Have you ever run an organization whose mistakes killed lots of people, thus attracting unpleasant publicity? The Buckley Method was designed with your needs in mind. The web site of the Buckley School explains:
In 1984, a toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India killed nearly 3000 people. The tragedy was terrible. So was the seeming incompetence of so many high Union Carbide functionaries, who were paraded before the camera. They appeared never to be able to get their stories straight.
As Reid Buckley watched these decent men squirm and fumble, he thought how unnecessary that humiliation was. He began testing a workshop to teach executives how to express themselves with poise under duress. The result four years later was the opening of the Buckley School.
Buckley School students travel to Camden, South Carolina — population approximately 6500 — which Mr. Buckley explains is “a winter destination for the Thoroughbred horse set and a home to the Buckley family.” As part of their training, students “join Mr. Buckley for cocktails and drinks.”
The school’s regular faculty includes Reid Buckley and eight non-Buckleys. A cadre of “consulting faculty” adds rhetorical firepower and more Buckleys. These include: Reid’s nephew Christopher Buckley, the political comic novelist; Reid’s brother John Buckley, comic novelist and Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications for the Internet company America Online and “Deputy press Secretary to President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush when they ran for reelection in 1984”; and Reid’s niece Priscilla Buckley Illel, who “lives in France with her husband and two children.”
The school’s offspring campus is run by David A. Melling. Mr. Melling received the Silver Medal in Oratory from the Buckley School, which “prompted Reid Buckley, founder of the Buckley School, to choose him to head up the new Buckley School West campus in Colorado.”