Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott Allen

Kate Bennis - Deeply Heard and Seen

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 239

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Kate Bennis is a professional actor and clinical social worker who draws from the skills and techniques of the theater, therapeutic training, and years of experience, to give her clients everything they need to communicate as their fullest, most perfectly imperfect selves.

Kate’s Presentation and Communication practice is grounded in practicing the skills that give the speaker freedom, agility, creativity, humor, ease, presence, and the ability to connect with their audience.

This work helps clients to bring their most authentic selves to everything from wedding toasts to TED Talks, from political debates to flirting!

A professional actor with over 40 years’ experience in TV, film and stage, Kate has coached senior and mid-level leaders at American Express, AOL, Deloitte and Touche, Apex Clean Energy, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Bank and the CIA; Harvard Business School Executive Education, Columbia University Executive Education, Darden Business School Executive Education, UVa’s McIntire School of Commerce, and University College London.  As the Lead Coach for the Charlottesville TEDx Kate has coached dozens of speakers and overseen the coaching for over 80 TED Talks. While with The Ariel Group Kate delivered trainings around the world, developed training curricula, and served as Director of Outreach.

A licensed clinical social worker, Kate has worked with children and adults in a private practice as well as schools and prisons.

She holds a BA in theater from Wesleyan University, an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work, and lives in Charlottesville with her husband and their two children.

A Quote From This Episode

  • "There was something about just listening and being heard that was so transformative, and that's my first example of my dad as a leader. He was a listener. He listened deeply to every single person without defensiveness and without a preconceived idea. He just was a deep listener."


Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)


About  Scott J. Allen


My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, thank you for checking in wherever you are in the world. You're listening to Phronesis today. Today, I have a very special guest. Her name is Kate Bennis, and you may recognize that last name. She is a professional actor and clinical social worker who draws from the skills and techniques of the theater, therapeutic training, and years of experience to give her clients everything they need to communicate as their fullest, most perfectly imperfect selves. I love that phrasing. Kate's presentation and communication practice is grounded in practicing the skills that give the speaker freedom, agility, creativity, humor, ease, presence, and the ability to connect with their audience. This work helps clients to bring their most authentic selves to everything from wedding toasts, to TED talks, from political debates to flirting. A professional actor with over 40 years of experience in TV, film, and stage, Kate has coached senior and mid-level leaders at American Express, AOL, Deloitte & Touche, Apex Clean Energy, Southern Environmental Law Center, The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve Bank, and the CIA. She has taught in all of the best executive education programs in the world. We're going to go, Harvard; we're going to go Darden at Virginia, we're going to go Columbia University in London. And, you know what? She is the lead coach for the Charlottesville TEDx, and she's coached dozens of speakers and overseen the coaching of over 80 TED Talks. While with Aerial Group, Kate delivered trainings around the world, developed training curricula, and served as Director of Outreach. A licensed clinical social worker, Kate has worked with children and adults in private practice, as well as in schools and prisons. She holds a BA in theater from Wesleyan, an MSW from Smith, and lives in Charlottesville with her husband and their two children. Kate, before we even started, because I know you have this connection to UC, obviously, your father was president of the University of Cincinnati. Literally, as we speak, as we're recording, my son is on a college tour at the University of Cincinnati, so this is fortuitous for us to be together today right now.

 

Kate Bennis 1:59  

Amazing, amazing. I hope he loves it.

 

Scott Allen  2:02 

I am so excited to jump into this conversation with you. And there are so many places that we could kind of enter because there's a lot here in your bio, but let's start a little bit with your father's legacy. I started my Ph.D. program in 2002. My professor, I lived in Virginia, he had taught at the University of Richmond, and his name was Richard Couto. And literally, the first book we were assigned in my Ph.D. program was ‘Managing the Dream.’ And, so from right there, we're reading Bennis, we're reading Burns, we're reading these kind of classic pieces of work. So, let's kind of talk a little bit about that. I know that, in recent times, there's been some really cool activity at the University of Cincinnati honoring him, so maybe let's bring that into the fold with listeners and see where the conversation takes us.

