All truly authentic leadership is improvisation

..be a leader with a strong presence not just at conferences, but in every interaction. And if you are such a leader, then every aspect of your presence — including your physical self, your intellect, your voice, and your emotions — is intimately bound up with your message.

..You can gain trust and influence by expressing your true purpose and commitment to others in a genuine way

..this type of leadership — the ability to communicate what needs to be said in a way that inspires people to join you — has risen sharply in recent years. Trust is increasingly considered a key competitive advantage. 

Excerpted from: “10 principles for leadership presence” by Annette Kramer for Strategy&Business

One definition of leadership I use is: “a Leader is someone others choose to follow”. These snippets are from an article giving you great “how” answers to what to focus on if your “why” is to inspire people to join you through your leadership.

This week I met (online, as we do now) with Annette Kramer, a fellow member of the WeAreLiminal community, for an inspiring, collaborative and fun conversation that I hope leads to more of all of that. Annette wrote the article linked above, and I align with all ten concepts in there, so encourage you to read the whole piece.

For this post I’ll highlight number 10: “Build your “muscle memory”, which begins: “All truly authentic leadership is improvisation. You come up with the right thing to say and do in the moment — not casually, but based on long experience, training, and insight. I learned this as a production assistant in a theater where jazz legend Max Roach played one night. He was known for his gift of improvisation, but he rehearsed on the drums relentlessly before his performance. He chanted as he played: “You’ve got to be in before you go out.” After an hour of this, he turned to me and said: “Do you know what that means? You have to know how far you can go out before you have to come back in.”

I love such ideas and find them powerful for #OpenLeadership, such as several recent articles around “Creative Constraints”, as well as: “Create Boundaries, then Improvise“. I am also a massive fan of jazz, including the late, great Oscar Peterson, who famously practiced ten hours a day so he could have that “muscle memory” and focus on stage on taking things to the next level. For more on this: “Put in the time before you improvise” features Oscar.

Oh, and when you truly build that muscle memory so you can show up with full presence and flow, you can reach levels you could never foresee. Oscar Peterson did that in the legendary sessions at the Montreux jazz festival in 1977. I share with you a link to what I consider the greatest piano solo ever. The audience agreed, as, after that one minute and twenty seconds, they explored into rapturous applause (link here). Oh, and for those fans of guitar solos, similarly resulting from muscle memory, this solo from Prince, and watch to the end and tell me, who caught the guitar.. and was that improvised? 😉