The Musicality of Leadership
Susan Templeton, Training and Organizational Development Consultant
In February I was honored to attend LEAD2016 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, an interesting venue that turned out to have some thematic significance. All the conference presenters were master storytellers, but the opening and closing sessions that wove together ideas about music and leadership resonated with me the most.
The first day started with Arthur Bloom’s session on Musical Resilience. When Bloom, who was recognized as a Top Ten CNN Hero in 2014, visited the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, he couldn’t shake the feeling that our wounded warriors were simply being warehoused. As a composer, he naturally turned to music. He created a rehabilitative program called MusiCorps, which provides instruments, mentorship, and instruction to interested vets at Walter Reed. In a number of cases, MusiCorps has provided customized instruments to accommodate missing or damaged digits, hands, and limbs.
Transformative Engagement
What Bloom discovered is that many vets—despite some extreme physical challenges and a lack of musical experience—became competent or even accomplished musicians. The key? They had long days to fill and now had something to apply themselves to that was both challenging and rewarding. It reminded me of the adage about teaching a person to fish. Bloom could have brought in musicians to perform at Walter Reed and filled some small part of the veterans’ days with entertainment. Instead, he brought in instruments and provided instruction—a far greater investment of time and resources but with an exponentially greater return.
Another takeaway is that Bloom didn’t question the vets’ capacity to learn and to become good musicians. He engaged them, provided the right tools and guidance, and then watched as they applied themselves and flourished. For many of the vets, being involved in MusiCorps has vastly changed their outlook and their lives. While we may not have as grand an impact on our team members, we should bear in mind that engaging, supporting, and believing in people can work wonders.
A Music Theory
Gary Muszynski’s closing session, Live and Lead More Musically: Leadership Agility for Challenging Times, also struck a chord with me. The concepts he presented were very much in sync with what I teach in POD’s Leadership Agility Series, but with a musical framework.
Muszynski began his session by passing out shaker eggs. He started shaking his egg and everyone in the audience followed along. When he changed the beat, we all adjusted our playing until we were in time with him. With that dynamic metaphor for leadership as a jumping off point, Muszynski drilled down further, using musical metaphors for different leadership styles.
Muszynski describes an orchestrating style of leadership as all about command and control. Like with classical or big band music, there is written music that’s often densely notated and has designated parts for different people to play. The next level of leadership would be collaborating, such as one might find with folk or world music; with this kind of music, there may be established songs or traditions, but there is more freedom to interpret the music and more fluidity among the players. According to Muszynski, the highest level of leadership is improvising, which he compared to free jazz or Indian raga music.
According to Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs, co-authors of Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change (the text upon which the Leadership Agility Series is based), leaders tend to engage in either heroic or post-heroic leadership. With heroic leadership, the leader assumes sole responsibility for setting the unit’s objectives, coordinating the activities of all team members, and managing people’s performance. In this way, a heroic leader might be both composer and conductor. While this can be effective, in complex environments where objectives, resources, and the institutional environment can change rapidly, heroic leadership tends to over-control and under-utilize staff.
Vision and Improvisation
Post-heroic leadership creates highly participative teams characterized by shared commitment and responsibility. Being a catalyst is an example of post-heroic leadership in the Leadership Agility model; at this level, reality is relative and depends on frames of reference. Catalyst leaders are visionaries who are open to change and willing to rethink basic assumptions. Thinking back to Bloom, although the veterans that participate in MusiCorps don’t form an organizational team, Bloom brought a post-heroic level of leadership to the project. His openness to possibility and strong vision engaged the veterans and gave many of them a transformative experience.
It’s interesting to think about leaders as catalysts in light of Muszynski’s idea of the improvisational leader. When we think of improvising—and letting those around us improvise—we might fear a complete loss of control. Yet if you think of greats like John Coltrane playing free jazz, it’s clear that Coltrane had a distinct vision and sound regardless (or perhaps even because of) his own and others’ improvisations. I think this illustrates something pretty fantastic that we can all aspire to: a balance of letting go while remaining intensely engaged, an ability to pay close attention to the actions of others and adjust our own responses accordingly. What we might then achieve is a composition that responds perfectly to a particular moment in time.
LEAD was different from other conferences I’ve attended in the past, and I was surprised at how emotional the two days were. Being there with POD’s director, Ujima Donalson, to accept an award for a UW leadership program that we’re both deeply committed to was quite moving in itself. Beyond that, I appreciated the conference’s focus on inspiring leaders with stories and encouraging them to take everyday actions to create a better world. As is the case with listening to good music of any genre, at LEAD2016 both the mind and heart were engaged. For me, it served as a profound reminder that the best of leaders are adept at using both.
