By Greg Dardis / Guest Column
To run an executive coaching firm is to continually engage in a study of leadership.
I try to evaluate a wide spectrum, from local to international, and contemporary to historical. With the Fourth of July nearing, my mind returns to the founding fathers. George Washington, in particular, is an inspiration. He embodied the principles at the core of our training. Our most popular public program might well have been named after Washington and the three areas he most excelled: “Leadership, Presentation and Image Skills.”
Here was a man who could think big and small, a detail-oriented visionary. He is remembered today for his foresight, but as he defined this republic, he also minded the table ornaments at each state dinner.
He understood that – as an individual and as a country – one has to look and act the part in order to get it – fake it till you make it. The kid from a “colonial backwater” in rural Virginia, as historian Julie Miller from the Library of Congress once put it, was keenly aware of what he did not know, and over the years he worked diligently at those blind spots.
As a teen, he wrote 35 pages in ornate cursive on the “the rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation,” detailing everything from warrants and wills to how “to keep ink from freezing.” (The secret: add a few drops of brandy.)
As a colonist, he put his social graces on full display. He dressed impeccably, was a skilled horseman and was a good dancer – which counted back then.
As the president, he sought out advice on the etiquette of foreign affairs to ensure that his Philadelphia home felt like a center of government. Every day he tried to demonstrate America’s legitimacy. Sometimes this hinged on getting the details right – the curtains, the centerpieces, even the flow of wine coolers at a state dinner. Washington once observed: “When you pass the bottles around, one bottle moves, another stops and all are in confusion!” This vexed him, according to Julie Miller, so he devised a new system, setting up a wine cooler with space for several bottles on casters that could roll. He requested that his new invention be made of silver.
“He was so concerned about his image and so concerned about appearance,” Ms. Miller said in The Washington Post’s “Presidential” podcast. “Some of it was insecurity … but some of it was out of a sense of responsibility about his role as the first president of the United States. He wanted to make a good presentation.”
Helping clients make a good presentation is a driving force at Dardis Communications, and it gratifies us to equip smart people with the tools that let you “speak as well as you think,” to quote our slogan. This isn’t frivolous, Washington understood; it’s imperative. It’s the finishing touch you can’t afford to skip.
For Washington, the payoff was huge. “He was very, very charismatic,” Ms. Miller said. “People really looked at him as being the most ideal person that they had ever seen. He gave that impression throughout his life…”
Our first president was ever mindful of his public image. In his tours throughout the country, as he approached a town, he got out of his carriage and mounted his white horse. “He knew that was what they wanted to see.” Once he had left the town, he slipped back into the carriage.
Washington cared about minutiae, writing to John Adams and Alexander Hamilton that “many things which appear of little importance themselves … may have great and durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of government.”
In the end, he struck an impressive balance, minding his principles and the particulars. He can spur us all to action, whether we are running a start-up or charting the next chapter for a well-established company, whether our foreign affairs bring us to a different company or simply a different division.
You’re already doing the heavy lifting of big-picture planning, so don’t overlook the details.
Greg Dardis is the CEO of Dardis Inc., located at 2403 Muddy Creek Lane in Coralville. For more information, visit www.dardisinc.com.
