maximum performance a practical guide to leading and managing people phần 3 pdf

you think because you know that you are right and they are wrong.
Let’s see how this dialogue might progress from here.
But, we’ve put in more than four months of training on the system we’ve got.
People have got used to it and won’t want to change again so quickly.
I don’t agree. We’ve got to keep pace with change. If people don’t like
it, they’ll just have to lump it.
I think we need to carry people with us, not ride roughshod over them.
Well, if they’re not with us, they’re against us and no one’s irreplace-
able you know.
Well, I think you’re wrong, our staff are vital to this organization and
I’m not going to support your suggestion.
Look, you’re missing the point here. If we don’t get this new system in
place soon, we’ll all be out of a job in [interruption] . . .
And you don’t appear to understand that blah-blah-blah . . .
Thus we can see that the first answer is confrontational and this
dialogue will continue on its merry way until one or both people lose
their tempers. The second answer represents the widely used, ‘Yes, but
’ approach. Let’s see how this dialogue might progress.
But, we’ve put in more than four months of training on the system we’ve got.
People have got used to it and won’t want to change again so quickly.
I hear what you’re saying, but surely it will benefit us all in the long
run if we move to the new system now. We’ve got to keep pace with
change, you know.
Yes, but if you put our staff offside they may start leaving and then
we’ll have real problems.
Yes, but we’ll have even more problems if we don’t keep pace with
change.
Yes, but not as big as the problems we’ll have if staff starting leaving.
Yes, but blah-blah-blah . . .
Like the first dialogue, this one will continue until one or both people
lose their tempers. Although it appears to be polite, ‘Yes, but . . .’ is a

102 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
façade. It actually means ‘I still don’t agree with a word you are saying,
you moron, so why don’t you shut up and listen to my ideas?’ ‘Yes, but
’ conversations invariably lead to people digging their heels in and
defending their original positions more and more vigorously. There
will of course be many occasions when ‘but’ is an entirely appropriate
word to use in conversations. However, if used repetitively in this fash-
ion it will drive people further and further apart, they will listen less
and less to the other person and no resolution will be reached. Let’s see
how the dialogue using the third answer might progress.
But, we’ve put in more than four months of training on the system we’ve got.
People have got used to it and won’t want to change again so quickly.
I see. You’re concerned that moving to the new system would cause
serious morale problems amongst your staff?
I’m very concerned. I understand why we need the new system, but
I’m really concerned about the effect it will have on our staff in the
short-term.
Well, we have a real problem don’t we? We have to get the new system
in, but it could simply overwhelm people. What would you suggest?
Do we need to implement the new system immediately? If we had a
lead-in time of 2–3 months that would give us time to persuade people
of the need to embrace the new system. If we can offer them some kind
of small financial bonus for any additional training they might need, I
think we could swing this.
That’s possible. It would certainly be better and more cost-effective
than putting people offside by trying to impose it on them now. Why
don’t we come up with a timetable and put this in as a joint recom-
mendation to the Board?
Good idea. I’m glad that we could resolve this so quickly.
(Adapted from Gould and Gould, 1990)

The third answer represents the active listening approach. This is by far
the most effective style, because it shows that, while you may not agree
with someone’s ideas, you take him/her seriously and respect their
point of view. This immediately makes other people less defensive
because you’ve given them an opportunity to let off some steam. This
is vitally important if the other person feels very strongly about their
opinions or ideas. But should we bring emotions and feelings into play
in dialogues with fellow employees? Do we want ‘irrational’ emotions
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 103
cluttering up discussions? In fact, we do. It is a widespread myth that
‘emotions’ lead to irrational behaviour. Irrational behavioural
outcomes, such as anger, are actually caused by the repression of feel-
ings and emotions. When you allow someone to express these, they
will usually calm down and become more rational and open-minded
(and, in this context, recall the role that emotional intelligence can play
in leadership from Chapter 1).
From here, it becomes possible to move forward. To reiterate some of
the points we made earlier, only when others have finished talking
should you take the opportunity to get others to listen to you (winning
an audience). When you reply to them, show them that you have
listened. Accentuate where you agree, but ask questions where you
disagree and instead of saying things like ‘No’, ‘You are wrong’, ‘I
disagree with you’ or ‘Yes, but . . .’, ask ‘Why do you say that?’ or
‘What would happen if we tried this? ‘Is that going to work in these
circumstances?’ People usually have an emotional attachment to their
ideas and opinions. If they feel that they are being attacked for these,
they will fight back or back off resentfully (a direct consequence of the
fight–flight response identified in Chapter 2). Their ideas may well be
bad, but reveal this to them by questioning them, not by contradicting
them. If the ideas being proposed are unworkable, they’ll soon be

buried and there still may be a good innovative idea waiting to be
uncovered. As we will see in Chapter 9, almost every innovative idea
in history was initially dismissed as being ridiculous and/or unwork-
able when it was first proposed.
If you really don’t agree with another person’s point of view, simply
tell them how you feel about it. They cannot deny how you feel about
something, even if they disagree with your ideas. Always look for
compromises early, seeking out ‘Win–Win’ rather than ‘Win–Lose’
solutions. The key is to do this without being aggressive, judgmental,
appeasing or sarcastic. You merely have to stay friendly, be assertive
and tell people how you feel about your proposal and, of equal impor-
tance, use facts and information, rather than opinions or polemic, to
support your position. Last, recognize that sometimes we will be wrong.
Take this on the chin, learn from it and move on. Be man, or woman,
enough to say to someone else, ‘You were right, I can see that now.’
Most people will take this as a compliment and, more importantly, will
see that we are willing to listen to and learn from others, not an arro-
gant know-it-all. The techniques described above are not foolproof and
may not work with really aggressive or toxic individuals, because, as
the American movie director Woody Allen once observed, ‘You can’t
intellectualise with Nazis.’ However, they do work well with most
people, in almost all work situations.
104 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Listen and you learn what makes people tick, you learn their attitudes, you
learn what they think about the work they do and the processes by which
they do that work, you learn what they think about the people who manage
their workplace. When you’ve heard what you need to know to make a
judgement, to make an instructive or constructive contribution, only then
do you open your mouth and say just enough to make the point you want
to make.

