Welcome to RockStar Leader

The Intersection of Music and Leadership

Do you love music? Do you love how it’s created? Do you appreciate all it takes to get a live performance or recording accomplished? If you do, you are going to love to interact with RockStar Leader.

Taking Time With Talent

Our bass player struggles at times. There; I said it.

He still sometimes refers to fret number instead of note (“do I play a 3 or a 5 there?”) and gets flustered occasionally when we speed up past about 120 beats per minute. It’s perfectly normal. You see, he’s only been playing for a year and a half, and in the band we play in, no one else has less than a decade on his instrument. I’ve got two decades; our drummer, almost three.  Jay’s got a ton of natural talent, strong hands, and a terrific work ethic.  He’s going to be a great bassist. We all know it.

All he’s missing is time on the instrument, and there’s no shortcut for that.

What I’ve noticed about Jay in the past two years are the phenomenal strides he’s made as a musician in a supportive environment. It’s easy to forget at times that the “big chunks of getting better” come early, not late, in our careers, and they come only when we feel like we’re in an environment in which mistakes get made and can be safely corrected.  Jay’s gotten better – a lot better – since his first tentative steps jamming in my basement studio, in part because of a clear message the rest of us have sent him.  What we’ve told him, in essence, is “you’re new to this; you’re important to us; we’re going to wait for you and be there for you.”

He knows that we’re going to raise our expectations as we go – but there’s no point in starting off with those expectations. All they’re going to do is frustrate him, discourage his continuing efforts to practice and improve, and ultimately cost us a good guy. We didn’t try and do a stage show for almost a year after we began; it just wasn’t the right setting for him. Letting him slowly come along in basement jam sessions was a better environment for him to learn his craft. But once he gained his confidence, and improved his performance, he’s been fantastic in live shows.

Making Music at Work

I see this same concept executed well – and, sometimes, executed poorly – at the leading organizations I consult with as a solution delivery executive with Aristeia. Companies recruit top talent from prestigious universities around the country, but all too often forget who they’re bringing on board: kids. They’ve done it all, on paper – but never when it mattered. Do we need new collegiate-age hires to come up the curve quickly? Yes. Do we also need to be patient with them as those “big chunks of better” manifest themselves? Yes.

We also need to recognize the moments when they’re ready to take a step, and allow them to take it safely.

I’ve brought this idea to a number of client organizations, where our engagement team has worked with HR to institute ‘jam sessions’ for new hires. They’re provided with a forum of mentor executives within the organization and encouraged to research and present a topic of potential interest to the organization – a new product concept, an assessment of a key competitor, an overview of an existing process with recommendations for improvement. They’re then given the floor to make their presentation with all the accoutrements; often, the boardroom is scheduled for the event, and lunch is provided. The only rules are that criticism can only be constructive, and anything that needs to be discussed in greater depth is done offline. It’s a safe environment.

The results for our clients have been fantastic. Everyone wins; young employees get valuable face time with senior execs, and they’re less nervous about presenting ‘for real’ down the line if they’ve seen those executives and answered their questions in a less formal setting several times before. Execs get to meet some of the company’s brightest young stars early in their career and develop mentoring relationships with them. And, every now and again, a presentation that was supposed to be a ‘trial run’ turns out to be something of real interest and importance to the organization – a product idea gets enacted, a process gets re-engineered, et cetera.

Practice Makes Perfect-ish

The presenter is almost always asked to be  a part of that team working on the project, in a ‘safe’ role. The time involved in preparing a presentation is minimal in the scope of the employee’s week, generally just a few hours’ time scheduled out to work on it, and the process also encourages new hires to meet and interact with other members of the organization in different operational areas.

Talent grows and flowers; it evolves, breathes, and expands. It’s not a shrink-wrapped commodity that’s switched on at a certain point in our lives and remains at a steady state. Carl Jung wrote that “…great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.” As we recruit and hire new employees for our organizations, these are important concepts to keep in mind. Rush a new hire along too quickly in the never-ending quest for productivity and improvement, and we risk gaining nothing from his or her tenure. Carefully managing our new human resources and bringing them along at a comfortable pace, however, ensures years – perhaps decades – of productive, creative service.

