Leadership reflections...

Mirrors are interesting things, but I find the rear-view mirrors quite intriguing. In one instance, they rearrange reversed and backward letters/words so we can perceive them correctly. Then, in other instances, we may see engraved on them a warning message saying, “objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”  

Of course, there’s the regular use of the mirror, where we make sure that everything is in place before we step through the door to grace the public streets with our presence. Yet, there’s another use I discovered while taking my conducting classes. As you may imagine, the classes were quite practical and we’d have rather lively discussions based on what we observed, as each of us took turns in conducting the class ensemble. 

 It was always a spot of bother to us how often we thought that, by our gestures, we were so very clear in showing the ensemble exactly what we wanted only to have the ensemble give little to no response. Time and time again our professor would ask us, "so what do you think could you have done differently"? and we’d try to come up with the most brilliant and profound sounding responses to show off our ability to thinking deeply and apply aptly. Our professor would patiently listen to us and, almost every time, offer one simple piece of instruction – “when you practice, practice in front of the mirror.”

 Why? How does practicing in front of a mirror help me to get the ensemble to respond to what I am already clearly showing them? Shouldn’t the ensemble be paying more attention? Why don’t they just take their eyes out of the music and watch me? Well, as all good teachers are known to do, our professor must have realized that we were reluctant to practice with the mirror, as he instructed and, as if he had read our minds, one day he said, “ensemble leaders often blame and fuss with the ensemble for a lack of responsiveness to their gestures without recognizing that the ensemble is indeed responding to what it’s seeing.” He continued, “you may think that your gestures are clear, you may think that the changes you are making in your gesture are noticeable, but in reality, that may not be so.” Let’s just say that my first practice session in front of the mirror was quite revealing and I/we all had some ‘apologizing’ to do.

 How often do we, as leaders, fuss with our teams for underperforming, under producing, under achieving? Perhaps it would be worth our while to remember, ever so often, that when it comes to our team members, “what they see is what we get.” We may think that our gestures (communication methods) are clear but when we check the mirror (when we ask a question about what we said/did, when we observe behaviors) we may notice that the interpretation is way different from what we originally intended to communicate. Next time your team doesn’t come up to scratch, before blaming the team check the mirror. It might reveal that the team did indeed respond to your gesture (or lack thereof).