The Importance of Clarity with John Mollura

Pressure has a way of shrinking your world. You stop breathing, you grip tighter, and suddenly you’re managing everything while trusting no one including yourself. That’s why this conversation with John Malora landed so hard for me: he’s lived in environments where “close enough” is not a standard, from testing systems for Mars rover missions to coaching leaders who feel stretched thin and stuck on autopilot.

We start with John’s unconventional journey into the US space programme and what test engineering teaches you about leadership clarity. When leaders obsess over steps, they create micromanagement, confusion, and low trust. When leaders define the objective, describe what success means, and keep the team aligned to the vision, people make better decisions and ownership rises. We also dig into the idea that rest is not a reward, it is part of how humans are built. Space to decompress, creative outlets, and protected relationships are practical tools for handling pressure and keeping your confidence intact, especially in changing times.

Then we get into the messy reality of teams: giving feedback to a leader, staying curious instead of judgemental, and separating data from drama when emotions run high. We talk communication styles, why people miss each other even with good intent, and how tools like DISC and the Enneagram can help you tailor your message so it actually lands. John also shares a free resource designed to shift you from judgement into curiosity and build awareness.

You can find John Mollura's free Navigator's Master here. It provides three questions to help shift from a mindset of judgment to curiosity. 

If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a leader or teammate, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one outcome you need to get clearer on this week?

Welcome to the podcast!

Join my free online webinars from the 2nd June to learn why your communication style is losing you sales!

Register for the sessions here.

All sessions are recorded (and less than 30 minutes long), and everyone who registers will be able to listen to the recordings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Okay, so welcome to the podcast. And today is the first time I'm joined with a guest on the podcast, which is uh John Malura. And John's got a very interesting background who and I'm gonna let him talk about that because he'll do it far better than I can. And also the topic that he'll be talking about, I think, is really important because I've spoken about how to handle pressure, and we all deal with that. It's something most of us are dealing with every day. And I'm gonna let John talk about his approach and in fact how he coaches and teaches people. So I'm gonna hand over to you, John, before I steal too much of your thumb that and perhaps if you if you start maybe with a little bit of background and then we can we can go from there.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Uh thanks for the opportunity to be here, Graham. And yeah, so my uh my background is not not typical. And I think most people would agree, especially folks that have been in the entrepreneur journey or life just in general, it's never a straight linear line, right? Like we might think it's point A to point B, and you know, there's all sorts of dips and trips and you know. So that that pretty much uh describes my journey. Uh my goal throughout my entire life was was always to join the US military and found out senior year high school I was not able to do that due to um you know some health health things. And so ended up going to college, you know, was kind of aimless. Guidance counselor told me to be an engineer because I was good at math and science. I said, yeah, sure, okay, whatever. Um so spent four years at university, really struggled, um, but eventually got my engineering degree or degree. And long story short, took a job as a rock climbing instructor in college. And that's actually what ended up getting me the job in the US space program.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Uh so yep, I got hired on as a test engineer right out of college in 2000 and 2000 and worked on the Mars missions that would land in 2003, the NER Mars rovers. And yeah, the rock climbing gig is actually what got me in there. Again, not because I had stellar grades, but because the gentleman who ran all the testing for these landing systems was former U.S. Special Forces.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

And I eventually asked, I asked him one time, I said, why did you hire me? I said, I'm not, you know, I'm not 4.0, 93.5 GPA.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

He said, I don't need another egghead around here. He said, I need someone that I can send out into the field wherever we are from Antarctica to England doing test operations and isn't going to get anybody killed.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah. And he said that's definitely a plus. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

So that's how I wound up working in the US Space and Defense program for 15 years and then through a series of events, you know, with my own personal growth stemming from from a tragedy about halfway through my career to the company being sold, ended up leaving engineering after 15 years.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

And turning my side hustle of photography, which you and I share in common, into my gig. So I was a commercial photographer for a number of years, and then eventually, especially after COVID, realized that people's confidence was just so in the in the gutter. They wouldn't even want to get in front of the camera for these shoots that they paid a lot of money for.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So I wound up coaching them, you know, things I'd learned through counseling and mentors and my own coaches.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah.