What steps are you taking in your organization to ensure that your young recruits are protected from harsh elements in the beginning stages of employment? How are you mentoring them with a sense of safety and encouragement? What else is needed to insure that your organization is providing the proper environment for professional and personal growth? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Dave Mayer is EVP & Executive Director of Aristeia, Inc.
He can be reached at david.mayer@aristeia-corp.com

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Rock Music Rocks Stocks

Okay all you Rock Star Leaders out there – get a-load of this! USATODAY reported on November 17, 2009:

“Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll — and the stock market? [S]ome academics and analysts are wondering if trends in pop culture might provide more accurate clues of where stocks are heading.”

This idea is that America’s “mood swings” determine not only what music we listen to, but if we want to buy or sell stocks!

“When people are in a collective good  mood, for instance, they tend to listen to bubble-gum-pop music with a steady happy beat.” Think back to January 2000, when the market was waaaay up, boy bands, Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilera, and the Carlos Santana/Rob Thomas smash hit, Smooth, were tops.

“Conversely, when they’re in a funk, people gravitate to music with dark, complex tones and themes.” No wonder that Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight peaked as stocks began to tumble in 2007, AC/DC hit #1 on the Billboards charts in 2008 — even the Sex Pistols got back together during the 2007 Dow slide!

“The connection of music, stocks and mood is more than coincidence,” said Philip Maymin, professor of finance and risk engineering at New York University Polytechnic Institute, who studied the “beat variation” of music during market tops and bottoms.

So what’s the message, here, for Rock Star Leaders? Perhaps a rousing chorus of Livin La Vida Loca?!

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Barry Zweibel is president of GottaGettaCoach!, Inc.
He can be reached at info@ggci.com.

Image Source: hipsotry.com, i.ehow.com

Rock Star Leadership In the Key of … “See”

Music.

MUSIC.

M-U-S-I-C!

So can music really teach a leader how to be a Rock Star Leader?!

Well, let’s see what M-U-S-I-C has to offer:

• “M” reminds us to always strive to Motivate Others.

As a Rock Star Leader, it’s not just about helping others to raise their game when it’s convenient, or when you feel like it. It’s about ever-being the role model, the one others look up to, and the one who  doesn’t just play the (Leadership) music, but someone who understands the (Leadership) music – and can explain it to others in increasingly powerfully engaging and relevant ways.

• “U” suggests we always Utilize our Resources.

A Rock Star Leader knows who’s good at what, who likes doing what, and how to those very skillful (and willful) people to stop what they’re working on, and willingly do what the Rock Star Leader needs done.

• “S” counsels us to purposefully Stretch and Grow.

Rock Star Leaders are not, to use the vernacular, “One Hit Wonders.” They’re continually upgrading their skills, savvy, power to influence others, and impact – not just by doing whatever they already know how to do, but by improving their “chops” accordingly.

• “I” informs us to Introspect Regularly.

Even the Rock world’s best “shredders” slow down and do the power ballad thing from time to time. So, too, with Rock Star Leaders. As pianist and composer Arthur Schnabel said, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides.” Pause, introspect, and learn something about yourself and how to be a better leader.

• “C” recommends that we Collaborate Freely.

Let the creative juices flow. Stretch what’s possible. Push the limits of what you typically do. Mix and Match. If Robert Plant and Alison Krauss can collaborate, and win multiple Grammys for it, surely you can pick up the phone and schedule coffee with that guy down the hall! If Carlos Santana can collaborate with … sheesh! who hasn’t he collaborated with … then so can you. But more importantly, if Mary in marketing and Steve in IT can collaborate together, then so can you!

So go on. Have at it. Let your Rock Star Leader flag fly! The M-U-S-I-C will show you how.

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Barry Zweibel is president of GottaGettaCoach!, Inc.
He can be reached at info@ggci.com.

Image Source: gcc.asu.edu

Why Dogs Don’t Enjoy Music

“Anyone with normal hearing can distinguish between the musical tones of a scale: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. We take this ability for granted, but among most mammals the feat is unparallelled.”

So reported Sandy Fritz in Scientific American Mind, last year, to the dismay of barking Labradors, woofing bassets, yelping Yorkies — and Rock Star Leaders –, everywhere.

