The following contains excerpts from the book, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Herminia Ibarra).
As an artist and musician, the role and value of leadership is rarely discussed. However, to create lasting influence in culture, it requires development in these areas.
In our music school in Odessa Texas, we hope to help students see the value of developing successful Leadership.
The author’s main premise in this book is to distinguish between making decisions based upon introspection, versus making decisions based upon gathering more information. She uses the terms ‘insight’ versus ‘outsight.’ She challenges the reader not to lean to their ‘authentic self’ but rather to learn a new self by placing oneself in situations that are new and challenging, thereby redefining one’s self-view. Developing new relationships, contacts, and gathering new information becomes powerful when the ‘outsight’ can be brought back into the company/business from which your journey originated. We strive to help students in our music school in Odessa Texas to listen to their ‘inner’ voice that will guide them in their artistic decisions.
“Stepping up to leadership, therefore, means not only learning to do different things and to think differently about what needs to be done but also learning in different, more self-guided, peer-driven, and external ways. In brief, it means actively creating a network from which you can learn as much as, if not more than, you can from your boss…branch out beyond the strong and comforting ties of friends and colleagues to connect to people who can help you see your work and yourself in a different light.”
The ‘Outsight’ Principle
- To step up to leadership, you have to learn to think like a leader.
- The way you think is a product of your past experience.
- The only way to change how you think, therefore, is to do different things.
- Doing things- rather than simply thinking about them- will increase your outsight on what leadership is all about.
- Outsight comes from a ‘tripod’ of sources: new ways of doing your work (your job), new relationships (your network), and new ways of connecting to and engaging people (yourself).
- Sustainable change in your leadership capacity requires shifts on all three legs of the tripod.
Redefine Your Job
“Like athletes and companies, managers and professionals over invest in their strengths under the false assumption that what produced their past successes will necessarily lead to future wins. Eventually we become trapped in well-honed routines that no longer correspond to the requirements of a new environment.”
“When we allocate more time to what we do best, we devote less time to learning other things that are also important. The problem isn’t just what we are doing; it’s what we’re neglecting to do (and not learning to do) instead. Because experience and competence work together in a virtuous (or vicious) cycle, when that competence is in demand, as if often is, it invites further utilization. So some leadership muscles get very strong while others remain underdeveloped.”
We teach students in our music school in Odessa Texas the importance of establishing a ratio between excelling at their core talents, while at the same time broadening their view and expertise in areas that are new and innovative.
“The returns from exploiting what we already do well are more certain and closer in time and space than the returns from exploring potential new areas in which we will necessarily feel weak at first.”
Charismatic leaders have been seen to possess these consistent qualities:
- Strong convictions based on their personal experience
- Good and frequent communication, mostly through personal stories
- A strong coherence between what they believe, what they actually do, and who they are
“How do you start learning to become a more effective change leader, right now where you are? You start by making your job a platform for doing and learning new things…It’s a more complex process that involves changing your perspective on what is important and worth doing. So, the best place to begin is by increasing your outsight on the world outside your immediate work and unit by broadening the scope of your job and, therefore, your own horizons about what you might be doing instead.”
- Success creates competency traps.
- When you allocate more time to what you do best, you devote less time to learning other things that are also important.
- Over time, it gets more costly to invest in learning to do new things.
- To act like a leader, you must devote time to four tasks you won’t learn to do if you are in a competency trap:
- Bridging across diverse people and groups.
- Envisioning new possibilities.
- Engaging people in the change process
- Embodying the change.
- It’s hard to learn these things directly and especially without the benefit of a new assignment. So, no matter what your current situation is, there are five things you can do to begin to make your job a platform for expanding your leadership:
- Develop you situation sensors.
- Get involved in projects outside where you are.
- Participate in extracurricular activities.
- Communicate your personal ‘why.’
- Create slack in your schedule.
As artists and creators, it is important to always have an eye for what is culturally relevant, while at the same time having the technical skills to be able to adapt to changes in the culture. Skillfulness takes effort, consistency and time. We encourage students in our music school in Odessa Texas to become skillful in core artistic competency which will allow them to change and adapt easily to cultural changes.
Network Across and Out
When it comes to developing our circle of relationships, the author suggests that we’re all narcissistic and lazy. “I call this tendency to prefer interacting with people who are similar to ourselves the narcissistic principle of relationship formation…We are drawn spontaneously to people who are like us in ways that are important to us, and we give those people the benefit of the doubt, creating conditions that increase the likelihood that a relationship will develop.”
“You can’t possibly stay current with new trends in the world, much less lead the way, if your network is a product of the narcissistic and lazy bias…Because no one person can possibly have all the answers or, indeed, know all the right questions to ask.” Some of the most profound musical developments have happened as a result of a few people who were willing to bridge the gap between divergent styles or approaches. One example of this is Rock, which emerged from Country and Blues. We encourage students in our music school in Odessa Texas to look beyond what they think they know, to establish new artistic directions.
Our networks fall into three main categories:
- Operational, which “helps you manage current internal responsibilities,
- Personal, people you feel closest to—friends, family, and trusted advisers, and
- Strategic networks “made up of relationships that help you to envision the future, sell your ideas, and get the information and resources you need to exploit these ideas. It requires both time and attention outside operational demands and strategic investment in outside activities that can give you outsight on what else you might be doing. You have more discretion about the composition of your strategic network…A good strategic network gives you connective advantage: the ability to marshal information, support, or other resources from one of your networks to obtain results in another. It’s not so much about the one-on-one relationships you have, but it is more about how they intersect.”
We hope to inspire students in our music school in Odessa Texas to make the effort to develop relationships that are meaningful with other artists who may have a different viewpoint. We encourage each student to be a life-long learner, willing to consider new ideas and direction.