As a cabaret singer, Belle has performed in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Paris, Munich and the hill towns of northern Italy. This year, she launched a non-profit arm of The Ariel Group, seeking to foster leadership capacity for social justice through offering Ariel's theater-based programs around the world, particularly in the areas of education and peace building. 

KE: Your book Leadership Presence centers on the connection between leadership and acting.  Can you tell us about that connection?

BLH:  Leadership and acting can seem unrelated, however if you look at the skills required to be a great actor, and then consider those same skills as applied to a leader, you would see the enormous cross-over. To engage the audience, actors must be authentic, creative, have passion and physical presence and be able to express emotion and empathy.  In order to play a role an actor has to understand another character and have empathy.  Being able to read the audience and have clarity of purpose is important as well.  Actors work to have clarity of intention so they know where to go and what they want to influence. When I started doing this work, people questioned why leaders needed to have passion.  Today it's clear that leaders must be able to move people emotionally.  Many of the skills that an actor has can be transferred into a leader's tool kit.

KE:   When people see you compare leadership to acting is there concern that leaders will take on a role, or hide behind a mask, and not be transparent?

BLH:   We play different roles every day.  Sometimes it is of mother, father, child, colleague, boss, or subordinate and we behave differently in each role.  We don't talk to our boss the same way we talk to our kids.  In each role we play, we use very different sides of ourselves.  As a leader sometimes you have to play the coach, the collaborator, or the captain of the ship.  Sometimes you are the visionary, painting a picture of the future.  In those different roles you have to find a different side of yourself.

KE:  How did you come upon the marriage of your gifts in singing and leadership?

BLH:  When I was at Harvard pursuing a degree in English, acting and singing, there was a director that gave me the idea that you can apply acting to other contexts.  When I started working in business, mostly in financial services and consulting, I realized that there is a strong connection between the world of the actor and the world of a leader.

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