

34:33

take an active part in negotiations. I

34:37

wouldn't say it's manageable.

34:40

Sometimes it gets out of control, but

34:42

eventually we get there. It's

34:44

happened that you spend an entire day

34:47

on a paragraph. I've

34:50

seen that happen. I can imagine that. And

34:56

then you have to have breakout sessions where

34:58

you break out over lunch. UNESCO

35:00

has a very interesting lunch

35:05

hour. They have two hours

35:07

for lunch. They break between one and three. That's

35:10

to allow four countries

35:12

to meet in the margins

35:15

of the meeting and work

35:17

out whatever differences they

35:20

have on a particular text. And

35:22

often actually, coming

35:25

back to your point earlier about

35:27

communication, that actually solves a lot

35:29

of communication issues

35:31

because when you're in a big

35:34

room sitting behind a microphone, there's

35:37

a lot of apprehension

35:41

and fear of misunderstandings.

35:44

And people are genuinely

35:47

under pressure because you're on

35:49

the interpreter's time, clock's

35:52

ticking. We're about to take a

35:54

decision that we won't be able to change because

35:56

there's no appeal process effectively at UNESCO once the

35:59

decision's been made. and gaviled, that's it, it

36:01

goes on to the next stage. It's being gaviled. Yeah,

36:03

with a hammer. Yeah, with a hammer. Is there really

36:05

a guy with a hammer? Who is that guy? What

36:08

is a chair? Or a girl? So usually

36:10

the chair of every meeting is elected. It's a woman or

36:12

a man. They're

36:14

usually representatives of a country,

36:16

usually a permanent delegate or

36:19

an ambassador of a given country. So

36:22

the chair. The chairperson.

36:24

Chairperson. Okay. Yeah. Okay,

36:27

so in terms of communication then, I mean,

36:30

we could talk for ages about the actual

36:32

processes of what UNESCO does, and I'm probably

36:34

going to do some introduction to give an

36:36

overview. We need

36:38

to get into the subject

36:40

of actually communicating and how that happens

36:42

in various ways. So

36:44

let me just ask you a couple of quick questions

36:46

then. What

36:50

are the various situations in which

36:52

you have to communicate between

36:55

the delegations or delegates at

36:57

UNESCO? So from small to

36:59

big, what's the smallest situation?

37:01

What's the biggest situation? A

37:03

smallest situation would be what

37:05

we call a bilateral meeting,

37:08

where you

37:10

have two countries meeting, bilateral. And

37:13

it's a conversation between two countries on

37:15

a specific issue. And

37:21

often, well, it could be you could have

37:24

two scenarios. You could have a situation where

37:26

you're speaking to a country

37:28

that agrees with you and where you

37:30

need to secure their support so that

37:32

when you then take that conversation to

37:35

the big meeting where everyone's going to

37:37

be in the room and it's ... That's the time when

37:39

the decision needs to be taken. You

37:42

want to make sure you know how many

37:44

people are supporting you on a given point.

37:47

But at the same time, in order

37:49

to facilitate the process of that end process,

37:52

you also want to talk to the countries

37:55

where you know they will maybe

37:57

have reservations about language

38:00

or some areas of that text will

38:02

be sensitive for them. So you want to make sure

38:04

that you can speak to them, and

38:06

you can clarify where you're coming from, so

38:09

that there's no misunderstanding, and

38:13

there's no lost opportunities, effectively. So

38:16

that communication then needs to be,

38:19

I mean, my mantra is

38:21

to be totally transparent, just not

38:24

put myself in a situation where I would have

38:26

to lie, because that just doesn't get you anywhere.

38:29

You just have to just tell the truth

38:31

to say it like it is. Can

38:36

you just give, I mean, I'm kind of tangent,

38:38

going off on a little tangent here, but hopefully

38:40

it'll illustrate these things we're saying. Give

38:44

us an example of the sort of decision that

38:46

you're trying to take. So I don't

38:48

know if you can give us a real example, or

38:51

if you can make one up, but just so that

38:53

we get an idea of what it is, what decision

38:55

it is that's being made. So, yeah. So

38:59

for a number of years,

39:02

I was speaking to experts from

39:04

the UK on

39:06

an oceanographic program,

39:10

the National Oceanography Center

39:12

in Southampton, and they

39:14

come to Paris to meetings in

39:16

UNESCO, because UNESCO has a program

39:20

called the Intergovernmental Oceanographic

39:22

Commission, and that particular

39:25

program looks at the science

39:29

of the oceans, and it's

39:31

scientists who come together in Paris

39:33

and talk and make decisions about

39:35

ocean science. So

39:37

it's a very important program, and it just

39:40

wasn't getting enough funding

39:43

from what we call the regular budget.

39:46

Where does that money come from? So the

39:48

money, the regular budget is the member states'

39:51

contributions. Okay. And

39:53

that is decided by the UNESCO

39:55

Secretariat, and

39:57

for a number of years, that funding was not

39:59

so far. efficient for that

40:02

oceanographic program to just

40:05

do its core work

40:07

on developing data, developing

40:11

the science, and monitoring

40:15

the ocean, for example, monitoring seabed,

40:18

mapping the sea floor, all

40:20

these really important scientific activities

40:24

that UNESCO was coordinating and facilitating

40:26

and funding. And UNESCO

40:28

has another way of getting

40:31

funding, which is to do what's

40:33

called resource mobilization, so they go

40:35

out and ask countries to give

40:37

them money for specific activities. The

40:40

balance had shifted more

40:43

towards that sort of funding, which

40:45

meant that UNESCO was no longer able

40:48

to do its core

40:50

work, but it was actually

40:52

going out and

40:55

looking for funding to do very specific

40:57

things. And actually,

41:01

the auditors, the internal auditors of

41:03

UNESCO said, it's a

41:05

problem because UNESCO is becoming more

41:08

opportunistic and less

41:10

strategic in a way. So I

41:12

just couldn't live with that. I just thought, we've got to do

41:14

something about that. We've got to

41:16

do something about the ocean project. Yeah, and

41:19

it's the ocean. It's not just anything. It's

41:21

not just a small project. So I thought,

41:23

right, we've got evidence, we've got an

41:27

internal audit here. We've

41:29

got experts in the UK who

41:31

are really top experts

41:34

in their field. And

41:36

I put together a team,

41:39

we thought

41:41

about how we were going to present the issue.

41:43

And the issue eventually was, right, we just need

41:46

to increase the proportion of

41:48

the budget from

41:51

the regular budget to this oceanographic program.

41:53

We just need to give this program

41:55

more money to do the

41:57

regular things that it's supposed to be doing. So

42:00

we're not going to say we're going to increase the

42:03

budget to do specific things. We could just,

42:05

it needs more money and we're going to

42:08

trust the Secretary of UNESCO to

42:10

allocate that money properly. But as member

42:12

states, we're going to take a decision

42:14

to say we are raising the

42:18

budget level by 1%. But

42:22

in real terms, it's actually millions. So

42:25

it was a difficult project. So I

42:27

then had to draft the

42:30

actual paper. So

42:32

I drafted the resolution and an explanatory

42:34

note, as we call it, to explain

42:36

why we wanted to do this. So

42:39

it was three or four pages. I

42:43

then showed the draft to my colleagues

42:45

in Canada and

42:48

then other countries had a look

42:50

at it as well. And we

42:52

organised what we called informal negotiations,

42:54

where I presented the text and I

42:57

presented the rationale for

42:59

presenting that paper.

43:04

Informal negotiations, right? Presenting

43:06

the initial presentation of the paper. So

43:09

in terms of big to small, as

43:11

I said before, this is fairly small.

43:13

This is like one to one or

43:15

is this email or? No. This

43:18

is actually the emailing part was in

43:20

the beginning with various colleagues like Canada

43:22

and others to help me with the

43:24

drafting. But I did the initial draft

43:26

and then they sort of improved it

43:29

and cut it down, moved bits

43:31

around. My ambassador at the time

43:34

as well had a

43:36

look at it. She was great at

43:38

drafting. And

43:41

then it's almost like you have to get

43:43

it out there. So you

43:45

have to publish it. So then that

43:47

first phase before publishing

43:49

it effectively was or

43:52

presenting it to member states was to

43:56

select a group of countries

43:58

whom I knew. Were

44:00

very focused on this oceanographic programs. I

44:02

knew I knew that care deeply about

44:05

this This is where diplomacy

44:07

comes in where the diplomacy this is where you

44:09

sort of moving around and like picking the people

44:11

that you choose To work with you in order

44:13

to get a core number of people that can

44:16

then be more influential or something So I didn't

44:18

so the way it's so picking sounds sounds a

44:20

bit so this is the thing we must always

44:23

avoid doing is because you you actually

44:25

that can Backfire actually.

