Leadership is an art. It can be nuanced, delicate and discrete but it can also be forceful and blunt. One act of leadership can instantaneously be all this and more.  

We have spent a lot of time systematising leadership. We have developed criteria by which we select leaders and categorise their behaviours. We have spent time watching ‘great’ leaders in order to emulate them. The assumption is that all we can observe is the sum of leadership.  But there is something primal about leadership that is lost in our ‘rational’ dissections of the topic. 

The way leaders experience the world is important to the art and act of leadership. This experience is at the foundation of leadership and it cannot be observed. It is personal, it is a product of reflection -  it is learned. So, here’s the thought: to what extent does our systematising, categorising, and theorising about leadership squeeze out the opportunities for leaders to develop—through experience—to the art of leadership. Does all the information on leadership push out opportunities to reflect on and learn from practice? Are leaders trying to be some textbook ideal and in the process forgetting to be themselves?  

I came to this by wondering why has it become necessary to educate potential leaders to be ‘authentic’. Why wouldn’t a leader be authentic? The art of leadership is developed through experience and as such is intimately wound into a leader’s character, beliefs, values, perceptions, emotions and behaviour. Leadership can only be done ‘authentically’. Maybe the need to educate on authenticity has arisen because we are lost in the thickets of the advice we all receive everyday on ‘how to be a leader’. In becoming lost, leaders may have become distant from themselves and their own experience of leadership.

In an earlier post, I looked at conductorless orchestras as a way to see how the absence of a leader might impact performance. This is where I got to:

It is a conclusion that speaks to what leaders do, not why or how. It is another observation. It doesn’t speak of passion or drive or force of character or something more elemental that is critical to the art of leadership. 

In 1967, the American music critic and journalist, Harold Schonberg, offered the following description of an orchestra conductor. It is an extravagant view but then leadership can be seen as an extravagant activity. Schonberg gets across a strong message of the leader as a focal point but also provides multifaceted view – one of all things to all people. 

Fifty seven years earlier than Schoenberg, General Hans von Seeckt’s description of a military commander offers a similarly theatrical portrayal of leadership but again it emphasises the leader as a central focal point. (General von Seeckt was responsible for rebuilding the German Army in the inter-war years.)

There is passion in these descriptions. There is emotion. In both cases, the leader stands on the precipice. By his or her action, stored organisational energy will be transformed into action. The art of leadership is to focus, harness, integrate and innovate. How can a leader not be authentic in that moment?  

Orchestra conductors and military commanders have much in common when it comes to leadership. First World War military commander General Sir John Monash drew a specific link between his role as commander and that of a conductor. For both conductors and commanders, success stems from a meticulous attention to detailed planning and choreographed implementation. But both are also responsible for managing the fine balance between adaptation, innovation and tradition in effecting the performance. In Monash’s words:

A perfected modern battle plan is like nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respective musical phrases. Every individual unit must make its entry precisely at the proper moment and play its phrase in the general harmony.

For Monash, that balance was tested in 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux where World War I was showing early signs of shifting from set piece to manoeuvre warfare, or in musical terms, from the innovation of orchestras to something more akin to the improvisation of jazz ensembles.
Innovation in orchestras also has an interesting wrinkle.

Frederick Goldbeck in his book The Perfect Conductor writes, ‘the conductor belongs to the genus interpreter’. His perspective is drawn from considering the relationship between conductor and composer. The relationship between the originator of the idea and the person responsible for leading its implementation. Goldbeck sees it as a complicated relationship and one that is intimately bound to the idea of understanding. On the surface, the conductor is the servant of the composer; however, the conductor’s ability to ‘interpret’ the music allows for innovation within the performance of the music that is, on the surface, defined by a seemingly tight set of musical rules. What does the conductor draw on in order to interpret the composer’s music if not his or her own experience, which is then channelled through the art of leading an orchestra?

I wonder whether through our relentless application of scientific approaches to understanding leadership we have not slowly but steadily distanced leaders from the experience of leadership. Leadership has been neatly boxed up such that its theories and behaviours can be inhaled by aspiring leaders. But the real trick is in the execution, the act, the performance. The experience of leadership is intimately bound to the individual. It interprets and creates meaning for others. It is a wellspring of innovation. It reflects values and beliefs. It is emotionally charged not anaemically rational. It is important that leaders experience all these aspects of leadership. A leadership ‘style’ comes from the experiences of an individual not a textbook. 

There’s something primal and personal about the experience of leadership that we shouldn't gloss over as we continue to systematise our knowledge of leadership. There is something deeply instinctual and emotional about the ability to move a group of people to sense, breathe, move, feel and think as if they were of one mind. All leaders should take the time to reflect on the deeply satisfying privilege it is to lead.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Sources:

Frederick Goldbeck, The Perfect Conductor: An Introduction to His Skill and Art for Musicians and Music-Lovers, London, Dennis Dobson, 1960.

Harold Schonberg, The Great Conductors, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1967.

General von Seeckt, Thoughts of Soldier, London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1930.

Geoffrey Serle, John Monash: a biography, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1982.

Picture Credit: 

Photo by SteFou! - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/41614647@N04