It is 2004 and David Lewis is sitting in an acting class in Chicago when an idea hits him.
The sales and marketing executive realised the skills used by actors could be harnessed to achieve better results in the corporate world. Actors, he reasoned, think first about audience reaction. Once they figure out what they want that to be, they modify their verbal delivery and their body language accordingly.
His insight led him to found Pinnacle, a communication skills training company based in Chicago, in 2005. Today, it operates in 25 countries and counts the likes of Apple, IBM, Lockheed Martin and Oracle as clients.
"The biggest challenge in communication - corporate, social, personal or professional - is not that we choose the wrong intention when we speak, it's that we don't choose anyintention," Mr Lewis said during a recent trip to Abu Dhabi to introduce his company to potential clients.
"And the problem therein lies in that I am leaving it up to you to determine what's the most important part of what I just said, how you should feel about it and what you should do with this."
Think about guests at a dinner party. When telling stories, they are generally compelling because their aim is to entertain. People giving presentations are often less compelling because they don't think about audience reaction. Their delivery is flat.
Mr Lewis established a three-stage process to teach his technique.
Step one: analyse the audience;
Step two: understand the actions you want to produce;
Step three: modify delivery to get the reaction you want.
"For us, it's about changing behaviour based on the way we deliver our message and no one else teaches that," said Mr Lewis.
Any scepticism he encounters about introducing acting techniques in the workplace he counters by listing a number of famous people, including Winston Churchill, the Clintons and Diana, Princess of Wales, who all studied with professional actors to perfect their oratory skills.
At the time of his brainwave, Mr Lewis, who has clocked up more than 500 stage and screen appearances, was planning to quit marketing for a full-time acting career and thought a small business would partly replace the corporate income he was giving up.
He had no inkling that Pinnacle would take off so quickly. Since its birth, he said, it has doubled in size every year apart from last year, when it tripled - a considerable feat given the gloomy economic climate.
In the UAE, Emirates Airline and Raqmiyat are already clients and the company is expanding here, having just partnered with Innovative Human Resource Solutions (IHRS), based in Dubai. As part of the agreement, IHRS will provide office space, sales and follow-up services for Pinnacle, which will conduct the actual training.
But is the technique something that can be transferred to other cultures outside the United States, such as in the UAE?
Yes, but tailoring delivery is important, said Mr Lewis, adding that his main focus is on communications at a global level.
"We are focused on the global stage helping organisations in China, or Dubai or Bangalore, communicate more effectively with their partners, peers and clients around the world - most likely in English'" he said. "What we are not trying to do is get people to talk like Americans. For Americans, we know with certain audiences we have to tone it down a bit. But most of the rest of the world needs to bring it up with the emotion."
Mr Lewis is a charismatic man. But as his business expands and others are employed as instructors, will the effectiveness of the technique be retained?
Again he is confident, saying that all his trainers are Pinnacle employees with backgrounds similar to his own: professional actors with business experience.
"One of my pet peeves when I used to hire outside companies to come do training is that we would always get a freelance instructor: somebody who trained five different things for 10 different companies," he said.
"I would always walk out of there saying: 'Is it fair to say your passion or expertise might be diluted because you train so many things?' All of our instructors are employees of our company. We put them through a very rigorous certification. They are the best in the world at what they do."