 

Kate Bennis  2:55 

Sure. Thank you for having me. First of all, I'm so excited to talk to you about this. I think the place to start is being a child of Warren Bennis because it's just a different orientation. Of course, I didn't read his books when I was a kid. I knew he was writing them, and they were thick, and that's about all I knew. But growing up in the house, I think, is sort of an interesting legacy because the way he led from a very…. Early on, before Cincinnati, he was in Buffalo as the acting president of the university during the 68 riots. He was the provost, but the President left and went to UPenn, and so he was basically running the University. And I remember meetings in our household that were in the living room with lots of smoking teenagers, and they were representatives from SDS, and from the Black Panthers, and from all of the student groups. He brought them all into our living room. And the kids came in with acoffin for my dad because of everything he represented. And he spent hours listening. And my mom was very, very, very nervous, she said. At that time, everybody smoked, and she was looking for a light for a cigarette, and all the students were helping her and were very kind. And according to my mom, they all gave each other phone numbers at the end, but left them on the ground. She said, “I'd cleaned up all the phone numbers.” There was something about just listening and being heard that was so transformative, and that's my first example of my dad as a leader. He was a listener. He listened deeply to every single person without defensiveness and without a preconceived idea, without all of that. He just was a deep listener. And then, in Cincinnati, I remember, to me, it was a normal household, but my friends all knew that this was not a normal household. We had students living with us all the time, at least three. And they would drive Dad, and they would go to his meetings with him. He included them in everything. They would take care of us somewhat; it was the 70s, and our house was full of students. I didn't realize how odd that was until the University of Cincinnati did a big memorial service for him, and the people who had been students at that time, who were now in their 60s, all got up to speak at the dinner and told these stories about… Cincinnati was a conservative and probably is still a pretty conservative place. Here comes this outsider; he's Jewish, and he's got longish hair for that era and for his generation. And he's very different, and my mom was very different than most people in Cincinnati at the time. And they felt included, and they were astonished by this. They were invited into the house just, and to sit with whoever was there, the Nobel laureates, the people he was giving honorary degrees to. It doesn't matter; he included everybody in every kind of situation because he felt strongly that that was the best way for them to learn, and he always did things in a really unorthodox way. So, I know that he left Cincinnati feeling that he had failed. He did what he came to do. He had come because, I don't know if you guys know the history, but the University of Cincinnati was a municipal City University, and they were going to either have to become a private institution or join the state system. And the state system did not want them, it's more expensive for them. And the people on the board didn't necessarily want… They kind of wanted to be a prestigious private university, but Dad, who had fought in World War II, so went to college on the GI Bill at Antioch College… And the reason he chose Antioch is very odd, and if you guys have read his book, that's because he had a soldier in his platoon. Dad was 19 when he marched into Germany, and a guy who was 26, dad considered very old, had gone to a place called Antioch in Ohio. And then a Co-Op program meant that he could work and get credit for it. So, that's why he went there. Cincinnati had the first Co-Op program in the United States, and Dad felt strongly that the way to keep an organization, a community, and a country alive is to have an educated populace, the same way that Jefferson did. That's why Jefferson created the University of Virginia, right? So, he felt strongly that there should be no barriers to access. Everyone should be able to have this education. And so, he wanted very much to help Cincinnati join the state system to survive. And in four years that he was there for six years total, but four of those six years were spent on this campaign. It was a success, but there was a lot of rancor and a lot of difficulty. There were FBI files. I remember there was a box of hate letters. And so, he really did not feel that he was beloved, and he wanted to be beloved, but he thought he'd had to do the right thing. And many, many, many years later, Tom Humes, who had been the 24-year-old that dad had hired to lead the campaign to make the university go “State,” and was a graduate of UC, was now the president of the board and came to a fest drift at Harvard for dad, and realized that dad had never been given an honorary degree, which is a typical thing to do after a president leaves. And so,  he brought Dad in to get an honorary degree. It was so healing, I can't tell you, for Dad to have that sense that he had been important. And then, after his death, all these students and the whole University started saying that he had shifted the university into this different trajectory that saved it, and it is thriving now. It's extraordinary. And if he'd known, it just breaks my heart that they credit him with this, that, at the time, was not very popular. And that's something for leaders to think about a lot, that sometimes we're really thinking of whatever the example is, the pyramids that will last for thousands of years, and the person building the pyramid has to believe that. I think that dad had to believe that knowing that, at the moment, it was not necessarily going to make him popular, but he felt it was the best thing. And today, they know it's the best thing. It's really exciting to be there

