by Roger Ailes
QUESTION: (from a small boy) Senator Kennedy, how did you become a war hero?
SENATOR KENNEDY: It was involuntary. They sank my boat.7
REPORTER: Mr. President, have you narrowed your search for a new Postmaster General? Are you seeking a man with a business background or a political background?
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: The search is narrowing, but there are other fields still to be considered, including even a postal background.8
PRESIDENT REAGAN: I’ve been getting some flack about ordering the production of the B-1. How did I know it was an airplane? I thought it was a vitamin for the troops.9
PRESIDENT REAGAN: (to a group of doctors) We’ve made so many advances in my lifetime. For example, I have lived ten years longer than my life expectancy when I was born—a source of great annoyance to many people.10
OTHER POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES
Examples of the Kennedy and Reagan light touch have filled books. But even if you don’t have a good sense of humor, you can still make others comfortable in other ways. You can become known as a person who is trustworthy. You can choose not to engage in gossip or sarcastic remarks about others when they are not present. You can avoid giving phony compliments but, whenever possible, say positive things about others.
You can practice looking more comfortable. Don’t make sharp, jerky moves. At a lectern, don’t rattle your papers. Avoid brushing back or fiddling with your hair, or pulling at your nose. These gestures convey a lack of comfort. Walk casually to the lectern, lay down your papers, place your hands on each side of the lectern, then look at the audience. Maintain your own timetable. If you overreact to the pressure of time, you will appear uncomfortable.
Ronald Reagan’s greatest gift is not his speaking ability but his ability to make others comfortable. One day as we were getting started on his 1984 campaign, a half dozen of us were gathered in an informal meeting at the White House. Our jackets were off, ties askew, sleeves rolled up, coffee cups half empty, and ashtrays full.
Suddenly, without any announcement or fanfare, in strides the President of the United States. Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Leader of the Free World. Well, you never saw a bunch of grown men in repose shoot up faster and attempt to look dignified—with less dignity, I might add. Reagan just smiled, held up his hand as if to say, “Relax, guys,” and breezily said, “Well, I figured as long as you were selling the soap, you might as well get a look at the bar.” He chatted with us for a few minutes about the days when he was in advertising selling Borax and other products.
After fifteen minutes of conversation and banter he announced, with a twinkle in his eyes, “I guess I’d better get out of here before the mystique wears off.” The president shook hands all around and walked out, as casually and self-assuredly as he had come in. The rest of our meeting took on a new sense of energy and purpose, because he had made everyone feel so comfortable.
A HARD CASE
Many of the executives who come to me have the problem of making other people uncomfortable without knowing that they’re doing it, and it’s my job to diagnose the causes and prescribe solutions. The most difficult client I’ve ever worked with was a fellow who simply could not see himself as others did. Everyone disliked him, and he rather liked himself. Actually, that’s not quite true. Some people hated him. Consequently, my job was to explain to him in as diplomatic a manner as possible how people felt about him. This was difficult because I was starting to dislike him myself. I had to show him how and why this was happening, and then help him find some new ways of expressing himself.
His behavior was something like this. If you were talking about something he knew anything at all about, and he disagreed with you, he would curtly cut you off and jump down your throat with “You don’t understand. I’ll have to explain this to you.” Or if you asked him a question that might have been covered in some printed material he’d given you, he would preface his response with “Well, obviously you didn’t read the report I gave you.…” He continually lectured everyone. Even when he thought he was being polite he would begin with “Let me explain this to you.” If he wasn’t interested in what you were saying, he just looked bored and changed the subject. Do you know anyone like that? Have you ever acted like that yourself?
Suddenly it occurred to me to ask him if he’d ever been a teacher. “Yes,” he said, “very early in my career I taught for a couple of semesters.” And then it hit me that this was what was coming out. He was treating everyone as if they were students. The problem was that he was lecturing his peers and other members of the board of directors, who didn’t appreciate being talked to in that manner. I tried to point out to him on videotape how he dealt with his peers and his superiors. Since he always took this lofty attitude, it wasn’t easy to break through to him.
There was more to this man’s problem than the fact that he had been a teacher. Most teachers don’t treat their students in this manner. Psychologists would have a field day discussing his inferiority complex and his need to make himself feel bigger by making other people feel smaller. But my goal was to get him to operate effectively in the workplace. I did suggest that he might talk to a psychologist about why he needed to behave this way. In the meantime, I told him to stop it or, in my opinion, he would be fired. It’s amazing how that statement can get some people’s attention.
I finally said, “You’re either going to have to start your own company, where you can be the supreme boss and behave any way you please, or you’ve got to alter your behavior.”
Ultimately, after many videotape role-playing sessions he was able to change his behavior dramatically. He’s sent me many clients since then, almost all from his senior management.
