Treating People Well by Lea Berman & Jeremy Bernard

Author:Lea Berman & Jeremy Bernard [Berman, Lea & Bernard, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

LEA

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One of the jobs of the chief usher is to protect and maintain the White House as a museum of American presidential history. One of the tasks of the White House communications staff is to make the White House look beautiful and majestic when seen on television. These two assignments were often in conflict, causing some angry disagreements. Gary Walters, the chief usher, and Scott Sforza, the communications staffer whose job it was to create memorable backdrops for all televised events, clashed about many things: whether the presidential podium for a joint press conference with a foreign leader looked best on the East Room’s east or west wall, or which rooms could be used for filming public service announcements, for example. An explosive confrontation came when one of the communications staff assistants innocently moved a rare mantel clock in the Red Room to set up a television shot, not knowing it was a historic antique that no one except the White House curator or the clock winder ever touched. (Yes, there was once a White House clock winder. There’s been a tradition of several generations of families serving as White House employees from the earliest days, although now the clocks are wound by the White House electricians.)

After the clock incident, a cold war raged between the two men, and their dislike for each other grew into a continuing problem. I understood their differing points of view and was increasingly drawn into their disagreements as the impartial third party. To their credit, they saw the value of an informal arbiter and found a way to get along through me.

Gary would come to me and say, “Can you tell Scott that we can’t get any more flags in the Grand Foyer for the press conference? They’re using the extra flags at an event in the Eisenhower building today.” Scott would accept that reason from me more easily than he would from Gary. By helping them reach common ground and “making them both right,” I found consensus. As a result, events ran more smoothly—which was, in the end, the whole idea.

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