Conducting Leaders

by Paul Crookall

Why do some teams perform more consistently than others? For years I had season tickets for the National Hockey League. I was often disappointed when the overpaid 'professionals' were anything but professional and simply didn't perform up to their skill level. So I switched to season tickets at the orchestra and have been impressed by their consistency and professionalism. I have had occasion to question their choice of music, but never the quality of the performance.

Even more impressive, they do it with frequent guest stars and visiting conductors. Imagine if you had to join a new team each week, and that team consisted of 100 people you had never met, including four of the world's top experts in the field, each known for their mercurial personalities. You arrive on a Monday, and your first deliverable is due that Wednesday — in front of a packed concert hall. Sounds like a challenge.

Thinking there might be something to be gained about understanding leadership of professional teams, I spoke with three of the leading practitioners in the field.

BORIS BROTT
BORIS BROTT, A CANADIAN, SPECIALIZES AS A GUEST CONDUCTOR. HE IS WELL RESPECTED INTERNATIONALLY AND IS A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER AT LARGE CORPORATE EVENTS. WHEN HE DIDN'T SHOW UP FOR OUR SCHEDULED POST-CONCERT BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW, I WANDERED OUT INTO THE CONCERT HALL TO FIND HIM ENGAGED WITH A GROUP OF YOUNG PEOPLE WHO WERE ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INSTRUMENTS AND THE ORCHESTRA. HIS STYLE WAS REMARKABLY WARM AND HE GAVE PATIENT, FULL ANSWERS. HE EXTENDED THE SAME COURTESY TO ME WHEN I ASKED HIM TO COMPARE PUBLIC SERVICE LEADERSHIP TO THE SYMPHONY.

Both have common goals, they must perform in harmony to achieve those goals, be creative and innovative, use teamwork. They both are teams of talented individuals who experience the joy of effective communication and successful performance. Building leadership starts in childhood. Leaders are born and built. Imagination is a key quality in leadership, and it is better developed by positive reinforcement than hierarchical abuse and order giving. You have to be able to look at the whole situation, and bring your experience to it. The broader your experience, the broader your viewpoint, the better able you are to resolve problems.

I teach young conductors. One-on-one mentoring, beginning in their twenties, is most effective. My parents were great mentors — my mother was director of the McGill Chamber Orchestra and my father was concertmaster at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Schools generally educate but don't develop people. I learned about the law in law school, I didn't learn how to be a lawyer. I find it useful to have done what the people I am leading are doing, to know what it is like to be led.

I love guest conducting. It is my dream job. A permanent conductor, or music director, like most managers, spends most of their time on personnel issues, fundraising and community relations. At the same time, it is a relationship fraught with difficulty. I am their very direct supervisor — only feet away as they give their performance.

I can come in, take the material and help the orchestra to give their best performance, inspire them to give more. My style is to be focused, oriented to the specific task. I know that people respond to praise and appreciation. Even though I drop in and out, I spend time in the corridors and coffee rooms getting to know them, asking about their spouses and children. My door is open.

Life balance isn't the problem for me that it is for many managers. I thrive on diversity; I don't need to relax. I take my Blackberry and laptop along — it's all fun, challenging work that can't be done 9 to 5, so it takes up my whole life, I have learned. Motivating a team of professionals, all expert soloists, to come together as a team, you have to be a cheerleader. I try to be open, praise their work, and expect their best. As a guest conductor I need to quickly understand each new unit's culture. I always try to make the work place fun.

Many of the failures to perform that I see in management are caused by a lack of confidence, either self-doubt or having doubt nurtured in the environment. The bottom line is: have fun, be inspirational, approach each day with positivity — and with a list of challenges you can accomplish through motivating people towards that challenge. Know who to acknowledge and appreciate. And it helps to have a stick in your hand.
The baton isn't much by itself; you have to help it.

