What Can Acting Teach Leaders about Communication and Authenticity?

Since antiquity, theater has been crucial in cultural and intellectual development. Theater communicates great ideas and inspires action. The actor is the instrument through which the message of the drama is communicated. Therefore, it is the actor’s communication skills—developed through arduous training in use of the voice, body, and expressive language—that determine whether the message of the play reaches and affects the audience. The task of an actor is to be present, and with that unique ability, to capture the eyes, ears, hearts, and minds of the audience through galvanizing communication and action. The same can be said of the leader whose responsibility it is to persuade, inspire, and motivate. Both actor and leader must possess the sine qua non of authenticity for their respective messages to be genuinely felt and received. The essential difference between the two pursuits is that actors dedicate themselves to the acquisition of a communication skillset, and leaders all too often do not have that opportunity. Yet the skills of the actor are universally applicable and can be taught. 

This is what we do in CWP, which is structured as a five-week, fifteen-hour communication boot camp. A premise of the “training” is that who you are as a leader and communicator is who you are as a person. Therefore, the course asks, Who are you? And: How do you communicate who you are—the beliefs, values and goals that power your passion and purpose? The action, the journey to one’s authenticity as a leader/communicator, is both reflective and expressive. It invites a willing vulnerability as students are encouraged to identify, confront and overcome self-imposed limitations—namely one’s accumulated fears of speaking—and the self-protective habits that guard us from the potentially threatening responses of others. In CWP every assignment, every exercise, every interaction is an opportunity to explore and self-observe under the bright lights outside one’s comfort zone. 

Genuine communication is active and not theoretical. The speaker must quite consciously commit all facets of the self: body, voice, emotions, clear intention, articulate language and a conscious desire to reach and affect another. We must always willingly renew our intention, our desire to communicate. 

Prior to the initial class meeting, students are assigned Brené Brown’s widely viewed TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” in which she asserts that to genuinely connect with others we must have the courage to allow ourselves to be truly seen—and known. Yet at the core of acting (and leading) is the excruciating fear that when I stand before you and strive to expose my thoughts and feelings I will be not enough; if you really see me, you won’t believe me, respect me, follow me. As human beings, that’s the way we’re wired. Even veteran actors occasionally experience stage fright, and I am no exception. As “leader” of my “team” of 16 brilliant Tuck students, I am eager for buy in, to be seen as authentic, a leader they can trust and whose work and direction they will commit to and believe in. To model this crucial premise and kick start the course, I must choose to allow myself to be truly seen and known. I must take a risk. 

Vital to this course based on theater skills is the notion that, just as we are captivated by a character’s story and human struggles we witness on stage or film, so we, the protagonists of our own lives, must confront the obstacles, defeats, and losses set before us. In the collision of our hopes and expectations with reality, we live out the theater of our lives. How we choose to act, choose to overcome our circumstances, choose to take steps from darkness into light, forges the narratives of our lives. Our stories are vital, sacred and, above all, human. They are also profoundly instructive. Ultimately our stories define who we are, guide us into who we will become, and may help us discover how we will lead. 

Therefore, minutes into the first class, I introduce myself to the group by sharing three stories from three periods over the course of my life when I was profoundly confronted by life-altering obstacles. During these times, my hope collapsed but then was rejuvenated, and I redefined the personal goals, values, and beliefs that are now foundational to my life, and to the way I teach and lead. I share these experiences as an invitation to my students. I strive to be fully transparent; I speak from the heart. I do not ignore what the screenwriter Robert McKee terms the “dark side.” I seek to inspire and motivate by sharing my stories wholly and truthfully such as they are. 

I tell the students that in one month’s time, in a five-minute spoken closure to the course, they too will share stories of their evolution, of their transformational leadership journey thus far. I tell them they will have the experiential awareness that, through willing vulnerability and allowing themselves to be truly seen, will open the door to compelling communication: authenticity through presence, genuine connection to others, animation, and self-acceptance born of self-knowing. I tell them that they will succeed and surprise themselves, and they always do.

This story originally appeared in print in the Winter 2026 issue of Tuck Today magazine.