"All the workplace's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," Shakespeare almost wrote, and that is good enough for management teacher Dr Aidan Daly, who is planning to develop the proposition further on a trip to Broadway in New York.
For Dr Daly, who is head of the marketing department at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a hotel is no mere place to rest your bones for the night. Neither is an airplane simply a method of moving from A to B, nor a call centre just a place to get information.
All, he says, are theatre, and he speculates that perhaps the sooner managers in service industries realise it, the better, for the consequences of workers playing their roles badly and getting scripts wrong are potentially dramatic.
Empty seats in the "audience" rows, for instance, could be the result for an airline whose pilots got in the habit of making announcements like one Dr Daly heard on a flight out of London. "Six minutes into the flight, the pilot greeted the passengers, told us we were now at 10,000 feet and that hopefully we would soon be at 30,000 feet. Hopefully! That wasn't in the script," said Dr Daly, who was not the only one who quickly pressed the flight attendants' buzzer to suggest that "hope" be replaced by "certainty".
The idea that hotel foyers, restaurants and call centres are, in effect, places of theatre where the choice is to put on a good show or a bad one, has so captivated Dr Daly that he has taken a year's sabbatical from NUIG to study it further. The relatively new concept has been explored by a couple of American management theorists, as well as Dr Daly's son David, who wrote a Master's thesis on the topic for his MBS.
On Broadway, and later, with leading Irish theatre companies, Dr Daly will explore elements of stage drama that may be relevant for managers in the fast-expanding and increasingly demanding services industry.
He will concentrate on four main elements in a production. "The key things in a performance are the actors, the script, the audience and the props. Think of staff in a hotel foyer. Do they know how to use their bodies - their eyes, expressions, posture - to the best effect?
Do they interact well with the guests - their audience? Do they know their lines - the script? Are they prepared? When the audience - the customers - come in, what impression do they receive? What is the setting like and what effect do you want it to achieve? What props should you use, and why?
Auditioning is another area in which Dr Daly will seek out pointers. "I will explore how theatre producers select people, how they decide they have the right person for the part. This is one of the toughest problems for businesses. Some hotels are already experimenting with role-play and video as part of the staff selection process," he said.
"The audition can also be an opportunity for the actor to see if the part is one he really wants," added Dr Daly, who is also a co-founder and non-executive director of Envision, a marketing consultancy firm in Galway.
He will also study actors for clues in relation to voice techniques. "In hospitals, for instance, people are reassured when the doctor's tone is calm, deep, reassuring." This is not lost on young recruits. "It can be extraordinary watching the transformation of red and raw youngsters into deep-throated fellows oozing gravitas around the wards," said Dr Daly.
Call centres are another service industry where the right kind of voice control - and the right script - is crucial in putting people at their ease, he says.
Staff "actors" of the future may be in for more challenges than controlling their voices. "The only time I saw people on a plane pay absolute attention to the safety demonstration was when the flight attendants made it into a dance. There was rapt attention," said Dr Daly.
Many service industries are just beginning to address issues around successful staff performance, Dr Daly said. "When the hairdresser leaves you waiting for half an hour while she's chatting on the telephone, it doesn't matter how good your haircut is, you won't go back. She was acting out of role."
Is there a prospect of customers of the future encountering a swathe of business staff acting in ways that some may experience as fake, or unreal, or which leaves them feeling manipulated? Or cynical, like when a politician's trip to "acting school" is all too obvious? "To act well, you have to be sincere. Can you have people doing a good job at something they don't like or believe in? No," says Dr Daly, who points, with no shortage of ambition or optimism, to Daniel Day Lewis as the kind of actor whose ability to get inside his role service staff might strive to emulate.
Although the study being undertaken by Dr Daly is still relatively new, managers in Britain have been taking other pointers from actors for some time.
In London, a group called Actors in Management (AIM), has been used by a range of companies, including IKEA, Sun Life of Canada and the Lloyds TSB group, to help boost morale and improve staff relations.
At AIM, which was founded in 1994 by Jill Connick and Edward Harbour, two former actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, professional actors perform workplace scenarios for training groups. The fact that actors perform the roles can make learning easier for people who dislike being "put on the spot" by traditional role-play, according to Jill Connick. Role play is a powerful tool but it needs to be handled well, she believes.
AIM have also incorporated the notion of "emotional intelligence", popularised by Daniel Goleman in a bestselling book of the same name, into their drama programmes. Goleman is quoted as saying that once people have reached management level, a few points up or down on IQ levels will not be a great predictor of job success. Star performers are high in areas such as self awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills, according to Goleman.
Leadership training is also available at the Globe Theatre in London, where managers can enlist with Richard Olivier, a theatre director and son of the late Sir Laurence Olivier, on a course run by Cranfield School of Management's Praxis Centre. Richard Olivier uses the play "Henry V" to examine what Shakespeare has to teach about leadership.
Sandy Barrett is a freelance journalist
