Six things leaders can learn from orchestra conductors

Fiona Smith Columnist

Six things leaders can learn from orchestra conductors

Published 14 October 2013 11:28, Updated 14 October 2013 14:23

Every organisation wants to hire the best, the most talented, the most dynamic people. But what happens when you throw them all together and start telling them what to do? Each employee is highly skilled and has their own vision of what they want to achieve – and each vision is valid. As a leader, how do you keep these people engaged and prevent the onset of anarchy? Sometimes, it can help to look at dilemmas through a different lens – and an orchestra can present a situation that many business leaders (particularly those with a creative workforce) can learn from. Three orchestra conductors were recently interviewed on ABC Classic FM, talking about how they managed to get the best from their musicians, without crushing their creativity. British conductor Christopher Seaman warns that conductors (which could be read as business leaders) have to be careful not to get in the way.1. Leadership, not dictatorship

“You have in your mind your vision of what the piece should sound like and you match that with what you hear at the rehearsal. And if what you hear is not the same as your vision, you can either change what you hear by asking the orchestra to do it differently, or you may decide they are doing it better than you had ever thought of it,” he says.

Seaman says conductors (leaders) are balanced between the extremes of imposing too much so they are choked and “recognising their artistry to such a degree that the whole thing is a mess.

“What you most want from a conductor is leadership, not dictatorship, leadership.

2. Make them think it is their idea too

Seaman says: “You need as a player a clear framework within which to operate, but you need to feel like you have a tiny bit of wiggle room within that framework. Even though they are playing it your way, an orchestra needs to feel that is the way they would have chosen themselves.

“So you need the ability to convince people”.

Seaman says good conductors make musicians want to do things the conductor’s way.

“You need to somehow hook into the orchestra’s desire for excellence and you need to make it a desire for your kind of excellence. It is very subtle.”

3. Don’t be afraid to lead

Seaman says conductors need to understand people. “And there will be times when you misunderstand people.

“Not all conductors get it right all the time and all conductors are liked by some orchestras more than by others. That is universal. It is a sort of chemistry.

“Underneath all that, the orchestra expects a level of professionalism and a level of musicianship and a level of leadership ability. And if they feel leadership, they relax and are able to function at their best.

“If they don’t feel leadership, there is an edgy feeling in an orchestra. As a player, I occasionally felt angry at a lack of leadership from a conductor. It is frustrating.”

4. Bring people together

Associate conductor at Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Benjamin Northey, says, at a basic level, conductors help musicians play together.

We are, somehow, the unifying force for all these different minds who are thinking about music in all these different ways,” he told the ABC’s interviewer, Guy Noble.

5. Sometimes, the leader’s vision prevails

There are situations where there needs to be one direction, set by the leader, whether the “star” employees like it or not.

Says Northey: “I’ve heard it said before that some music needs one mind, for better or worse, and the conductor has that responsibility.

Adds Seaman: “You have to insist, and the orchestra expects you to insist. If you don’t insist, they go home short-changed, even though the moment of insistence can be slightly irritating for a few people.

“You are dealing with professional people with skills. One important principle is, say, the effect you want, rather than telling them how to do it. You recognise their skills.”

6. Allow failure

English conductor Nicholas Braithwaite says that exciting performances require risk-taking.

“You only get the best out of people if they can take the risk and afford a possible failure,” he says.

Braithwaite quotes English opera director John Cox, who said it was absolutely crucial that an artist be able to fail, because if they were not allowed to, they would not feel able to take serious risk.

“They will play for safety the whole time and you will get much less of value,” says Braithwaite.

Some orchestras have rejected the leader-led model – most famously the Grammy-award winning Orpheus Orchestra in the US, which has no conductor at all and votes in revolving concertmasters, who operate as coaches.

The music is researched and interpreted by core groups and, not only do core groups and concertmasters change from concert to concert, but they also change from piece to piece.

According to an article in the US’ Fast Company , at the conclusion of every piece, Orpheus musicians bow and walk off stage. When they return for the next selection on the program, they take different seats, according to their part in that piece.

The Orpheus Orchestra is often used as an example of how organisations can use collaboration and consensus-building to settle creative differences.

Orpheus was formed in the 1970s by young musicians who wanted some creative control.

“Many of us believed that joining a traditional orchestra would lead to a creative dead end because you’d be under the thumb of its conductor for the next 30 or 40 years,” Ronnie Bauch, 47, a violinist with Orpheus since 1974, told the magazine.

Orpheus’s executive director, Harvey Seifter, says: “Orchestras take a lot of very smart people, many of whom learned to read music before they learned to read words, and, if they’re violinists, sit them in the last row of the second-violin section, where they must unquestioningly follow someone who’s waving a stick at them.

“Success is defined as how good you are at getting your bow to leap off your violin at the exact same nanosecond as all of the other violinists’ bows.”

Research from the early 1990s by Harvard psychology professor Richard Hackman shows that many orchestras and their conductors do not get the balance right, with widespread discontent found among symphony musicians in 78 orchestras in four countries.

Symphony members experienced the same levels of job satisfaction as the federal prison guards.