Making Music

Colleagues,

On Saturday, we had a big graduation celebration for Lance and Mara who both graduated from college last week.
 
Many of their friends love playing music so people brought their instruments and we had live music for much of the evening.
 
I can play the guitar but not well. Despite my own reservations, I sat in on a few songs and played along. There were two things going on that can be insightful into leadership.
 
First, I was playing an acoustic guitar but the others had electrical instruments. This meant that nobody in the audience could really hear me, so I didn’t need to be worried about making mistakes.
 
Secondly, I realized that the strength of the other players allowed me to play better than I normally do.
 
So here are two leadership lessons:

1. If we want people to take risks, we need to lower the cost of failure.
2. People perform better (and grow more) when they work with people who are more accomplished. If you want to grow your leadership, find some leaders who are better than you are and learn from them.

 
Do good and be well,
 
Frederick