Service Mindset And Creative Outlets

SPEAKER_00 3:41

To get them in front of the camera, and you know, ended up thinking like maybe there's this is a new way to start start serving people. And opportunities came for me to speak, and uh they took off and I capitalized on them, and and and here we are. Now I do coaching and speaking full-time, and the photography is uh, you know, back to being a hobby.

Why Humans Need Space

SPEAKER_01 3:59

I think there's a actually a couple of points in there, and then they relate to COVID. One of them is the service, and this is something that is a real theme through when I'm talking about salespeople. We're here to serve our clients, we're here to solve, we're problem solvers. Our interactions are not about making the next sale, they're not about, you know, how can I get this guy to buy something? It's it's going in with curiosity and with a service mindset. And the other thing I want to throw in there, because photography is my other passion, wildlife photography. And during COVID, I put together um just a bunch of challenges you could do around your home. Because I think what's really important, and this ties back into what we're we're going to talk to, is having um an outlet. And I think it's really important to have a creative outlet that's different to your work, because I think just when everything's going a little bit pear-shaped and you're really stressed about it all, if you've got somewhere else to go that's separate and engages that creativity part just from a mental health perspective, I think it's very, very grounding. And that to me is really important when you're handling the big stuff. You need somebody to go and get grounded. So photography for me is one of those things, and that turned into another passion, and obviously with you. So anyway, that that was just something I just wanted to dive in there and share.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and what you mentioned there, and I don't want to move past that because that's really important, especially and it gets so overlooked now, is giving ourselves space.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Just think, like, we are not, humans are not designed to operate 24-7.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

No.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

That's why we send rowwats to Mars.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Um, and if we don't have that space, we our brain never gets the chance to decompress. So we might think if we're having a challenging problem at work or home or whatever it is, the natural reaction a lot of times is to dig in and work harder.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

But that can sometimes become a double-edged sword if we don't have the space to let ourselves expand.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Like we're we're not designed for that. And that's why people always say, I had the best idea. Where? In the shower. Because you're not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah. Yeah, you just got to stop digging sometimes, climb out of the hole, go for a walk.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah, that's that one. Put the shovel down.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Exactly. Yeah. And then um then you get a different perspective. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, and and that's actually baked into any major faith system across the world from throughout the course of human history.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

You know, Christianity and Judaism have like their Sabbaths built. And you know, Muslim has their prayer time and their and their holy times, the meditations of Hinduism, like it's because humans need a break.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

But to downbreak their Yeah, I mean and I think if you honor what we are and the way we're, you know, how we've evolved, what we are as um, I mean, I shoot wildlife, so to me we're primates, which isn't as complimentary, but essentially that's what we are.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

And you kind of that's a couple of some people I've met.

Clarity As A Leadership Skill

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Well, I won't go there, I think. That'll be another podcast. Maybe a private one. Um yeah, you know, you you it's about honouring what we what we are, and also I think what's important. Um, so for a lot of people, it's family, it's friends, it's those kind of things. And again, when we get stuck into work too much, those relationships are the ones that are probably most likely to sustain us, and they tend to be the first ones that go out the door because we're just stressed and we're gonna work those extra hours. We don't see wife, kids, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's stopping and slowing things down and walking away. And I'm gonna lead into what you talk about in your website about um essentially clarity being the the key thing. And and do you want to maybe expand on that? Talk about what that means to you and how that's worked with the people because you've done a lot of coaching on this, and how does that how does that uh work with those people?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, clarity is one of those things that that sounds simple, but if we get down to it, it's it's not easy to do. And but but it's so important to take the time to be very clear. And I I I saw this uh in in test operations, right? Like back for space and defense program, our our team's job was to go test and make sure the thing did what it was supposed to do before we put on a fighter pilot or crashed into Mars, right? And and what I saw so often was people would give us the specification and it wouldn't it wouldn't be specific. It'd be like have make sure it does something kind of like this. It's like, well, wait a minute, time out. Like kind of like this isn't gonna cut it when you're screaming through the atmosphere and mock whatever you are. Like we we need to and if if we don't know the exact number, like then let's put a range to it, we'll test to it and see if it meets spec. And so often in our life we don't take the time to to be very clear about how what we want the outcome to be. And because it it's so easy, and I see this all the time with with the leaders that I coach, they get so hung up on the details of like the step by step by step to tell their team to do. That they they spend so much time on that. What they really need to do as a leader is spend the time on what what is the actual objective? What does success mean? And then as the leader, trust your team to go figure out how to get there.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that that's a big thing on leadership. Is that because your job as a leader is to provide direction? There's a great phrase that a mentor that I have is, and that's start with the end in mind. And once you communicate what that end is, hopefully you're hiring people who are really smart and much smarter than you in the areas they're responsible for. So exactly as you say, you you and then you empower them to do the things that they're good at doing, and you don't start fiddling around and micromanaging with something you probably don't really understand that well anyway, or potentially. So I think that's really important. That that aspect of not only giving a clear endpoint where you want to go, but empowering people along the way and and making them feel empowered, making them feel heard. I think that was the other when I got into management, that was a very um luckily I picked that up really fast.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, yeah, that and that that that absolutely. And as far as like leaders and teams go, like obviously trust is is foundational to that and the way and trust doesn't just happen. So as leaders, we need to be very clear about what the objective is. We need to support the teams. You know, we we we need to provide direction.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah.