Yet a study conducted by researchers at UCLA, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Weizmann Institute of Science, concluded that “humans can easily detect frequencies as fine as one twelfth of an octave — a half step in musical terminology. Dogs can only discriminate resolutions of one third of an octave.” (And “dog” employees? Well, they can’t hear even that!)

The implication for Rock Star Leaders is this: You may be, unkowingly, diluting your impact by communicating with your employees  in a too-subtle, or too-convoluted, manner.

Granted, this conclusion has less to do with hearing than understanding, but stay with me.

Subtlety is often considered a more “refined” form of communication. The problem with subtle communications, though, is that they ask the listener — they require the listener — to be much more discerning when listening. And depending on circumstances, that could be asking a LOT from someone.

Too much, perhaps.

Indeed, expecting someone to give you their full and Undivided Attention could be far more than they’re ready for — or capable of — in this busy, distracted, juggling priorities, go-go, world of ours.

So what if we purposefully avoided such splitting of ”dog hairs” when we’re sharing our content with others? What if we focused, instead, on talking more clearly and crisply (and in larger octave steps, perhaps?) so that everyone — even those with lesser abilities to listen so carefully — could completely understand what we’re talking about anyway?

What would that sound like, I wonder?

Hopefully, this isn’t too subtle a point to be making for Rock Star Leader readers. I suspect it is not. And i hope that it will encourage (and help) you to communicate more effectively than you might otherwise.

And, hopefully, that will be music to EVERYONE’S ears!

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(excerpted from: http://www.ggci.com/blog2/2008/11/why-dogs-dont-enjoy-music.htm.)

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Barry Zweibel is president of GottaGettaCoach!, Inc.
He can be reached at info@ggci.com

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Music-Based Learning 101

 

A one, and’a two, and’a One, Two, Three!

I have the greatest job in the world. And I’m keeping it.  When I go to the office I get to talk about which musicians are being featured in the next event and I get to call up Billy Joel’s saxman and talk music, I get test out new guitars and bring people together at companies like they never have before. It is fun.

It wasn’t always that way.  I used to run an online solutions agency.  It was cool, but it didn’t satisfy my soul. When the day was done, I’d go out and jam with friends.  I watched the dynamic in the room during those jam sessions and I noticed something incredible.  The room was in tune.  Each person was listening to the other in ways regular folks don’t.  When I came away from those sessions there was a deep sense of satisfaction no job could provide.

Eventually I sold the agency and had a chance to re-evaluate my career.  At the end of each day, I’d go home and pick up my guitar and play… just like yesterday.  There were two fundamental things I noticed.  People I used to jam with when I was a kid were dusting off their guitars again and going back to the activities they enjoyed most.  And the music industry was changing dramatically.  Today, music is all about live performance. Professional musicians are constantly looking for new places to perform and new audiences to share with.

I had a vision. Harness the power of music to teach eadership and collaboration.

As I became more and more intrigued with music as a tool for teaching collaboration and leadership, my wife bought me a copy of “This Is Your Brain On Music”, authored by Daniel Levitin.  This book brought it all together for me in an instant.  Mr. Levitin’s research confirmed everything.  I wasn’t the only one thinking about this topic.  This is where the passion connected with the science.  I then spent the next year creating a program for non-instrument playing people to experience the power of music-based collaboration.

The response to these programs was instant, and today, three years later, The League Of Rock provides a full array of Music-Based Leadership Training & Team Building programs to companies on both sides of the border.

One might think “oh, music-based learning… our company is way too conservative for that”, or “what’s music-based learning? We can’t waste our time listening to music and jamming. We need to get our people working more effectively on software programming”.

Music-based learning, simply put, gives people a deeply enjoyable, universal language for communication.  We don’t deploy new fangled wacky practices or wierd exercises.  The League Of Rock’s programs utilize an age old approach to listening and trading ideas.

Simple. Fun.

In future installments I’ll talk about discovering the Customer Service Rep at one of Canada’s largest cell makers, who turned a rock song into a Dub Reggae tune as his work-mates thankfully joined him in the process.  They didn’t know he had this talent, and they didn’t know they could collaborate on that level. These people came into the event as relative strangers who happen to work together, and they left as a deeply and emotionally connected team.