Once again, the second essential is to make others comfortable. Do you?
THE THIRD ESSENTIAL: BE COMMITTED
Being committed is crucial. Very few people freeze up, unable to speak, when they feel strongly about something. If you come home five nights in a row and your kid’s bike is in the driveway, the first couple of times you mutter under your breath and move the bike. But the fifth time it happens, you say, “All right, that’s it [vocal inflection]. Keep that bike [gesture] out of the driveway or I’m taking it away.” You’re very clear. Everything you may have learned about facial expression, eye contact, body language, and vocal energy come together, and everything clears up automatically with commitment.
That’s why my course for executives avoids the traditional techniques. If you know what you are saying and why you are saying it, and you care about what you are saying, you will say it well! Another important point here is to know when you must do all of this. Know when you have to be good. Whether you’re selling your ideas to the boss, meeting with your peers, or inspiring your troops, you should perform well. Obviously, it’s not necessary 100 percent of the time, but whenever someone else’s opinion of you counts, you’re on. Be yourself—at your best.
Ordinary people become extraordinary communicators when they are fired up with commitment. This happened to Candy Lightner of Fair Oaks, California, after her thirteen-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The driver had been convicted of drunken driving and related offenses three times in four years—each time getting his license back after a slap on the wrist from the courts. Two days before he killed young Cari, the driver was arrested for another hit-and-run while intoxicated. He was released on bail.
Candy Lightner was told by a hard-bitten cop, “Lady, you’ll be lucky if this guy gets any jail time—much less prison.”
Grief-stricken, angry, and frustrated, Candy Lightner became committed to preventing others from being victimized like her daughter.
Although divorced and supporting two other young children, Lightner quit her job and founded Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, or MADD. Completely apolitical until her daughter was killed (“I wasn’t even registered to vote”), Lightner began speaking out—using the force of her commitment—before state and federal lawmakers. She enlisted the
support of many political leaders and, in six years, turned a one-woman crusade into a 600,000-member organization in forty-seven states.
Her conviction has garnered national publicity and led to several initiatives, including court monitoring and victim outreach programs in local communities. Lightner says, “There are so many people who are worse off than I am—people who have lost two children or their whole family. Nobody cares for them, so it’s up to us to be the voice of the victims.”
Another person who isn’t afraid to show his commitment is Lee Iacocca. He was so committed to turning Chrysler around that when he appealed to Congress for help, they believed him and provided the necessary guarantees the company needed to remain in business. In effect, Congress gave those loan guarantees to Iacocca himself, because they believed in his total devotion to the project.
To repeat, the third essential is be committed. What are you committed to? Are you good at showing that commitment to others?
THE FOURTH ESSENTIAL: BE INTERESTING
I meet people every day from every walk of life who are interesting. It’s easier than you think to be interesting. It just takes a little imagination and some pluck. For example, a thin, bespectacled, and studious boy went to college, got good grades, and entered the so-called “dismal science” of economics. Today he is one of the most sought-after and interesting speakers on the lecture circuit. He is Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist. Although economics has a reputation for being a dry subject, it didn’t make Friedman uninteresting.
At the other end of the spectrum, a mousey girl from a poor family in Tennessee decided that when she grew up she had to be famous. Today, we know her as Dolly Parton. She certainly has a distinctive style—part camp and all “country.” Whatever people say about Dolly, she laughs all the way to the bank and jokes, “You’d be surprised how much money it costs to look cheap.”
It’s difficult to be interesting if you’re not committed and vice versa. So these two rules work closely together. No audience (no matter how small or large) will forgive you if you’re boring. On the other hand, very few people have ever been fired for giving a boring speech. That’s folklore in business. Everybody knows this, so they feel safe in getting up and reading their speeches in a boring way and sitting down. Their audiences are bored, and they all know the speaker is bored. But they feel comfortable with an uninteresting 65 delivery because they know that if everybody’s boring, then nobody will stand out. I call this silent collusion the Brotherhood of Boredom. It’s one organization you should avoid joining.
STYLE VERSUS SUBSTANCE
Some business speakers will do almost anything to find a way not to be interesting. There’s a sense among some people in business that style and substance are mutually exclusive. The perception is that if you have style, you must be a lightweight. The same logic says that if you’re going to demonstrate substance, you’ve got to be boring; then the audience will think you’re one of the really bright persons who know what they’re doing. This is the old way of thinking, and the successful people moving up in the workplace today know it. Don’t join the Brotherhood of Boredom—the dues are too high. In today’s world it can cost you a promotion.
