CMR? Yeah, well, just don’t act like Phil Donahue

 

No discussion of customer relations management – this month’s ProjectManagement.com’s theme – would be complete without a review of that relations epic FAIL, the interview of Katherine Hepburn by the, ahem, journalist, Phil Donahue.

It took place in 1991, when Hepburn was 84 years old. For an hour Donahue interviewed the famed actress, who discussed her life and career. At the end, Donahue asked Hepburn to autograph a copy of her autobiography, Me, and that’s when things got, shall we say, interesting. (Full disclosure – I’m not relaying all of the interaction, just some selected quotes.)

“What’s your name?” she asked.

Donahue, clearly put off, leaned forward and answered “Geraldo Rivera.”

Hepburn started laughing, immediately recognizing that Donahue wasn’t Rivera, but Donahue wasn’t about to give her a break. After some banter, he continued:

“You don’t know, do you? I bet you don’t know.”

Hepburn continued to try to write something – anything – special in the front page of the book, but Donahue wouldn’t stop pestering her.

“So, we’re going to sit here, and you won’t be able to sign this!”

“I’m just going to sign my name” she said, with a giggle. But Donahue wouldn’t let up.

“Twenty-four years on the air, over 5,000 hours, and you don’t know who the hell I am!”

Of course, not being a fan of Phil myself, I would count that last assertion as a compliment. Donahue eventually told her his name, and how to spell it, ending the interview.

At the time, Katherine Hepburn had been nominated for no fewer than 12 Academy Awards (a record surpassed only recently by Meryl Streep), winning four of them – a record that stands to this day. The American Film Institute named her the greatest female star in Hollywood history.

Donahue was listed #42 on TV Guide’s list of greatest television stars.

I’m thinking that any interviewer with a modicum of class (or perspective) would have given the aging icon a little room. It’s not as if leaping into a state of high dudgeon was going to suddenly re-introduce Phil’s name into her memory. Add to that the fact that Hepburn was in the process of complying with Donahue’s request to sign her book for him, and his intent becomes all the more incomprehensible. Did he want to humiliate her, on-air? If so, would that bode well for the prospects of landing future interviews with any Hollywood star over the age of 60? If his intention was to avoid having her appear aged and forgetful, why didn’t he just dispense with the dramatic re-telling of his resume, and just start spelling his name? Finally, by granting the interview in the first place, who was doing whom a favor here?

I believe Donahue’s out-sized ego interfered with his ability to properly manage the interviewer/interviewee relationship, which, I think, points to a truism that underpins all customer relations management: a little humility goes a long way.

Consider virtually any cataclysmic people-interaction/ relations failure – do they not have in common an inappropriate sense of self-worth on the part of the failing party? Napolean, Custer, the board of directors of IBM in the late 1970s – all must have felt invincible, right up to the time of their best-remembered blunders. As I discussed in my previous blogs (particularly about the Soup Nazis), if your product, project, or service is absolutely unique, AND in high demand, then and only then do you have a bit of latitude to indulge your superiority complex, and even in those circumstances the opportunity for epic failure is never really far away. You want a fast fix for your organization’s customer relations management issues? Introduce a little humility – that’ll fix most of what ails you.

And it will keep you from acting like Phil Donahue.