Leadership Lessons From World-Class Orchestra Conductors
Leadership is the power, the driving force behind success. Leadership focuses all the power and energy of people, imagination and resources toward accomplishing the mission of the business. Leadership pulls together all the ingredients needed for success, creating a powerhouse organization that wins and cannot be slowed down or stopped.
What, then, defines an exceptional leader?
First and foremost, an exceptional leader is a person with a clear, strong vision, purpose, and mission, who is able to communicate his or her purpose and vision to others in such a way that others want to follow. A leader is driven by purpose, and puts his or her heart and soul into the business and its purpose.
An exceptional leader is an excellent communicator. He or she understands and manages people well.
An exceptional leader is extremely competent in his or her field. A leader is someone others recognize as worthy of being followed.
Truly exceptional leaders are visionaries who create movements in society, the arts and business.
A terrific example of excellent leadership is a world-class orchestra conductor. What does such a person have in common with business leadership?
The world-class orchestra conductor is an artist and expert musician, so he or she commands respect and admiration by virtue of his or her technical expertise.
The world-class orchestra leader has a clear, strong purpose and vision regarding the quality of music he or she intends to create.
The world-class orchestra leader understands each and every instrument and sound, understands how each instrument and sound contributes to the musical end result, and understands how to blend all those instruments into a beautiful, musical masterpiece.
The world-class orchestra conductor takes each musician and instrument, and coordinates and directs them into a strong, united group that together act as one to create a rich, harmonious and pleasing musical end result that audiences love.
The world-class orchestra leader must interact with and manage many individual musicians, each of whom brings his or her own goals, purposes, skills, opinions, personalities and temperaments;
The world-class orchestra conductor knows how to inspire the musicians to reach for and attain their very best;
The world-class orchestra conductor makes the difficult decisions as needed for the good of the whole orchestra and the musical end results. Such hard decisions include: letting go of any musician not pulling his or her weight; when and how long to practice, and so on. Such a conductor doesn’t care what others think of his or her decisions as long as he or she achieves the desired end results.
The world-class orchestra conductor demands that a high standard be attained. Such a conductor then drives, pushes, rehearses and inspires his or her musicians to perform their very best.
The world-class orchestra conductor's primary purpose and intention is to create the very best orchestra and music that cause audiences to beat down the door to his or her music hall.
The world-class orchestra conductor works hard and persists until he or she achieves the vision and goal.
The world-class orchestra leader blends the people and instruments into an aesthetic, desired, and universally-acclaimed musical masterpiece.
The world-class orchestra leader has all the qualities of an exceptional leader and manager, and blends them into an aesthetic, desired, and universally-acclaimed end result.
These are the very qualities and skills an entrepreneur, business owner or executive needs to lead his or her business to success and prosperity.
It all starts with a purpose and a vision. A leader must have a clear and exact vision and end result he or she wants to create. Everything starts with this; without a clear purpose, vision and end result properly communicated, nothing much happens - or chaos results.
There is one more parallel between an orchestra leader and an owner-executive. A man or woman who is a superb musician might not be a good orchestra conductor. It takes a different set of skills, abilities and qualities to become a master conductor. Being a world-class musician doesn’t automatically translate into being a world-class conductor or leader.
This is common in the business world. Very often, someone who has done an excellent job gets promoted to management. Many such people struggle for a time, and some even fail, because there is a different skill set needed for leadership and management. You see this very often in sales. A terrific sales person doesn’t always make a good sales manager.
The way to achieve your business goals is to become a good, competent leader and executive. Fortunately, the skills, abilities and qualities of a competent, successful owner and manager can be learned, and learned easily.
A truly competent, dynamic leader can lead any group toward its goals, regardless of the environment the group is in, even in a bad economy.