In tune with leadership

'... when we look at performance, do we see people's eyes shining?'

Ben Zander’s leadership lightbulb moment arrived when he realised that as an orchestral conductor he doesn’t make a sound.

His power as conductor is enormous - and it consists of his ability to make his musicians powerful. As a leader Zander calls the tune but he doesn’t play it. So how could he get the people that follow his leadership baton with their eyes to perform from their hearts… and play out of their skins?

Zander set about redesigning the relationship between the conductor and the musician. He wanted to build different connections that better released the passion
and creativity he seeks to help deliver an outstanding musical performance.

This was good news for orchestra players. At the Leaders in London (LiL) summit last week, Zander said a survey revealed orchestral musicians enjoyed less job satisfaction than prison inmates!

More later about Zander and how he used ‘possibility’ as a key to help achieve this connectivity. What has caught my attention now is how Zander’s realisation some seven years ago strikes a chord with leaders today.

TSOC ran a leadership survey at LiL – and I delight in
the results.

We asked: ‘What do you think contributes most to a leader’s ability to stay on the cutting edge?’

Thirty five per cent of respondents agreed it is the
‘ability to remain in touch with the organisation, to actively listen to its people, despite the detachment a leadership role brings’.

And 24 per cent believe it is the ability to ‘keep dreaming, innovating, and aspiring for better things, long after you’ve reached the top leadership spot’.

In another question we asked respondents which of five leadership quotations, from leaders ranging from Dale Carnegie to Colin Powell, best reflected their own leadership thinking.

Thirty one per cent put trust at the top of their list, with a quote from thought leader Rob Lebow:

‘Great companies are made up of staff members who, when treated with respect and trust, will in turn take personal responsibility for their performance and behaviour and welcome the opportunity to be accountable.’

And 28 per cent opted for vision, with a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi: ‘We must be the change we wish to see.’

These results mirror Zander’s eureka moment. Now, I declare I am a Zander enthusiast. His mantra is that possibility unlocks potential, inspires self belief, allows us to consider for a moment that we can achieve that which we initially assumed impossible.

This approach has helped me help the senior executives I coach on a wide variety of leadership development challenges. I’ve taken Zanders’ principles, moulded them, and applied them with - not ‘to’ – the executives searching for their own Holy Grail of leadership style. I have found that in this process the question ‘what kind of leader am I?’ becomes ‘what kind of leader can I be?’.

For the business leaders I work with this question has the same effect as Zander’s realisation years ago. Power alone is not enough. The tone of our individual leadership style speaks volumes. Power can pull and it can push; how it persuades is down to individual knowledge and experience, for sure – and, I think, how as leaders we aspire on behalf of those who follow us.

At LiL I listened to Zander speak; I was there when he had his 800-strong audience sing, first Happy Birthday, then Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – in German – at full throttle first thing in the morning. Later the same day he was TSOC’s VIP guest at a private reception.

So my most recent exposure to the maestro’s thinking and style has been up close, and personal. This has prompted me to check in with my own thinking on what ‘possibility’ means, and I believe you get six key components for successful leadership.

(1) Aspiration – for yourself, your teams, your organisation. Make aspiration more real and turn it into (2) a vision of the future you want your people to have because you want them to deserve it. Keeping it real means (3) staying connected with these same people; when we listen to what our people say, do we hear a tone of voice? As Zander asks, when we look at their performance, do we see people’s eyes shining?

And how do we get people’s eyes to sparkle? Well, Zander sidesteps what some people find the tremendously burdensome business of competition by awarding his musical students an ‘A’ grade for their course - within the first ten minutes of his first lesson.

By letting us know we’ve succeeded before we’ve even begun, he steers us away from a world of measurement and evaluation. Zander describes the approach as creating ‘ not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into’. I can’t count the number of times when, at the beginning of a new coaching relationship, I’ve been struck by the perception of a new executive – and even by an experienced leader – that they should
be the perfect boss… have all the answers, be right every time.

When this occurs I take a leaf out of Zander’s book and pass on his ‘A’ grade. The message is, ‘it’s ok, you’ve passed the test already; now, relax; you’re free simply to concentrate on being the best you know you can be’.

I enhance this with (4) ‘respect and expect’. Experience has shown me, and I pass this on to the people I coach, that in engendering mutual respect with the people I work amongst I can expect them to want to live up to all I believe is possible for them.
And yes, as Rob Lebow says, respect does nurture people to become personally responsible for how, and how well, they do what they do. And we know that when people feel valued, they tend to work harder, to seek more (5) opportunities to get and do better. Where there is opportunity there exists chance, and where there exists chance I think there exists (6) innovation and advance. What might innovation and advance breed? Aspiration… and so the positive circle continues.

We have much more food for thought to come, prompted by our relection on what the many and excellent speakers at LiL had to say. If you would like a copy of the results of our leadership survey, please email: lizzie.jordan@tsoconsulting.co.uk; we’ll be writing more on this as well.

I’d love to hear what you think about Zander’s approach, my contribution to the topic, and whether or not any of this relates to your current leadership challenges.

Feel free to contact me for interesting conversation!