(David Parkin et al., Perform Or Else, 1999)
Seek first to understand then to be understood.
(Ancient Chinese saying)
How to spot liars
If ascertaining the truth from employees, suppliers, clients or
customers is an important part of your job, you can also familiarize
yourself with many of the non-verbal signs of lying. According to the
psychologist who analysed the videotapes of Bill ‘Teflon’ Clinton’s
evidence in the Monica Lewinsky hearings during 1998, there are 22 of
these. Interestingly, Clinton actually did believe that oral sex with ‘that
woman’ did not constitute ‘sexual relations’, a belief that was –
allegedly – a product of his Southern upbringing. Signs of lying
include leaning forward, touching or rubbing the nose, lack of direct
eye contact (in most, but not all cultures), eyes dropping down to the
left and right, rubbing the earlobes, folding the arms, crossing the legs,
furrowing the brow, wrinkling the centre of the forehead, sweating,
dilating pupils, forced laughter and indignant childish anger
outbursts. Very few people, most notably actors and politicians, are
able to consciously control their facial expressions and body language.
There are also computer programs that can identify and analyse
‘micro-tics’ that are not detectable by the naked eye (Geary, 2000). If
you think someone is lying to you, the best way to confirm this is not
by confronting them directly, but by asking questions. This is standard
operating procedure in police and military interrogations. Sooner or
later they will either trip themselves up, or give themselves away, by
contradicting something they have already said.
Giving feedback to staff
Another important element of interpersonal communication concerns
the manner in which we give feedback to staff. This comes in two main
forms. The first is the manner in which organizations relay information

to and from their employees. This will be described in the next section
and, in the context of leading and managing change, in Chapter 8. The
second concerns the more formal feedback given to employees at work
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 105
and in performance appraisals. The next self-development exercise is
designed to identify ways of giving feedback to people in one-to-one
situations in a non-emotive and supportive way.
Exercise 3.2
Feedback skills
Below are a series of statements that might be made to employees in response to poor perfor-
mance or their failure to complete a work task. Can you think of less emotional, biased and nega-
tive ways of giving this feedback?
Yii Chern, you are always late to meetings. Your attitude towards punctuality is sloppy.
Sally, your last presentation was a disgrace. Get your act together in future.
Alan, you always seem to be asking me for help with your work. It’s not my job to constantly
help you out. Get a grip on things, OK?
Wee Chong, you are too quiet and introverted to brief your project team properly.
Linda, the way you handled that difficult customer was a bloody disgrace. The next time you do
that you’ll be out on your ear, flogged to within an inch of your life blah, blah, blah.
Is that clear?
What a cock-up! Why can’t you lot do things properly when I tell you to do them?
And, if your boss is giving you a hard time:
You are always on my back and blaming me for doing a poor job. You treat me like a moron and
I never know what I’m supposed to be doing! ◆
Please compare your answers with these:
Yii Chern, you are always late to my meetings. Your attitude towards punc-
tuality is sloppy.
Alternative: ‘Hi Yii Chern. We’ve noticed that you’ve been arriving late
to our last three meetings. Is there a problem?’
Sally, your last presentation was a disgrace. Get your act together in future.

Alternative: ‘Sally, how do you think your presentation went? Would
you like to go over the content of your presentation together before
next week, so that you can do a really good job in front of the group?’
106 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Alan, you always seem to be asking me for help with your work. It’s not my
job to constantly help you out. Get a grip on things, OK?
Alternative: ‘Alan, you seem to need extra help with your work a lot at
the moment. Is everything all right? Would you like to talk with me
about your workload?’
Wee Chong, you are too quiet and introverted to brief your project team prop-
erly.
Alternative: ‘Wee Chong, I was really nervous at first when doing
formal talks in front of my colleagues. I did a course on presentation
skills and found that this gave me great confidence. I’ve got some
information on this in my office. Would you like to borrow this? And
how would you feel about running your presentation by me before you
do the next one?’
Linda, the way you handled that difficult customer was a bloody disgrace. The
next time you do that you’ll be out on your ear/flogged to within an inch of
your life blah, blah, blah.
Alternative: ‘Linda, some customers can be very difficult. Would you
like me to give you some help with handling the difficult ones? When
are you available this week?’
Is that clear?
Alternative: ‘Can you please run that by me in your own words so that
we can make sure that we are in agreement about what needs to be
done?’
What a cock-up! Why can’t you lot do things properly when I tell you to do
them?
Alternative: ‘OK everyone, please tell me calmly what’s happened and

let’s work out how we are going to deal with this problem.’ Conversely,
if they have done a great job, use the old sports coach trick and say,
‘You have done a fantastic job . . .’, don’t take the credit yourself.
You are always on my back and blaming me for doing a poor job. You treat me
like a moron and I never know what I’m supposed to be doing!
Alternative: ‘When you treat me this way I feel demotivated and
confused. Could you please give me clearer guidance on my perfor-
mance so that I can do a better job for you?’
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 107
In summary, feedback should focus on behaviours not personalities
(that is, ‘When you behave like that/do that. . .’, not ‘You are a &@#%!
’). Being aggressive, hectoring and negative does not help anyone
and will turn all reasonable people into resentful monsters. All feed-
back should be given as near as possible to the event (‘Well done –
great job’). Initially focus on the positives and be as constructive as
possible. Be very specific about what you want your staff to do. Try to
avoid vague suggestions such as ‘You should do a bit more prepara-
tion.’ Check that they understand what you have said and ask for their
reactions to your comments (‘What do you feel about this?’). If people
do make mistakes, try to use these as opportunities for learning, not
punishment. Try to replace negative words (‘don’t, ‘can’t’, ‘shouldn’t’
or ‘won’t’) with positive ones (‘do’, ‘can’, ‘should’, ‘will’). The main
problem with negative feedback is that this only tells people what they
should not be doing, not what they ought to be doing. Constantly crit-
icizing staff for mistakes and focusing on errors will reduce feelings of
competence, and undermine motivation and performance. Over a long
period of time this can create a culture of punishment and negativity.
Jointly agree future goals and courses of action and end your discus-
sion with a compliment. In a sports coaching environment, there is
overwhelming evidence that not only does positive feedback enhance