44:28

So so what I did was I

44:30

I emailed a lot of colleagues I

44:32

a very broad range of countries and

44:34

then it's only the ones who were really

44:36

interested who responded and who came to that

44:38

meeting and it was a meeting

44:41

that we chaired that I chaired with my ambassador

44:43

and And

44:45

then we presented the issue and then and then there were a

44:47

lot of questions so you so

44:49

we were answering that questions, it was a bit like a Like

44:54

a parliamentary question time so they're quizzing. Oh,

44:56

yeah, they'd be quizzing me they were they

44:58

were grilling me So

45:01

I'm sorry, how many how many countries were there

45:04

present at this meeting then well That

45:08

was so we did two sessions in that with that one

45:10

morning and the keen the written the

45:12

countries are really keen with The first came to

45:14

the first session as you'd imagine. Yeah, I

45:16

guess 40 or 50 40 or 50 countries so

45:18

it's 40 or 50 individual delegates Grilling

45:24

you yeah on your proposal. Yeah.

45:26

Yeah. Okay, and we brought food

45:28

so As

45:35

much as possible the negotiation but so we brought

45:37

Madeleine I give you a cake you

45:40

agree with me this is the way it works No,

45:43

but it was a very serious meeting but

45:46

there was lots of food so people could

45:48

could stay on top of Their

45:50

brief. Yeah. No, but it was it was a

45:53

really good process because it meant that you could

45:55

iron out all of the issues You could get

45:57

people to voice their concerns air

46:00

their frustrations. And

46:03

again, I keep coming back to this, I

46:06

think that it's very risky being

46:08

a delegate of a UN organization

46:10

because you're responsible for a very

46:13

important decision actually. The people who

46:15

were in that room were ultimately

46:18

going to take a decision about millions

46:21

of dollars being allocated to a

46:23

program and they had to then

46:25

sell that back to their capital.

46:29

So they wanted to make sure they'd understood everything so

46:31

they could brief their

46:33

colleagues back in their capital. So

46:36

it's pretty, yeah, I guess pretty tense.

46:38

So I was going to get

46:40

lots of questions about, you know, how so I

46:42

had to yeah, so I said my role was

46:45

then to clarify and answer all those questions. I

46:47

had them in my head and I had the

46:49

figures in my head because I'd be this was

46:51

a process that

46:53

a document that took a year

46:55

in the making before we so

46:58

it's it was sort of very

47:00

slow gradual process and then towards the end you have

47:02

a sprint because we

47:04

had like from January till

47:06

March to get everything down

47:08

to get the paper finalized because the session

47:11

was going to be in May. So

47:14

we had to submit the paper months

47:16

before because

47:18

UNESCO has to do translation

47:21

into six languages. Okay.

47:24

And then and then so we did

47:26

that. And so then then after those

47:29

informed so we did two informal sessions

47:31

of negotiations and then a lot of

47:33

back and forth by email and all

47:35

the time the result of those negotiations

47:37

or meetings is to kind of make

47:39

changes to your your document.

47:41

Yeah. Do you call it a proposal? Yeah,

47:44

it's so it's a it's a decision.

47:46

So you have two parts you have

47:48

a decision and then you have an

47:50

explanatory notes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's

47:52

the decision. The decision is a what

47:54

does it look like a contract? Does it look like a

47:56

contract? It's a it's a

47:59

number of paragraphs. I

48:01

can't remember how many paragraphs we had, but

48:03

it was a page and a half, and

48:05

then you have the paragraphs are numbered. The

48:08

typical opening would be you recall

48:11

a number of previous decisions so

48:13

that it's effectively

48:15

like in a court of law. It's

48:18

a judgment in a way. You have

48:21

to recall and make sure

48:23

that your evidence base is

48:25

correct and accurate and sound

48:27

in a way. You

48:29

have the legal foundations in a way. Like

48:32

a court decision or a judge's decision

48:35

would refer to previous cases. Exactly. I

48:37

don't know exactly the wording they would use, but with

48:40

reference to blah, blah, blah versus

48:42

blah, blah, blah, or some

48:45

other previous case notes. Absolutely. It's

48:48

funny because my previous ambassador,

48:50

we always used to laugh

48:52

at how difficult

48:55

to digest those letters

48:57

and UNESCO documents are because

48:59

it always begins with, in

49:02

reference to EXB

49:04

2016 slash rev,

49:08

addendum X and that. It

49:10

loses, you're already dropping off and you're already

49:13

lost at the beginning of that. Difficult

49:16

to read that stuff, isn't it? It's

49:18

really difficult. Especially it's like a Tuesday morning, you

49:20

didn't sleep very well the night before, you haven't

49:22

had coffee yet and you're just like, okay, with

49:24

reference to EXB 2016, oh god.

49:27

Oh yeah, it's hard work. You're

49:30

essentially sending this stuff out to people,

49:32

asking people to read it. And

49:35

then the diplomacy, all

49:38

sorts of communication skills

49:41

involved throughout this process.

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50:49

let's, okay, I hope everyone listening and watching

50:51

is following all of this stuff because it

50:53

is complicated. It's incredibly complicated, I

50:55

have to say. Just

50:58

make sure everyone knows where we are. So you're giving

51:00

this example of this oceanographic project,

51:02

this decision that you'd like to be

51:05

taken, that you would like to be

51:07

able to apply. Yeah. And

51:09

it's a very concrete thing. It was

51:11

increasing the funding for that program. Okay.

51:14

Giving that program more funding so it could do

51:16

its core science. Okay. Yeah.

51:20

And ultimately, you want all 194 member states. Member

51:23

states? Yeah. To

51:26

give their agreement to this decision.

51:28

And then it gets actually applied,

51:30

right? Exactly. So

51:33

at this stage, so you've written the thing, it took

51:35

you a year to write it. Yeah.

51:37

Yes. It took me a year

51:39

to think about it and then it took me a day to

51:41

write it. Okay. Yeah, okay. Because

51:44

it's a bit like Jack Kerouac, you

51:46

know, writing his book in one night because it's

51:48

just so clear in his mind. Yeah. He

51:51

lived it for a year or two and then

51:53

just wrote it all down and whatnot. Yeah. It's

51:55

like that. It's a volcano just erupting. Right.

51:59

I see. Okay, so you've written it,

52:01

you've changed it with the help of

52:03

a few key sort of, I don't

52:06

want to say allies, that's not the

52:08

right word. Yeah, key contributors. Okay. Yeah.

52:11

And then you've opened it out to a

52:13

slightly larger group in these two meetings where

52:15

they're grilling you like, what about this? What

52:17

about this? What about this? Before

52:20

we agree, we want to ask you all these questions. And

52:22

that must be hard work for you. Yeah.

52:24

It was hard work. It was sort of... You

52:29

know what, I thought it was great.

52:31

Actually I felt good in that process

52:33

because I could see that countries cared

52:35

deeply about the ocean and you

52:38

had some very passionate individuals who thought

52:42

of their jobs, not just as a sort of

52:44

a posting that they were going to do for

52:46

four years, but they were actually

52:48

taking that subject really seriously. They thought, you

52:51

know, it's the ocean. And

52:53

the ocean science is going to play

52:55

an important part in the next COP

52:58

27, COP 28, all

53:01

those important meetings where decisions are going to

53:03

be taken about the future

53:05

of the planet. And

53:08

that UNESCO program does very tangible

53:11

things. So I was just happy

53:13

that we picked something that

53:15

was where

53:18

we could bring a lot of

53:20

different countries where we would not

53:23

necessarily always agree on everything. But

53:25

on that one thing we agreed

53:28

and that agreement was really strong.

