For all of my adult life, I’ve been seeking the answer to this very simple question:
Why was Arthur Fiedler so famous?
One might embellish that question by also asking, why was Arthur Fiedler the most successful conductor in history? Why did he sell more tickets and records than anyone else? How was he able to stay at the top of this horrifically competitive field for 50 years straight?
This question is all the more vexing given that Arthur was really not all that musically talented. In fact, he had the baton technique of a slaughterhouse butcher. I was right there in the orchestra, looking right at him, and by all of the reference points that I had to work with at the time, his massive success made absolutely no sense.
I gradually came to realize that my intellectual reference points were not up to the task of solving this problem. Most of my academic training had been based on a linear/mechanical/industrial paradigm, and, like Newtonian physics, it was not able to explain certain phenomena such as quarks or Arthur Fiedler. So I had to develop an entirely new theory of what makes an effective leader. I call it “Transformative Leadership.”
I have tried to explain Transformative Leadership by sharing stories of my own journey in this realm. And more and more I am coming across people who understand this alternate paradigm. They are dance instructors, healers, coaches, and shamans. They are hard to find; as best I can tell maybe one person in a hundred in any given profession operates this way. But there are enough of them that I know I am not crazy (or if I am, there are other people just as crazy as me).
Simply stated, it is about transcending belief in limitation. It is about rising above mechanical processes and engaging the hard-to-explain powers of the mind and personal presence. Most of all, it’s about flying free of the ubiquitous training in uniformity and becoming your true self. This is, by definition, leadership.
Transformative Leadership is really about discovering who you are. It is finding the power of being as opposed to the power of doing. It is the power of presence versus the power of process. In a mechanical realm of reference, this all sounds silly. For those who have “made the leap” and have moved into this realm of existence, it’s the only way to do things. In my orchestral experience, I watched the best conductors use it every day, the way you would use any tool in your toolbox. It never failed. And the conductors who had not “made the leap” in this realm were rejected, no matter how talented or energetic they may have been.
I use the word “Transformative” because this approach is not a result of linear processes. In fact, linear approaches get in the way. Loyalty to the past gets in the way. It is a “quantum leap,” in that there is no transition. You were this, and now you are that, with no middle. For this reason, it frightens many people.
Mary Hoedeman, my favorite dance instructor, calls it “the essence of effortlessness.” When you transform into your true self and dispense with the false protective processes, things just flow. Henry Mancini had this quality. As conductor, he did virtually nothing, and yet, the less he did, the more energy came out of us in the orchestra. Yes, there are always little “craft”-oriented mechanical elements in anything, but that is not the heart of it. There is no mechanical explanation for this. It was an entrance into a different realm. And as a leadership “coach,” this is the place where I hope to guide my clients. Systems based on passive obedience, no matter how efficiently designed or stringently enforced, can never approach it.
© Justin Locke