In future installments I’ll cover issues such as “why do I feel like no-one on my team hears me” and “As a team leader, I’m having trouble getting my people to execute the way I need them to”.  The odd time I’ll toss in a few stories about a jamming with great players such as Richie Cannata. I’ll share inside scoops from Rod Stewart’s long time guitarist Robin Le Mesurier and many other music based back stage stories.

Where I live, it’s all about leaving the ego at the door, tossing the ball around, sharing, listening hard and enjoying the process.

Giving adults an engaging experience they truly enjoy to make sure they retain more information is the basis of everything we believe in at the League Of Rock.  Our clients usually come to us after having gone through many events where eight out of ten participants either fall asleep or try to make a break for it to “end the madness”.  During our events there’s always at least one participant who comes over to me and says “Terry, I wish I had your job”.  I inevitably agree… I wish I had my job too.

So, to give clarity to this “self-generated” introduction, this is how I arrived here today.  In 2006, I gave myself one year to “find myself.”  The challenge was to take my past experiences, my inner belief system, my understanding of music, and combine it, to transform my life experiences into a force for great collaboration and leadership.  When it all came together in my mind, the vision was League Of Rock.  An organization dedicated to helping people learn better leadership and collaboration through music.

This brings me to the end of my first installment on Music-Based Learning 101.  Please stay tuned… I’ll try to keep it fresh, engaging, a little on the edge, and always informative…  If you have any questions, I welcome them. Please feel free to connect with me at Terry@LeagueOfRock.com

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Would You Play A One-String Guitar?

You don’t have to be a guitar player to know that a musician would not opt for a one-string guitar, in lieu of the standard six-string instrument. The magic in making music and listening to music comes from the rich harmony of notes and chords. Talented artists mix and mingle the guitar strings to create a range of rhythms and melodies.

Fewer strings would compromise the music and render the guitar barren. The six strings of a guitar parallel our six senses.

So I pose, why do ‘humans’ often opt to utilize one sense, when we have six? Why just hear, when you can see, smell, taste, touch and of course, intuit? Why settle on being ‘rational’, when you can embrace what is relational, emotional, and physical? Imagine the richness of experience that awaits you, if you consciously employed the senses available to us. Performing artists are immersed with the senses daily. Their work is dependent on it. Their world is configured by it.  Are you leading playing a one-string guitar?

Why?

Walk around your office space several times. First focus on seeing. After awhile add seeing and hearing. Then pay attention to the smells and the taste in your mouth.

How did your experience change? How does experiencing with all your senses inform what you know, and do? What possibilities do you think await you if you choose to play all six strings? How could it enhance your personal leadership?

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Rochelle Mucha is Managing Director of Business as Performance Art
She can be reached at rochelle@businessasperformanceart.com

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How To Be a RockStar Leader

When you hear the word “rockstar,” what comes to mind?

Does it conjure up visions of a stage performance where adoring fans groove to the pounding vibe of a mega-celebrity with massive adoration? Does it evoke images of limousines, red carpet struts, and mega-attention?  Perhaps it makes you think of an indulgent lifestyle where someone “gets” everything in lavish doses because of their huge persona, swelling fan base and their ability to command an army of servants to grant their every wish? Maybe an image of Mick Jagger, Bono, or even Hannah Montana?

What about in a corporate setting? Have you ever heard of an executive on a rocket ride to the top in the organizational structure being referred to as a rockstar? If you have, does the image make you think of what that person gives, or what he or she gets?

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Often times the images of a rockstar focuses mostly on their onstage performance and what they receive in return in the form of affirmation, applause, rave reviews, and lavish “things” that they get and get to do. Rarely does any attention focus on the mundane aspects of what actually creates their celebrity: hard work. (Yuck! Who wants to hear about that???)

If you ask someone if they would want to be a rockstar in their field of endeavor, that person would probably think of what they would get by being that rockstar, rather than what they would have to do and sacrifice to gain that position. Of course, this is probably normal. People think in terms of getting, rather than giving. It’s a much more pleasant thing to do.

