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Company Overview
 Carol Adelman, President of Movers and Shakespeares, and Ken Adelman, Vice President, conduct the training. The topics covered are tailored to each client's needs. Most clients begin with Henry V because it is so suited to leadership training and is a play that can be easily taught without participants having to prepare or know Shakespeare at all.
Clients include: Northrop Grumman, the American Red Cross, Foote Cone and Belding, U.S. Air Force, Aspen Institute, General Dynamics, Merrill Lynch, and Wharton (four or five times per year, for Professor Michael Useem's leadership programs) and many others.
 How It Works
Opening with Henry V makes for an accessible "case study" on overall leadership. Participants watch and discuss scenes from the 1989 box-office hit, Henry V, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. This wonderful movie is full of sweeping scenes of courts and courtship, fighting and reconciliation, beautiful visuals and compelling music.
After setting up a particular scene, and then showing it on a large screen, the Adelmans lead a discussion on:
- Strategic planning for success;
- Filling a broader role, as one moves up an organization;
- Setting high ethical and performance standards;
- Holding employees to such high standards;
- Using creativity to overcome daunting obstacles;
- Motivating in tough times;
- Persuading and marketing at all times; and
- Working across business groups and locations.
 After showing key scenes and having plenary discussions, participants form break-out groups. They meet for more than a half hour to relate particular "lessons learned" from Henry V to specific challenges in their own business unit. Members of each break-out group then report back to the whole group, leading a brief discussion of their conclusions.
The seminar itself closes with each participant writing down his or her "I learned" take-away lesson from Henry V, and "I will" pledge -- how each will alter some leadership practice to improve, as a result of the day's discussion. At the very end, usually immediately after dinner, comes the fun-filled skit starring the day's seminar participants in Elizabethan costumes.
Why it Works
Movers and Shakespeares is a success because it is educational, enjoyable and unique.
It cannot help but be educational, since it makes accessible the wit and wisdom of William Shakespeare.
Henry V works superbly for overall leadership, as explained above. Merchant of Venice offers insights into: a) the importance of risk-taking to job satisfaction and achievement; b) evaluating risk; c) managing risk; d) the damaging effects of discrimination and systematic prejudice; and e) the importance of accenting "the quality of mercy" in the workplace. As a final example, Julius Caesar presents a riveting case study in: a) building a team; b) making critical decisions for the team; c) assuring adequate planning; d) rousing support for the project; and e) settling disputes within the team.
Participants find this training enjoyable, as it involves film-watching, team-building and mind-stretching. The sessions are all interactive; main lessons come from participants themselves, after watching a film scene. The moderators never speak for more than five to ten minutes straight during the day. Afternoon break-out sessions and reports back to the whole group enhance this team-building. And the day ends with laughter and cheers when six or eight participants -- commonly the CEO, and selected executives -- don pumpkin shorts, hoop skits, King's robes, and other Elizabethan costumes -- venture on stage to ready funny Shakespeare quips about their business.
Bard in Charge
Once more into the management breach? Take the lessons of Shakespeare with you
By Monica Elliott
When Marc Antony spoke at Caesar's funeral, the power of his words swayed the crowd, but it was the timing of his oratory that really won them over. By saving his appeal for last, Antony managed to stir up his friends, Romans, and countrymen against Brutus and Caesar's other assassins and gain support for his own agenda, which, fortunately, was the morally correct one.
Their diverse client lists includes the U.S. Air Force, Wharton Business School, McKinsey, and McGraw-Hill, but most of their clients are engineers. In fact, their biggest client is Northrop Grumman, and for Ken Adelman, it's not hard to guess why the Shakespearean approach is such a good fit for engineering management.
"First of all, they love it because they love problem solving. Engineers love to figure something out, and Shakespeare gives them something to exercise their brains," he says.
Adelman knows a little something about advising leaders on strategy, having served as President Ronald Reagan's chief advisor on arms control. But Adelman admits that even though he as taught Shakespeare courses at universities, he has never been trained in literature and is more a Shakespearean enthusiast than a true scholar. He and his wife concentrate primarily on the leadership lessons within the plays, for example, examining the character of Hamlet in the context of crisis management - what Hamlet did wrong, what Claudius did right.
