A premise of influence
As much as we may think otherwise, we can't control people. We can't make people do anything, think anything, or say anything.
Yet, conductors can easily forget this and believe that our job involves making people do things we want. This was how we were trained sometimes. It can become a source of great frustration, and sadly, it mostly comes from a well-intentioned place: Leaders want to help people achieve their best work. We usually have a particular vision and have a clear idea of how to achieve it. So it’s hard for us to understand why people don’t do what we tell them to - because we have their best interest in mind!
When leaders operate simply under the premise of “do what I tell you”, the result is (at best) hushed compliance.
In reality, it’s rarely that simple. We would all likely experience some kind of resistance. This spurs us to go into convincing and persuasion mode. We fixate on the need to control. We think the answer is to change the behaviors and thoughts of others. Most of the time, this makes things worse. Even if we do succeed in getting people to do what we want them to do, it ends up being due to coercion. And everyone knows it and feels it.
What if we start with the premise that we can’t control anything people do, say, or think - so we don’t even waste the time and effort to try?
Our next best strategy is to get them to want to on their own accord - in other words, influence.
All we can control is how we best create the conditions that will most likely influence the desired behaviors, thoughts, and actions. What they do is out of our hands. The outcome is in their full control, not ours. And we can actively let that need go.
Here are some actions we can take to create influential conditions:
Articulate the value gained. What’s in it for them? What are they going to get out of this?
Articulate the impact on others. What’s in it for other people? How does this create something special for others?
Connect the work with identity. People like us do things like this (a phrase from Seth Godin). Who are “people like us”? And why would we “do things like this”?
We can leverage these to have more influence on the musicians we lead - so they actually want to do the things we want them to do.
Finally, I'm reminded of a brief quote from Katherine Morgan Schafler: "Control manipulates. Power influences."
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