19 | Music and Trust

I have two very cool videos I want to share with you, and they revolve around the concept of trust. The best part? They use my favorite language to tell it: music.

We don't need to direct everything we work on for the intended or best result to blossom. We must trust in our colleagues and selves that we can do the task at hand. Charles Hazlewood delivers a great TED Talk on this. When we are in a position of un-trust, we tend to over manage. When a conductor lacks trust in his/her ensemble, he/she tends to over-articulate the guiding motions. A mild crescendo will be signaled by a sweeping motion of the left hand, maybe with the shaking of a fist if the conductor lacks trust in the players. A manager (in any field) may stand over the shoulders of the staff if they can't place trust. A client, if distrusting (account managers get your butts into gear), may try to direct the creative process, hindering instead of helping the end product. All that over "conducting" in lives and careers accomplishes is opening doors for ridicule, and lowering the self-trust of the people around you. From there it goes downhill fast. Hazlewood describes ideal leadership as a small bird in your hand: hold it too tight, and you crush it. Hold it too loose, and it flies away.

Bobby McFerrin shows just how little instruction is needed to create an intended result in the video below. He doesn't tell us where each tone lies, and how to connect them, and remind us what we've learned so far before moving on. He gives us the critical foundation for the learning process, and trusts our ears to take us the rest of the way.

I consider music to be a universal language. It definitely has dialects and slang all its own, but there's something emotional about music that transcends cultural differences and speaks wisdom to nearly every aspect of our musical lives. Here, in just two clips, we've found grounds for trust in ways that can be applied to creative direction, management, briefs, client-agency relationships, and so much more. I invite you to listen to music not always just for enjoyment, but as a reflection of everything that is not music.