Last week Facebook hosted a marketing conference in London called Leadership In A Day, about the skills you need to be a leader. One of the guest speakers was Tim Chatwin: now VP of Public Affairs at Google, but formerly David Cameron’s comms guy, who talked about the importance of being a good listener.
Now, a Google exec talking about this is brave enough, with more and more people convinced that their Google-powered smartphones and speakers are eavesdropping, but Tim doubled down by singling out an old colleague at No.10 as being an absolute master of this skill. In his words, “a really great listener” who he thought they’d do well to emulate.
That colleague? Andy Coulson.
Perhaps best known as the tabloid editor who was so good at listening – especially to answerphone messages that he shouldn’t have had access to – he went to jail for it. |