Return to blogIt’s rare that you get to see a spontaneous, black-and-white contrast between the effects of two different approaches to leadership. But it happened to me many years ago, and forever changed my ideas about the power of communicating vision to a workforce.
I had engaged a very good tenor to sing a beautiful Bach Cantata. It’s common practice for a conductor to meet with a singer prior to the first orchestra rehearsal to reach agreement on tempo, phrasing and other musical ideas. I accompanied him at the piano and he began singing. I was startled by the number of mistakes he was making: wrong notes, mispronounced words, vague rhythms. I patiently corrected each error, but after a half hour it was clear that we were getting nowhere.
“Look,” I finally said, “we’re wasting each other’s time. Why don’t you take a look at this piece on your own, and we’ll schedule another meeting later.” He seemed relieved and admitted that recently his busy schedule of performances and recordings had gotten out of hand. But I tried to salvage some benefit from the time we’d invested, saying, “Before you go let me tell you my ideas about this piece.”
I translated the German text for him and explained its poignant imagery: a man is weeping salt tears. The tears are gathering into an ocean. The waves are swelling as a huge storm gathers. Then the anchor gives way, the mast cracks, and he is swept overboard and pulled down to the bottom of the sea where he sees the jaws of hell about to snatch him away. The text ends with him weeping salt tears again, as if awakening from a nightmare.
The tenor hadn’t realized how moving the words were.
Next I played through the piece, showing him how the music depicts each event: the tears, the waves, the storm, the jaws of hell and finally the tears again. Then I said, “Let’s just go through it one more time.”
I was astonished. He not only sang with a new conviction, but also had fixed every mistake he’d previously made. In less than five minutes he had learned the entire piece, while the previous half hour had led to nothing but mutual frustration.
After he left I contemplated what had happened. It was one of my first glimpses at the power of convincingly sharing a compelling vision. Without that vision none of the technical details of pronunciation or rhythm made any sense. They were just tasks to carry out. I saw that vision, communicated at the right time and in the right way, can both save an enormous amount of time while it liberates people to use all of their talent.
To listen to this Bach Cantata No. 21 on YouTube click here. Advance to the 12:41 mark to hear the tenor aria.
Roger Nierenberg