When you think about what it takes to really become a rockstar, it boils down to talent, practice, creativity, hard work, enormous perseverance, and an intense drive to succeed. Because rockstars put in all the ingredients upfront is why they get the opportunities to succeed at such high levels. Look at the perseverance of Thomas Edison in creating the light bulb. That dude is a RockStar! He deserves his name in lights!

So, Do You Want to be a RockStar Leader?

If you answer yes, then start getting in shape, because it is going to take a Herculean effort just to get on stage. Probably, the biggest part of that effort is going to be in changing perspectives from one of a receiver to one of a giver. Give first, receive later is the very first set of “expectations recalculations” that will need to take place in your head.

And what do you give? You have to give a whole ‘lotta love.

Seth Goodin in a recent article about The Two Elements of a Great Presenter says that there are two ingredients in being a great presenter. I think that these two ingredients also apply to the formula on how to be a rockstar leader. He says this about being a great presenter:

The two elements of a great presenter

1. Respect (from the audience)
2. Love (to the audience)

There are no doubt important evolutionary reasons why this is true, but in my experience, every great presenter earns the respect of the audience (through her appearance, reputation, posture, voice, slides, introduction, etc.) and captures the attention of the audience by sending them love.

If you have ever experienced a rockstar presentation from a corporate or organizational leader, you certainly respected themgreatly and they definitely poured out much love onto and into you. They showed up as a giver. They gave you what you wanted or needed in overwhelming quantities. They came to your table ready to feed you. And you adored them for it.

See this simple recipe entitled How to Become A Rockstar from wikiHow. The article tells you the behind-the-scenes steps it takes to get to a destination called “rockstardom.” It doesn’t go into details on how to smile for the cameras, or on eating caviar on your Cheerios. It talks about the selfless steps you have to take to reach something grand.

So, if you want to be a rockstar leader, go for it! You actually have a good shot at it if you give it a try. Like the article says on becoming a rockstar, focus much more on songwriting than on performing.

Do you dream of raging fans, adoring reviews, and your name in lights? Then start your journey by serving the very people around you today and see where that takes you.

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This post was originally published at www.linked2leadership.com.

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Tom Schulte is Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership &
CEO of Recalibrate Professional Development.
He can be reached at tomschulte@recalibratenow.com

Image Source johnvondracek.co

Welcome to the Jungle!

Welcome to the jungle. Welcome to a new place called RockStar Leader.

The idea for the RockStar Leader group and blog came from a conversation with a talented keyboardist named Emerson St. Pierre who wanted to see his two passions of music and leadership talked about in a vibrant open forum. Emerson knows what he is talking about when it comes to these two topics. He was the recent winner of the Hard Rock Cafe’s nationwide search for talent in the Ambassadors of Rock Battle of the Bands contest in Summer 2009. Beating over 150 bands, the Atlanta, Georgia band named Rudy Vaughn won the Hard Rock Cafe contest and was flown to London, England to play at Hyde Park in the Hard Rock Calling with Bruce Springsteen, The Dave Matthews Band, The Killers, Neil Young, and more.

Facing the challenges with creative-types on that journey really prepared him to gear up for more challenges in cooperating with others in the creative music business. Since that experience in London, Emerson is honing his skills on the music scene and is continuing his lifelong passion of leadership effectiveness.

So, E, here is your blog. We call it the RockStar Leader.

The new blog called RockStar Leader is designed to engage people who are interested in the intersection of music and leadership. Here are some of the topics we will be covering:

“A Different Drummer” has topics related to people who might just be a little off-beat. (But everyone is welcome…)

“Leader of the Band” discusses issues related to being a leader of a musical group, orchestra, or worship team.

“Music Genres” is a category for different types of music. Find your favorite beat here. Rock, pop, jazz, hip hop, and more…

“Intersections” is our catch-all category for those topics that we just can’t seem to get back into their cage.

“Decade” has subtopics, oddly enough called: 1960’s, 1970’s 1980,s, and so on…

And More!

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Aesthetic Intelligence: Reclaim the Power of Your Senses

by Rochelle T. Mucha Ph.D.

“A pioneering book about the intersection of business and the arts…”

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PLEASE REPLY and let us know if there are topics or categories you would like discussed.

Also, if you are on LinkedIn, come join our group here:  RockStar Leader