Comedians have always been popular at corporate award ceremonies, if only to cut the boss down to size but, as the recession tightens its grip, performers like Ruby Wax and John Cleese are in demand as business motivators.

Wax is probably best known for her merciless interviews with Imelda Marcos and OJ Simpson. Now she is forging a whole new career in executive training.

She has gone back to her first love, psychology, and uses examples from her own career, good and bad, to teach top executives at Microsoft, eBay, Orange, Johnson & Johnson and BAE Systems how to be better leaders.

“I play them clips from when I used to interview people and you can see straight away what my moti-vation was, which was to make a really good show. I was using them. They were just puppets to play with and I couldn’t understand why they were cowering in the corner.”

She didn’t always have the upper hand. “There’s one clip where I am interviewing Madonna and she is totally intimidating me, so I’m getting stressed and my brain shuts down and my questions make no sense. She’s killing me and you can clearly see it happening. I use it to ask my class to analyse what’s happening and how I could have changed things.”

But her training sessions are not about making people laugh or turning them into comedians. “I don’t use comedy. If you are naturally funny, then that’s fine, but you have to know when that’s needed and when it’s not.” Bosses have to be able to communicate and relate to their workforce as human beings, she said. “It’s not like it was when Henry Ford was running Ford – now the boss has to hunker down and be one of the people. You can’t get away with being a bully any more – people are much more fragile. You have to learn to connect with people and how to create trust. It’s an overused term but it’s about emotional intelligence and you can’t fake it. President Barack Obama has it – and if you have it you can sell anybody anything and they will follow you to the end of the world.”

Barry Jones, marketing manager of CSA Celebrity Speakers, the global speaking agency that arranges Wax’s workshops, said: “Being a chief executive is a lonely job. Nobody tells you the truth. She is fantastic, amazingly successful. The chief executives get a shock when they see her and worry that she is going to make them do stand-up comedy, but she brings them down to earth and makes them realise that they are not on their own on a different planet. In this day and age you can’t just force people to do what you want. You have to engage with them and connect with them, and she shows chief executives how to do that.”

Similarly, John Cleese, best known for his deplorable management skills as Basil Fawlty, will be the main speaker at Yorkshire International Business Convention in Harrogate in June. Mike Firth, chief executive of Yorkshire International Business Convention, explained why he was so keen for Cleese to address business leaders.

“Cleese is a special case because his skill is in showing people how they are doing it wrong – Fawlty Towers was all about how not to run a hotel – but we also want him for his training expertise.

“What marks out a chief executive is his ability, or inability, to present, whether it is to customers or to staff. The salesman’s joke is always ‘I took the chief executive to meet the customer – and lost the business’.

“But all joking aside, there is a lot a comedian can teach a chief executive. Being a stand-up comedian is one of the hardest jobs in the world, and there are similarities between that and being a chief executive – in both cases you have to stand up in front of people, engage them, communicate with them and get them on your side.

“In America a chief executive is trained to be a front man from an early stage, but in Britain chief executives are too often trying to hide behind their public-relations people. It’s not the norm for chief executives to put themselves up as spokes-people and you notice the difference when they do. When that British Midlands crash happened [a BMI plane crashed on the M1 in 1989 killing 47 people], Sir Michael Bishop [the then boss of BMI] was straight on the scene before his public-rela-tions people. He was there, talking to people, proving he cared. He did a great job. In contrast, when the Herald of Free Enterprise sank they were all hiding and blaming the captain.”

Comedians, said Firth, can help chief executives become “more accessible and more visible to their clients – and that takes guts, which is another thing comedians have a great deal of.”

Roger Edward Jones, a banker turned executive coach, believes so strongly that stand-up comics can teach chief executives all they need to know about leadership and communication, that he overcame his own stage fright to perform comedy gigs to prove it.

But Jones is not advocating that all chief executives suddenly pop on a fez before they address the board. His is a more subtle approach. “Stand-up comedians are excellent communicators and I often wondered what skills and techniques they use to successfully deliver their routines. So I watched hours of vide-os and visited lots of different comedy venues. Then to put it all to the test I wrote and delivered a stand-up comedy routine at a comedy club in London. The experience helped me realise that chief executives [and indeed all of us in business] can learn a lot from stand-up comedy performers.”

His book, What Can Chief Executives Learn from Stand-up Comedians?, was runner-up at this year’s San Francisco Book Festival.

Humour, though useful for breaking the ice, or making a message memorable, is almost the least of what a boss can learn from a good comic, said Jones. “There are so many skills that a good stand-up and a good chief executive share,” he said. “Good comics get their message across quickly and crisply – they don’t waffle on or hide behind technology. When did you last see a comedian use Power Point? They also have great self-awareness, which is a key leadership skill, and great self-belief, which is something a good leader needs,” he said.

They also appear to have a natural authority, he said, “Think of Jack Dee. He comes across as someone who is very natural. He’s not putting on a persona, and that’s what makes him so engaging and memorable.”

Get the message across like a comedian

Preparation. Good stand-up performances appear totally spontaneous, but the reality is quite different. Comedians spend hours honing those routines. The harder you work on a presentation, the more relaxed it sounds.

Less is more. A comic’s messages are not long-winded, but tight and concise. Presentations benefit from fewer, more focused, words.

Confidence. Although they may suffer horribly from nerves, a comedian must exude a natural authority or die. Equally, bosses need to think about the impression they give and may have to project an air of confidence.

Responsibility. The stage is a lonely place. When they bomb in front of an audience, comics know there is nobody to blame but themselves. It’s the same for bosses – but they may not always realise that they have to take the flak for failures as well as the rewards for success.

Courage. Comedians are constantly pushing themselves further from their comfort zone as they progress to bigger performances and new material. All executives can benefit from reexamining their comfort zones and pushing outside it now and again.

What Can Chief Executives Learn from Stand-up Comedians? By Roger Edward Jones

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