In Sophocles’ Antigone,Antigone defies her uncle Creon’s decree to leave her brother unburied; her brother had fought against his homeland and this was his punishment.  Even though her sister, Ismene, implores Antigone not to go against Creon’s edict, Antigone follows a higher law, a law she believes is best for her brother, and buries him.  

I’m reminded of a quote from my father, Warren Bennis, who wrote on leadership: “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing.”  So, Antigone’s sister, Ismene, is like a manager, following fickle orders born of personal vendetta and anger, while Antigone, a leader, does the right thing, the most generous thing. Her actions are for her brother, risking safety to herself. She is generative and generous.

I think of this story when I think of being generative as artists and communicators…Read on.

When Charles and Elizabeth Handy were a young couple, they lived in Malaysia where Charles worked for an oil company.

He was doing everything “right”—married, a stable job, with plans for children, a house, the whole package.

One day, his canny and remarkable wife, Elizabeth asked him a few questions he had never asked himself:

• Are you genuinely happy?

• Do you love your work? Are you proud of what you do?

• Is our marriage together what you dreamed of?

To each question Charles answered, “It’s OK.”

Liz would have none of that. She knew...Read on.

Great leaders compel others to struggle together towards a shared vision.

Great leaders work for the good of others; mostly, for those who have the least power.

Therefore, great leaders must be great communicators.

Politicians and those in the public eye often have a team of advisors who prepare them for debates, press conferences, media interviews, and speeches. These advisors focus on things like strategy, speech writing, and talking points. When I work on such a team, my job is to make sure that the speaker’s message is congruent with the speaker’s delivery. I focus on how the content is performed through expression, gesture, body-language, and voice.

Any of you following this blog know that my work with clients is not prescriptive; rather, our work focuses on freeing the speaker to be their full selves—alive, powerful, at ease, appropriate, and riveting. Rather than using a list of rules (“stand like this,” “don’t do that,” “lean in here”), we work towards…Read on

Many speakers come to me with a written text that they plan and hope to memorize. The first thing I do is take away the script and ask them to give me the talk right then and there without notes. Off the top of their head. I want to break up that love affair with their text as soon as possible. A memorized talk can be a barrier between the speaker and audience; the speaker’s focus remains on themselves and their text, remembering or forgetting certain lines and phrases. We then begin the work of deconstructing the talk back to what inspired it, reconnecting with its purpose and rhythms to get the speaker back to a sense of aliveness in delivery.

Exceptions to the Rule

Once in a great while, there are talks which invite or even demand word-for-word memorization. These talks are crafted, each word chosen, phrase-by-phrase, the words creating a melody. Maybe the speaker is a poet or spoken-word performer. Maybe the speaker is a writer who knows that the truest way to share what they’ve found, seen, felt, is with this exact language, punctuation, and orchestration; the exact word is the only word.

In these rare cases, the speaker spends weeks, hours, days, reciting until… Read on.