Make them the hero
In the marketing industry, a reform has been taking place to go from selling commodities to satisfying a need of the customer. The first focuses on increasing value for the company and serving the seller themselves. The latter focuses on providing value for the customer so they are transformed after using the product.
And most importantly, instead of telling a story where the company is the hero, marketers are starting to tell stories where the customer is the hero.
As people, we can easily tell the story of ourselves as the hero - how we came to be, why we think what we think, and to justify our ideas. It's much harder to put the customer in the center as the hero. It prompts us to articulate and empathize with that hero's journey: how they feel, what they desire, what they think, what they say, and what problem they are having - even if it's foreign to us. And it's hard because, simply, they are not us and we are not them.
Marketing legend Seth Godin says, “The challenge you face is that people don’t care about you. They care about themselves, which is pretty natural.”
That can be pretty hard to hear as a conductor or a leader. At the same time, this mindset may give insight into providing the most impact for the musicians we work with.
In our rehearsals, daily interactions, and how we create community, we can try to tell the story where they are the hero. They have to overcome obstacles. They have goals. They have conflicts.
How can we help them achieve their goals? How can we help solve their problems? In order to help, we must know what those feelings, goals, and obstacles are first.
Sometimes we can get stuck in our own feelings, preferences, desires, and challenges when leading from the podium. And we frame the work we do and our interactions with musicians as serving our wants and needs.
A common manifestation of this is making musicians' lives harder because we have trouble navigating a technical conducting challenge. Another is calling this conductor-centric framework as "interpretation." Both are limited to being one-sided.
In both cases, the hero is us.
I think we ask our people to care about us too often, and we neglect that their human desire is to care about themselves. We can learn from the marketers who see the people we interact with as the hero.
What if we focus on the technical challenges they are having? What if we cared about what they think musically?
And when we tell the story from their angle with their interests in mind, it addresses the questions: Why should they care? What's in it for them? How might they be transformed by this work?
Make them the hero. And they'll become more invested in the work they do because it means something for them.
(Here's a tiny but sobering post from Seth Godin about doing work for them.)
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