motivation and performance, it produces players who enjoy their sport
more, show greater enthusiasm in coaching sessions and perform
better overall (for example, Carron, 1984; Smith, 1979). The same prin-
ciples apply in a work context. Having said this, the ‘three warnings
and out’ principle has to be applied here. Employees cannot be allowed
to make mistakes indefinitely, and if they cannot learn from their
mistakes they should be moved on and replaced.
Feedback skills checklist
Focus on the positives first.
Focus on behaviours, not personalities.
Be hard on the problem but gentle on the person.
Be descriptive and constructive, not judgmental or evaluative.
Use positive or neutral language.
If you have to be critical, explain where improvements can be made in
the future.
Check that your feedback is understood.
108 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Agree joint courses of action.
Make allowances for the abilities of high, medium and low ability
employees when giving feedback.
Give people a fair go, but apply the three warnings and out principle
when required.
And, remember,
If your employees go away thinking about their behaviour . . . you’ve
succeeded.
If your employees go away thinking about you and your behaviour . . .
you’ve failed.
Exercise 3.3
Accentuating the positive
This is an exercise you can experiment with the next time you’re at work. Try to say nothing

negative and only communicate with your staff or colleagues in words, phrases or questions that
are either neutral or positive for an hour or two. When you have got used to doing this, try to last
half a day, using only words or phrases that are either neutral or positive. Then try to go a whole
day using only words or phrases that are either neutral or positive. ◆
Summary
Exercise 3.4 concludes the first part of our review of communication
skills. As we’ve seen, many managers believe that they are good
communicators and it is other people who lack this important ‘soft’
skill. So the first reason why communication can cause problems
must be that most people are not as good at communicating as they
like to believe they are. The reality is that we can all improve our
communication skills by learning to listen actively to colleagues and
junior staff, by learning strategies to diffuse conflict and anger (see
Chapter 7 for further information on this) and by giving appropriate
feedback to our employees. These basic interpersonal communica-
tion skills also form the basis of formal presentation skills, which
will be reviewed later in this chapter. They also play a pivotal role in
leading organizations, a topic we will look at in the following
section.
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 109
Exercise 3.4
Having read through this section on interpersonal communication, think about how you can trans-
late any new insights you have acquired into your communication strategies in the future.
Insight Strategy to implement this
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. ◆
Communicating from the top

Everyone is talking about communication these days. Any self-respecting
business now has a communication director, a communication department,
a communication policy, a communication culture or turns to a communi-
cation consultancy.
(Heinz Goldman, Communicate to Win, 1995)
In Chapter 1, we saw that leader/managers influence the behaviour,
thoughts and feelings of their followers, by their actions, deeds and
words. Despite rapid advances in communication technologies in
recent years, personal communication is still, by far, the most powerful
medium for leaders to communicate with their followers. Leaders, in
politics and business, still meet to discuss important issues face-to-face;
they do not send emails or have video-conferences with each other. It is
the only way to truly engage with others, and to touch hearts as well as
minds. Through this medium, leader/managers are able to build
bridges and establish relationships with their followers. As we saw
earlier, this requires two-way communication, listening and demon-
strating that they have both heard and understood their followers’
ideas, needs and concerns. Furthermore, employee attitude surveys, in
the USA, the UK and Australia, have revealed that one of the most
consistent complaints that employees have about their jobs is the imbal-
ance between top-down communication and upward communication
in organizations (for example, Trinca, 2000; Trapp, 1996). Many organi-
zations still spend an inordinate amount of time pushing vision and
mission statements, employee newsletters and directives from the top
down, but still fail to listen actively to their own employees. At the same
time, confronted by accelerating change, globalization and intensifying
110 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
competition, many leaders have recognized that effective two-way
communication with employees is becoming a much more important
part of organizational management, and a constructive way to harness

the ideas, commitment and enthusiasm of their staff.
A significant component of effective leadership is communication, and
many transformational leaders do have exceptional communication
skills. They are adept at telling staff who they are, where they are going
and why they are going there. Some of these leaders are, or were,
exceptional storytellers. Throughout history, leaders of all kinds have
used storytelling as a powerful motivational tool, particularly during
times of uncertainty, change and upheaval or in response to crises. The
importance of storytelling in organizational life has been largely over-
looked in the current organizational and leadership literature. In this
section, we will look at how transformational leaders try to engage
with all of their employees, and how some of these have used story-
telling to transform their employees’ behaviours, beliefs and attitudes.
How to communicate with a nation
‘No other President, before or since, has ever so thoroughly occupied
the imagination of the American people. Using the new medium of the
radio, he spoke directly to them, using simple words and everyday analo-
gies, in a series of “fireside chats”, designed not only to educate and
move public opinion forward but also to inspire people to act, making
them participants in a shared drama. People felt like he was talking to
them personally, not to millions of others [ ] Roosevelt purposely limited
his fireside talks to an average of two or three a year, in contrast to the
modern presidential practice of weekly radio addresses. Timed at
dramatic moments, they commanded gigantic audiences, larger than
any other program on the radio, including the biggest prizefights and the
most popular comedy shows.
The novelist Paul Bellow recalls walking down the street on a hot
summer’s day in Chicago while Roosevelt was speaking. Through lit
windows, families could be seen sitting at their kitchen tables or gathered
in the parlour listening to the radio. Under the elm trees, drivers had pulled

over, parking bumper to bumper and turned on their radios to listen to
Roosevelt. They had rolled down their windows and opened the car doors.
Everywhere the same voice. You could follow without missing a single
word as you strolled by. The press conference became another critical tool
in reaching the hearts and minds of the American people. At his very first
conference, he announced that he was suspending the wooden practice
of requiring written questions submitted in advance. He promised to meet
reporters twice a week and, by and large, kept this promise, holding nearly
one thousand press conferences during the course of his presidency.
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 111
112 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Talking in a relaxed style with reporters, he explained complex legislation,
announced appointments and established friendly contact, calling them all
by their first name, teasing them about their hangovers and exuding
warmth. Roosevelt’s accessibility helped explain the paradox that although
80–85 per cent of the newspaper publishers regularly opposed his policies,
his coverage was generally full and fair.’
(Editorial [Time], 1999)
How transformational leaders engage with their followers
In the industrial age, the CEO sat on the top of the hierarchy and didn’t
really have to listen to anybody. In the information age you have to listen to
the ideas of everyone, regardless of where they are in the organization.
(John Sculley, Former CEO, Apple Computer Co., 1992)
In Chapter 1, we observed that transformational leaders seek some-
thing much more than mere unthinking obedience and compliance
from their followers. They are capable of changing their followers’
basic beliefs, values and attitudes in order to get superior levels of
achievement out of them. They lead by virtue of their ability to inspire
devotion and extraordinary effort from their followers. In order to do
this, they have to believe in and trust their employees, and they have