"We're not in the business of teaching Shakespeare; we teach leadership," Adelman explains.
So what plays does the instructor recommend? "Henry V is probably the best starter. Merchant of Venice is great for a follow-on or Juilus Caesar - Merchant of Venice about risk taking and diversity, Julius Caesar about communication and planning."
Because the language in the plays has been known to frustrate even the most apt pupil, the instructors rely heavily on sundry film versions of the plays to bring their lessons to life. They set up a scene, show it, and then discuss it. Students engage in breakout sessions so that they can relate what they are learning to their own businesses. And at the end of the training course, students have an opportunity to dress up in costumes and inhabit some of the Bard's famous characters.
The fact that companies keep sending their executives to Movers and Shakespeares speaks to the effectiveness of these techniques, but Adelman pinpoints three reasons that the true draw is Shakespeare as an arbiter of leadership savvy:
"e had the greatest insights into human history, and all success...in life depends on sizing people up, knowing how to motivate them, knowing how to bring out the best in people. Second, he told stories, and people learn more through stories than they do through PowerPoint presentations or do's and don'ts. And three, he's the greatest [at] language, and leadership is about language."
Ambition can be made of no sterner stuff.
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When asked, "Why Shakespeare?" we explain:
- Because Shakespeare furnishes the keenest insights into human nature. And success in business, government, non-profits, family, or any other institution depends upon realizing what makes people tick. Sam Rayburn, when Speaker of the House of Representatives, quipped that if somebody couldn't size up another person correctly and quickly, he didn't belong "in my profession." That may be true in any profession.
- Because Shakespeare tells stories. And people learn more through stories than through power point presentations, or lists of "do's" and "don'ts." The parables of Jesus are more fetching than the rules of Deuteronomy. Moreover, exciting stories make training more intriguing and thus enjoyable.
- Shakespeare used (and often invented) the greatest words. Leadership depends upon words to motivate people, to bring out their best, to connect them to each other and to the mission of an organization.
- Using Shakespeare opens opportunities to show great films. People like "going to the movies." And great films make Shakespeare's words and wisdom readily accessible. No other author -- fiction or non-fiction -- has been turned into such great films.
When teaching "crisis management," for instance, we show clips from nine different film versions of Hamlet. Teaching both risk-management and diversity, we use four versions of Merchant of Venice (including one played nationwide last year in theaters, starring Al Pacino).
- Because the greatest Shakespeare stories (turned into the greatest movies) deal with precisely the topics that companies want stressed in any corporate retreat or executive training:
- Overall leadership, taught via Henry V;
- Evaluating, handling, and managing risk via Merchant of Venice;
- Diversity training, also via Merchant of Venice;
- Corporate communications and planning, via Julius Caesar;
- Crisis management, and coping with life, via Hamlet;
- Abuse of power and sexual harassment, via Measure for Measure; and
- Change management -- changing another person, changing one's self, and one's institution -- via Taming of the Shrew.
Movers and Shakespeares has received considerable publicity, including two articles on the front page of The New York Times; a feature in People magazine; a front section article in Fortune; several pages in U.S. News & World Report; Forbes FYI; Washington Post; Wall Street Journal; Los Angeles Times; Chicago Tribune; and other leading papers.
Specialty trade publications also have featured the company, with SalesForceXP putting a client and the Adelmans on its recent cover; Training & Development; and Incentive magazine (also the cover story).
The U.S. News & World Report feature was typical of these articles: "Presented by a Washington, D.C.-area group called Movers and Shakespeares, the sessions include movie clips, discussions of leadership dilemmas, and a finale in which willing executives don tights, doublets, and codpieces as they perform a Shakespeare-based skit. 'More traditional leadership courses are helpful, but I don't retain the lessons the same way I do from these,' says Gray" (Katie Gray Northrop Grumman, who has attended many sessions.)
To Contact Movers & Shakespeares:
Call Ken or Carol Adelman at 703.525.0100 if you need immediate answers or
email us at Adelmans@moversandshakespeares.com |
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