LEADERSHIP
Gernot Schulz, CIPD 2017
at the front waving a baton!” he explains. “As leaders, we need special skills. All of the important things are beyond our order and command. They have to come out and develop from the team – a transformational kind of leadership.” For Professor Schulz, the primary role of the conductor or leader
when creating the conditions for success is to create meaning and communicate that. “We have to create a common passion. If you demand high
performance, you have to give it meaning. In most cases, people know how to do their jobs and the challenges of this. But, quite often, they do not know why. “As an orchestra, we do not produce anything. We do not offer
a service that is necessary. We need to make people excited about what we are doing. If I, as a conductor, am never excited by what we are doing then the orchestra will never be excited by it. It is like a chain – the chain starts with me, the leader. “This is maybe the core challenge: to make people committed
and to make the orchestra committed even if they have individualist views and are individualist.”
Perception is fundamental to high performance At the core of creating meaning are a conductor’s perception and intuition – the result of deep personal learning and passion. “My lifelong challenge is to go into the scores, to look at every
note, to think about every dynamic – every crescendo, every pianissimo – and ask, ‘what does it mean?’ “Our role as conductors and leaders is to perceive and intuit,”
continues Professor Schulz, who has conducted and played with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, and was assistant to Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti. “Perception links to precision, which is the basis of good,
orchestrated action. I have to be the best perceiver in the orchestra company and communicate that. “Bosses and CEOs [chief executive officers] are the centre
of communication. They also always have to be aware that their experiences are different in other parts of the organisation. “It is not that they have to justify everything, but to acknowledge
that everyone in the organisation has a role rather than just playing a role,” he continues.
Perceiving and playing In one of a number of crossovers between the orchestral and corporate realm, the conversation turned to recruitment and engaging with high-performing individuals and teams. Underscoring the role of perception and intuition in the orchestra,
Professor Schulz outlined the year-long probation used among some professional orchestras for its musicians – a process that ensures a good fit between the individual and the rest of the orchestra. “It is very important in an orchestra that everyone is a perfect
virtuoso on their instrument,” Professor Schulz continues. “But an orchestra knows very well that even the best virtuoso playing is not enough for good orchestrated interaction. Many orchestras therefore have a special assessment process
where chose players have a probation year. During this time, the orchestra is checking if the player is as good at perceiving and creating togetherness as they are a player.”
Transparency and trust in delivering high performance Transparency and harmony running throughout the operation is critical to maintaining and communicating accurate perceptions. Here, again, there are links to the corporate world, this time for performance management, believes Professor Schulz. “If I do not appreciate a good performance, I send the unspoken
message that I have not noticed or do not care for it. The same goes for poor performance. If I do not acknowledge it, then I allow it. It is very important for me as a leader to be transparent. “Maybe an interesting a link to companies’ work is that
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