to communicate with their employees on a regular basis. Leaders
throughout history, particularly in the military, have long understood
the operational power of this principle. In modern times, the need to
communicate the value of innovations, products and services quickly
both within the organization and to suppliers, customers and clients is
also becoming much more important. Below are some examples of
transformational leaders who have achieved extraordinary results for
their companies through effective two-way communication (adapted
from Nelson, 1997; Fries, 1997; Adams, 1997; de Pree, 1989; personal
anecdotes).
In the early 1990s, the CEO of Alcatel Bell, John Gossens, flew all 1200
of his managers to a large aircraft hangar and put all of them (not just
section heads) in charge of change in the company. He asked each one
to suggest at least one change they could make to improve their work.
Every manager had to send him a signed letter with their suggestions.
This became known as the ‘Thousand Points of Light Approach’ to
change. While there were successes and failures, the overall results
were spectacular. The 40 best innovations were incorporated into
‘Learning by Experience Workshops’, and company profits have risen
consistently since. Jerre Stead, CEO of the Legert Corporation, places
great emphasis on communication. He estimates that 60 per cent of his
time is taken up with this. Peter West, the former MD of BP (British
Petroleum) in Western Australia, spent ‘at least 50 per cent’ of his time
communicating with his staff. The seven directors of Viking Freight
Systems in California spend about three months each year visiting
their 4000 employees in the company in eight different states. Andy
Grove, founder and Chairman of Intel, holds at least six open forums
at different locations within the company each year, ‘to hear my
employees’ ideas first hand and keep them informed about where the
company is heading’. They have even put the company’s two main

corporate goals ‘Stay at No. 1’ and ’Make the PC it’ inside fortune cook-
ies distributed at the company’s HQ in Sunnyvale, California. Nicki
Lauda, the ex-Formula One driver, and CEO of Lauda airlines, used to
spend about 700 hours a year on his planes, because ‘For me it’s the
easiest way of knowing what’s going on. If you sit in an office you have
three levels of bullshit below you – whenever a story comes through,
it’s completely different to how a passenger sees it.’
After Paul Anderson joined BHP-Billiton in December 1998, he spent
his first 90 days visiting all of the company’s operations throughout the
world. He held management forums and shop-floor breakfast meet-
ings with employees, organized symposia with investors and held
numerous press interviews. Then he completely revamped top-level
reporting systems to shorten lines of communication across and up and
down the whole of BHP-Billiton’s organizational structure. Under his
astute leadership, the company was transformed from a potential
basket case into an international behemoth. After a successful four
years at the helm, he made these comments when he left the company
in June 2002: ‘The Al Dunlap approach would have been to come in
and fire everybody . . . [in] senior management, because obviously the
place wouldn’t have been in such a mess if any of them had a lick of
sense. The other approach was to think that these people were basically
good and capable, but lacking a bit of direction . . . and that’s what I
found when I got there. I asked each of my managers two questions:
what do you do, and what would you do if you were me? The inter-
esting thing is, nothing took place in the next two years that wasn’t on
those pieces of paper’ (abridged from Bachelard, 2002).
When the US company, Herman Miller, introduced an employee
suggestion scheme in the 1980s, this led to savings of three million
dollars a year (or about $US3000 per day per employee). All staff who
have worked there for a year own company stock, and so benefit

directly from bottom-line improvements in the company’s profitabil-
ity. Ben Edwards, the CEO of stock brokerage firm Edwards and Son
in St Louis, conducts a nationwide real-time speakerphone meeting
every Friday with his staff to answer their queries and get ideas for
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 113
improvements direct from his employees. During the 1990s, Noel
Goutard, the former CEO of the French auto parts maker Valeo,
expected all his employees to make at least ten suggestions for quality
and process improvements each year. On average, his senior manage-
ment team received 25 000 a year. Employees who suggested the best
ones received performance bonuses linked to the success of these
improvements. Lincoln Electric, in Cleveland, generates more than 200
new ideas every month from its employees. These are linked to profit
sharing. Preston Trucking, in Maryland, receives more than 8000
suggestions a year from its employees – these too are linked to profit
sharing.
Sam Walton, the legendary founder of Wal-Mart, often wandered into
his stores to chat with his employees, discuss service and product qual-
ity with customers, and often dropped in unannounced on the
company’s suppliers. He was renowned for giving off-the-cuff talks
over store announcement systems, talking about how the company
was doing and new initiatives. Wherever he went, he conveyed simple
mantras: the customer is at the centre of what we do, and you should
be proud both of what you do and the contribution you make to the
success of the company. Unusually for a leader of his generation, he
also listened to his employees and often took on board suggestions
they had for improving value to the customer, as well as any gripes
they had about the company or its senior management. His presence
often had a galvanizing effect on staff, because of the simple fact that
he bothered to visit and mix with his employees on a regular basis,

something that few leaders of his time would have bothered to do. His
legacy lives on in the company, where senior management continues to
utilize his hands-on philosophy. In 2003, Wal-Mart became the biggest
publicly listed company in the USA.
Upward communication is also vital for promoting innovation and
change. Among the dozens of examples that could be used to illustrate
this point is the story of Dow Chemicals. Ken Wilson, an engineer at
Dow, was asked to help run a contest to improve energy performance
at the company. For 12 years, between 1981 and 1993, he organized a
contest among the Louisiana Division’s 2400 staff – never going higher
than supervisor level – to suggest projects that could save energy or
reduce waste. The results were staggering. Of the 575 projects that
were audited, the average return on investment (ROI) was 202 per cent
a year, with total savings amounting to $US110 million a year. Even in
the tenth year of the project, nearly 700 projects later, the 109 winning
projects averaged a 305 per cent ROI. In the final year of the contest,
the year that Wilson retired, 140 projects had delivered an average of
298 per cent ROI. Employees were rewarded through a company
114 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
recognition ceremony and a profit-sharing scheme tied to each
employee’s pay deal (abridged from Fries, 1997).
Ever wondered why the main fuel tank on the Shuttle is a grubby-look-
ing brown colour, and not the pristine white of the booster rockets? In
the early 1980s, NASA was confronted with a seemingly insurmount-
able problem; the Shuttle was 800 pounds overweight and there
seemed to be no way of reducing this to the required launch weight.
After months of considering major re-engineering options, and the use
of increasingly exotic light construction materials, a line worker
observed that the total weight of the paint used on the huge fuel-tank,
supplied by Lockheed Martin, was almost exactly 800 pounds. The

