Leadership reflections: Let the music play

Recently, I was reviewing frank Barrett’s Say Yes to the Mess: leadership lessons from jazz, for a workshop I was delivering. This comparison of leadership and jazz has always resonated with me. I considered where I had seen this in my career and a current team came to mind. While as the leader, I had not deliberately set out to adhere to these principles, they were in fact the underlying components of how this particular group of individuals function as a unit.

Frank Barrett identifies the following elements of leadership

1. Unlearning – we need to challenge routines and not rely too heavily on past successes, in other words continue learning and growing.
2. Encourage experimentation – be open to possibilities in the creative power of our teams innovate our path forward
3. Learn from failure – encourage people to make Mistakes and learn from them
4. Use minimal structure in order to facilitate autonomy and innovation
5. Take turns soloing and supporting – share the leadership and the spotlight
6. Create spaces for hanging out – come together without purpose and see what happens
7. Provocative competence – know the potential of your people disrupt their routine and move them out of their comfort zone in order to support their achievement of their potential

The team had established the necessary components for high performance, including: trust, commitment, accountability and attention to results. To establish this they had mastered respectful conflict, openness to diverse perspectives and a willingness to forgo personal priorities to meet the needs of the team overall – boy, does this strike a chord with the lessons from Barrett’s jazz analogy!

What really stands out for me is the importance of establishing psychological safety in a group. This has to exist for trust to grow thus allowing for experimentation, learning from mistakes, and minimal structure to exist. Unstructured meeting times allow for creativity to flow and relationships to grow further facilitating that trust. This deep respect and trust allowed them alternate between being a leader and a follower in their various projects – sharing the spotlight and celebrate each-others success’. As the leader of this team my appreciative paradigm and my desire to support growth in others means that I regularly “provoke competence” by challenging my team to stretch and learn towards their future goals and aspirations. Although it wasn’t deliberate the alignment between Barrett’s principles for leadership and the elements of a high  performing team became obvious to me. So now with intention we must continue to foster these elements and a focus on new learning individually and collectively to keep the music playing.