September 6, 2011
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Far too much leadership advice relies on giving listeners a series of precise steps to follow instead of expanding their perceptions. Understanding the capabilities and motivations of one’s charges is what distinguishes successful leadership.
Just to illustrate, let me start by making a terrible confession. When I was a teenager, my musical ambition was not to be a bass player. It was to be a symphony orchestra conductor.
One of the things I remember most about that era was sitting around with the other teenage wannabe conductors. We had all gone through the standard process of taking classes and reading books on the topic, and we assumed (as our paid instructors implied) that avid consumption of instructions was all that was needed. We thought we knew everything — now we just needed to execute.
One very popular activity was discussing the proper way to conduct a symphony orchestra at the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I cannot begin to tell you the degree of spirited debate and detail that went into this. We never once considered asking a professional musician what they thought. After all, they were merely obedient players, a lower class not worth considering. Besides, they might not understand our deep sensitivity.
When I made the leap into playing in professional orchestras, my perspective altered significantly. It had never occurred to my narcissistic little mind that in a major orchestra, the 90 people on stage already have a good idea (not to mention strong opinions) of how it should go. Further, no amount of baton-waving can provide the necessary precision required for 90 people to begin a piece with only a few hundredths of a second worth of tolerance for error. The conductor’s waving of a baton is just one small part of a massive team effort and almost magical moment of collective consciousness.
Sad to say, the vast majority of conductors never become aware of this complex process. They are too loyal to their training to learn anything new. They perceive of the orchestra as an inert and inanimate machine whose sole purpose is to obediently respond to carefully practiced white stick stimulus.
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