 

Scott Allen  8:41 

And that's what's so interesting. And if I recall, because I'm going back a few years since I read ‘Managing the Dream’ or ‘On Becoming a Leader,’ I think that experience was fundamental to his writing. You have an individual now who is immersed and embedded in the research and has also gone through the struggle and experienced that, and I think that was transformational moving forward for him in his understanding of the activity of leading others. There's sitting around talking about it, and then there's actually engaging in that very, very… Because he was leading a change initiative. It was a shift. It was a change. And, to your point, that is not always the most popular. My wife's grandfather was the person who was in charge of bringing Case and Western Reserve universities together, and those alums still talk about the horrible atrocity that was. (Laughs) So, leading through that transition had to have been so informative, right? 

 

Kate Bennis  9:44 

Absolutely. That's why he did it. He had been an academic. He was tenured at MIT. He didn't need to leave, but he really wanted to have that experience in order to know more about it. He was curious. 

 

Scott Allen  9:57 

Well, tell us a little bit about the center, because I think I saw an image with some really, really wonderful people. Maybe there was a celebration at the University of Cincinnati, that's within the last nine months. Cynthia Cherry was there, I know, I remember her in the photo. But tell us a little bit about that. And then I want to switch gears a little bit into some of the communication world, but let's hear about it.

 

Kate Bennis  10:17 

So, this started years and years ago with a kid from Cleveland like you, living in Cleveland, who as a junior in high school, I believe, got grounded, and his dad said, “You can either be grounded for three weeks or read this book called ‘I'm Becoming a Leader’ by Warren Bennis and writing a paper.” So, Jack Fitzgerald read this book, and then went to the University of Cincinnati. And when he got there, he said, “Where is all this talk about Warren Bennis? There's nothing about Warren Bennis here. What's going on?” And so, he started something as a sophomore called the Warren Bennis Leadership Experience. And the first one was right after the year after, I believe, Dad died. And he invited me, and he invited my mom who came down from Cleveland. I couldn't make it that first year, but the speakers were Howard Schultz of Starbucks and his then CEO, Myron Ullman, who had gone to the University of Cincinnati and knew dad very well. And it was a spectacular success. This young kid brings these guys in, “What is happening here?” And that kind of coincided with dad's death and with the memorial service, and a bunch of those young whippersnappers who had been students when dad was there, and had lived in our house, and were my babysitters were at this event, and Joni Plunkett, she was a really dear friend of ours and a babysitter, and now a doctor, and Joni Linhart is how we knew her, and she became Joni Plunkett. And she said, “Wait a minute, why don't we do something for Warren Bennis? We should do a Warren Bennis Leadership. We kind of have a really significant Warren Bennis leadership story here at this university, and we should really do something with this.” So the student got together and said, “Let's do this.” And they combined with the Warren Bennis Leadership Experience to create something called the Warren Bennis Leadership Institute, or at least the idea of it. And Neil Novak was part of that, and Bruce Hopple, and all these people that been my babysitters. And they just started talking about it and bringing awareness to it. And Tom Humes, we talked about earlier, who had been the chairman of the board, and Myron Ulman, all these people got together, and Dick Thornburgh, and they said, “We have to do something about this.” Meanwhile, coincidentally, I get a telephone call from Tom Peters.

 

Scott Allen  12:35

Oh wow. In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters.

 

