I have this friend, Dr. Robert Lee, he’s a bigtime gestalt therapist. He writes, edits, and publishes a lot of stuff for other therapists. I was asking him about his work one day, and he said to me, “Justin, it all pretty much boils down to one thing: are you connected or are you disconnected?”
It’s a simple statement, but when I started to think about it, it sure made a lot of sense to me.
In the realm of conductors and management, here is a story of how this approach applies:
When I was a teenager, I had grand ambitions of conductorial glamour and grandeur. Of course, orchestras to actually conduct are hard to come by at any age, so in lieu of actually conducting an orchestra, I read lots of books on the subject, I would practice waving a baton at my stereo system, and when I met up with other wannabe conductors, we spent hours and hours discussing the theory of conducting. One of the favorites was how to begin Beethoven’s Fifth with the least amount of motion, and all sorts of very high-minded discussions about how to shape a phrase and so on and so forth etc. etc. etc.
Unfortunately, there was one small thing lacking from all these many hours spent studying conducting, and that was the lack of doing any actual conducting. All of this theorizing and philosophizing was, sad to say, sorely lacking in practical experience. To be honest, I’m not sure the opinions or the possible point of view of, say, a 5th chair violist, ever came up as a topic for discussion. We just assumed they would find us to be wonderful, and that was that.
Well, my conducting goals got sidetracked because of the exceptional circumstance of my actually getting a gig playing the bass in a major orchestra. And while I of course played for some truly fab conductors, there were a lot that truly weren’t so fab. The difference was not talent or training or ability, though. The great ones . . . were connected. And the also rans . . . were disconnected.
Great conductors all have this way of making you feel like they are right next to and rooting for you and loving every subtle nuance of what you are doing. The also- rans make you feel like you are a nameless cog, that you could get booted out at any minute for making a mistake, and their instructions and interaction with you is all one way– they often created a sense that they were not listening to us at all, and were instead demanding that we listen to (read: obey) them, period.
The lack of perception is a key symptom of disconnection. And the more you try to fix the resulting problems with one-sided top-down error reduction systems, the worse it gets.
Of course, connection to people can be fraught with difficulty– being connected creates sense of risk of losing that connection, and to some that feels like a loss of power and control. Of course, if you lack connection, power and control is all you have in place of it, so one can be loath to give that up.
So anyway, back to real life application: for the players in an orchestra, when a conductor fails to create a sense of connection, and instead indulges themselves in enjoying the massive power that being a conductor confers, oh, brother. Not good. We would be tremendously annoyed and offended, and of course we would lose all interest, and sometimes even sabotage them. In those moments I am not even sure it was a conscious act, it was more like an irrepressible urge. Felt like justice.
Musicians in particular spend a lot of time practicing specifically to obtain greater connection. And when a person in authority does not take the time to hear them, professionalism does not save the day. We would just shut down and do the minimum to keep the check flowing.
And of course the same thing happens in any organization.
For all of the hoopla about management theories and social media, the core dynamics of human interaction have not changed. You can have 6,000 friends on facebook and still feel isolated and alone. You can have a massive website and have no one care about you.
A state of isolated perfection, like my conducting a stereo system so long ago, is very appealing in its promised efficiency. But in reality, I wasn’t making any meaningful connections with anyone. Connections are imperfect, they are inefficient, they are hard to predict, but that’s the real guts of the matter, and there’s no getting around it.
So as you ponder your upcoming web 2.0 strategies and your six sigma implementation, whether you’re a conductor, a manager, or a bass player, there is always going to be this one oh-so-very important question regarding your team and your customers:
Are you connected, or are you disconnected?
© Justin Locke
btw, one of Bob’s books:
http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Shame-Connection-Psychotherapy-Institute/dp/0881632821
