Growth mindset is key to leadership.
Curiosity is key to leadership
In my youth I learned and played musical instruments, yet somehow got in my mind that I couldn’t improve, couldn’t grow to a level that would satisfy me. I then lost my curiosity and sense of wonder around playing music. Perhaps if I knew then what I understand now life may have gone in a different direction.
Today, then, simply three bands and their visionary leaders and how they have inspired me. Perhaps we can all learn from musicians who continue to lead from a space of curiosity and growth.
The Waterboys
The artistic expression of Mike Scott (a fellow Edinburgh boy!) for 35 years, innovators of “Big Music”, their own form of pulsating Irish folk rock, and writers of one of the greatest pop songs in history.
I have been a fan for some thirty years, yet only made it to see them live when I moved to the UK in 2017, and have since seen them live three times. As my oldest son noted when he saw them this year with me, they are a “tight” band. They came on stage in Edinburgh recently and were rocking the room from the first notes.
Each time I’ve seen them they have changed things up in multiple ways. Mike Scott will never tire, he will keep changing things up. This last time he even found a way to be fresh with that one super famous song that the crowd always want to here, having the effervescent Jess Kav standing on the monitors, bouncing and conducting the crowd as a choir.
I give you this fun interlude of Mike Scott and his longtime collaborator jigging. Oh, and listen to the whole track so see how brilliant Steve is with that electric fiddle! I was at that concert live, amazing!
Florence and the Machine
Florence Welch is still only thirty-one, yet has been a blazingly brilliant force of nature for 10 years at the front of her band.
She keeps innovating all the time, and her latest album is her best yet. She keeps growing as an artist and human.
A few months ago she played a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. It was announced on really short notice and somehow I got ticket in the 8th row. Florence is from Camberwell in South London, almost literally around the corner from the theatre, and she used it to play songs from her new album, very much focussed and self-reflective on her life growing up there. Florence builds such a deep connection with her audience, and it was a very special night.
In the week or two before the gig she had released her new single, Hunger. As I recall, she launched into it on about only the third song of the night. The roof nearly came off the building. What a force of nature, what a divine talent.
The Killers
Brandon Flowers and the band from Las Vegas smashed onto the scene 15 years ago with “Mr Brightside”, and anytime I am travelling and need a lift, I play tracks from the movie of their Albert Hall concert from 2009, particularly the final number, intro’d by Flowers with “We’re going to play it as hard as we can play it. Are you willing to receive it as hard as you can receive it?”
By 2013 and 2014, I was in Vegas often working on some very cool projects, and could see how The Killers had inspired other Vega bands, with Imagine Dragons in particular being about the biggest band at that time.
The Killers continue to grown and inspire, and bands like The Waterboys, Florence and the Machine, with their constant growth and curiosity, inspire me and many, many others to keep growing. I hope today’s shared songs inspire you too !
I give you two songs from The Killers to close this blog. The first is that closing number from that Royal Albert Hall in 2009. The second ? Remember I said The Waterboys wrote one of the greatest songs in pop history. Well, Brandon Flowers agrees, saying in his intro at another concert where they played this: “..it was written by some Scottish gentleman, its one of the finest songs I’ve ever heard“… The Whole of the Moon…