The Thoughtful Leader

Tag Archives: Effective Leadership

Music as a Metaphor for Business Leadership

I was pleased to read in the New York Times last Sunday that music continues to offer a useful metaphor for business leaders, who have often turned to musical groups like New York’s Orpheus Orchestra, and to a conductor/cellist like Benjamin Zander, author of “The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life” (Penguin Books 2002). Jazz pianist John Kao apparently ,delivered a message to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last Saturday as part of a jazz performance, according to reporter Steve Lohr (“Bright Ideas: The Yin and Yang of Corporate Innovation,” NYTimes, Business Section, 1-29-12, p. 3).

In his performance John Kao told business listeners that jazz “demonstrates some of the tensions in innovation, between training and discipline on one side and improvised creativity on the other.” In a jazz combo there is a free flow of leadership that passes among the various instruments, with each taking a turn at exploring the tune with unique features of sound, texture and dynamics. But underlying those improvised solos is a solidly competent group of players and a shared rhythm, melody, and harmony that shape the whole direction of the tune.

In classical performances, like those of string quartets where the music is written down (and is “interpreted” within much more clearly defined boundaries than in jazz), the leadership can also pass around depending on the personalities of the performers. Often the cellist, who has the lowest line in the music and sets the harmony, will lead the other players in setting the tempo for the whole piece. The first violinist, with the highest part, will make sure everyone else is “in tune” before the performance starts.

In every kind of musical performance, whether jazz or classical, all the players must have “training and discipline,” as Kao notes. They have to be able to play their instruments cleanly and effectively, producing a good sound on their own, before they join the others. When they do join the others is when the “creativity” part begins, whether it is jazz improvisation or interpretation of a written classical score. If everyone has the training and discipline to begin with, they can then begin to “cook” together – letting their imaginations soar, catching the energy from each other, and really making music.

I’m a classically trained violinist and I regularly play in a string quartet, so I know what this excitement can be like, but I also know how hard I have to practice my own part before the group gets together. Without this kind of practice, the quartet would sound awful! And I know many jazz musicians who have the same experience as they seek a balance between training/discipline and creativity.

So how does this metaphor apply to the business world? What’s your experience with the balance between training/discipline and creativity in your workplace? Clearly people are hired because they are qualified to walk in the door, sit down at their desks, log onto their computers and begin to do the work of the day. But when does the creativity kick in? Does it emerge from the synergy of the work team? Does it come from excitement with the content of the work itself? From having individual and shared goals for productivity, achievement, and success? Getting to the end of the song and loving it?

What kind of music gets played at your workplace? I assume that your colleagues have the right training and discipline, but do they also play in tune with each other and do they share the harmony and the rhythm?

Katharine Gratwick Baker, PhD

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Leading in a Time of Constant Change

Happy New Year to our readers, colleagues, friends, and families.  What Leslie and I wish for the world (and for your company, your community, your family and ours) is that systems-based leadership ideas will take off in 2010.  As we write in the introduction to Leading a Business in Anxious Times, the leadership principles we’ve introduced in the book “will enable you and your organization to successfully face the challenges that you encounter in an unknown but constantly changing future.  They will give you the resilience, stability, flexibility, and vision to prepare yourself effectively for whatever lies ahead.  Imagine if your company embraced responding to change as its strategic differentiator.  What could it not accomplish?” (p. 22)

At this point all we know about 2010 (we don’t even know if it will end up as “twenty ten” or “two thousand ten”), is that it will surely involve enormous change and demands for adaptation from all of us.  We will certainly be called upon to analyze, understand, and utilize new technologies, new products, and new ideas for defining and solving challenges at home, at work, and in the wider world.  As you know from reading our book (and probably from your own life), most people experience change and the demand to adapt as stressful.  When we are feeling anxious or stressed out, we can’t think as clearly, we make mistakes, we look for shortcuts, and our productivity and performance go down.

Faced with the inevitability of change in 2010, what can we do about it?  We’ve said that functioning higher on the scale of differentiation (p.110) is the key to managing change and to providing effective leadership at all levels in a business.  And raising your functioning has to start with self-awareness:  “Understanding how you functioned in your family when you were growing up, what triggers your anxiety today, and how you react when you are anxious can inform your thinking in ways that enable you to better manage your anxiety in the present.  Functioning at a higher level of differentiation as a member of an organization is always beneficial; you are less vulnerable to absorbing anxiety from others in the emotional system.  Being a non-anxious presence in the system brings big benefits to the organization…  As a way of leading, differentiation of self is about the value that a thoughtful, self-reflecting, emotionally independent individual brings to the workplace (p. 124).”

Please read on through Chapter 5 to learn more about how to do this.  And write to us about how it works for you as you face the changes that 2010 will surely thrust upon you.

Katharine Gratwick Baker, PhD, Northampton, MA, December 31, 2009.