53:30

Okay. Yeah. So

53:32

then what was next after that? So that was like you

53:34

said about 50 countries, something in

53:36

the region of... So yeah. What

53:38

was the next stage? So then we had... Let me

53:40

move your microphone a little closer to you if I

53:43

can. Yeah, of course. So then we had to seal

53:45

the deal. You had to get countries to

53:47

sign. And so we call

53:49

that co-sponsorship. So we had to make

53:51

sure that countries could co-sponsor

53:55

the document as it was. So we'd

53:57

done all the editing. There

53:59

was a... Final draft and we said right, Can

54:01

you put you your name to this colluding

54:04

with a wheat when the last thing you

54:06

want to do when you propose. Ah A

54:08

Resolutions are a decision. As

54:10

to be the only country proposing it because

54:12

it looks odd and co is it is

54:15

suspicious about that so he wanted to have

54:17

as many countries as possible supposing it to

54:19

the rest of us. Some point is is

54:21

it was jointly proposing into the rest of

54:23

the organization. Yeah yeah cause I so in

54:25

the end we had about. Sixty

54:28

three countries who cosponsored it out

54:30

of a hundred Ninety Four, which

54:32

is not bad and. And

54:35

then. The reason you want to

54:37

do that is to avoid. Another

54:39

lengthy debate. In

54:41

the meeting because it's married and says

54:44

cause you've got turpitude is so we

54:46

we say. Avoid having a

54:48

negotiation on the interpreters time and

54:51

what happened and was that there

54:53

wasn't a decision that was to

54:55

the another document, another item that

54:58

was dragging and the chair seamless

55:00

was once that because. I

55:03

think the authors of that previous

55:05

had it doesn't really prepared their

55:07

that the room so we'd we'd

55:09

We was super prepared and everyone

55:11

was clear about. What be she

55:14

was So we then came in and said

55:16

to the chair let's just adopted without debate.

55:19

And the chair. Love that. He thought

55:21

great we'd scaffold on and it's done

55:23

yet. So so that so there was

55:25

no. The discussion: Everyone

55:27

knew what this item was about

55:29

Wix we've been talking about for

55:31

so long and the we just

55:33

did a short end of incipient

55:35

say thank you It's really important

55:37

I town as I never would

55:39

have freedom And it was Danielle

55:41

while die by Us Consensus: Fantastic!

55:43

Congratulations So you didn't have to

55:45

do a painful, tortuous negotiations. We

55:47

do. We have internet access with

55:49

Hundred Ninety Five already added as

55:51

he said with a document screens.

55:53

Wow. Great. I must have been

55:55

very satisfying. he was it was

55:57

actually because it meant that we kids respect

56:03

the sacrosanum

56:09

principle in a way that decisions are

56:11

adopted by consensus. It's very important that

56:13

UNESCO is one of those organizations that

56:15

because the mandate is

56:18

so universal, you've got

56:20

education, science, culture, culture,

56:23

it's very difficult to vote on

56:27

decisions and resolutions on culture. It

56:30

doesn't really make much sense. You want

56:33

those decisions to be adopted as much as

56:35

possible by consensus. When

56:37

you say by consensus, you mean without

56:40

having to force people into doing

56:43

it. Because

56:45

it's weighed them really hard. You just

56:47

want them to read it and everyone in

56:49

the room to just be like, yes, we

56:51

all agree. That's right. The

56:53

only thing that you get to that point

56:55

is that you are inclusive as much as

56:57

possible and you take comments on board as

56:59

much as possible provided

57:02

they're constructive comments. That's

57:05

how you build the consensus. We

57:10

went from small to big there through the

57:12

process where you started on your own or

57:14

maybe with your ambassador

57:17

and then with a group

57:19

of experts from Southampton.

57:22

Then you open it out to a

57:25

few key other participants and

57:27

help you to draft it. Then

57:29

you get the smaller, well, I say

57:31

smaller, but the meetings where they quizzed you

57:33

or grilled you. Then you prepared

57:36

it so well that when you presented it

57:38

to the executive board, that's where

57:46

they grilled you. No, no, no, no. That's

57:49

where we adopted it. Okay. So that

57:52

was 94 people. No,

57:55

it was 58. Okay.

57:58

Because That's the executive board. Boy get out

58:00

of make decisions. Yeah there a all and

58:03

so they hit the oh yeah it's it's

58:05

I'd say. I mean. Some

58:07

might say that it's the most

58:09

important governing bodies Unesco you've got

58:11

to be I'm executive board or

58:13

just such A snow. Wow wow

58:15

wow wow. So the is so

58:17

as to what you were looking

58:19

for was in formal negotiations around.

58:22

That's when that's when I put

58:24

the paper, presented the paper and

58:26

the first time and was grilled

58:28

instead of against yes another at

58:30

the grueling session. The idea or

58:32

choice has to six or so.

58:34

What does it room? when? is

58:36

it difficult? Than water. The Challenges:

58:38

When you go under Ninety

58:40

four delegates from a from

58:42

a hundred ninety four countries.

58:44

At Least A Hundred Ninety

58:46

four delegates Because so many

58:48

different communication styles outfit languages,

58:50

people coming from different culture,

58:52

me and texts does it.

58:54

I mean, He

58:57

has, does he go wrong? Sometimes

58:59

it does. Am. It's.

59:03

He said it's it's such a sound

59:05

is really good question. And key

59:08

for us to max out at as

59:10

if if if that means a difficult

59:12

questions everyone tell i'm i'm i'm my

59:14

technique is the saints number of the

59:16

entire room before I start my to

59:18

read since of I can get my

59:20

thoughts are in an iota her while

59:22

press. As much as I don't have

59:24

many like to see some it's not

59:26

meant to be a challenging question. I

59:29

do genuinely want to explore the subjects

59:31

of intercultural communication. The nights are coming

59:33

from the position of being an English

59:35

language teacher. you know this is a

59:37

subject. Comes up a Latinos like a

59:39

lot of my students and was to

59:41

over the years have been a works

59:44

in various different capacities, have different rules

59:46

as a different industries and things and

59:48

they he knows earth's dealing with people

59:50

from other countries yeah probably in English.

59:54

always involves that cultural elements were fair

59:56

enough you're trying to speak the same

59:58

language but you're not There's

1:00:00

a different mindset because you're coming from different

1:00:02

places and different cultures. So

1:00:05

I'm always interested in any sort of

1:00:07

insights that people have about that process.

1:00:09

And I mean, you're in a great

1:00:11

position because this is a

1:00:14

very substance of what you do, isn't

1:00:16

it? Well, communication is everything. Diplomacy

1:00:19

is about convincing. You

1:00:23

have to convince the colleagues

1:00:25

around the table who are also decision

1:00:27

makers. You have to convince them

1:00:29

that this is the right decision to take and that

1:00:32

your proposal is sound and that

1:00:35

your intervention is

1:00:37

constructive. But

1:00:40

it comes down to the relationship

1:00:43

that you build. It's

1:00:45

almost, I remember one of my previous

1:00:47

bosses saying to me, people

1:00:50

do business with people. It's

1:00:52

always down to the individual relationship.

1:00:56

So your communication style will...

1:00:59

So typically, your

1:01:01

communication style will have to

1:01:03

be adaptive. You'll have to

1:01:05

adapt to the person that you're talking to.

1:01:07

And they will be coming in to

1:01:10

this conversation from a very different cultural

1:01:12

perspective. They will find that maybe you'll

1:01:16

find that some of the language that you're proposing, they

1:01:19

find it offensive. Really? We

1:01:22

think it's just being efficient.

1:01:25

We're getting to the point where we're trying

1:01:27

to be concise and actually

1:01:29

a few words like

1:01:31

ensuring. We

1:01:34

want to ensure that UNESCO does this

1:01:36

and that. They

1:01:40

think, one, this is too

1:01:42

strong language. How can

1:01:45

you ensure that UNESCO does these things?

1:01:47

To ensure something is to make something

1:01:50

sure, to make it certain. And that

1:01:52

sounds a bit like boffing someone to

1:01:54

do something. It's too direct. Or

1:01:57

even sometimes you have these very

1:01:59

opportune... of words requests the

1:02:01

director general to do XYZ.

1:02:03

And countries I've found informally

1:02:06

and they've come to speak to me and tap on my

1:02:08

shoulder in the meeting and say, you can't say

1:02:11

that Max, you're being

1:02:13

too forceful here. Why

1:02:15

don't you say invites the

1:02:17

director general or... This is a

1:02:19

good... ...recommends

1:02:22

that the director general takes this position.

1:02:24

This is really interesting because ultimately what

1:02:26

you're trying to do is ask someone

1:02:28

to do something or

1:02:31

tell someone to do something. So if we take

1:02:33

this simple case study

1:02:36

which is like make me a cup of tea,

1:02:38

right? Yeah. So that request.

1:02:41

So the idea is that I want a

1:02:43

cup of tea and I want you to

1:02:45

make it for example. So

1:02:48

how do I actually achieve that?