decision was quickly taken to leave the tank unpainted – an already
expensive piece of kit that is in use for just eight minutes during shut-
tle flights and which then gets dropped into the Indian Ocean as waste
by-product.
Over the last decade, leaders of many cutting-edge companies have
introduced more formal communication strategies to improve commu-
nication up, down, across and outside their organizations. These
include suggestion boxes, consultative councils, quality teams, focus
groups, speak-up systems, employee participation groups, 360 feed-
back, upward communication systems, staff attitude surveys and
customer liaison systems. The range of options is huge and no
company these days really has any excuse for not listening to and
rewarding the ideas of all their employees. Com Corporation, in the
USA, even replaced suggestion boxes with ‘screw-up boxes’ in the
1990s where junior staff could point out senior management failings.
Senior managers had to respond to these within one month. These
forms of organizational communication also play a pivotal role in the
management of change, innovation, organizational learning and
knowledge management, topics we will return to in later chapters.
In some companies, the importance of communication as a strategic
tool has become ingrained in their cultures and people management
policies. Sir Jack Cohen, the former CEO of the Tesco supermarket
chain in the UK, was fond of saying that a leader could not lead by
being a SOYA Bean (Sitting On Your Arse). In Microsoft, this is
referred to as MBCAL (Management By Communicating A Lot). In the
Body Shop this is known as DODGI (the Department Of Damn Good
Ideas) and, most notably, in Hewlett-Packard, as MBWA
(Management By Wandering About), a source of some amusement to
the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams. However, even this often-mocked
HP practice still has many supporters. For example, Chuck Goodyear,

who took over at the helm of BHP-Billiton in January 2003, was asked
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 115
in an interview, ‘How would you describe your management style?’
He replied,
It’s really management by walking around. I think that if you get to see the
people that day-to-day are doing the job you have a much better sense of
what’s going on. I think you’re providing more motivation to these people
because they recognise that there’s not six layers of management between
them and, in this case, the chief executive. It’s their work that is being
presented and they are there to defend it. You often find that people doing
the work are the ones who are best able to answer the questions.
(Durie, 2003: 32)
Last, but not least, effective communication with customers and clients
is also essential. For example, a 1999 survey, conducted by the Forum
Corporation in Australia, analysed the reasons why 14 manufacturing
and service companies lost commercial customers. It found that 15 per
cent left because of quality problems; 15 per cent left because of price;
20 per cent left because of lack of contact and individual attention; and
50 per cent left because contact from the suppliers’ personnel was poor.
In other words, communication problems were given as the main
reason why 70 per cent of these companies’ customers and clients left
them (www.forum.com, 20 April 1999). In a similar vein, Ford’s
unwillingness to quickly admit responsibility and communicate with
disgruntled customers and car dealers about the exploding
Bridgestone/Firestone tyres on Explorer and Ranger four-wheel-drive
vehicles in the mid-to-late 1990s led directly to the sacking of Jacques
Nasser as CEO in 2001, and the termination of the 100-year business
relationship between Ford and Firestone that began in 1897. Nasser’s
performance at this time was universally criticized, in particular his
apparent lack of concern for the dealers and customers who had been

affected, or even the 174 people who had died as a direct result of these
vehicles being fitted with inappropriate tyres. One commentator
described him as ‘a combination of Al Gore and Crocodile Dundee’,
with ‘formal syntax and thick Australian accent’, who failed one of the
true tests of leadership – to be very visible and to be seen to be taking
responsibility when major crises occur (Taylor, 2000: 52).
If I had a single piece of advice for leaders of organizations, it would be to
communicate, communicate and communicate with all your staff and,
when you’ve done that, communicate some more.
(Tom Peters during a talk to the Institute of Directors, Centre Point, London, June
1990)
Leaders as storytellers
An important, and often hidden, part of the communication repertoire of
the leaders described in the last section is the ancient art of storytelling.
116 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Storytelling has been part of the fabric of human life from the time our
ancient ancestors sat around fires in caves to the present day, and has
been an integral feature of every human culture and civilization
throughout history. It has been an important element of the human
experience for millennia, dealing with issues of self-identity, group
membership, the past and the future, and good and evil. From early
childhood to adulthood, stories are an important means of learning
and communication. As children, our parents read fairytales and other
stories to us as both a form of entertainment and as a way of learning
about morality, culture and acceptable standards of behaviour and
conduct. They also strengthen the parent–child bond. By the age of
five, young children all over the world have become consumers and
creators of stories. Listening to stories, and learning from these, is an
aptitude we acquire at an early age and remains an important method
of learning throughout life. Even in adulthood they can be used to help

us (re)define who we are, why we are here, the goals we aspire to and
our roles in life. Stories are still used widely as teaching and entertain-
ment devices. Stories also act as both mirrors and windows on the
human experience, showing people either how to look at reality or how
to look at reality in a different way (Edwards and Sienkewicz, 1994).
Throughout history, political and religious leaders have utilized story-
telling. They have created characters, settings and events to convey a
particular perspective or world-view. The leaders of early civilizations,
such as the Indus Valley civilization, the Incas, the Greeks and the
Romans, constructed mythologies within which issues of life and
death, the physical and the spiritual world and individual and group
identity were explored. Religious leaders such as Jesus Christ, Buddha
and Mohammed were storytellers par excellence. These long traditions
of storytelling have enabled human beings to make sense of the world
that surrounds them, and their place in it, for millennia. For most of
human history, the oral tradition was the only medium used by human
beings when communicating a particular viewpoint, idea or vision of
life. Even early written works such as the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the
Norse Vedic myths, the Greek epics of The Iliad and The Odyssey were
textual works based on rich oral histories dating back to at least 5000
BCE
. The performances of Japanese serial stories in Kodan theatres, the
oral histories of American folk preachers, African–American folk-
histories, Aboriginal dream times, Maori rituals of encounter and the
oral epic Sunjata performed in parts of West Africa, have all utilized
narrative stories to communicate information (Kaye, 1996; Gardner,
1995).
These all served essentially the same function: to make sense of
cultural, philosophical or spiritual questions, and to give people a
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 117

