Debating skills come in handy in business

Law and politics are the career choices of competitive debaters, but as President Bush and Sen. John Kerry battle tonight in the most consequential of debates, insiders intimate with the machinations of the sport are seeing a gradual shift toward business careers.

By Del Jones, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2004-09-29-ceo-debates_x.htm

Debaters train to persuade and advocate a side. At tournaments they often don’t know what side they will take until the last minute and are often required to switch sides in subsequent rounds.

That seems a perfect tutorial for lawyers. Cynthia McKay, CEO of Le Gourmet Gift Basket, says she learned "attorneys have no opinion until they’re paid to have one" at University of Denver law school.

But the debate discipline is also laden with skills necessary to business. And although debate teams will likely remain a breeding ground for future lawyers and the politically ambitious, debate coaches are seeing more and more of their former students at or near the top of companies.

Debaters must do exhaustive research, be flexible, get to the point and have the courage to discard just about everything they learn on the fly. In other words, debate teaches them to make tough choices.

If there is a single lesson of debating, it’s to know your opponent better than they know themselves, says Scott Deatherage, head of the Northwestern University debate team, winner of six of the last 10 national championships. "We teach how to make decisions under pressure and in a timely fashion. My sense is that CEOs are called upon to do that," he says.

Key debate skills

CEOs and company presidents who have formal debating experience include Lance Rosenzweig of 2,500-employee outsourcing specialist PeopleSupport; Chuck Berger of Nuance Communications, a software company with more than 300 employees; Mark Astone of marketing and communications agency Panagraph; Tod Loofbourrow of 130-employee human resources software company Authoria; Karyl Innis of The Innis Co. executive coaching firm; and McKay, whose company has 510 franchises in 11 countries.

Michael Beckley and Marc Wilson, both 30, co-founders of software company Appian, are also on the list. Before joining Dartmouth’s debate team, the two competed against each other in national tournaments going back to the ninth grade. Wilson’s two-man team at Dartmouth ranked No. 2 in the USA his senior year.

Wilson and Beckley majored in government with a focus on international relations at Dartmouth before co-founding the Vienna, Va., company that has grown to 190 employees in five years and has Home Depot and GlaxoSmithKline among its clients.

Debate skills are key when preparing for meetings with such clients. Beckley and Wilson will often play the role of skeptical customer, anticipating, as trained debaters do, any concerns that could scuttle a deal.

They get ready for interrogations by customers who come with ammunition supplied by competitors and hired-gun consultants. For example, a client might ask why it should hire a 5-year-old software company when it could go to an IBM, Microsoft or Oracle.

One Appian retort: "Unless you plan to spend millions, those companies will give you their B team." Beckley and Wilson say such arguments have won Appian large intranet accounts, including the world’s largest at the U.S. Army with 1.7 million users.

Having been trained to assume each side of an argument lets Wilson and Beckley deal with customers who are Sun Java or Microsoft dot-com zealots.

Beckley and Wilson go so far as to say Appian may not exist without their debate backgrounds. Beckley says he tries to explain to friends and co-workers how critical debate has been to his success. Most think Beckley carries an inner quality, "But it was really about the training," Beckley says.

When time is limited

Nuance’s Berger says he learned three things in debate that have helped in business. First, how to research and prepare a controversial topic with opposing viewpoints. Second, to make a compelling presentation. Third, to act quickly on your feet.

"In a structured debate, you have limited time," Berger says. "Customers likewise give you limited time to tell them why they should buy your product. You must get right to the point in a compelling way."

Horrow Sports Ventures President Richard Horrow was a Northwestern debater after twice winning the Florida high school championship. He graduated from Harvard law school but chose business and runs a company that has cobbled together 102 public-private stadium partnerships, including Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati and Miami Arena. He’s been successful in 30 of 32 of what he describes as "jousts" to persuade voters to approve stadiums.

"Debate gave me the ability to organize my thoughts and make a rational case in a way that is unparalleled," Horrow says.

Innis says it taught her "to talk and not sweat, to persuade and not shout."

CEOs such as Charles Hoffman of broadband provider Covad have no formal debate experience and are glad for it. He has debaters on his executive team, including general counsel Jim Kirkland, who competed for Harvard. Hoffman says his job as CEO is to listen, make a decision and not waiver.

"Arguing for the sake of arguing does nobody any good," Hoffman says. Yet, he says, it’s even worse to have a company void of debate and full of yes men.

Ruthless competition

Other CEOs who have been trained in debate say that their rise required adjustments to their win-at-all-cost mentality. "Good debaters are ruthlessly competitive," Berger says, which may be admirable when dealing with an opponent, but not always the best tactic for team cohesion.

"You can come off as a used car salesman," McKay says. "Aggressive, pompous. Part of business success is the ability to compromise."

But debating teaches listening skills and winning allegiances, not pomposity, Deatherage says, adding that people who don’t see the opponent’s point of view tend to be the weakest collegiate debaters.

Debaters encounter other drawbacks when entering business. Horrow fights a tendency to cut people off and finish their sentences. "I’ve learned to slow down my speech. I do it consciously."

Wilson and Beckley say they focus on minor flaws in their arguments to the point of paranoia. "We spend far too much time worrying about things that no one else would notice," Wilson says. "We detail every possible failing, real or imagined."

But in business, the positives far outweigh the negatives, debaters say. Women say debate taught them to communicate in a man’s world, to hammer home strong points. McKay says she has won business with some "who might have a gender problem."

Debating CEOs say tonight’s presidential debate is better than no debate at all, but the candidates have insisted on rule changes that will gut the debate of give-and-take.

"The format doesn’t take the candidates off their scripts and move them away from polished preparation," Beckley says.

But the CEOs also say they will be watching Bush vs. Kerry Round 1 and expect to get a glimpse of how the candidates react under pressure and how well they can identify with the audience.