1:02:50

Right? So first level is simply,

1:02:52

Max, make me a cup of tea or

1:02:54

make me a cup of tea now or

1:02:57

make me a cup of tea in 10

1:02:59

minutes. Right? There's that and then

1:03:01

we can go through all the different

1:03:03

possible ways of phrasing this request. I

1:03:06

actually want to do it. How would you do

1:03:08

that? So you would say

1:03:10

you would recall a previous

1:03:13

decision where my

1:03:15

predecessor or had made you

1:03:19

a cup of tea before or you would

1:03:21

recall a law that says that every guest

1:03:24

on Luke's podcast should bring a

1:03:26

cup of tea in the room

1:03:28

unless or otherwise

1:03:30

they will be arrested. So okay. So that would

1:03:32

be the little time. Max,

1:03:34

remember this sounds a

1:03:36

bit informal though the way I'm saying it,

1:03:39

but I would say maybe in a more

1:03:41

informal setting. I'd say Max, but these requests

1:03:43

are not made informally. They're made informally. They're

1:03:45

made very formally. So you would, like I

1:03:48

said, you would start recording various decisions

1:03:51

in writing. Sorry. You would

1:03:53

also have, you

1:03:56

would recognise the importance of the issue. You

1:03:58

would say, recognise the importance of the issue.

1:04:00

recognizing the importance of tea

1:04:02

in the development of,

1:04:05

in the facilitating of

1:04:07

the connection between synapses,

1:04:10

for example, you would

1:04:12

then recognize the convivial

1:04:14

nature of sharing a cup

1:04:16

of tea and you would

1:04:18

acknowledge the art

1:04:20

of tea making and then you would get into

1:04:22

the real beef of the issue, you

1:04:25

would say on the

1:04:28

basis of these principles you

1:04:31

invite Max to

1:04:34

consider switching

1:04:38

the kettle on with a

1:04:40

view to brewing

1:04:42

a lovely cup of tea for his

1:04:45

gentle host. That is a

1:04:47

very indirect way of doing

1:04:50

a very, very, it's very respectful. It's

1:04:53

very gentle, very graceful. The language

1:04:55

is always quite graceful. Well, not

1:04:59

always, but we try. I mean, we

1:05:01

try, the aim is to make the language

1:05:03

as graceful as possible. I see. And

1:05:05

so when you're dealing with different cultures, there's

1:05:07

different expectations or

1:05:10

standards of gracefulness or

1:05:12

indirectness in language. So

1:05:16

certain cultures, they don't, like

1:05:19

being direct, for example, if I just

1:05:21

said to you, Max, remember last time

1:05:23

you came here, you made me a

1:05:25

cup of tea. Well, I request another

1:05:27

one. That's much too

1:05:30

strong and that's rude. Absolutely.

1:05:32

Yeah. Yeah. You'd

1:05:34

have to put a lot more sort of

1:05:36

fluffiness around that. But that's the debate. That's exactly

1:05:38

the nature of the debate. You have countries who

1:05:40

kind of say, oh, come on, you know, let's

1:05:43

get to the point here where we're beating around

1:05:45

the bush. And

1:05:47

then you have countries who just really

1:05:51

want the language to be gentle and

1:05:53

who don't want to force the secretariat

1:05:55

or do we don't want, I can't

1:05:58

tell today. sort

1:06:00

of bring themselves to requesting the

1:06:02

secretariat as if to say we

1:06:04

own you, you belong to

1:06:08

us, you do what we say because we pay you. They

1:06:10

don't want to say that. They want to sort

1:06:13

of be approaching it in

1:06:15

terms of collaboration between. Again,

1:06:18

sort of coming to my point where you have

1:06:20

two sides. You have the member states who are

1:06:22

the shareholders and then you have the secretariat staff

1:06:24

who are delivering. That

1:06:27

relationship is a

1:06:29

very collaborative one.

1:06:31

They're quite

1:06:34

extraordinary people, the colleagues

1:06:36

and the secretariat. They're very

1:06:39

eminent experts in

1:06:41

their fields. In a way,

1:06:45

we're lucky to have them. We

1:06:48

want to make sure that we can enable

1:06:50

them to blossom and bloom. Yes,

1:06:53

you have to treat them with care. Do you care

1:06:55

and attention? You can't be, oh, it made me a

1:06:57

cup of tea. No, that's right because they are a

1:06:59

lot more experts and sort of they're a lot more

1:07:01

interesting and

1:07:09

probably important in their fields than

1:07:11

we are in office. Who are we

1:07:13

to tell them what to do? But

1:07:16

at the same time, we are

1:07:20

actually responsible for the

1:07:22

outputs of that organization.

1:07:24

It's a very subtle

1:07:26

balance. Yes, it's fascinating. The pragmatics of

1:07:28

the way language works and the decisions

1:07:30

we have to take with it and

1:07:34

the way that language changes

1:07:36

depending on the relationship that you have or

1:07:38

the way that you perceive the relationship. If

1:07:40

someone uses language with you in a certain

1:07:42

way, it's very disrespectful

1:07:44

because it sort of shows that

1:07:47

they perceive you or their

1:07:49

relationship with you in a certain way. It's

1:07:52

not just a question of using... There

1:07:54

is no such thing as just simply

1:07:56

objectively rude language. Well, sometimes there is

1:07:58

a swear word. It is often

1:08:01

more about the implications. he has

1:08:03

the wording somehow that implies the

1:08:05

relationship all the way you view

1:08:07

the other person. Ccs damn recently.

1:08:09

I mean sit at the out

1:08:11

we were negotiating. Something

1:08:15

I am a non non non.

1:08:17

Can again to the detail but isn't the

1:08:19

point on side as a I'm trying to

1:08:22

make it is. Coming.

1:08:24

Back to your point about cultural. Hesitations

1:08:27

and we I am I speaking to

1:08:29

it was a group of us from

1:08:31

I guess the northern. Hemisphere

1:08:33

speaking to a country who was

1:08:36

from the southern hemisphere s and

1:08:38

the communication style is very different

1:08:40

north and South you. I typically

1:08:42

I would say that the north

1:08:45

cut northern countries are much more

1:08:47

sort of blunt and direct and

1:08:49

and I don't think actually that

1:08:51

the be know they'd that the

1:08:54

being rude sam but but that

1:08:56

cysts sometimes that that that that

1:08:58

that. I've seen that cyst as

1:09:00

well and then it in that

1:09:03

particular. Case it's it's an exception

1:09:05

to that, to my assumption. Anyway,

1:09:07

we were speaking to a group

1:09:10

of countries from the north, were

1:09:12

speaking far too diplomatically to a

1:09:14

country from the south, and that

1:09:16

individual just. Didn't. Understand why

1:09:19

we were being. My

1:09:22

were our reservations where where are preoccupation

1:09:24

ones for us and at one point

1:09:26

I came in and sit. With

1:09:29

disease. And and and

1:09:31

and and colleagues were of. Uncomfortable.

1:09:34

and and one colleague came to me

1:09:36

after that said max you know you

1:09:38

being on diplomatic there is not right

1:09:40

he can't say things like that so

1:09:43

these smooth muscle groups were were a

1:09:45

citizen berms so suffer with the word

1:09:47

for it i'm guessing of as they

1:09:50

were at cross purposes or see us

1:09:52

getting the wrong end of the stake

1:09:54

and on wrong an exotic like communicate

1:09:56

yeah clearly and you just came he

1:09:59

said lotion Let me just clarify here's

1:10:01

the issue. And

1:10:03

that person then responded and said,

1:10:06

ah, okay, I understand. It's not

1:10:08

just about this

1:10:10

other issue. It's actually about this

1:10:13

specific issue. And they

1:10:15

understood what our reservations

1:10:17

were. And

1:10:19

we were being, you know, other countries and we

1:10:21

were beating around the bush. We were not being

1:10:24

clear enough. And so you have these challenges sometimes

1:10:26

where you just have to sort

1:10:28

of put the diplomacy and the fancy language

1:10:30

on the side and just be

1:10:32

super clear because you need to

1:10:34

move on. You need to make progress. Yeah,

1:10:37

yeah, yeah. And that's the challenge and the

1:10:39

communication. But the, I

1:10:41

guess, I guess coming back to,

1:10:43

you know, the issue of

1:10:45

language, you have six

1:10:48

official languages in the UN. And

1:10:50

in UNESCO, it's the same. It's the standard

1:10:53

UN format where

1:10:55

you have English, French,

1:10:57

Spanish, Chinese,

1:11:00

Russian and Arabic,

1:11:03

or Mandarin. Sorry. Yeah,

1:11:06

but we've actually on the screen, it's

1:11:08

labeled Chinese actually. So maybe it's

1:11:10

an old way

1:11:13

of calling it. But so you have

1:11:16

those six languages and in

1:11:18

the UNESCO rooms, you're able to

1:11:20

sort of flick a button where

1:11:22

you flick between those languages and

1:11:24

you listen to the language that

1:11:26

you want. So there's six simultaneous

1:11:28

interpretations going on. There's six people

1:11:31

listening in and speaking simultaneously, interpreting

1:11:33

what's being said. Absolutely. Wow,

1:11:36

incredible. And you've got a little thing, you've

1:11:38

got headphones and you can switch between the different channels.

