The Great Cacophony: how musicians can bring more harmony to the U.S. workplace
During the pandemic, neighbors and strangers coalesced around driveways, parks, and porches to listen to music. Orchestras came together online. and learned to make beautiful music in parallel on Zoom!— like many work teams.
Citizens were so starved for community that many musicians and patrons cried at their first concerts in person. Still today, musicians see many more tears in the audience than before. “People have bundled up so much inside, arising from the pandemic, politics, war, racism, global warming, and financial stress,” a concert violinist told me recently, “and it does seem they are finding some release at these concerts.”
In contrast, the joy of any return to normalcy at work was short-lived for many. Distance replaced solidarity. Many are pushing back on “return-to-site” orders and setting more boundaries. Others are working themselves into the ground like engines without regulators. Every month 25% more employees quit than pre-pandemic.
Managers, advised to be empathetic or supportive in the pandemic, now must enforce return to the office rules, do more with less, tighten spending, and prepare for a downturn. Most are still untrained for greater workplace tension and emotionality — and have not historically been rewarded nor promoted for high emotional intelligence.
The best conductors conduct a beat ahead of the music to guide musicians — they control the timing and phrasing of the music. Amateur conductors conduct to the beat of the music, straining musicians. In the fog of COVID, most managers always felt a beat behind — a source of stress for them and also, of course, to their reports.
Given this context, and that we spend most of our adult time working and managing relationships there, how can we find a way back to workplaces that feel more harmonious? The daily structure and reward of work provide major mental health benefits. It connects people from different backgrounds, provides a sense of belonging and sentiment of contributing to a collective effort, and gives us a social identity.[1] This is fundamental to our professional but also personal well-being.
Step to the other side to move forward
Nearly two years we wrote about Maestro Benjamin Zander’s approach to creating solidarity in a dispersed youth orchestra during COVID. This was a resounding success, and his approach and central instinct seem now prescient:
“Each orchestra member, irrespective of age or level of experience, would be allowed to explore the musical, psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges that face a conductor.”
So how did he do it? How did he get his young musicians to take responsibility for the whole?
Put listening at the core.
Members of Zander’s orchestra demonstrated their excerpts while the rest listened, aware of each detail, and every challenge conductors faced.
They came prepared to jump in and offer coaching and advice — just as conductors do, in effect crowd-sourcing mentorship. Under normal circumstances, musicians might have little interest in the excerpts of instruments other than their own. Nor are they often put in a position to be the mentor and not just the mentee. In this new world, they adopted and made the concerns and challenges of their fellow orchestra members their own.
Like good leaders and managers, good conductors ensure that no voices predominate and that all voices are heard and appropriately modulated. They challenge the orchestra members to also work on making sure that their instrument does not drown out those of the others.
At work: Younger employees reportedly value diversity, equity, and inclusion. Living these values, however, can prove challenging in an environment of “just get it done!” cancel culture. GenZers are the most credentialed and diverse generation ever — hence should be much more skilled at listening and appreciative of different viewpoints than their elders. However, they grow up spending more than half of their waking hours on screens and report more mental health distress than any prior generation — making it harder to focus and give someone the gift of attention and grace as well as the benefit of the doubt. However, listening is essential for leadership and workplace well-being, greater psychological safety, real diversity/equity/inclusion/belonging, as well as better customer experiences and business outcomes. Invest in training that teaches people to listen in a way that fosters creativity, innovation, and connection.We are never taught to listen in school — just ordered to. Ensure that the dominant orthodoxy does not drown out other points of view.
Break the monotony.
Musicians prepared a languid piece, and then a very fast piece, for example. The central idea was to ensure that musicians would not rehearse on autopilot but experiment with different styles and paces.
At work: “Flexicurity” refers to a labor market policy that encourages more flexibility in the labor markets and greater security for workers. Many workers are trying to do this for themselves — keep a steady job and its attendant crucial benefits (such as health insurance and a steady income), while cultivating side gigs to increase income, cure boredom, and engage in passion projects. Otherwise, people languish at work. Give an employee time to work on a project of particular interest (see Google’s nearly 20 year old 20% rule), ask a gregarious employee to be silent at the next meeting to make space for others but summarize the meeting at the end, or enroll a more introverted staff member to write an article for the company website. Basically, think of how employees can experiment more within their current jobs.
Shift perspectives.
Musicians prepared excerpts from the orchestral repertoire to better understand the orchestra from a perspective other than their own.
In parallel, they practice their instruments and piece. In this world view, everyone and no one was the first chair (the leading instrumentalist in the group, who is typically the most accomplished and the most talented, the most significant leader after the conductor and their stand-in).
At work: It is easy for subordinates to be critical of their managers. In March 2022, Fast Company reported that over 80% of workers surveyed believed they could do their jobs without managers; it was close to 90% in healthcare. Many of them also have no interest in becoming managers themselves. Like many trends suddenly front and center, this trend predates the pandemic — a 2019 survey by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that only 9% of Western non-managers expressed an interest in being managers — and management has gotten immensely harder since. We read that younger people are seeking jobs without direct reports.
So how can you build interest in management and build empathy for managers? Rotate the leadership of team meetings or put staff in charge of managing a small group project, or of organizing a fundraiser or charity event. It is stressful, it is work, and it requires making choices that might disappoint, but it can develop skills, and provide a real sense of accomplishment and appreciation for how challenging leadership and management are.
When she became acting concertmaster, violinist Ami Campbell went from being one of those in the group who see the conductor as separate to feeling like a collaborator and communicator with the conductor. “I have to watch myself sometimes to remember he really is not my friend,” she says, “and my colleagues count on me to represent THEM at all times. But ultimately, I do see that he is trying to make the best music possible.”
Engage in “one-buttock” playing — lead with heart and soul
In 1990, Fortune Magazine headlined the end of the workplace as we know it. This is not the first time that we think that everything is different.
Regardless of circumstances, managers and leaders need to continue to remain optimistic and, like Maestro Zander, try to lead with heart and soul and accept that they might be met by a mix of fascination and disdain, just like conductors.
“At the professional level, we usually love them at first, and then the conductor makes one power move. We realize they are not ‘one of us,’ and everyone turns on them,” Campbell explains. “However, no matter how much we complain about the conductor, IF they bring their heart, soul, and composure to the concert, and we feel we are all in it together for the higher good, we can really have magic, and all is forgiven.”
In Zander’s language, creating magic for a musician might be letting yourself engage in “one-buttock playing,” wherein you literally lean into the music. What is your one-buttock moment? What tasks at work could possibly give you that kind of joy and engagement?
More generally, what can we all do to transform our workplaces into Maestro Zander’s orchestra, bringing more heart, soul, composure, and humanity to the workplace — whether in person, in our chambers, porches, online, and soon in the Metaverse?
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With Bahia El Oddi, founder of Human Sustainability Inside Out.
Inspired by Ami Campbell, acting concertmaster of the Dallas Opera. Most of the year, she plays with the Dallas Symphony when not at the Opera, and teaches privately. She is a former member of the Colorado, Seattle, and St Louis Symphony Orchestras. She grew up in Oregon, studied at Juilliard, Indiana University (BM), and enrolled in a masters at Yale. She left after her first semester when she won a job with the Colorado Symphony.
[1] John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop, Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace, Springer Nature, 2018, page 12.