Trust Teams And Avoid Micromanaging

SPEAKER_00 11:06

That's and that builds the trust with the team. And then the team's responsibility is to take action on on whatever it is to get to the objective. The team's job is to maintain an alignment with the overall vision that has been clearly communicated. And then I always tell people, I'm like, it's not the leader's job to make decisions. They're like, no, it's the leader's job to make decisions. I'm like, the vision, yes. But the decisions is actually the responsibility of the team because if the team can stay in alignment, take action, and make decisions, that's going to build the trust that the leader has in the team. And then the trust builds, and that those are high-functioning teams whenever it's structured like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, absolutely. So so I'm just thinking, I'm and I'm thinking of this from the perspective of leaders who are listening and also people who are part of a team who are listening. What what are there sort of key takeaways that you've learned with your experience and and your interactions with people that are perhaps things that people in leadership should be doing? The big thing and the things that you've coached people on, the things they tend not to do that cause problems. So that would be both leaders and the people who are within a team working with a leader who perhaps isn't functioning as well. What would be your as a pretty easy thing to answer? I've just throwing that at you. What what would you like to offer there to just help those people?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, so so teams that that have a leader that aren't, you know, maybe leading should. I think your question. Yeah, that that's that's a bit of a sticky wicket.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

It is for sure. Yeah, and there's not too much you can do about it often as well. You're kind of stuck with it.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, well, uh unl unless the leader has has the posture of curiosity and not judgment, which is something I talk a lot about. Like whether you're a leader or not, you're like having that posture of curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah. Instead of like, hey, instead of saying like to to the leader, hey, you did this wrong, yeah, here's what you should be doing. It's like, hey, you know what would help us be even more productive, bring in more profit, you know, make more sales calls, land more clients, is if you know, insert wherever the leader is lacking.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

You know, to give that feedback. Yeah. As in, and always tying it back, especially in the business world, always tying it back to the the the core goal of the business. Absolutely because so often it's tied back more to emotional things.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

And emotional intelligence is extremely important. I'm not I'm not negating that, but in the business realm, the way things get justified is tying it back to the return on investment, the ROI.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Even emotional intelligence and and personnel and human resources and all that, at the end of the day, that all gets tied back to a metric. And if you can show a positive influence on business, that's how things can a lot of times get leverage and get support, especially from higher-up management.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah. And I think too, with the managers, if you're lucky you've got a strong manager, and to me, strong people are the ones that are open, they tend to be curious, they're open to feedback. It's the the weaker managers tend to be more fearful, they're defensive, and any suggestion they take is an attack, and yeah, that's a really tough one if you're in that situation, because those are the teams that are going to struggle. Um, right. And I and I'm not even sure what I what I would suggest to somebody in that situation because really it's it's hard to change it, and and then you've got to kind of make a call for yourself, I think, whether this is something you're gonna continue with for your own health and the things we were talking about earlier, or uh, you know, if you can't come up with a way of handling it. So I'm not I don't think there's a magic bullet for that one, but yeah, I don't know if you have any suggestions in that area, or it's just a case of you know doing your best.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yeah, yeah, that and and that is that is a difficult position to be in, and that's when it becomes very important to be able to separate the data from the drama.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

