Mid-Term Reflection

As I watched the TED Talk by Talgam, ideas and affirmations about leadership at its finest began flowing like water.  Conductors, at the level of which Talgam speaks, are leaders of what we would otherwise call “High Performing Teams”. In LMX jargon, each member of the orchestra is part of the In-Group. They can all be trusted by the Conductor to perform their individual and collective duties in a thoroughly outstanding manner; each musician is at the top of his or her game and a consummate professional.  Furthermore, they have all practiced together for enough time, that they are truly a team where no one individual, or a few individuals are playing for themselves, but they fully recognize, behave, and focus on blending with one another to “speak” as one “voice” under the leadership of the Conductor.

Again, as I watched the video, I was immediately reminded of a time in my program management career where I quite unexpectedly became the leader of an extremely high-performing team for about eighteen months. When I came on board, everyone was indeed “warming up” before the concert. I want to make clear, before I go any further, that I take very little credit for the development and performance of this high-performing team. I had the extreme good fortune to have brought together individuals who were indeed at the top of their game, and eventually I became like the final conductor that Talgam showed in his videos; I almost literally could just stand in front of the group and enjoy the “music” as the team “played” it.

I learned from my experience, as Talgam discussed in his talk, that the highest form of leadership or at least the highest experience in leadership is to facilitate the bringing together of talented people on a project and helping them to weave together their talents and energies into a single story that we all tell together. I had the distinct honor to almost literally play the part of a Conductor. Everyone knew their part; I made sure of that, but not by edict, rather by dialogue and capitalizing on their ideas and talents to make them part of the unified whole. Everyone played their part to perfection. Everyone challenged one another, helped one another, and delighted in the combined accomplishments of the team.

This doesn’t happen by accident, but obviously some amount of good fortune is involved. It is not often that a leader inherits a team where everyone is a star performer, yet no one puts themselves above any other member of the team. I merely needed to have the good sense to set the objectives and get out of the way of progress. Every last member of that team took extreme pride in their performance, but even more in the performance of the team. It was an experience I will never forget. The trick would be to build and mold such a team regardless of what you have to start with as a leader. Like a Conductor, the leader would need to spend long hours with individual performers, long hours with groups of performers, long hours with the more senior and experienced performers to ensure that the right kind and amount of mentoring was happening, and long hours with the team as a whole to practice in real time how to reach for and achieve the goals and objectives set forth.

The real leaders can do just that. They can take a diverse group of individuals with varying talents and levels of development, and they can make them into a high-performing team by setting expectations, developing high-quality relationships with each individual, teaching, coaching, delegating appropriately, growing and developing the individuals, and also growing and developing the team. I think that the example of top Conductors of orchestras is a great simile to that of a top performing leader; likewise, I think that the example of the orchestra is a great simile of a top-performing team. And yes, even the audience participation is a great example of the context or external environment that leaders must also include in the equation.

We have studied many theories of leadership thus far in this Course. What I have found is that each theory contains at least some elements of what great leadership looks like, acts like, and performs like. One may argue whether traits are genetic or conditioned, but every great leader does possess some degree of personal characteristics that set them apart and make them effective. Likewise, a great leader must possess a skillset that, while variable and somewhat situation-dependent, must nonetheless be employed to achieve results. The behavior and situational approach also described inherent truths in what leaders should do, and how they might adjust their style to best fit the situation, or to fit their followers (or both).  Path-Goal Theory clearly put forth the relevant role of a leader in helping to remove or overcome obstacles in the path of the followers. And LMX showed us how the social aspects of leadership usually do evolve within an organization as relationships between leaders and followers develop; and how it is only natural that leaders come to depend on followers who have demonstrated certain qualities that the leader can depend upon to get things done.

The Conductor of the orchestra has no doubt established high-quality relationships with every musician in his or her charge. Mutual respect has no doubt been established between the players and the Conductor, and among every musician. Everyone understands that they are uniquely talented and uniquely responsible for the performance of the team as a whole. To the extent that a leader can achieve those qualities or characteristics across his or her team or organization, everyone wins. In every leadership theory we have studied thus far, there are elements of truth in how a leader should go about creating such conditions.