The following contains excerpts from the book Leadership Mastery (Dale Carnegie Training).
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, rather it is relationships. We encourage teachers and students to learn the subject of leadership and how to interact with and serve others.
Although the Carnegie Training Institute is comprised of later generations of leadership teachers, they frequently draw from Dale Carnegie’s teachings, extending his core leadership principles to our current times.
The Inspirational Leader
“The ability to create, communicate, and pursue dreams is, in fact, the first defining quality of inspirational leadership. Inspirational leadership masters see a clear picture of the future in their mind’s eye. The dream has tangible reality. It’s like Mount Everest: It’s there and the leader is going to lead his team to the top. Masters of inspirational leadership not only make their dreams seem real, they can enlist others in the pursuit of those same dreams simply through the energy of their own charismatic personalities. To put it another way, inspirational leaders have the ability to transfer importance.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we hope to provide students with inspirational leadership, showing them a future of possibilities.
Inspirational Leaders should surround themselves “with good people, but not people who are all good at the same thing. Be careful not to choose clones, especially clones of yourself. Diversity is always good.”
“Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people…and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them.’ So keep the number of rules as low as possible.”
“Explain what needs to be done, explain how to do it- and then let go.”
Inspirational leaders don’t usually like routine. They want to keep opening up new territories. They can be impatient with details and are often not very good at small talk. They tend to see themselves as the lead roles in a great drama that they’re enacting with the other members of the organization…inspirational leaders can become like surrogate parents to their team members. And as every parent knows, this means being the focal point for all kinds of hopes, dreams, fears, and irrational hostilities. An inspirational leader can never hold this dynamic against people or punish them for their emotional investment. Nothing must be done to discourage them from making this investment, because this kind of obligation is the foundation of a leader’s effectiveness.”
The Organizational Leader
“When Louis V. Gerstner took leadership of IBM, the company was in a prolonged downward slide…Gestner was asked to describe his vision of the company. His reply would make an inspiration leader cringe. ‘I don’t have a vision,’ Gestner said. ‘The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.’
Inspirational leaders…in many ways resemble rock stars. They are most at home at center stage, exciting the crowd…they can reach the heights, and they can also fall very fast and hard. All in all, it’s a risk they’re glad to take. If Inspirational Leaders are like rock stars, the organizational leaders we will look at now are like music company executives or theatrical agents. Organizational leaders don’t crave adulation or applause. They’re often uncomfortable in the spotlight. They are not eager to accept the scrutiny and second-guessing that comes with spectacular success of failure. For their reward, Organizational Leaders look inward at the solid foundation they’ve created. They let others lead the parade through the outside world.”
“In the past, whether fifty years ago or five hundred, large organizations were shaped like the pyramids of early civilization. There were large numbers of people on the bottom followed by layer after layer of supervisors and managers in ascending order. Each new layer had more authority than the one below…In the twenty-first century; many of those pyramids have come tumbling down. Borders, ranks, and lines of demarcation are already evaporation. Every day new technologies are equalizing access to information and making rigid bureaucracies obsolete. You don’t have to have a deep voice and big biceps to be a leader anymore. You have to be fast, flexible, and first with a new idea.”
“Organizational leaders are very comfortable with these changes. Their authority doesn’t depend on force of personality. Their first priority is the strength and success of the organization …are comfortable and sometimes even ruthless about downsizing…Peter Drucker said, ‘The modern organization cannot be an organization of boss and subordinate. It must be organized as a team.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we value the student and endeavor to serve the student through training, discipline and expectation. At the core of what we do, we ultimately see ourselves as serving the student, from the bottom up, inspiring them to achieve new heights of artistry.
Peter Drucker points out that “the world is no longer made up of privates, officers, and drill sergeants. Modern organization leaders thoroughly understand that. Armies were traditionally organized along a paradigm of command and control, and organization ins other fields simply copied that model.”
“Today, with organizational leadership, groups are structured more like soccer of tennis teams than like infantry divisions. Every team member is now empowered to act as a decision maker. Employees must see themselves as both executives and line workers…first and foremost, is a shared sense of purpose. Nurturing that sense is the primary task of an organization leader…The essence of such an organization is the unified vision of the team members. Once that vision is in place, the ideas, creativity, and innovation will come from the team itself. The leader, however, still plays an absolutely essential role. He must direct and focus all that energy. ‘You’ve got to create the emotional and intellectual environment. You’ve got to zero in on the corporate objective. You’ve got to provide the stimulus and encouragement so that individuals and teams can truly think of themselves as world-class.’”
“For an effective organization leader, team success equals personal success. Anything else is unacceptable. The greatest reward these leaders can achieve is to inspire, mentor, and model into being a group of talented, confident, motivated, and cooperating people who are themselves ready to lead.”
One of the most important aspects of our music school in Odessa, Texas is to include students in music groups, or ensembles. This develops their ability to not only contribute their own individual musicianship, but also to partner with others, learning to listen to the group as a whole.
“Great inspirational leaders have the ability to make people follow them. This is a unique gift, and even a form of genius. The gift of the organizational leader, however, is subtler and just as great. It requires the ability to get people moving forward. The movement comes, not because of the person leading them, but because they are leading themselves.”
“If inspirational leadership is like a temperamental high-performance sports car, then organizational leadership is more like a well-engineered sedan. Organizational leaders are built to withstand the bumps in the road, and to get good gas mileage for the long haul. They are interested in creating a rock-solid structure, both for the present and for those who will come after them…Organizational leaders like to see things through to completion. They are good at anticipating obstacles and developing alternative strategies. People describe these sorts of leaders as being on top of things. Unlike the inspirational leader, they often have a tremendous capacity for thinking about detail.”
We endeavor to teach students in our music school the value of inspirational leadership as well as organizational leadership. Both inspiration and attention to detail are necessary to the ultimate success of the growth process.
Leadership In Balance
In order to lead effectively, every part of a leader’s life must being in balance, which includes proper exercise, rest, nutrition, relaxation, and intellectual and creative balance. “A recent study revealed a direct correlation between reduced hours of sleep and physical aging…Until the start of the twentieth century, many doctors saw very few heart attacks or cases of cardiovascular disease. This was partly because people gave their hearts a rest at night…Researchers have determined an invisible cutoff line that separates two distinct sleep behaviors. That line occurs at ten o’clock at night.”
“For people in demanding leadership roles, a vacation isn’t just an indulgence. It is a necessity. It provides you with an opportunity to reset your internal clock, see new places, and make new friends.”
“Family is our most important organizational unit…you get from family what you put into it. This is true of parenting, of marriage, and of all primary relationships…Family is a setting in which two complementary experiences can take place. We can be show we really are, and we can discover or explore new parts of ourselves.”
“Balance and perspective are fundamental to personal leadership mastery: prudence balanced with freedom, work balanced with rest, career balanced with family, and material well-being balanced with spiritual awareness. Leadership in your personal life means investing in your own happiness… Solitude and tranquility of mind are key to balanced and effective leadership. The more electronic our society becomes, the more items we have to plug in and separate us from this simple but essential experience of quiet contemplation. Do not shortchange yourself. Do not mistake solitude for dead time or boredom. With practice, you’ll be able to restore you energy and quiet everyday stress by insisting on some protected quiet time.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we hope to nurture the student’s appreciation for wholistic balance in life and try to help them see the enjoyment and benefits of participation in music, as a part of a balanced life. Learning to appreciate beauty, order, and design are foundational to the well-being of the human soul.