Communication Styles And Assessments

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Is this truly a leader that yeah, is this truly a leader that has no interest in growth and just has like their sight set on the corner office by any means necessary and manipulative, narcissistic, like be it you you need to be honest with yourself, like is that truly what that person is, or am I now looking, am I casting like you know, a lot of feelings and emotions on it, yeah, and it's clouding, and or is the person just a different communicator than I?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, and it's one of the things I'm gonna throw in. I'm actually a disc practitioner, so behavioral profiling, and that is something that I found very interesting because I know with just my type, and I'm absolutely textbook for mine, I'm a high-D, if if you know disc. And I I had somebody working for me a few years ago now, and I I'm very vague about getting things done. Say we need to do this, this, and this. And she just wanted a lot more detail, and it really used to irritate me until I realized she's coming at me from a different perspective. She was really committed to helping me, but the method of communication that she needed was different to the method of communication I was using, and I think this also, and that's a very good point that you've you've made there. You're just understanding different type different the different ways you tend to communicate, and that we're not all the same, most definitely. Yeah, and that yeah, that's a very good point.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah, communication. A lot of people think communication is is all about how to get your message across, and that's not wrong. But the goal of communication is to figure out how the person that you're talking to will best receive your message.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah. Yeah, so it's like listening on a radio and being off on a slightly different frequency, and you can't understand what's wrong because your frequency looks fine, but they actually are on a different one, and that's where the problems come. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Yeah, that's um that that's why you know this disk is a great assessment. And a lot of times I've I've used that, especially with clients that maybe had trouble with communicating with people.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

You know, like they're like, man, everybody's just a jerk. And I'm like, well, there's a common denominator here. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

The everybody is kind of the giveaway.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yeah, yeah. Whenever you use those absolute terms, my radar goes. Everybody, all, never, all the time. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

I always just spotted a common denominator here.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, yeah. Um, that's why a lot of times I lean in with the Enneagram.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Which is communication, you know, arch types. You know, some people you need to be very direct with.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

And those leader you need to understand that, you know, like someone might be like, hey, Mike, steps one through eight, you missed seven, fix it.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

And they're like, they appreciate that. They're like, got it. And if you walked up to that same person and be like, hey, how are you doing today? Hey, Mike, I noticed that they'd be like, My goodness, will you just get to the point? Exactly. Yeah. But other people who are direct like that, they'd be a puddle of you crying on the carpet for two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And that's Yeah, and you have to understand that, especially as a leader. How do they receive communication best?

Free Masterclass And Closing

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, and and I think when you start to understand that, it's like light bulbs flash and pennies drop, and all the other things happen. You suddenly realize why there are issues with certain people that so far, no matter how hard you've tried, you just can't seem to connect with them. And often it it will come down to that. Um, so so I'll give we're gonna keep this fairly short because these podcasts tend to be quite short. But um, just for anybody who'd like to know more about what you do, I'm gonna put your um link to your website in the uh description for the podcast. But um is there anything you'd like to say to anybody who's you know, maybe I was gonna say driving in the car, but that might be the best time to start making notes.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, when you get somewhere safe and pulled over, yeah. Pull over first. Yeah, you go to johnmalora.com slash free stuff. There's a link there to my free navigators master class. And what it does is it gives you three powerful questions to get you out of this mindset of judgment of yourself and of others, yeah, into which into curiosity and also helps you get out of autopilot, which is where I see a lot of people just stuck in and build awareness. So instead of being on autopilot and judgmental, you know, or aware and judgmental, they can become aware and curious about things because that's what I call having a seeker's mindset. So if you go to johnmallora.com slash free stuff, the navigator's master class is right there for you.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Yeah, that that's brilliant. And um yeah, I think as soon as you take the pressure off, no matter how you do it, that's just it's like you can breathe again. And as we were sort of saying at the start, it makes such a huge difference to um just managing what a lot of us have stressful situations now that we're in changing times, which doesn't help. Things that were stable, not so stable anymore. So yeah, I think this is um a very relevant and very timely topic. And um, yeah, I'll have that that link is in the description. So um please go take a look. John, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for um joining me on the podcast. And um maybe we should do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Sorry, Graham. Thanks for your time, man. Take care, bye bye. Okay, thanks.