Here’s a perfect example of what I mean. One of my clients was a lawyer in the chemical business. He was a nice guy—one of the smartest I’ve ever met in the industry—and totally committed to cleaning up the environment. But when he talked about battling pollution, his voice was low and flat. His eyes and face showed no life force. He barely moved his head and shoulders, and his arms hung lifelessly by his sides. There was nothing in his physical expression to convince you that there was urgency in what he was saying.
All of this was bad enough because it showed very little commitment. Even though he said he felt it in his heart, he didn’t show it in his body language, or voice, or face. However, even worse, he never said anything interesting about his subject.
I told the client that he was talking much too softly, with too little animation. He needed to raise his energy level. And I asked him what his immediate problems were at work. He said he needed to get a 30 percent increase in the environmental budget from his company, but he didn’t think he had the attention of the senior executives, including the CEO. Frankly, I could understand why he didn’t have their attention—because of his manner of presentation.
THE FIVE-MINUTE MANAGER
We came up with an exercise which was essentially this: You’re going to get five minutes of your chief executive officer’s time. Five minutes to get your 30 percent budget increase. You need to demonstrate commitment and be persuasive and get everyone’s attention in that short time. You need to sell—not just tell—your point of view.
This is how he did it, after our rehearsal. He walked into a conference room, sat down, leaned forward on the desk, and said in a crisp, clear voice with solid eye contact, “Many companies like ours pay lip service to environmental cleanup. If we make that mistake, it will cost this company one billion dollars over the next seven years.” Every executive in that room was riveted. The rest of his presentation was similarly direct. He got the budget increase.
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST
You can have substance in a speech—Winston Churchill did, Franklin Roosevelt did, John Kennedy did—and still have a style of delivery that impresses the audience. It’s just plain wrong to think you can’t perform well without being shallow or slick. Some of the best speakers in the country are also some of the best thinkers. Notable examples include two retired but still active corporate chairmen—Walter Wriston of Citicorp and Fletcher Byrom of Koppers. Other examples are Jack Welch of General Electric, Malcolm Forbes, Jr., of Forbes magazine, and Tina Brown of The New Yorker.
You will be interesting if you do what is called “thinking outside the dots.” We all remember that little game of nine dots on a page and having to connect the lines without ever lifting the pencil off the paper. We find that it’s impossible to do until we begin drawing the lines longer than the dots allow; in other words, drawing a line outside the dots allows us to be successful.
We must do the same thing when communicating. Don’t be limited by the so-called parameters of your subject. Think creatively. Think of analogies from fields that you’re not discussing. Think of putting what you’re talking about into historical perspective, or comparing it to something which is familiar to your listeners. In other words, just because your topic is the corporation’s commitment to environmental safety measures doesn’t mean you can’t talk about movies, history, people, or ideas which you can somehow relate to your topic.
According to that excellent columnist James Brady, “The legendary book editor Maxwell Perkins—who worked with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe—was known for always wearing a hat in the office on the theory that, when confronted by a bore, he could escape by saying he was on the way out.”11 If 67 people suddenly throw on their hats when you enter their offices, you might want to start thinking outside the dots more.
Joseph J. Melone, president of The Prudential Insurance Company of America, used an outside-the-dots ending in his remarks at the American College Annual forum in Orlando, Florida, on October 12, 1985:
Everything I’ve ever read suggests that those individuals who are most successful in this world—the ones people really look up to—all say the same thing: the greatest joy in life doesn’t come from wealth or praise or high honors. It comes from achieving something worthwhile—something of lasting value.
The ancient Romans were noted for their achievements in construction. Many Roman arches are still standing. They’ve survived for 2,000 years.
The Romans had an interesting practice. When they finished building an arch, the engineer in charge was expected to stand beneath it when the scaffolding was removed.
If the arch didn’t hold, he was the first to know.
Whatever you choose to build with your life, build it so you—and someday your children’s children�
�can stand beneath it with confidence and pride.12
THE 30 PERCENT SOLUTION
I often tell my clients they should do at least 30 percent of all their reading outside their own field. This will give them perspective and knowledge that will make them more interesting. Another good practice is to stay in touch with popular culture. For example, flip through TV Guide, People, Readers Digest, humourous books or newspaper columns written by people like Russell Baker, Erma Bombeck, and Marvin Kitman, and inflight airline magazines and similar periodicals. Remember or jot down points or stories you can use in conversation and speeches. On an index card you can keep in your wallet, list the key phrases of ten stories that will entertain audiences for the next ten years, because you rarely speak to the same audience twice.
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THE MAGIC BULLET
If you could master one element of personal communications that is more powerful than anything we’ve discussed, it is the quality of being likable. I call it the magic bullet, because if your audience likes you, they’ll forgive just about everything else you do wrong. If they don’t like you, you can hit every rule right on target and it doesn’t matter.