sense of who they were and what they might become. Influential lead-
ers in all cultures have used different types of stories (inspirational,
motivational, directional, instructional, spiritual and philosophical) in
order to change the way their followers looked at the world. They
narrated stories about themselves and their groups, about where they
have come from and where they are headed; about what was to be
feared, overcome and dreamt about. These leaders have also been
adept at taking narratives that have lain dormant in the population and
brought renewed attention or a fresh twist to those stories. Through
such stories visionary leaders have been able to engage with their
followers and inspire people to action. For example, the ideas of Martin
Luther King Jnr. spread with amazing rapidity, because he was able to
engage in a particularly intimate way with the fears, hopes and aspira-
tions of most African–Americans during the 1950s and 1960s. His
speeches and writings made extensive use of his audiences’ familiarity
with stories about the founding fathers of America (‘All men are born
equal’) and biblical mythologies (‘The promised land’). His most
famous and influential speech, revolving around the simple mantra, ‘I
have a dream’, lasted less than ten minutes, but its worldwide impact
was enormous and the sentiments it expressed still resonate today. In
another context, Mahatma Gandhi also drew from religious and
cultural stories in developing his own vision of satyagraha (non-violent
resistance). He also embodied this vision and ‘walked the talk’, by
never resorting to violence in his struggle against British imperial rule
in the 1930s and 1940s.
Storytelling in organizational settings
Whilst storytelling has been widely used by leaders throughout
history, its role in contemporary organizational life has received
limited attention. This is surprising because it has been an indispens-
able element of human communication for millennia. Stories are a rich

communication medium that can be used to convey complex ideas in
ways that are more likely to be understood and remembered, and most
importantly, can be used to appeal to both the hearts and minds of
followers. Storytelling can also help to ‘frame’ and ‘reframe’ the big
picture and communicate it to different groups within organizations.
They can also convey the company’s desired objectives and culture in
forms that are more likely to be understood and remembered.
Furthermore, organizations now function within an increasingly
complex and uncertain world. Leaders have to be able to make sense of
this fast-changing world and convey this to their employees. Through
their words and actions they can influence the behaviours, thoughts
and feelings of their followers. This can only be achieved by creating
118 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
evocative mental pictures that help employees discover who they are,
where they are now and where they should be heading. To be truly
effective, leaders should not only communicate stories, but should
embody them in their actions (Hönig-Haftel, 1996; Kaye, 1996; Young
and Post, 1993).
One of the best-known stories of the importance of storytelling in
communicating a new vision surrounds the genesis and development
of the Sony Walkman in the 1970s. The man who co-founded and
helped to build Sony into the global corporation it is today, Akio
Morita, once said, ‘I had a very clear vision of its potential. But, I do not
believe that any amount of market research could have told us that the
Sony Walkman would have been successful.’ He sold the idea of the
Walkman (originally conceived by the company’s co-founder Masura
Ibuka) to sceptical colleagues by narrating the story of two shoe sales-
men sent by their companies into the jungle. The first salesman, having
surveyed the local population and market potential, sent a letter back
to his company reporting, ‘None of the natives wear shoes. There is no

market for our products here. I’m returning home on the next flight.’
The second salesman, having surveyed the local population and
market potential, rushed back to his hotel, telephoned his boss and
said, ‘None of the natives wear shoes. We can clean up the market here.
Please send all available stocks and as many salesmen as you can
muster.’ In other words, Morita was saying, ‘Don’t limit your horizons
to common-sense frameworks of understanding and always look for
the potential for new products and services.’ His colleagues were
convinced and the rest, in the old cliché, is history.
Another example of the role of storytelling can be found in Industrial
Light and Magic, the company that created the visual effects for the
movies Toy Story and Forrest Gump. Durrance tells this story about Gail
Currey, who headed ILM’s Digital Division. She regularly drew on her
company’s legendary accomplishments to help rally her troops
through difficult moments on complex and demanding projects:
‘All of our Oscars have stories attached,’ she says. So when the going gets
tough, Currey gets up in front of her three hundred grumbling geniuses and
says, ‘Remember when we did Gump, how at first nobody thought it could
be done? And how impossible it became, how hard we worked, and how
great it was that we did it?’ Then, the geniuses float back to their computers
on a wave of confidence to pull off yet another miracle and add another
page to the corporate myth. The stories that form the glue that hold a
company together don’t have to be heroic.
(Durrance, 1997: 29)
Wilkins (1984) describes stories as ‘social maps’, meaning that can they
chart the way and give meaning to what goes on in an organization by
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 119
illustrating ‘how things are done around here’. Two examples of these
are cited by Boje (1991). The first one describes ‘Nurse Bryan’s Rule’, a
story that enriched understanding of patient care in the hospital where

it was told, and also came to represent organizational shorthand for the
way all patients should be treated:
A new hospital administrator, holding his first staff meeting, thought that a
rather difficult matter had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction, when one
of the participants suddenly asked, ‘Would this have satisfied Nurse
Bryan?’ At once the argument started all over and did not subside until a
new and much more ambitious solution to the problem had been
hammered out. Nurse Bryan, the administrator learned, had been a long-
serving nurse at the hospital. She was not particularly distinguished, had
not in fact ever been a supervisor. But whenever a decision on patient care
came up on her floor, Nurse Bryan would ask, ‘Are we doing the best we
can do to help this patient?’ Patients on Nurse Bryan’s floor did better and
recovered faster. Gradually, over the years, the whole hospital had learned
to adopt what came to be known as ‘Nurse Bryan’s Rule’. This story is an
excellent example of an unwritten commitment to ‘doing what is best for
the patient’ which focused staff minds on the best way of doing things in
keeping with the hospital’s core values.
(Boje, 1991:110)
The second example he cites is the use of a story to communicate
complex or abstract concepts in a more appealing way:
Let’s say you’re at a staff meeting to present the company’s strategic plan.
If someone says we’re going to take the business from $US two million to
$US twenty million in five years that may or may not make employees feel
a connection to the goals of the company. Or, if I want to ask people to get
more involved in the volunteer program we provide, I can say I want to
move from 40 per cent to 80 per cent participation. But that’s only me speak-
ing. If, however, you tell stories about bringing a better product to the
marketplace and how that serves the well-being of another person, or if you
instead ask someone who is doing volunteer work to tell about the role that
he or she is playing in the community and what that means to him or her,