1:11:40

You can. Yeah, incredible.

1:11:43

Yeah. So

1:11:45

the challenge is that you want

1:11:47

to make sure that the nuance of

1:11:50

what's being said by the speaker

1:11:53

in the room, that they're usually the official representative

1:11:56

of his government, you

1:11:59

want to make sure that the person who's saying

1:12:01

that intervention in Arabic, that the person who's

1:12:03

listening to it in Russian actually

1:12:06

gets that nuance. And

1:12:09

I've had colleagues who've come to me

1:12:11

who from some of the, I

1:12:15

guess, I think from Lithuania who

1:12:18

understood the Russian intervention, because the person

1:12:21

was speaking in Russian, and

1:12:23

said, what you were getting

1:12:25

in your headphones in English was

1:12:27

very gentle. Or

1:12:33

other countries, maybe

1:12:35

Arab representatives,

1:12:38

speaking in Arabic, what

1:12:41

they were saying was actually

1:12:43

a lot more harsh

1:12:46

than what we were getting in English. So

1:12:48

even there's that sort of diplomacy from

1:12:51

the interpreters. Yeah, I have the

1:12:53

utmost respect for interpreters, because what

1:12:56

they do is absolutely incredible. And

1:12:58

also, it's very revealing about the nature

1:13:01

of different languages. But I

1:13:03

think... I'm not

1:13:05

an expert linguist or anything, but I

1:13:08

think that some languages just by their

1:13:10

nature are more direct than others. Even

1:13:13

if just like grammar, sentence structure,

1:13:16

in some languages, like for example Japanese, they

1:13:18

put the verb later in the sentence. And

1:13:21

I think in German this happens too, well I'm not

1:13:23

entirely sure. But listeners can... In

1:13:25

German, that's correct. Yeah. Do

1:13:27

you speak German? Well, a little bit. I

1:13:29

mean, I studied German, it's cool, and I

1:13:31

never lived in Germany, so you

1:13:34

could argue, I never really practiced it. Yeah,

1:13:36

okay. But so anyway, these

1:13:38

structural things make a huge

1:13:40

difference, where the impact gets

1:13:43

changed. And also, obviously

1:13:45

some languages have words which

1:13:47

are harsh and direct, and

1:13:50

which don't necessarily have equivalence in

1:13:52

the other languages. So yeah, it must... By

1:13:56

feeding it through the interpreter, the

1:13:58

message does... change in its

1:14:00

tone sometimes. It can, yeah. Always

1:14:03

for the better. I mean, that's where I

1:14:05

really admire the interpreters is that I,

1:14:09

I mean, I understand that what

1:14:11

they're, you know, what we're getting in

1:14:14

our headphones is a very

1:14:17

gentle, coming

1:14:19

back to my point earlier, is a very

1:14:21

gentle version of what was actually said, the

1:14:23

nuanced version. But you

1:14:26

have the risk also of Russian

1:14:28

colleagues saying, actually, no,

1:14:30

I mean, everyone, I said this

1:14:32

and everyone else got

1:14:34

the wrong version. The interpreters interpreted it

1:14:37

in the wrong way. And

1:14:39

so some of the nuance gets lost sometimes. It's

1:14:41

really risky because you have then an entire room

1:14:44

who then sort of looks

1:14:46

a bit lost and whereas the original

1:14:49

speaker actually intended to say something quite

1:14:51

different. So do you ever get

1:14:53

the, sorry, do you ever get the interpreter in and

1:14:55

say, oh, right, come in here. What

1:14:57

did you do? You know, what are you,

1:15:00

not to punish them, but just to kind

1:15:02

of involve them in the conversation. Has that

1:15:04

ever happened? Quite

1:15:06

rarely. Sometimes the

1:15:09

chair will pawn the meeting

1:15:11

and we'll ask the speaker

1:15:13

to repeat their statement and

1:15:15

the interpretation will have another go at it.

1:15:17

Yeah. I've seen that happen. Yeah. No,

1:15:22

but it's fascinating because

1:15:25

again, communication is everything.

1:15:29

Communication is with an aim of convincing. You

1:15:31

need to convince colleagues that this is the

1:15:33

right thing to do. And

1:15:36

like you say, those

1:15:38

decisions are effectively aiming

1:15:41

to cause an action

1:15:43

in a way. You want to trigger an

1:15:45

action. So you want the organization to do something

1:15:49

that you're telling them to

1:15:51

do. So you want to tell

1:15:53

colleagues something you want. Yeah,

1:15:55

you want to tell them what to do. So

1:15:58

that's that you've got to get that tone right. you got

1:16:00

to get the language right. I guess

1:16:05

the other challenge

1:16:07

is about time

1:16:10

as well. It's always about,

1:16:12

because UNESCO's agenda is

1:16:14

very busy. You have a lot

1:16:17

of subjects

1:16:19

being discussed at UNESCO. You

1:16:21

have education, you have natural

1:16:23

sciences, social and human sciences,

1:16:26

culture and within the culture portfolio there's

1:16:28

lots of different aspects of cultures. You

1:16:32

have restitution of cultural

1:16:35

property, you have freedom

1:16:39

of artistic expression, you have

1:16:42

protection of cultural heritage, obviously that's

1:16:44

the big flagship, protection

1:16:46

of cultural heritage in armed conflict and

1:16:50

those are all being discussed at UNESCO. Then

1:16:54

you have freedom

1:16:57

of expression, media

1:17:00

freedom, safety of journalists. In a week and

1:17:08

a half, two week meeting of the executive board, you've

1:17:10

got to go through pretty

1:17:12

much all of that. That's

1:17:15

where communication is. Coming

1:17:17

back to communication needs to be efficient

1:17:20

and clear because if you

1:17:23

take an afternoon for

1:17:27

one item that was supposed to just take an

1:17:29

hour or two hours max, you're

1:17:32

shifting the entire agenda and

1:17:35

you're then compressing the agenda on

1:17:37

things where actually there

1:17:39

needs to be a debate. It's

1:17:41

always a risk. Good

1:17:43

will is so important in this situation. How do we

1:17:46

define good will? It's just that sense

1:17:53

of deciding

1:17:55

to enter into these situations with

1:17:57

a positive and good faith approach.

1:18:00

I think that's a really interesting point. I think you hit the

1:18:02

nail on the head there because one

1:18:04

of the subtleties, I suppose, of

1:18:08

negotiating is you could

1:18:10

very well take the position where you are...

1:18:14

Well, you're faking misunderstanding. You're saying, well, you

1:18:16

don't agree with that particular intervention, but you

1:18:18

don't want to say to the entire room,

1:18:21

we don't agree with that because

1:18:23

that's just... You know you're not

1:18:25

going to... That's not going to get support. So

1:18:28

you could just buy yourself time and

1:18:30

say, I don't really understand what you're

1:18:32

saying, what this country is proposing. Can

1:18:34

they explain? And then they buy

1:18:36

them... Yeah, that's buying time and it's... Effectively,

1:18:39

sometimes your... Some

1:18:43

country's strategy is to just push

1:18:47

people to exhaustion in a way. Really?

1:18:50

What by pretending not to understand? Pretending not

1:18:52

to understand. Or going around the houses as

1:18:54

we would say. Yeah. Your

1:18:57

comment about good faith and

1:18:59

goodwill. Yeah. So you get

1:19:01

through these sort of thing where people

1:19:03

sort of like attempt... Basically force everyone

1:19:05

to get frustrated as a sort of

1:19:07

tactic. Yeah. Have you ever

1:19:09

noticed any actual sort of... What's the

1:19:11

word for it? Insulting or

1:19:15

comments that are intended to insult

1:19:17

or cause pain? Yeah. You

1:19:19

know? Sadly, yes. And

1:19:21

I've seen comments... And

1:19:24

I've seen countries respond to those

1:19:26

by saying, you know, I find

1:19:28

these comments extremely offensive

1:19:34

and yes. So

1:19:36

you have those situations where someone just sort

1:19:38

of loses their temper in a way and

1:19:40

says something that they regret later

1:19:42

on, then they have to apologize. Something hurtful is

1:19:44

that way. Yeah, something hurtful, something a bit more

1:19:46

less polished. And

1:19:51

yeah, I think that happened a few times.

