10 Surprising Insights into Leadership and Teamwork from Jazz

Everyone has something to learn from jazz; even if you aren’t an active listener of this mesmerising music form. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find that you’re a fan of the free-wheeling form after all.

Here are ten things jazz teaches you about leadership and teamwork.

1. Move.

Literally, of course, and figuratively. Stay on top of the latest developments, up your productivity, set higher goals for yourself and your team, and keep the energy levels high.

Jazz music is filled with prolific geniuses who kept going: Duke Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions. Ella Fitzgerald has 84 albums to her credit. Miles Davis invented several new genres of jazz. And that’s just a small sample.

If you want more, sample this song, aptly called Move.

2. Innovate. Constantly.

Jazz isn’t really a single form of music as it is an approach: if you think of it as a tree (planted roughly in the 1920s), it grew new branches very often. Some of those new branches became significant departures from established norms.

Take bebop, for instance: it developed in the 1940s and shocked people initially with its sheer speed and its adventurousness. The swing music preceding bebop was far more easygoing. But innovators like Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker took jazz to all-new heights with the invention of bebop.

No matter what the dominant form of the day is, it’s never a bad time to push the envelope further to new, radical innovation.

3. Improvise — but after rehearsal.

Most forms of jazz place improvisation — the art of inventing, riffing, and improving upon an existing theme — at their heart. The takeaways are clear. Adapt to new challenges, expect the unexpected, and always look to try out new ideas and variations on an idea.

But there’s a catch. As any newbie jazz “soloist” will tell you, improvisation isn’t simply about sitting down and playing anything that comes to you. Every great jazz musician has spent hours rehearsing and crafting their solos (the same goes for improv comedy, incidentally).

When you’d like to introduce a certain degree of flexibility and spontaneity, it’s helpful to realise the value of planning, even for spontaneity, so that you’re mentally prepared for one (or more) of many possible outcomes.

As Duke Ellington put it: “You can’t just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art.”

4. Improvise around a central theme.

In jazz, even the wildest, most unpredictable solo always returns home — to the central theme.

It’s exciting to try new things, traverse completely uncharted territory. But don’t veer too far away from your core values. Return to the things that got you going in the first place: your passion for solving problems, or building a better world, or even just writing beautiful code.

5. Build on your team’s strengths.

The greatest jazz ensembles became famous for spotlighting the unique strengths of their members — and not straitjacketing themselves into what they “should be”.

The story goes that when, in 1955, Miles Davis first heard John Coltrane play, he heard a certain degree of awkwardness and squeakiness. But he also heard Coltrane’s strength: namely, a risk-taking, unique voice. He decided to build on those strengths, and the duo went on to create some of history’s most memorable music.

If you accidentally discover that you have a great photographer in the new intern, build on that fact to create stunning visuals. Or get that wisecracking software engineer to put her sense of humour to work by writing some one-liners for your business. You get the drift.

6. Give everyone their time to shine.

If you’ve ever watched a jazz concert or heard a recording, you’ll notice how everyone gets a solo, no matter what, even double-bassists and drummers. Even if there is a clear “leader”, one musician rarely hogs the spotlight. And these solos are often unique expressions of each individual musician’s particular talents and aesthetic. The rest of the band, during these solos, provides support — called “comping”.

There’s an important lesson in here for teamwork and leadership. Everyone’s got their own stories to tell, and deserves their time to shine, with the team’s support. And like comping, providing support to let someone shine has its own unique pleasures.

7. Listen — really listen — when the rest of your outfit is speaking.

Jazz musicians have “big ears”: they listen to the rest of their band intently. This act of deep listening helps them connect to even the most complex, obscure ideas in the music, which then informs their own playing.

The key here is empathy. Spending time listening to your teammates and partners not only strengthens your team; it might even introduce you to something new (like a new idea or method). A strategy of empathy also helps you see the world through another’s eyes.

8. Don’t pick speed over soul.

Yes, you need to move fast, be lean, and adapt quickly. And yet, that doesn’t have to be a hard-and-fast rule.

Occasionally, paying attention to other factors — like the overall feel and soul of things — can be equally important. It could even give you unexpected results.

Jazz music is known not just for the breathtaking inventiveness it can produce at breakneck speeds, but also for the mood it creates, the emotion it invokes.

Slowing down, pausing to look at the big picture, gaining some perspective, and reassessing your core values — all these are valuable ways of strengthening your work, even if it doesn’t produce immediate results.

9. Take in the moment, but with an eye on what’s coming next.

“Jazz is about being in the moment,” said Herbie Hancock, the legendary American jazz musician.

Whether you’re building a company or writing a novel, lots of meaningful things can require long, lonely hours of work.

And because you’re always looking to what’s next, it can be insightful and revealing to pause occasionally and look around, give yourself credit for what you’ve built, and how far you’ve come. Jazz teaches us to live in the moment. Of course, we’re not saying that you should only live in the moment: you need to plan for what’s coming too (but you were probably already doing that, weren’t you?)

10. Have fun.

At the end of the day, there’s a certain joy in connecting with other humans, no matter how complicated — even occasionally frustrating — it can feel. Laughter, playfulness, and enjoyment are all part of the great big journey.

As the great Fats Waller said back in 1937:

The piano’s thumpin’
The dancers are bumpin’…
The joint is jumpin’.

If you like what you just read, please hit the Recommend Button so that others may stumble upon this. We’d love to hear your comments!

Visit us at Limitless, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Originally published at www.lmt-lss.com.