Lessons from Reagan 1

I wanted to return back to your time with President Reagan. He was known as the Great Communicator during his eight years in office. What did you learn from him in terms of how to communicate as a leader?

Well, one thing I learned is, I asked him one day "You've given speeches to the whole world. You've given speeches that millions of people listen to. What is it that you're thinking about?" And this is something, I'm sure, in your career that you think about, too. And he said it all goes back to the very first job he had in the radio world when radio was a new technology. And he wanted to be a radio announcer and he got a job and they put him in the room. They closed the door and they said, start broadcasting. And he said he went blank. There's a microphone in front of me in this booth. What do I do? People are listening.

And they said all of a sudden he remembered that every Saturday he'd go get his haircut at the barbershop and that the guys in the barbershop always had the radio on. So he started talking in that microphone as though he was talking to the guys in the barbershop. And then it became very personal, very conversational, because he could think of their faces and think of their reactions. And he told me that even decades later, when he had delivered a State of the Union or spoken to the entire country or the entire world, he still thinks back to those guys in barbershops who were listening to what he's saying.