1:19:56

But you know, again, sort of

1:19:58

dwelling. I think it's such an important... question

1:20:00

that you asked about communication. There's

1:20:03

a particular communication style, I think

1:20:05

that's more effective than others,

1:20:08

is I start

1:20:11

to believe more and more about the power

1:20:13

of emotions in

1:20:15

communication and how effective

1:20:19

an intervention can be if it's sincere

1:20:23

and passionate. Because

1:20:28

everything that you say, the tone, your attitude,

1:20:30

the rhythm of

1:20:32

your sentence has a different flow

1:20:36

and it just

1:20:38

strikes a different chord

1:20:40

in people's minds. I mean, we're out there

1:20:42

to win hearts and minds of

1:20:44

people because there's

1:20:46

not much time to take these decisions, so you only have

1:20:49

one go at it. So once

1:20:51

you're there, that's it, that's your

1:20:53

moment and if you're not

1:20:57

convinced yourself that

1:21:00

the point that you're making in an intervention in front

1:21:02

of that big room is not 100%

1:21:06

right in your mind, then you're

1:21:08

not going to convince anyone else. So

1:21:11

that communication style, I'd say

1:21:13

I would describe

1:21:15

communication in that way as well, UNESCO,

1:21:17

about not being shy about putting some

1:21:19

emotion into what you're trying to say.

1:21:23

And as Brits,

1:21:25

we try and

1:21:27

be not

1:21:30

too emotional sometimes or I think we have

1:21:32

an issue dealing with our emotions

1:21:34

that... Yeah, we can

1:21:36

do because we think... Well, yeah, I

1:21:39

agree. I think that maybe Brits are

1:21:41

a little bit cautious of being

1:21:44

super earnest, of

1:21:47

making that... I often try and

1:21:49

think of ways to illustrate

1:21:53

this because I do talk about this quite a

1:21:55

lot where I can

1:21:59

never think of a good example. for it but

1:22:01

a certain earnest like

1:22:04

one-dimensional earnestness yeah we

1:22:07

find that uncomfortable we have to balance it with a

1:22:09

little bit of humor or something

1:22:11

to kind of break the awkwardness that

1:22:13

we feel when we're just speaking directly

1:22:15

from the heart you know and

1:22:18

that's in all sorts of different ways you

1:22:20

know in moments of diplomacy or

1:22:23

even in sort of relationships

1:22:25

yeah you know so

1:22:29

absolutely I just want I think that's a really good point

1:22:31

I want to pick up on that the humor I think

1:22:34

you you're right 100%

1:22:36

right if you manage to

1:22:38

do an intervention where you're talking about something

1:22:41

difficult and you know it's not going to

1:22:43

land very well it's the right thing to

1:22:45

say but it's going to

1:22:47

be a pain for the person on the receiving

1:22:49

end usually the Secretariat so

1:22:51

for example for many years we've the

1:22:54

UK's been asking the Secretariat to reform

1:22:58

its field offices

1:23:00

so UNESCO has about 53 offices around

1:23:02

the world and not all of

1:23:05

them were doing not

1:23:08

all of them were achieving their

1:23:10

objectives and delivering

1:23:12

you know good tangible results and

1:23:15

the UK for a number of years was quite frustrated

1:23:18

about that so we always had to sort of say

1:23:20

come on can you you know can you improve

1:23:22

that please can you improve the management

1:23:25

of that that system and

1:23:27

and I just remember a

1:23:30

conversation with one member saying

1:23:32

we it was a ping-pong

1:23:34

negotiation where the entire

1:23:36

room was saying we're staying clear that

1:23:39

discussion political we're gonna

1:23:41

let those two countries fight it out and

1:23:44

this was on interpreters time in the room

1:23:46

ping-pong negotiation yeah it's like to tick to

1:23:48

tick to tick to tick to pick two

1:23:51

people two countries going back and forth back

1:23:53

and forth in a room where there's over

1:23:56

a hundred delegates watching a

1:23:59

big game of where there's a big audience

1:24:01

and just two people in the middle. And

1:24:03

I made a little joke, but

1:24:06

it was a very tasteful joke,

1:24:09

and the whole room... Sorry,

1:24:11

were you playing the pink one? I was, yeah. You

1:24:13

were one of the players. I was one of the

1:24:15

players. You made a joke. And I made a joke,

1:24:18

and it was culturally related. And

1:24:22

the entire... No, well, I'm

1:24:24

not going to get into the details

1:24:26

of it, but it was incredible

1:24:28

how the entire room just sort

1:24:31

of relaxed, because everyone laughed.

1:24:33

Everyone found my joke quite funny.

1:24:37

And the entire room just relaxed, and

1:24:39

we was able to reset the mood.

1:24:43

And we came back to the negotiation a

1:24:45

lot more sort of lightheartedly. But

1:24:47

you're right. Us, as

1:24:50

British, we

1:24:52

have in our culture

1:24:54

that way of incorporating

1:24:56

humor in serious

1:24:59

business speeches,

1:25:02

or meetings, or interventions, or... And

1:25:05

we do that at the beginning, or in the

1:25:07

middle, or somewhere. And

1:25:11

it's a way of just relaxing the atmosphere

1:25:14

and easing up the tension. We're quite good

1:25:16

at that. We're not... In

1:25:19

terms of our skill set,

1:25:21

we may be not so great in some other area.

1:25:24

But in terms of breaking the ice with a bit of

1:25:26

humor, or at least being prepared for it, we're

1:25:29

quite good at that. That's also interesting

1:25:31

that not only will

1:25:33

we perhaps do something that's

1:25:35

intended to be humorous, but also

1:25:37

Brits are always ready to receive

1:25:39

humor as well. So

1:25:41

the giving and receiving in communication.

1:25:44

Not all other cultures are always

1:25:46

ready for humor. I mean, I know

1:25:49

that from experience. Yeah, absolutely.

1:25:52

And some countries might feel,

1:25:54

wow, this guy's trying to

1:25:56

sort of wrap me around

1:25:58

his finger here, and he's trying to... to sort of get

1:26:01

me to laugh at

1:26:03

this situation so that I forget

1:26:06

to ask the difficult question or

1:26:08

so that I don't see the

1:26:10

actual thing that that person is

1:26:12

trying to convince me of. So

1:26:14

you could almost misuse

1:26:17

humour or you could almost sort of be

1:26:20

misinterpreted. You could almost be

1:26:22

in a situation where the fact that

1:26:24

you're trying to sort of ease attention

1:26:26

and put a bit of humour into

1:26:28

the conversation. The person opposite

1:26:31

might get increasingly suspicious

1:26:33

about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:26:36

But we've had that in the UK and

1:26:38

we've had politicians who were just joking around

1:26:40

a bit too much. Yeah, well, yeah. So

1:26:42

this is, so you're referring to a certain

1:26:44

ex-Prime Minister whose whole persona was like,

1:26:49

you know, I'm just, you know, it's all a bit

1:26:51

of a joke, isn't it? Bah!

1:26:55

Yeah. It's a good example

1:26:57

of when it goes too far, I think,

1:26:59

you know, it's kind of, that was a

1:27:01

weakness in our culture, I think, to allow

1:27:05

Boris Johnson to, this is me talking, this

1:27:07

is not, these are not the words of

1:27:09

UNESCO here. No, no, no, no. Yeah.

1:27:12

To allow Boris Johnson to get into

1:27:15

this position he got into was to

1:27:18

a large extent because people loved him

1:27:20

because he was perceived as being a

1:27:22

funny guy. Funny, charming. Yeah. But

1:27:25

I think his humour let him down sometimes.

1:27:27

I mean, he was great, he did some

1:27:29

great jokes and he would, he would win

1:27:32

the room with his humour.

1:27:35

Yeah. But it doesn't work with everyone. When

1:27:38

it comes to being a great state town, like,

1:27:41

for example, when your country is in the

1:27:43

midst of a huge global pandemic, you know,

1:27:45

which is threatening the lives of hundreds of

1:27:47

thousands of people, you need

1:27:49

a statesman who can get the tone

1:27:51

right. And Boris Johnson struggled in

1:27:53

that situation. You know, that's not his company.

1:27:56

He's much more comfortable on a TV chat

1:27:58

show or something. Or in a... in

1:28:00

a meeting in a like

1:28:02

a drinks after dinner drinks kind of

1:28:05

situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

1:28:07

yeah, so you have to be careful about how much,

1:28:09

you know, how to dose that humor appropriately.

