by Dennis Adsit
Many clients have come to me and said they want to be Partner or a VP or a C-suite leader.
And I love it when they do. Drive like that can be harnessed…for all sorts of things.
After trying to understand why a promotion is important to them and expressing my willingness to help, I remind them that whether they make the level they aspire to is not completely in their hands.
The economy affects how the org is doing and the number of openings available, and it can even affect the results they get in a given year. There is also who you are up against for promotion and of course the organizational politics.
What is in their hands, I say, is mastering their own way of leading.
Whether it is guitar playing or leadership or any depth skill we need to be successful, ChatGPT is not going to bail you out.
The Invitation to Mastery Question
When trying to help clients reach the next level, coaches like to ask their clients some version of the question, “Who are your heroes?” Or “What leader do you look up to?”
They like these questions for variety of reasons. One is to learn where a client draws inspiration from. Another is to get some ideas about the specific skills they might want to develop. A third reason a coach might ask clients this question is to learn about the boundaries of the client’s identity.
But there is a follow-on question that has the potential to refocus the work that a client and coach do together.
I learned it from Dave Tronzo, a friend of mine since my high school days, who still teaches guitar at Berklee College of Music.
On the first day of class with a new group of students just learning their instruments, he asks them: “Who is your favorite guitar player?”
He gets a range of answers from living musicians…such as Derek Trucks, Dave Mathews, Pat Metheny…to the deceased…Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Wes Montgomery.
He encourages all the responses and often adds what he also loves about their hero’s guitar playing.
When they have all weighed in, he pauses and then asks them, “Why isn’t it you?” Why aren’t you your favorite guitar player?
His students are stunned. They stammer, “Because I can’t play like that.”
Dave knows that of course.
What he also knows is that there was a time when their heroes couldn’t play like that either.
What he is really doing with this question is trying to change their orientation to their instruments.
Whether it is guitar playing or leadership or any depth skill we need to be successful, ChatGPT is not going to bail you out.
You have to put your hands on the instrument…you have to get in front of management and present in a way that influences them…in front of a potential customer, understand their objections and find win-win to get a signed contract…in front of a team and lead in a way that focuses and mobilizes them.
You have to not only get on the field, you have to get good.
He has them listening to themselves, not their heroes, often for the first time in their lives.
Finding and Mastering Your “Sound”
A tried-and-true technique guitar players and musicians through the ages have used to improve is listening to and transcribing the solos and fills of musicians they admire. It’s sometimes called “stealing licks.”
Steal enough you’ll definitely be able to fake it, at least for awhile.
[As an aside, the management and business equivalent of stealing licks is the wearying, endless…Five Keys to X and Three Steps to Y…“hack” articles that business magazines and LinkedIn are stuffed with.]
For those that show an interest, Dave advises them to move away from “stealing licks to stealing concepts.” He helps them learn the concepts that are behind the licks their heroes were creating on different songs or in different periods in their careers.
Then he has them to pick up their instruments and improvise using one of those concepts. And they record what the student comes up with. For homework, they transcribe what they just played…their licks.
In other words, he has them listening to their own sound…not their heroes…often for the first time in their life.
He tells them when they transcribe what they played, they may find much of it somewhere between lacking and awful.
He continues, “You will also find a handful of good ideas in there…your ideas. And now you are on the bus. You’re at the back of the bus, but you’re on it. And you’ll move up…seat-by-seat…by doing the work.”
As with the music students, when people tell you who their favorite leader is, the traits of that favorite leader are already inside them. They just may not know it yet, nor know their unique expression of those latent traits.
The question, “why isn’t it you?” does two things for these young musicians.
First, he is pointing them towards uncovering their music, their sound, the place inside them that’s already there, that Jimi Hendrix’s or Pat Metheny’s music is touching in them.
Second, he is trying to change their focus from a destination they are a long way away from, with an ultimate outcome they can’t control to a one-step-at-a-time process, with steps that are completely accessible to them.
In short, what he’s really doing is presenting them a fork in the road and an invitation to begin the mastery journey…mastery of their own approach and their own sound.
The Parallels to Leadership
As with the music students, when people tell you who their favorite leader is, the traits of that favorite leader are already inside them. They just may not know it yet, nor know their unique expression of those latent traits.
And the same approach Dave uses with his guitar students can apply to finding and mastering your own approach to leading…understanding concepts, improvising, “recording and listening” to yourself, etc.
I mentioned at the beginning that I remind those hankering for promotion that that outcome is not completely in their hands, but there’s another option, a mastery road for finding and perfecting their own way of leading.
In case it is not obvious, most musicians don’t choose the mastery road and most leaders don’t either…preferring to steal licks and leverage “five keys to X” hacks.
But some choose the road less taken. And in Part 2, I’ll talk more about that road and how leaders interested in genuine mastery of their own way of leading and coaches interested in helping them can walk it.
Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service that has helped hundreds of newly hired and promoted executives get great starts in challenging new jobs.
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