Dramatic Techniques to Reach Out, Motivate, and Inspire

Leadership Presence
by Kathy Lubar, Belle Linda Halpern

For more than a decade, Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar have applied the lessons and expertise they have learned as performing artists to the work of their company, The Ariel Group. Halpern and Lubar have helped tens of thousands of executives at major companies around the country and the globe - including General Electric, Mobil Oil, Capital One, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. In Leadership Presence, they make their time-tested strategies available to everyone, from high-profile CEOs to young professionals seeking promotion. Their practical, proven approach will enable you to develop the skills necessary to inspire confidence, command respect, build credibility, and motivate others.

Executive presence is so important to our success as consultants. I believed if our consultants could speak with clarity and confidence if they could find their voice then they would show up as credible advisors, capable of assisting our clients with their most challenging problems. Your impact went much deeper than that. With your guidance, we worked on our connections to each other, on making vulnerability safe, and most of all, on being authentic in whatever roles we played as consultants and leaders. We moved from playing our roles to being those roles.

Judi Rosen, then Managing Director, CSC Index Eastern Region

WE FOUNDED THE ARIEL GROUP IN 1993, AND IF YOU'D ASKED US hen what we were doing, we'd have said we were teaching leaders to be better communicators. We thought the skills and techniques we'd learned as professional actors and performers would be helpful.

They were, and The Ariel Group prospered. But as we worked with more companies and more leaders, we began to realize that something beyond better communication was going on. The use of dramatic skills and techniques was leading to something richer in the lives of people we worked with.

Two women attending one of our corporate programs for a giant financial services firm had been struggling for months to complete a budget. They couldn't resolve the issues that kept them apart. In our program they did a listening exercise together over lunch. That evening, fueled by their newfound understanding of each other, they put the budget together in less than two hours and sent it off to their boss in London, who happily approved it without change.

Better listening skills? Certainly. But their newfound ability to collaborate went beyond listening. We worked with the executive team of a software company. They were preparing to present an important new strategy in a town meeting for all employees, and they wanted to do it in a way that broke the mold of previous presentations. Rather than the old PowerPoint slide show, they wanted to model a collaborative and cohesive spirit among the executive team, to communicate how the strategy needed to be implemented throughout the company. Not only was the presentation more powerful and creative but, as a result of our work, they told us afterward they had "never before been this cohesive, except during two crises 9/11 when we had a large contingent of people in New York and during a major workforce reduction." Better presentation skills? Of course. But their teamwork inspired the organization too.

We deliver our work as volunteers in a Boston-area program for prison inmates called Houses of Healing. One of the inmates in the program was a man whose street name was Nitro. When he was asked in an exercise to illustrate his life story, he drew a chain of railroad cars climbing a steep mountain. Each car was another event from his life. As he began to describe each car, he dissolved into tears. By the end of the program he'd changed his street name from Nitro to Patience, as he understood, for the first time, that he had the power to create a life for himself beyond drugs and violence.

Greater self-confidence? Yes. But personal transformation too.

As we saw these moments of change, and countless others like them, we began to understand the power of the concepts we were bringing from the theater.

It wasn't just communication. It was about authentic connections between people. The two women making a budget found a way to connect with each other. The executive team making the strategy presentation found ways to connect with company employees in a new way. Nitro found a way to connect with himself and in the process became Patience.

We've found these kinds of transformation everywhere as we've worked with a diversity of private and public organizations. From U.S. Customs officers to senior partners at a major accounting firm, from school teachers to management consultants, from Wall Street financiers to prison inmates. Over thirty thousand senior executives in fourteen countries. We've worked with companies like GE, Mobil, Capital One, Boston Consulting Group, Merrill Lynch, City Year, Jumpstart, and many others.

Our work over the years convinced us that the ability to connect authentically which we call Leadership Presence is crucial if leaders want to motivate and truly inspire their colleagues, their managers, and their clients.

Our understanding of presence comes from our experience on the stage. Both of us have been performers most of our lives. Kathy majored in theater at Stanford and worked as a professional actress for fifteen years. In 1985 she cofounded the New Repertory Theatre in Boston, where for eight years she was a leading actress. Belle, born to a musical family, decided at age fourteen she wanted to be a cabaret singer. After graduating from Harvard-Radcliffe, she trained in voice and theater and performed her one-woman shows all over the world.

When we met in 1992 we had already discovered how useful our stage skills and experience could be to people outside the performing arts. Kathy had taught acting to nonactors at the New Repertory Theatre. Businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and many other professionals filled her popular classes. Week after week they returned with stories of applying with powerful results what they had learned in class to their interaction with coworkers, students, even spouses. Belle had taught successful singing workshops in the United States and Europe for individuals convinced they could not sing. She discovered that conquering the fear of singing liberated her students to conquer fear and doubt in other parts of their lives.

Within a year of meeting we combined our resources and began offering workshops together. A senior manager from Computer Sciences Corporation attended one of our early programs. He came in a skeptic, but at the end he said: "Before taking the workshop, I thought expressing myself fully was an act of self-indulgence. After taking the workshop, I think expressing myself fully is an act of generosity." His comment moved us profoundly then and still inspires us today.

We wrote this book because we feel strongly that by developing the skills of Leadership Presence, by making profound, authentic connections with one another, employees will be more fulfilled, teams will be more motivated, and organizations will be more inspired. The need for Leadership Presence is greater today than ever before, whether it's to lead an organization through difficult economic times, restore trust in an environment of corporate malfeasance, or build consensus among countries. The world won't survive if people can't connect in deep and genuine ways.

We hope you find inspiration in this book that allows you to go beyond standard ways of communicating and helps you connect more generously and authentically with those you lead, your coworkers, your friends, and your family.

Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar

April 2003

Copyright © 2003 by Gail Evans, Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.

About the Author

Kathy Lubar and Belle Linda Halpern, cofounders of The Ariel Group, have instructed more than 30,000 executives from hundreds of companies through their workshops. Lubar is a professional actress and cofounder of Boston's New Repertory Theater.

Belle Halpern performs nationwide as an actress and singer and has taught music students at Harvard University. Both live in the Boston area, where The Ariel Group is based.