Kate Bennis  12:38

Yes. And Tom and I have grown very fond of each other. I adore him. So, I've met so many people through my parents, even posthumously, who are a big part of my life, and Tom is one of them. And Tom called me up and said, “Kate, guess what? My old professor's daughter has been living in London,” I think working at maybe the London School of Economics,” but I'm not sure. “And she's now going to be the dean of the Lindner School of Business at the University of Cincinnati.” So, you've got Marianne Lewis.” So, I talked to Marianne, and Marianne said, “We want to house the Warren Dennis Leadership Institute.” So, this is all coincidence in a strange way, all these people coming together. And Marianne is a dynamo. I can't even describe her; she's extraordinary. I think she's probably presented at the ILA in different years, and she brings in Donna Crowbot Mason to be the academic dean of this organization. And it begins. So, my job was to sort of be a cheerleader. That was kind of it. I would come in, I would talk about Dad, I would introduce people. So the first Warren Bennis leadership Experience, as I said, was Howard Schultz and Myron Ulman. I think the second one, I kind of helped them bring in David Gergen and Doris Kearns Goodwin. And then, the third one, I think that then COVID started, so we might have had Paul Pullman did one virtually. Dan Goleman did one virtually. Tom Peters did one virtually. And then we had… I don’t remember, I don't want to miss anybody. It's just been an extraordinary group. Oh, Betsy Myers. So, Betsy Myers, who has been involved with ILA, she was, I think, Chair of one of the global meetings. I can't remember exactly, but I think she was Chair of that organizational piece of it. And she and I became very dear friends. She met dad because she was working at the Harvard Kennedy School when he and David Gergen were starting the Center for Public Leadership. And she became one of the executive directors there. Then, after dad died, we became friends. And everyone would know that Betsy has been into presidential administrations. She worked with Clinton and with Obama, and so she came in as sort of a consultant and my partner in crime in developing whatever we were going to do because Betsy said… Oh, she would also be the person who brought in everybody for the big Festschrift at Harvard's Kennedy and Business School for Dad, and that was sort of the who's who of everyone in the business at that time. And she still is in touch with many of them, and said, “Let's create something.” And we decided to do a council of advisors. And their job is to make sure that the spirit of dad's work and their work, because they've all influenced each other so much, is alive for these young students. They're 18 years old. And even the professors don't know dad personally, so we wanted to make that personal connection really strong, so we've created this group of advisors well. 

 

Scott Allen  15:58 

Well, the wonderful thing about his work is that it's so foundational and timeless in the observations; there's just wisdom on how humans should interact, and it's so wonderful to hear your story about your experiences with the students and the meetings. And then we're going to sit down, we're going to listen, we're going to communicate, we're going to dialog. So much of his work, it's foundational. It needs to be known because it should be in that foundational canon of, “You want to learn about leadership, here's a starting place.” One of the pieces that we need to go to first.

 

Kate Bennis  16:33 

Yeah. This is his deep belief and practice in equality, as well as the fact that he included students of every background in every kind of meeting. He had no hierarchical impulse.

 

Scott Allen  16:48 

And it's so interesting. When you think of him as a father, what are some things that stand out for you? 

 

Kate Bennis  16:55 

And this is what everybody says; this is not just me- every single person that ever met him felt this way, but I believed it- he made everyone feel that they were the only people in the world, that they were really special. And you hear it again and again. Betsy, Myers, and I have done podcasts with the members of the council, and we can give you the link to all of those. They're incredible. We've interviewed Charles Handy who's 92 now, and every single person said this about Dad. I remember Pat Saigarni called him a master… What was it? She said, a conversation convener. Ken Cloak said he not only asked great questions; he asked the questions that would bring you forward. So, as a daughter, I felt that deeply. I felt deeply heard and seen. And so to have someone in your life who makes you feel so seen and not, “You're special, you're different, you're better than…” Ever. You are uniquely yourself, and that is it. It was lovely, really a gift. A gift. I wish that for every child. 

 

Scott Allen  17:59 

Okay. A couple of things. I'm an Antiochian, I did my Ph.D. My undergrad was marriage and family therapy, it was called Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. So, family systems theory. I have a great appreciation, not only for what you grew up with and just being embedded in the context with your father and that knowledge around leadership, but then, I very, very quickly see some of the connections in your background around acting, and communication, and the importance in that work. And then, I also see whether it's some of the therapeutic background that you have, I see the importance in that because what is a team? Well, it's a small group. It's no different than a little family system. And are we a healthy system? And how do we create a healthy system? And so, you bring this beautiful combination of skill sets, mindsets, just knowledge that I'd like to explore a little bit. I don't know the question embedded in that, but you have to bring just this really unique combination. I guess the question in there is, what are you thinking about recently as it kind of relates to leadership, and how does some of that background inform that thinking?

 

Kate Bennis  19:08 

First, I should say that Dad loved theater. I had a guy who contacted me after Dad's death just to say how much he had been influenced by him. His name's Marco Aponte. Marco was also using a book called ‘Leadership Presence’ by Belle Halperin and Kathy Lubar, for which Dad wrote the foreword. Something like leadership as a performing art or something; he was really thinking about that a lot. And I was working for the Aerial Group. And so Marco reached out to me from University College London and said, “Your father must have loved theater because you're an actress. And I said, “Oh, no, no, I love theater because my father loved theater. He brought me to everything, and my mother too,” I have to say, both of them were huge arts fans and participants. Dad really thought of theater as part of leadership and an important part because it's all about communication. And what people in theater can do is say, “I need to do 3,000 performances of cats; how can I make each audience member feel that they are the only person in the room, and this is for them every single day, eight times a week? And Dad, as a leader, really had to practice that. And so, the roots of the work I do are deeply embedded in theater. At the University of Cincinnati, I took my first acting class with Kay King of the Mini-Mummers, and I never looked back. I went to the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts and just knew that this was my journey. And what's interesting is that, for me, I did theater for so many years, and with such a rich and changing tapestry of… The work itself is always changing because every role you play is a different life that you're learning, and full skill set, and whole worldview, every single part. So, I thought I'd never get sick of it. I thought this was the thing for me until one day, I was doing a production at the Longworth theater in Connecticut, and I was putting on my makeup, and my little freckles all over my face, and this big red wig, and my corset, and I was missing my stepsister's wedding in California. And I just thought, “This is not a real life,” and that's where my work switched from being purely theater to something else. This was, as I said, around the same time that the Aerial Group was starting, and the Aerial Group is made up of professional performers who teach communication skills to leaders and corporate executives all over the world. So, that was my next step out of that to say, “I want a real life, I don't want to have a fake life where I'm missing a real wedding to be in a fake wedding. I just want a real life.” And I was able to kind of bring these things together. And I remember, after that play, I called my dad, and it was in the fall, and I said, “I think I want to be a therapist. I think I want to do something different.” And Dad said, “You should go to the Smith School for Social Work.” I said, “What do you know about this? How do you know anything?” He said, “No, no, it's good. You do all your academic work in the summer.” I have no idea how he knew this. “And then can continue to be an actress when you're doing your internships during the school year.” And I applied, and that summer, I started. And it just changed my life, the trajectory right there, but using theater all the time. And then, after that degree, I started working for the Aerial Group, which brings in all of the psychological work with all the theater skills, and uses it to help leaders become better communicators. And, honestly, if you can't communicate, you simply can't lead. If you can't communicate your vision, you can have all the greatest ideas in the world, but if people don't hear and understand them… The quote that Dad loved was from Henry IV, Part 1, where Glendower and Hotspur are vying to overtake Henry. And you've probably heard this quote a million times; it's so powerful. And Hotspur, of course, is the hot-tempered young whippersnapper, and Glendower is the elder statesman who thinks this is mine because I deserve it. And they're having this verbal sparring, and Glendower says, “I can call the spirits from the vasty deep,” and Hotspur replies, “Why? So can I, or so can any man, but will they come when you do call them?” And I think about that all the time as a communicator. We communicate all the time with emails, texts, phone calls, Zoom meetings, endless communication, newspapers, everything, constantly communicating, but what actually changes hearts and minds? What communication actually draws the spirits from the vasty deep to follow? And that is in our face and our voice. Some of it is just written, but a lot of it is… I say to people all the time, “Who here has not fallen asleep during Shakespeare?” And he's a pretty good writer. So, the text is not everything; a huge part of it is the delivery. And so, theater people have real techniques that are very simple, learnable, and practicable, but it has to be used in a really particular way for them to be enlivening rather than deadening. Some people say, “I don't like to rehearse because it just makes me dead. It deadens my performance, it dulls me.” And I always say, “You just have not rehearsed enough,” because every actor knows we get to a place a week before the performance, and we call everybody, and we say, “It sucks, I’m the worst, I just don't even… It's horrible.” And then you live through tech week, and then it comes alive again. And when people don't practice as leaders, we can get into a lot of trouble. And I know that it's hard; I know that people are so overworked, but it's sort of like self-care. If we don't put that in, we suffer, and the people we're leading suffer. So that's sort of how Dad's work and my work really come together is through theater, oddly.

 

Scott Allen  24:51 

Well, there's so much there. We're actually going to be in Stratford-Upon-Avon in a week and a half.

 

Kate Bennis  24:56 

I still think about the productions I've seen there. I saw Antony and Cleopatra, and I saw… At the Shaw Festival. Do you go to the Shaw Festival?

 

Scott Allen  25:04 

We have been to the Shaw Festival. Yes. It was awesome. Well, so much in what you just said that's so incredibly important. I'm in organizations quite often at this point in my career, and it's almost tragic, Kate, when a leader, a person in a position of authority, has an opportunity to, like you just said, stand up in front of a group and shift hearts and minds, and it's this overly scripted, plastic, really, really boring address that, when they get off the stage, they say, “How'd it go?” And everyone looks at them and says, “It was great. The part about the ‘the’ was awesome. I was really…” But no one has moved. And so, that skill set and that ability to connect is so incredibly important. And I go to some of these events at times, and again, everything is over-scripted, over-rehearsed, and I just at times want the leader to stand up and say, “It is so good to be here with you. It's so good to see your smiling faces. We are going to have an awesome couple of days. And I know this is a lot of time for you, but we're going to do some really cool stuff, and we're going to have an awesome conversation. And I just can't thank you enough.” That right there gets into people's hearts and minds, and so let's transition a little bit to some of this communication work because how do we help? Because, in today's context, it seems everyone's so worried about the exact perfect message that then there's almost no message. Does that make sense?

 

Kate Bennis  26:33 

Oh yeah. Absolutely. So, my goal with my clients is that they don't look rehearsed, but it takes a lot of work to get there. I want them to feel really free and able to pivot because things do come up. For me, some people love jumping out of airplanes, I love going on to the stage because you never know what's going to happen. That is a thrill. And you have to be so well prepared that you can just go with anything. And, in fact, actors kind of crave that with, “What's going to go wrong?” It brings us alive, but it brings the audience with us. So, the skills that I practice are generally preparation, which is you just gotta do it. You gotta rehearse, you gotta do research on who the audience is, you have to have fluency. And in not only your field, but in this particular content, I want all the technical stuff sorted out in advance. I want people to know what kind of microphone? How big is the stage? Who is the audience? Tom Peters says he reads the local paper of every city he speaks in to know who the high school teams are and everything. Who are the clients? What do they want? That's a huge part of it is just the preparation. And people are very afraid of that, I think, because they don't know where to begin, and they're afraid of that dulling of the content. And I would just say, if you keep it fresh, you're just crossing your fingers that the stars align because sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. And, as an actor, that's not fair to your audience. And I would say, as a leader, that's not fair to your audience. We really need to know that we're going to do the best job we possibly can every time, not hoping that it all works out. So, preparation is huge. Another big piece of it that I work on with people is breathing. And this sounds so maybe obvious, trite, I don't know, but the breath is vital. It is what connects us to ourselves; it is what grounds us, and it is what calms us. Almost everyone has a little bit of anxiety. It is the base of the voice. So, if we want a fluent voice that is fluid, variable, and alive, and connected with who we are, we have got to do some breathwork. It slows us down. If we don't breathe, the audience doesn't breathe; actors know this. If we're on stage and we are not breathing, the audience will start feeling anxious and not know why. It is a way to pace ourselves. We do a lot of breathwork. Sometimes, I have people write little hash marks where to breathe the same way that a violinist… If you see an orchestra, they all breathe at the same time. They write it in the script. So, we need to work on the breath in many different ways. And I could do it right now, I can illustrate what the difference is if we have a shallow breath or a deep breath, that just changes everything in our delivery. So, that's big, and easy to practice, and anyone can do it, and no excuses not to. You can do it driving. Just practice that every day so that it's a part of who we are. Number one. And like anybody who's done yoga or meditation, it's centering and brings us into the present, just where we want to be. So, that's number two. And the third thing is the most complex but the easiest once you get a handle on it, and it's called intention. The way I use this is directly from Stanislavski, who was a great director who directed all of Chekhov's plays and created the technique that American actors began using that is still the technique of almost all actors, great actors worldwide. He and Chekhov really said, “We no longer want performance to be representing an emotion.” Think of silent films with someone sort of putting the hand on the brow, or whatever, or clenching their fists. It was very representative. They wanted theater to be presentational, to present the real person. They also loved the quirkiness of human beings; they didn't want a stereotype. They wanted everyone to be odd because people are. And when I coach people, I love that. I want that full self. I never say your perfect self, your best self, ever, because I care about that. That's not interesting. Interesting is and where we really lean in is vulnerability, is authenticity, which is another whole… We should talk about my argument with Dad about authenticity, for sure. We had many arguments about that. But there's this sense of humanity that we have that we don't want to squander, and that is another whole tangent I could go on is that's why I really want people to think hard about slides because any static image is far less interesting than a human being. And we fly people all over the world, put them in hotels, feed them meals, and then put the slides up? My goodness, don't squander this connection. It is ineffable, you just cannot get this any other way than being face-to-face with a human being. So, don't squander that; don't hide behind the slides. In any case, the intention piece is one of the skills that Stanislavski came up with, and he calls it objective. Every play, every character has an objective, a huge overarching objective, and then every scene has an objective. And what it is basically is what do I want from the other person? It could be from the audience. It's always for the relationship. Even if it's a soliloquy, a soliloquy is still with the audience, figuring something out. So, what that does is the intention to put our attention on the other. Anything that boomerangs the intention back on ourselves to make the sale, to be impressive, to get the job, is all about me. To remember the lines, to remember where I am in the talk, all of those things simply put attention on me, and we forget the audience, the other. And so, what a great intention does is it is always for the other. Always. It is a verb. It is framed in the positive. It's not to do something like not mess up. You can't play ‘not,’ so it's an action. So it might be to welcome, to include, to hear what they're saying deeply, to understand whatever it is. We can bring this into meetings and difficult conversations. I've worked a lot with leaders who will come into giving feedback a 360, and we'll do these role plays in the training. And they'll say, “Well, you did this wrong, and this was late, and blah, blah, blah,” they'll go through the list of what wasn't working, and I'll say, “What was your intention there?’ And then, I'd ask the audience, “What do you guys get?” Well, to humiliate, was it? So, if we don't have a consciously chosen, clear, and positive intention, we will default. So, if you're afraid of speaking, it might be to get this over with. And I would say, once again, going back to people falling asleep during Shakespeare, if you think that the text is enough, but your intention, whether conscious or not, is to get it over with, that is the communication that the audience gets. The audience gets communication, “Whoa, we got to get this over with. That person is anxious; let's get them off stage quick.”

 

Scott Allen  33:27 

You used a couple of words that really stuck with me. Oftentimes, I'll use a little bit of a metaphor of a Wi-Fi signal with public speaking. So, you've been in situations where maybe you only have two bars of the three, that you wish it was a full signal strength, but it's just kind of a couple of bars. And, at times, when I'm working with people on presentation skills, you have the individuals, maybe if there's one bar, it's a person, to your point, just trying to kind of get through. And they're getting through it, but they're not connecting. Then you have individuals who are kind of, technically, really good, and the message got through, but there's no soul, no personality, to your point, no humanity, vulnerability, their sense of humor. Who are they? When you get to that kind of full signal strength? And again, I love how you were talking about the actors and stuff because it's those performances. The image I have in my head is those performances where it enters me. And not just my head, but me. I feel. It's a part of me, and I'm making sense of it through the context of being in the presence of an incredible actor. But it also, I think, happens in the presence of incredible leaders, and there are too many out there kind of just getting through it or working at that just solely at the head, proficient. It was mechanically perfect, and there was no soul. I don't know who that person was.

 

Kate Bennis  34:50 

Yeah, and we don't feel anything. There's another example Dad always loved, it's Jenny Churchill, who is Churchill's mother. And this famous story where she said, “When I had lunch with Gladstone, I felt that he was the best conversationalist in the world, the most brilliant. When I had lunch with Disraeli, I felt I was the most brilliant conversationalist in the world.” And that is what we want to do. There are lots of performers, speakers, and leaders who we look at and say, “Gosh, they're so good. They're so good. Boy, that's amazing. That's like a skill. It's like watching a circus performing.” You're like, “Can't believe they did that.” But are we moved? Do we feel seen? Are we changed? And that takes letting go of some ego and having a little bit of humility because people might not even remember what we said or think that we were great. They may walk out; it's like walking out of a play and thinking, “That was just that person; they weren't acting at all,” which is actually the greatest compliment. So, as a leader, if people walk out feeling, “Gosh, I feel great.” I've got a friend who's a folk singer, and someone said that to her. Her name is Dar Williams; someone said, “When I go to a Dar Williams concert, I leave feeling seen and known, and I’m not alone anymore.” And rather than saying, “Whoa, that was some cool guitar licks,” whatever. It's just a different orientation towards communication, which is really for, once again, has to be for the audience. So, the most important thing of the intention is that it is for the audience. It's a gift, always for them. As soon as it's about us, it has that other quality.

 

Scott Allen  36:20 

Well, as we begin to wind down our time, Kate, is there anything else that you kind of have on your mind in recent times that you want to highlight or explore for a little bit? Anything else that you want to kind of cover? Again, this just beautiful integration of your background, it just brings a beautiful palette of colors to the conversation.

 

Kate Bennis  36:43 

Thank you. There's nothing. I think those were the main point that I wanted to talk about was the technique because my wish would be, my intention would be that people listening would take the time to do the work that the audience, the team, the business, the community deserves, and give ourselves that opportunity to speak in a beautiful, clear, full way. 

 

Scott Allen  37:10 

Well, in that full way, your humanity is there. Again, that phrasing of humanity, I love that because I think, at times, we don't quite get there, and there's a missed opportunity, just a lot of missed opportunities I see for us to connect in different ways. The story you began with about your father, there could have been a lot of missed opportunities there, but he chose to display his humanity and engage in the dialog, and probably had some pretty good results as a result of kind of approaching it that way. So, I always wind down the conversations by asking what you've been listening to, streaming, what you've been reading. It could have something to do with what we just discussed, it might have nothing to do with what we've just discussed. But what's caught your attention lately that listeners might be interested in, Kate?

 

Kate Bennis  37:59 

Okay. This is my case for art. I read nonfiction during the day during my work hours because I think that it is part of my work, and, at night, I only want to read fiction for my pleasure. And the book that I read, or had read to me recently on Audible, was Barbara Kingsolver's ‘Demon Copperhead,’ which is based on David Copperfield, and the reader is a guy named Charlie Tucker. And it's a long book, so if you have a long drive, it is spectacular. And I learned more about Trump. I learned more about the opioid crisis in this work of fiction in America. I live in Virginia, and it's set in Virginia, but it is so different from my Virginia. And it cracked open my heart. And his reading is extraordinary. I used it in a blog post I wrote about in ‘being in service of.’ His reading is in service of this text. The writing is in service of a greater something. And it's really a gorgeous book. And it won the Pulitzer Prize, and I would say I adored it. I think that's really worth looking at because it has taught me more than any nonfiction book about these big real issues that we're facing right now because art really can do something. It can touch you in a way that's very different than a lot of facts and figures. It's much more based on character and story. We didn't even talk about the story. Wow. What I'm working on is adapting King Lear to “Queen Lear,” which will be a four- or five-woman production. So, I am intimate with every language and every line of King Lear right now. And I'm fascinated by this play so much because, as Dad would say, every time I read Shakespeare, he's learned something new. So, Shakespeare's learned a lot about our current situation in America, and he has written a play that is perfect for this time. So, that's what I'm happy to be working on.

 

Scott Allen  39:48 

Oh, Queen Lear. Okay. Well, we will do it again. Next time, we'll talk about story.

 

Kate Bennis  39:54

Absolutely.

 

Scott Allen  39:55

I cannot thank you enough for your time today; just a wonderful conversation and so many fun little connections that kind of emerged in the dialog. Literally, I think I just got a text that they finished the tour at UC. (Laughs)

 

Kate Bennis  40:08 

Oh, great.

 

Scott Allen  40:11 

So, I just really, really appreciate it, Kate. Thank you so much. And my daughter's name is Kate, and I think I told you. I love that name, it's just an awesome name. So, good, strong, awesome. Kate. I love it, I love it, I love it. Well, have a wonderful day. We'll do it again. Thank you so much.

 

Kate Bennis  40:24 

Thank you. Thank you so much, Scott. Take very good care.

 

 

[End Of Recording]