then everyone connects around the humanity of the story. It moves commu-
nication from the heads of the company to the hearts of the company.
(Boje, 1991: 116)
Some of the best-known examples of the use of mythology and story-
telling in organizational communication are associated with the
American company Hewlett-Packard (HP). While many computer
companies struggled in the late 1980s and early 1990s, HP enjoyed the
most successful decade in its history. It rose from relative obscurity to
become sixth-largest company of its type in the world. It was the only
major computer company to remain in profit during the last world
recession. It also enjoyed a long-standing reputation of being one of the
most benevolent and forward-thinking employers of the postwar
years. Why was this company so successful? The answer may well lie
in the management of its corporate culture. During the early years of
HP, its founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard developed a number
120 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
of management concepts and attributes that evolved into a directing
set of corporate objectives and a business style known as ‘The HP Way’
(Forster, 2002).
These were first put into writing in 1957 as part of the company’s
strategic objectives. With minor modifications, they remained the most
fundamental and active guiding forces at HP for more than 40 years.
The HP Way effectively represented a formal statement of HP’s corpo-
rate culture (Packard, 1996). One of the most important methods of
conveying HP’s culture was through the telling of company stories.
These helped to clarify, as well as communicate, the values and atti-
tudes that were important to the company. These stories also had an
important symbolic function when describing important historical
moments in the company’s history or exemplifying company role
models and heroes. At HP some of the most common stories known by

employees concerned the following:
• How Bill and Dave (as Hewlett and Packard were always referred to
by HP employees) started the company with a $US538 loan in the
garage behind the Packards’ rented house in 1937.
Messages: from small seeds, great trees can grow. Be entrepreneur-
ial in your thinking. Don’t borrow more than you can afford to fund
your enterprise.
• How they called their first instrument the 91200A19, so that poten-
tial clients would not know they were just starting out and would
not be afraid of doing business with a small, unknown company.
Message:think big and create a positive image with potential new
customers.
• How the ‘Call to Coffee’, announced by a bell chime in all HP
offices, originated when Dave Packard’s wife rigged up a bell in the
garage they worked in to let them know when meals were ready.
Message: we encourage socialization and communication with
fellow employees.
• How they made their first big breakthrough by supplying some of
the technical wizardry for Disney’s Fantasia in 1939.
Message: innovation and cutting-edge thinking are core competen-
cies in this company.
• How during the 1970s business downturn, when companies across
the USA were laying off employees, every employee at HP took a 10
per cent pay-cut and took every other Friday off to prevent any lay-
offs.
Messages: we genuinely care about our employees’ welfare and job
security. We make sacrifices together when we encounter difficulties.
• In the early days of the company, Bill Hewlett tried to get into a
supply room to get some equipment. He found it locked after
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 121

normal working hours. Unable to find a key, he broke into the locker
with a bolt cutter. He then left a note indicating that all such rooms
were to be left unlocked in future. This has remained standard prac-
tice in HP since.
Message: we trust our employees not to steal company equipment
from us.
• How new recruits to the company often hear about the time when
Dave Packard awarded a ‘Medal of Defiance’ to house-engineer
Chuck House in the late 1970s. This was awarded because House
had persisted in working on a new monitor despite being told to
drop it by Packard. This monitor became a huge commercial success
in the 1980s. Today, all HP staff still look for ways to introduce new
ideas before senior management tell them what they should not be
doing.
Message: we encourage independence of thought and innovative
thinking – even if senior management don’t agree with your ideas.
These and other illustrative stories were not only used during
employee induction and development sessions, but were repeated in
many different circumstances on a continuing basis. They were used in
staff training workshops, recalled during management meetings and
retirement parties, and were incorporated into reminiscences in
speeches and letters from Bill and Dave and other company leaders.
Furthermore, these were stories that were told throughout HP’s global
operations. When Collins and Porras were doing their research on
long-lasting visionary companies, they found one hundred docu-
mented instances of HP managers talking about HP’s values and objec-
tives – in external speeches, internal talks, in individual conversations
and in company documents. They also encountered dozens of ‘Bill and
Dave’ stories during the time they spent with HP (Collins and Porras,
1996: 211).

In a very different organizational context, Lee Iacocca was able to
convey an important message to his employees by leading through
personal example, during his struggle to take Chrysler from near-
bankruptcy to profitability in the 1970s and 1980s. He did this by
announcing that he was going to pay himself a symbolic salary of one
dollar for 12 months. Despite the fact that his previous annual salary
had been $US360 000, and his pay-cut only lasted a year, this became a
story that spread very rapidly throughout the organization and acted
as a powerful catalyst for change. The story enabled him to win conces-
sions from all of his employees (including very suspicious labour
unions) through what Iacocca called ‘equality of sacrifice’. As he
observed at the time, ‘although my reduced salary didn’t mean we had
to skip any meals, it still made a big statement in Detroit. It showed
122 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
that we were all in this together. It showed that we could only survive
if each of us tightened our belt. It was a dramatic gesture, and word of
it got around very quickly’ (Iacocca, 1988: 242).
Another example of how a story was used in another struggling US car
company, Ford, to create a picture of a better world is recounted by
Austin (1995: 18):
At a meeting of 300 Ford managers in Detroit, held after the company
announced changes that would significantly alter the way its cars are built
and how its employees work together, a senior executive told a story about
Willie B., a majestic silverback gorilla who for 27 years had lived in isolation
in a dismal bunker at the Atlanta Zoo. The executive had helped raise
money for a new, state-of-the-art habitat, where Willie B., for the first time
in his life, would regularly feel the sun on his shoulders and the rain on his
head. But it took him several days of venturing a few small, tentative steps
at a time to fully explore his new domain. A photographer caught the
moment when the gorilla gingerly tested the grass with a toe, and the

portrait hangs in the executive’s office today. ‘It’s there to remind me that
no matter how attractive the new surroundings might appear, it takes time
and courage to leave the comfortable security of a place – even an ugly,
cramped space – that you know well.’
The Body Shop is another company that has used storytelling in an
active way since it was created. The company’s founder, Anita
Roddick, has long espoused clear values of care for the environment,
equal opportunities, concern for human rights and opposition to
animal exploitation. In her first autobiography in 1992, Body and Soul,
she recounts, in story-like fashion, her life journey in creating the Body
Shop and the development of her values and ethical management
philosophy. Every Body Shop stocks the book. Roddick was a leader
who used storytelling in a positive way to lead her organization and to
sell its products:
I still see story-telling as a major component of communication within the
Body Shop, both stories about products and stories about the organization.
Stories about how and where we find the ingredients bring meaning to our
essentially meaningless products, while stories about the company bind
and preserve our history and our common sense of purpose. We realised
that we need to learn more from our own storytellers within the company,
because the penalty for failing to listen to stories is to lose our history, and
the values we seek to promote. As we have grown, the stories that have
been told and re-told about the company have entered the chronicles of the
company.
(Roddick: 2000: 80)
Summary
Through stories we gain a deeper understanding of our relationships
with the people around us, whether in the workplace, the home, or
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 123
with our friends and acquaintances. More importantly, the use of