JACK EVERLY
JACK EVERLY IS A GUEST CONDUCTOR WHO OFTEN LEADS THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE ORCHESTRA. UNLIKE MOST CONDUCTORS WHO ARE FIRST PERFORMING MUSICIANS AND THEN BECOME CONDUCTORS, JACK KNEW FROM THE START THIS IS WHAT HE WANTED TO DO. HE HAS WORKED WITH MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV, SARAH BRIGHTMAN AND ELLA FITZGERALD, TOURING THE WORLD FROM HIS HOME IN INDIANA.

For many people, leadership is a second career. For me, performer and leader is one all-encompassing mindset. My artistic work on the podium is to extract the orchestra's best performance. There is an absolute similarity of mindset between artist and leader. I started studying piano at age six, and in high school offered to compose a piece for the band. Our teacher said, "You composed it, you may as well direct it." I was hooked; I had found my career. I learned from my teachers, from the way they worked. Three key teachers had much different styles, which I have tried to integrate — one was a taskmaster, another patient, another filled with passion. Each inspired me. I only realized later their influence on me.

Dropping in as guest conductor is a challenge. I have to be efficient given we only have two rehearsals. I need to be clear in my instructions. And we have to be innovative, as audiences are becoming more sophisticated — they don't want hear the same interpretations of the same pieces. You have to keep one step ahead of them, especially early in one's career, where one bad performance can end that career. The first time with a new team, you are under great scrutiny — do you know your job, is your demeanour acceptable, do you have chemistry with the audience and the team?

Managing divas, leading people who are at the top of their profession — well, as conductor, I get to hire them, which provides some control. My role is to inspire their confidence in me by creating what they need, for example, in the phrasing of a particular piece. I need to make them feel so at home that their artistry can be easily expressed. I facilitate. There is some of 'the buck stops here', or there would be chaos, but I see myself as the conduit, the mediator between the divas and the support staff.

I expect it would be similar in public service. You are always listening, take a mediating approach; but from time to time you need to say, "No, we are going to do it this way." The greatest joy in my work is when it all comes together, and we succeed in communicating with the audience — to inspire them, or amuse them, or move them to tears, doing a good job with difficult material.

What I've learned as a leader is to be obvious and open in my leadership style, to coordinate and facilitate; to ask what their mission is and find out what I can do so these people who want to do their best can excel.

HARVEY SEIFERT
THE ORPHEUS IS ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED TOURING ORCHESTRAS. THEIR WORK IS OFTEN PLAYED ON CBC RADIO. THEY DON'T USE GUEST CONDUCTORS — IN FACT, THEY HAVE DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO HAVE A CONDUCTOR AT ALL. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN LEADERSHIP IS LACKING. HARVEY SEIFERT IS A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AND FORMER DIRECTOR WITH THE ORPHEUS. HE HAS WRITTEN ABOUT THEIR SELF—DIRECTED TEAM IN LEADERSHIP ENSEMBLE: LESSONS IN COLLABORATIVE MANAGEMENT FROM THE WORLD'S ONLY CONDUCTORLESS ORCHESTRA.

The Orpheus is distinguished by its culture of collaboration. They are a community of excellence that is constantly raising the bar. In rehearsals, there is no compromise, but there is open discussion, so the practices take twice as long as most other orchestras. For example, if some players want a piece to be done at 80 beats per minute, and others at 120, they do not compromise at 100, they take the time to sort out which interpretation is best. The goal is not to reach consensus, but to achieve peak performance.

Leadership is not eliminated — the role of conductor doesn't disappear — but leadership is reconfigured and distributed. The orchestra is trained in the key skills of listening, conflict resolution, problem solving and consensus building. For each piece, leaders are elected; they develop a plan, and bring it to the orchestra for approval.
Eight management principles underline the Orpheus process:
·     put power in the hands of the people doing the work
·     encourage individual responsibility for product and quality, for their individual contribution and the team's
·     provide clarity of roles
·     foster horizontal teamwork
·     share and rotate leadership
·     learn to listen, learn to talk
·     seek consensus and build creative systems that favour consensus
·     dedicate yourself passionately to your mission.