1:28:14

And not everyone is comfortable with doing that because it's,

1:28:16

you know, you're taking a leap of faith in a

1:28:18

meeting. I mean, before I took the floor and did

1:28:20

that joke in that meeting, I was

1:28:23

really nervous. I just didn't know which way it was

1:28:25

going to land. Well, thank goodness

1:28:27

it landed the right way and enabled

1:28:29

us to make progress because we were just getting

1:28:32

into a deadlock. And

1:28:35

it just reminds me of a French

1:28:37

word and the French uses word dilettante.

1:28:41

I don't know what would that be in English? Dilettante?

1:28:44

Is that someone who's just approaching

1:28:46

an important

1:28:50

subject matter with a real air of

1:28:53

such nonchalance that it's insulting. Yeah, so

1:28:55

a time waster, you know, like, again,

1:28:58

this is interesting because in French there's

1:29:01

the dilettante, which is this wonderful

1:29:03

single word, quite large sounding word.

1:29:05

Whereas in English, we end up

1:29:08

with a much more pragmatic phrase,

1:29:10

a time

1:29:12

waster. Yeah. But no,

1:29:14

you know, you see this. I don't

1:29:16

know. Right. In here's an

1:29:18

example. When you go, okay, this sounds like

1:29:20

a random example, but I'm just trying to

1:29:23

illustrate this phrase, time waster.

1:29:25

You see this also in the context

1:29:27

of being in a band. So

1:29:30

you go to a rehearsal studio and you

1:29:32

see on the wall. I'm

1:29:34

curious what would be written in French, but you

1:29:36

see on the wall posters for bands

1:29:39

who want a drummer or want a

1:29:42

guitarist. And it says, you know, punk

1:29:44

band or like a 60s

1:29:46

mod revival band, seeks

1:29:49

bass player with own

1:29:51

equipment. Yes. No time

1:29:53

wasters. No time wasters, please. Yeah. I mean,

1:29:55

I don't know if the classic what's what

1:29:57

would be written on one of those in

1:29:59

French. French, would they say no

1:30:02

dilettins? I don't know. Is

1:30:04

that too formal? I've

1:30:07

never seen adverts

1:30:10

for looking for band members in France actually. I

1:30:12

don't know where they would put them. It's

1:30:16

not as common as in the

1:30:18

UK. No time wasted. Yeah, people

1:30:20

in France waste a lot. It's

1:30:22

a different relationship to time. I

1:30:27

shall have a look. I'll get back to

1:30:29

you on that one. In diplomas

1:30:31

you never say you have no idea. No,

1:30:33

no, no, don't say that. Say, hmm, interesting

1:30:36

point, I'll get back to you. So we've

1:30:38

got, great question. Thanks for asking that question.

1:30:41

It's a really interesting point, I'll get back to

1:30:43

you on that. Words

1:30:45

to live by, words to die by. In

1:30:49

many situations, also as an English teacher,

1:30:51

those are useful things. That's a really

1:30:53

interesting question. Let me check it

1:30:55

out. It's going to take quite a long time,

1:30:57

I think, to really go through that in detail. Let

1:31:00

me check it out and I'll get back to you. Then

1:31:02

you go back in the teacher's room and you look through

1:31:04

your copy of Murphy or whatever it is. Luke,

1:31:06

you have two minutes. Yeah, exactly. Yes,

1:31:09

yes, yes, yes. Okay, all

1:31:11

right. Wow. Very

1:31:14

interesting subject and very interesting

1:31:16

work that UNESCO does. We

1:31:20

didn't get into the nuts and

1:31:23

bolts of what UNESCO does.

1:31:25

Maybe just to clarify for

1:31:27

the listeners, UNESCO is really

1:31:29

at the high level of policy,

1:31:32

so they will produce high

1:31:34

level policy recommendations. They

1:31:37

will not be building schools or

1:31:39

building roads or delivering vaccines. They

1:31:42

will be setting what

1:31:45

a good education system should look

1:31:47

like in a country. So they

1:31:49

are saying to governments in countries,

1:31:52

yeah. Here's a

1:31:54

recommendation for the laws that you get.

1:31:56

Here's a recipe list for how you

1:31:58

can get... your

1:32:00

literacy rates increasing

1:32:03

or your new mercy

1:32:06

rates increasing. It's extremely

1:32:08

high level project, incredible

1:32:12

really. And it

1:32:14

came out of the end of World

1:32:17

War II. It did. That's the idea

1:32:19

of let's build a better world sort

1:32:21

of thing. Let's build a better world,

1:32:23

let's increase our understanding of each other,

1:32:25

let's find ways to create peace that

1:32:27

are not through economic means

1:32:30

and political means. Let's work at

1:32:32

that sort of soft power. Although

1:32:36

I think the soft power term, it came

1:32:38

much later. The idea was much more about,

1:32:40

the initial idea was much more about mutual

1:32:44

understanding, intercultural dialogue, tolerance

1:32:47

and just sort of uniting

1:32:50

around universal topics such

1:32:53

as education. I

1:32:55

mean out of those five

1:32:57

major programs of UNESCO, I always

1:32:59

find that actually science

1:33:02

is the one that creates the biggest

1:33:05

consensus. Although

1:33:08

you might not think that that

1:33:10

would be an obvious one, but I find it

1:33:12

was practice that the scientific

1:33:15

science is so much more

1:33:17

pragmatic than education specialists or

1:33:19

certainly cultural specialists or... Yeah,

1:33:24

so it's very measurable isn't it as well?

1:33:27

When you're dealing with science and culture,

1:33:30

that's very sort of almost

1:33:33

intangible. Yeah, it's a

1:33:35

lot of interpretation and

1:33:37

relativism. Yeah, exactly. Okay,

1:33:40

I would ask you about the Parthenon

1:33:42

marbles or the Elgin marbles. But it's

1:33:45

a very hot topic. I

1:33:47

touched on it briefly in a recent episode. I'd

1:33:50

like to do it in more detail. I

1:33:53

mean what I can tell you on that is that it

1:33:58

is squarely a UNESCO... topic

1:34:01

of conversation. It really is, you

1:34:04

know, it's family with UNESCO. UNESCO

1:34:07

can't take a legal decision to force

1:34:09

the UK to return the Parsonham sculpture.

1:34:11

So it's not about that. It's about

1:34:14

bringing everyone to the table to

1:34:17

keep that conversation going. It's

1:34:19

difficult when the Greek

1:34:22

prime minister visits London. Yeah. And

1:34:24

because he talked about it on

1:34:26

the news, the

1:34:29

British prime minister refuses to talk to

1:34:31

him. It's difficult to get the dialogue

1:34:33

going in that context. It's difficult to

1:34:35

get the dialogue going in that context.

1:34:37

Exactly. I think it's all about finding

1:34:39

the right forum and UNESCO is definitely

1:34:41

a good forum to have that conversation

1:34:43

between the parties. I'm

1:34:47

hopeful that the discussion

1:34:49

will evolve with time. It's

1:34:53

a really important topic and we need

1:34:55

to keep the conversation

1:34:57

open. Yeah. All right.

1:35:00

Yeah. Well, we certainly kept

1:35:02

the conversation open during this episode there.