stories can significantly influence thinking, attitudes and behaviour.
Through stories, employees come to know what is important about the
work they do and why they are doing it. Stories bring key individuals
(heroes) to life. Some highlight myths and/or significant real-life
events that have shaped a company’s fortunes. Others emphasize ritu-
als and ceremonies. Organizational leaders can use storytelling to paint
the big picture, to teach new management values and to change their
companies’ cultures (see Chapter 8 for an example of this). Memorable
stories can act as potent culture change mechanisms, because they can
encourage behavioural and attitudinal mind-shifts. In Chapter 1, we
saw that leaders are, in effect, people who interpret reality and explain
this to their followers and, when necessary, reshape and remould their
employees’ perceptions of reality. So, if a leader can make important
points in a consistent and memorable way by using memorable and
engaging stories, then – over time – their followers will listen, because
it is only through these media that emotional connections can be made.
Effective leaders have long known the value of connective symbolism
in directing the efforts of their followers, and storytelling is one of the
few media through which symbolic and emotional connections can be
made.
The long history of storytelling shows us that it has always been
central to the human experience and to our ancestors’ ability to
survive and adapt to new circumstances. History is rich with exam-
ples of leaders who inspired others to higher levels of performance, or
encouraged their followers to look at themselves and their environ-
ments in a different way. Churchill, Gandhi and Martin Luther King
are examples of political leaders who achieved this. In business, Akio
Morita, Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Steve
Jobs and Andy Grove are all examples of leaders who have under-
stood the power of storytelling. History is also full of examples of

what happens to leaders who lose sight of the importance of symbol-
ism and the ability to manage this through evocative language. Sooner
or later, they always lose their grip on power. A manager who is inca-
pable of storytelling may never hope to aspire to senior leadership
roles, so it is a skill worth developing and, like other communication
skills, it can be developed through self-learning. Kaye has even
suggested that organizations that don’t utilize storytelling are, in
effect, not communicating with their staff and, if people aren’t
communicating, then the organization will eventually fall apart (Kaye,
1996: 49). Of course, while important, storytelling alone will never
make anyone an inspirational and engaging communicator. This
requires high-level formal presentation skills, which are reviewed in
the next section.
124 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Exercise 3.5
Having read through ‘Communicating from the top’ and ‘Leaders as storytellers’, think about how
you can translate the insights you have acquired into your organizational communication strate-
gies in the future.
Insight Strategy to implement this
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. ◆
Formal communication skills
Once upon a time there was a very inexperienced junior lecturer, who
was about to deliver his first lecture to 150 second-year business
students, in a very large auditorium, with steep banked rows of seats
running as far back as the eye could see. He was more than nervous; he
was terrified, with a very dry mouth and, at times, visibly shaking.

After getting the assembled mob quiet, he then proceeded to commit
all the cardinal sins of public speaking. He was incoherent, he
mumbled, he was monotone in delivery, he ‘ummed’, ‘aahed’ and
‘okeyed’ all the way through, he talked far too quickly and, in pre-
PowerPoint days, used a ridiculous quantity of overhead slides (most
with plenty of words on them). His students had to suffer this for the
next six weeks, two hours at a time on Friday afternoons. Soon after the
end of the semester, his teaching evaluations arrived. Not surprisingly,
many of the students thought he was an awful lecturer. On the reverse
side of their evaluation sheets, the students had the opportunity to add
personal comments and feedback. Under the heading, ‘How would
you improve this course?’, were helpful comments like, ‘Shoot the
lecturer’ and ‘Bring back hanging’. Under the heading, ‘What did you
most like about this course?’ were ‘Thank God it’s Friday’, ‘Knowing I
won’t have to study this ***** ever again’ and ‘Going to the Happy
Hour in the Union bar afterwards to recover’.
You’ll have guessed that the person being described here is the author
of this book (who stills remembers this experience with a shudder).
COMMUNICATION AT WORK 125
But, more than a decade later, I now relish public speaking and also
run presentation skills workshops for managers and professionals. The
reason for sharing this anecdote is to show that no matter how much
we might initially dread public speaking, anyone can learn to become
better at this, and enjoy doing it. For some leaders and managers,
public speaking is a real buzz and, for an elite few, both highly lucra-
tive and something they clearly enjoy. The ex-British prime minister,
Margaret Thatcher, used to charge about $US100 000 a talk, Mikhail
Gorbachov $US100 000 (but he gave most of this to charity), ‘Storming
Norman’ Schwartzkopf, Allied Commander during the first Gulf War,
$US100 000 and ‘Billion Dollar’ Bill Clinton about $US150 000. During

a visit to Australia in February 2002, Clinton earned $US350 000, for
delivering the same speech in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, that he
had earlier presented in the USA, Britain and Israel (Carson, 2002).
Later estimates put his total earnings for public speaking during
2000–2003 at more than 14 million US dollars. The top leadership and
management thinkers of the 1990s, such as Peter Drucker, Charles
Handy and Tom Peters, commanded appearance fees of $US20 000–
40 000 a day.
‘Teflon Bill’
’Joe Klein believes that Clinton’s oratorical strength wasn’t the result of
language skills, but a consequence of his physical presence – “a mirage
of body language”. There was something carnal in the way he embraced
an audience: his face bore “a raw pink fleshiness” that suggested
jogging and junk food, crude energy, unslaked appetites. For all his
unshakable popularity and an approval rating that defied every setback
and scandal – driving Republicans to ever more noxious attitudes of
bafflement and despair – he never found a way to communicate his
larger vision to the American public. He was, Klein believes, a better
public speaker than Ronald Reagan, more comfortable behind the
podium that any President since John Kennedy, yet he created no
memorable rhetoric: he was a great speechmaker who made no great
speeches. Once, when he was addressing Congress, the wrong speech
was posted on the teleprompter. Clinton ad-libbed for 20 minutes while
the right words were found. But even those words weren’t his: they
rarely were.’
Source: Abridged from a review of Joe Klein’s The Natural: The Misunderstood
Presidency of Bill Clinton, in The Weekend Australian, 29–30 June 2002.
When professionals and managers are asked to describe the activities
they most dislike at work, many will point to public speaking in front
of colleagues, bosses, customers and clients, and at conferences, as

126 MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE