Shakespeare: you don't have to be a committed thespian or a theatre aficionado to understand how the Bard's 400-year-old works give inspiration and instruction to the modern leader.

By Emily Ross

Life in a big corporation offers real lessons in what power can do to people, the consequences of fierce competition and the fall-out from flawed leadership decisions.

Westpac's head of Institutional Banking and former group chief financial officer Phil Chronican has spent 25 years at Westpac, rising through the ranks while experiencing the alliances, power plays and naked ambition of a company's internal politics first hand.

Along with companies such as Australian Unity and KPMG, Westpac Institutional has worked with professional actors to offer senior executives a unique insight into human nature, while also enhancing their 'performance'. (Practically speaking an annual general meeting is a major performance after all.)

'Actors understand that people are looking at them all the time and that every little thing they do is important to the performance,' says Chronican. 'Leaders have to find ways to send out their messages and connect with their audiences.'

Senior executives at Australian Unity were asked to come to work one Monday morning in 2007 wearing runners and armed with a bottle of water. They were transported to a mystery destination and greeted on a Victorian Arts Centre stage by Bell Shakespeare's artistic director John Bell and two actors. The executives sat on stage with the actors, watching at close range how they worked through Shakespearean scenes. For John Bell, the workshops offer something far removed from whiteboard training.

'They can see their own work in a sense as role playing,' he says, a believer in Shakespeare as a keen psychologist. 'Shakespeare really did understand people very well, which is why his plays are populated with deeply flawed characters (even war criminals), xenophobia, betrayal, jingoism, even weasel words.'

Through his works he delves into human nature, looking at what changes a person's mind, how to sway a king, how to tame a shrew.

The workshops are an opportunity to question the level of performance expected from staff.

'They were so wide-eyed and shocked,' says Bell Shakespeare's general manager Jill Berry. 'It is also a chance to understand the fear factor of a live performance.'

A leading player in the Bell Shakespeare Company who has the role of Hamlet is expected to perform eight shows per week for a 15-week tour. 'Do you get that level of performance from your executive team? Because that is what we have to have on stage,' says Berry.

The concept of Shakespeare as a management guru is not new. In 2000 the Bard was the next big thing in management fads competing alongside Steven Covey, Jack Welch and Winnie the Pooh for his views on power, leadership and motivation. Several North American writers received six-figure advances from publishers keen to cash in on the fad, apparently Henry IV is a perfect case study in effective modern crisis management. Business schools, including the Columbia Business School, Cranfield University School of Management, Oxford University's Said Business School, the Aspen Institute, Melbourne Business School and the Globe Theatre, devised courses.

However, not everyone was excited. Critics believe that this modern interpretation takes Shakespeare out of context. Financial Times management columnist Lucy Kellaway quipped: 'This modern reinterpretation of Shakespeare is not just irritating, but downright vulgar.'

Cynics may question what on earth managers can learn from wearing commedia del arte masks at an executive retreat but Berry argues that there are considerable benefits for executives to get on their feet at a conference and take on a challenge, to get people collaborating.

'That is eminently translatable to the business world,' she says. Eight of Westpac's senior executives even presented an after-dinner performance (in tights) to their peers at a 2007 leadership retreat after rehearsals with Bell Shakespeare actors. While it went down well for sheer entertainment value, the idea was to build up a strong group dynamic, encouraging staff, says Chronican 'to put themselves out there'.

'It's about the confidence and credibility you portray, how you present yourself in total,' he says.

The Shakespearean workshops for Westpac executives are an extension of Westpac Institutional Banking's sponsorship of the Bell Shakespeare Company. It is also due to Westpac's group executive of people and performance, Ilana Atlas, who has a position on the Bell Shakespeare board.

Since mid-2007 Bell Shakespeare has worked directly with its executives in a series of customised workshops. The workshops usually revolve around confidence building, presentation and resolution of conflict.

'To be honest, sometimes people come along and they are rather nonchalant, thinking this is a bit of a wank,' says Bell, 'but they get hooked when they see the actors performing the scenes.'

The workshops allow participants to see someone moving in and out of a role. 'That starts to humanise the role for them,' says Bell, 'and they start to see more clearly that these are people like yourself, with various flaws and various virtues.'

A selection of the top 100 executives at Westpac Institutional have observed Bell Shakespeare's actors close up, analysing classic scenes from Hamlet, being invited to interpret and rework scenes, questioning the motives of the players. Most participants are not expected to recite Shakespeare, but rather to listen and interpret. The idea is to encourage a deeper understanding of how scenes can be played very differently for effect. The workshops and demonstrations are also about the experience of watching at close range an actor's skills delivering Shakespearean drama.

John Bell has personally introduced a small ensemble of actors to a Westpac team before the actors work through a scene on a bare stage (for example a scene from Hamlet with King Claudius' spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), taking the audience deeper into the drama and a close-up view of the skills involved. Berry says that often the work is not that different from the work Bell Shakespeare does with school students.

The workshops involve playing out a scene, discussing it and then playing it out a different way, asking the group what they would do in such a situation. For example, performing Lady Macbeth as victim, then as vampire. The group then looks for what is motivating the characters, their strategy for the scene.

Chronican is careful not to overplay the influence of the men in tights. He's not trying to suggest that careful scrutiny of Hamlet or Twelfth Night can make all Westpac managers the greatest leaders of all time.

'That's drawing too long a bow,' he says. However, the quality of Shakespearean theatre, the flawed characters and the exploration of ethics and what power can do to people can lead to a deeper understanding of human nature. The Bard's work covers much relevant leadership territory: the dangers of  'poison'd flattery', the damage caused by a man passed over for promotion (Iago in Othello) or the price paid for never listening to one's troops.

Jill Berry is adamant that the works of Shakespeare are 'crying out' for reinterpretation. 'While they were written more than 400 years ago, we don't seem to learn from our mistakes,' she says.

Shakespeare on …

... honesty
No legacy is so rich as honesty
All's well that ends well, act 3 scene v

... leadership
Strong reasons make strong actions
King John, act 3 scene iv

Action is eloquence
Coriolanus, act 3 scene ii

... the value of reputation
O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial
Cassio, Othello, act 2 scene ii

... lack of consensus
How in one house
Should many people under two commands
Hold amity? 'Tis hard, almost impossible
Regan, King Lear, act 2 scene iv

We carry not a heart with us from hence
That grows not in a fair consent with ours,
Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
Success and conquest to attend on us
King Henry, Henry V, act 2 scene ii

... the abuse of power
The abuse of greatness is when
It disjoins remorse from power
Brutus, Julius Caesar, act 2 scene ii

Business lessons from the Bard

Understanding how characters react with each other is one of the greatest lessons would-be leaders can learn from Shakespeare. That the pursuit of power for its own sake is corrupting and how a great leader can unite and inspire are enduring Shakespearean themes.

As well as directing plays for the Globe Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier's son Richard Olivier is a director of Olivier Mythodrama that conducts workshops on Shakespeare and modern leadership. His clients include Avon, the BBC, British Airways, BUPA and Daimler Chrysler.

Olivier explains why his courses centre on four great works:

Julius Caesar 'How can we effectively influence others? How can we survive organisational power struggles? Can we develop political intelligence without sacrificing integrity? The leaders in this story fail. We learn from their mistakes.'

Macbeth 'Shakespeare's greatest psychological thriller provides fascinating insights into the behaviours that can make or break individuals and organisations.'

Henry V 'A compelling case study for all who seek or need to inspire those around them.'

The Tempest 'The art of a successful change initiative.'

Source: Said Business School, Oxford

Reference: April 2008, volume 78:03, p. 24-27