1:35:05

Well, anyway, thank you, Max,

1:35:09

for telling us all about that. It's really interesting

1:35:12

subject and stuff. And nice to have

1:35:14

you in this pod room. And

1:35:17

I don't know. So earlier on

1:35:20

before we started this recording, you

1:35:22

came in and you looked around at my

1:35:24

guitars and you're like, Oh, wow, look at

1:35:27

the guitars. Because listeners, Max is an excellent

1:35:29

guitarist. Thank you. And so my guitars are

1:35:31

feeling very happy right now because Max

1:35:34

took the guitar, took this guitar

1:35:36

off the wall. This is what listeners, you can't

1:35:38

see this, but it's just one of my electric

1:35:40

guitars that I don't

1:35:42

play as much as I should do because I'm really

1:35:44

not that good. But Max

1:35:46

picked it up and started playing some Jimi Hendrix

1:35:48

on it. Oh my God. And the

1:35:50

guitar is like, I could see the guitar

1:35:53

going, thank you. Thank you so much for

1:35:55

playing Jimi Hendrix so well. That's what

1:35:57

I was born to do. I've

1:36:00

been sitting here thinking when is someone gonna pick

1:36:02

me up and play Long Hot Summer Night by

1:36:04

Jimi Hendrix and it happened today Yeah, so I

1:36:06

don't know Max Do you want to I mean

1:36:08

do you want to do you want to please

1:36:11

one of my other guitars? Which

1:36:13

one which one slow slow pickup? Well, I

1:36:15

think if you're gonna play

1:36:17

the guitar on this podcast then it's gonna have

1:36:19

to be an acoustic guitar Yeah, what about that

1:36:21

one? Yeah, this one is a Gs mini I

1:36:25

brought it recently and it's a

1:36:27

slightly smaller guitar Because I

1:36:30

needed something because obviously we're in a slightly

1:36:32

smaller room So I thought it would make

1:36:34

sense to get a guitar that was a bit smaller. Okay, so This

1:36:42

likely you can play whatever you want Let

1:36:46

me just let me just do that how long have you been

1:36:49

playing the guitar and Since

1:36:52

the age of nine. Oh, I'm now 42. Okay. I'm 42 It

1:37:03

felt like it was the only thing to do I

1:37:06

grew up in the countryside

1:37:08

and Belgium and Not

1:37:10

much to do and my mother asked

1:37:12

me Would you

1:37:15

like it? She tried to

1:37:17

get me to learn the piano and it was

1:37:19

a disaster The

1:37:21

teacher had extremely bad breath Doesn't

1:37:25

really want to make you go back to

1:37:27

your general lessons Sorry

1:37:29

poor poor teacher. I hope he's not listening to

1:37:32

this If you

1:37:34

are if you are I mean, you know

1:37:36

you despite the fact that maybe you didn't

1:37:38

realize you had bad breath You did instill

1:37:41

certain musical foundations Here

1:37:43

which came to fruition later when Max

1:37:45

picked up a guitar Yeah,

1:37:48

and then my mother asked me do you want

1:37:50

to do on sort of trying the next option?

1:37:52

Do you want to learn the guitar and I

1:37:54

remember we were in the car coming back from

1:37:56

school and I thought

1:37:59

of slash from Guns N' Roses

1:38:01

and then I said, oh yeah, yeah. And

1:38:04

he slashes cool with his guitar. I think

1:38:07

guitar was cool. You thought of Slash on

1:38:09

the top of a mountain, didn't you? Doing

1:38:11

his solo from whichever song I sing. Don't

1:38:13

cry, yeah, probably. I probably sort of Slash

1:38:15

as the car drives

1:38:18

off the cliff in Don't Cry and

1:38:20

he's then jumped out of the car,

1:38:22

and he's doing his guitar solo. Right,

1:38:25

right, right, right, yeah, of course. So,

1:38:28

wait, you, just to be clear, you grew

1:38:30

up in Belgium. Yeah. You

1:38:32

are English. Both your parents are English. So, my father's

1:38:35

English and my mother's French. Oh, is she? Yeah.

1:38:38

Okay. And you grew

1:38:40

up in Belgium. You went to an English school

1:38:42

in Belgium, right? It was an international school in

1:38:44

Belgium. Okay. It was not

1:38:46

the international school in Belgium. It was another

1:38:48

international school, but it was, yeah, we had

1:38:50

a big

1:38:55

British expat community in

1:38:58

that school. Okay. It

1:39:00

was nice. You spoke English at school. Yeah, we spoke

1:39:02

English at school quite a lot. I was hanging out

1:39:04

with, I made English friends, and so it was always

1:39:06

there from a very early age, the English. And you

1:39:09

were bilinguals, English and French? I

1:39:11

hope so, yeah. Sometimes I hesitate in

1:39:13

French, but I speak to my wife in

1:39:17

French. And

1:39:20

my wife is actually an important...

1:39:24

We were talking about UNESCO earlier.

1:39:26

She's... I'm thinking...

1:39:29

I know that you and I both appreciate

1:39:31

the Godfather. The film, the Godfather. The

1:39:34

film, the Godfather. Yeah. And so,

1:39:36

I often think of my wife as my conciliary. Yeah.

1:39:40

She's definitely helped me to

1:39:43

understand how to

1:39:45

better negotiate with the French delegation at

1:39:47

UNESCO. This

1:39:49

is a whole other story

1:39:51

for another time, specifically communication

1:39:54

with the French. Or

1:39:56

at least, Britain, French communicating or

1:39:58

miscommunicating. Yeah. Yes, okay.

1:40:01

But then you also lived in, you

1:40:03

went to university in the UK as

1:40:05

well. I went to university in the

1:40:07

UK, yeah. All right. You've got

1:40:09

a guitar in your hand though. I did, yeah. Everyone

1:40:11

went and stopped talking about that. Played the guitar. So

1:40:15

I came in and did, what did I do? I

1:40:17

did Longer Huts on the Night. It is. I

1:40:32

wish I had a drum kit. And

1:41:04

on and on and on. Absolutely. It

1:41:06

makes a bit like, it's funny how

1:41:08

sometimes there's something in a song that

1:41:11

really catches your attention and I've always been

1:41:13

into rock and the sort

1:41:16

of the really, the

1:41:18

louder it gets, the more I love it. And

1:41:21

there's this bit in the song where he goes, there's

1:41:23

a break and instead of doing, he

1:41:26

does a... And

1:41:30

he just does that for one, he just

1:41:32

does this model. And

1:41:35

then there's the solo on top of

1:41:38

that. And then I just

1:41:40

thought, wow. And then I love that song just

1:41:42

for that bit. But now I've

1:41:44

learned to love it for the rest of it.

1:41:46

I'm such a huge Hendrix fan. It's untrue. And

1:41:50

I really listened to

1:41:52

probably the first three albums and my favorite,

1:41:54

the first two, and

1:41:58

just every time I listen to them... It's

1:42:01

like I kind of notice or

1:42:03

discover more things. And

1:42:06

thank you for, you sent me these

1:42:10

tracks where through

1:42:13

the help of AI

1:42:15

they've managed to isolate

1:42:18

the vocals and you just hear the guitar. And I

1:42:20

think that's extraordinary because a lot of people think of

1:42:22

Jimi Hendrix as sort of

1:42:24

a noodling crazy

1:42:27

noodler. Or the guy who did the Star

1:42:29

Spangled Banner with all of the feedback and

1:42:31

stuff. And actually his compositions

1:42:35

are really interesting in terms of

1:42:37

his more sort of

1:42:39

the chord that he uses and what

1:42:41

we call in music terms

1:42:44

the rhythm guitar which

1:42:46

is more about sort of establishing that

1:42:48

foundation for the song rather than the

1:42:51

top lines, the solo lines

1:42:54

in a way. Much like

1:42:56

in classical music you

1:42:59

have the solo violin. That's

1:43:01

what you hear most of and that's where all the

1:43:03

glory goes. But actually all

1:43:06

the things that happens beneath

1:43:08

that Hendrix himself is

1:43:12

such a rich tapestry. What

1:43:15

else? I also played some

1:43:18

completely different Georgistre. I

1:43:20

played some chic, didn't I? Yeah,

1:43:24

Nyle Rogers. What was his sister's sledge?

1:43:28

I did Everybody Done. Everybody

1:43:46

Down. Everybody

1:43:48

Down. So

1:43:50

Nyle Rogers who was

1:43:52

the guitarist and producer

1:43:55

of those records. Yeah,

1:43:58

fascinating guy because he created... these

1:44:00

pop songs, these disco albums, which

1:44:02

actually has so much sophistication, so

1:44:05

many sophisticated

1:44:08

jazz chords. In chicken guitar parts?

1:44:12

He very humbly and modestly

1:44:15

nicknamed his guitar because he's been using

1:44:17

the same one guitar

1:44:20

for all these songs and he's been

1:44:22

calling it the hit maker. I

1:44:25

love that. I love that. He

1:44:27

tells us, I saw an interview where he

1:44:29

told a story where he was

1:44:31

really worried about a friend of his who he'd

1:44:33

just heard had been

1:44:35

diagnosed with cancer and he

1:44:38

was on the subway

1:44:40

as they call it in New York. He left

1:44:43

the guitar on the subway. The guitar that

1:44:45

was worth millions in

1:44:47

terms of the equivalent of a musical

1:44:49

success. The hit maker. Chot,

1:44:52

chot, chot success. The hit

1:44:54

maker. And thank goodness he

1:44:56

managed to get it back. Wow.

1:44:58

Because he's been distracted by this. Yeah,

1:45:00

he was just in his head somewhere

1:45:03

else and he stepped out of the

1:45:05

subway, left the guitar. Probably had it on top,

1:45:07

I don't know where he had it, but it

1:45:09

was just his feet or something. It

1:45:12

came back to him, it found its way back. That's

1:45:14

right. As a guitarist, you think, regardless

1:45:17

of how much money that guitar was made

1:45:19

in terms of chart success, you just still

1:45:21

think it's such a living

1:45:23

thing, a guitar. Because like

1:45:25

you say, I love that analogy where you

1:45:28