Cultivating Talent – Talent Revolution

Unlocking Team Potential: Insights from Conducting

The conductor steps onto the podium, raises their arms, and the orchestra snaps to attention. The role of the conductor is to be a communicator — to use language, gesture, and presence to drive performance from a team in order to bring an experience to life.

To learn how to be this type of communicator, you study and practice. The study of conducting includes:

Instrument study: how instruments are played, their constraints, where they sound best, and how to speak to the performers of those instruments.
Music study: how music is written, elements of music, the function of harmony and form, and the history of music.
Communication: gestures, hand waving patterns, baton technique, how to hold one’s self, and how to run rehearsal.

I want to write you about presence. The conductor’s must project confidence and competence while projecting a certain kind of humility. Simultaneously saying to their orchestra “trust me, I know what I’m doing, and I am here to serve you, our music, and our patrons.” The conductor may stand tall, shoulders back, and with a puffed out chest. They may speak firmly but with a tone that leads with respect. Conductors that project such confidence and yet project so much humility and respect get amazing performances.

People are community animals and we love to follow the leaders we admire. And the same way that musicians perform better for effective conductors, so do teams outside of music.

You, the savvy leader, can practice the skills of great conductors.

Study how your teams work. Understand the constraints of their work, the conditions required for great work to occur, and know how to speak to people about their work.
Study your product. Who does your product serve? What are the mechanisms of action that product value for your customers? How do your teams contribute to the top and bottom lines?
Study communication. What type of communicator are you? How well do you simultaneously project confidence and humility? How likely is it that your team admires you?

Remember — you’re not just managing talent — you’re creating the conditions for talent to flourish. Just like a conductor.

Overthinking collaboration

I have a theory that leaders overthink how to create highly collaborative and productive teams. This article from the Harvard Business Review recommends the new rules include a culture statement, a way to measure performance, and continuous improvement systems. What’s novel? And why is there demand for this knowledge?

I respect HBR’s work, and I value that they’re serving a need. Thank you, HBR. And I believe their output is not new, it’s what we do everyday — culture.

Let’s consider culture a system of transmitted behaviors, norms, values, and status markers that shape our society or organizations. It’s everything we see and can’t see. The system, like any organism, evolves in adaptive and maladaptive ways.

If that definition is true, here are my reasons for why we’re overthinking teams.

Life Finds a Way

Critique: Large teams are composed of people likely organized in sub teams. When people are organized together to create work outputs, they’ll create a system of behaviors, norms, values, and status markers that help them create valuable outputs — Robin Hanson calls these developments “cultural gadgets“.

Alternative: Allow sub cultures to form and thrive. Great work cultures can have contagion effects. Enjoy that. In fact, go out of your way to share subcultural practices with other teams so that they can be adopted. You’re creating your own internal and mini culture market.

Robustness vs Performance

Critique: Establishing key performance indicators is critical. No disagreement. However, as initiatives change your team will need to adapt. You’ll want robust culture systems that evolve to meet the shifting demands and pressures.

Alternative: Employ real time performance management dashboards (recommended by the article) and track how well the team adapts to changing priorities. Keep a history of all of the changing demands your team evolved to meet, productivity levels during those changes, and challenges you all overcame along the way. Share that story with your team constantly!

Maximize for Bottom Up

Critique: It’s common to hear that culture starts at the top. I disagree. I believe, based on my experience, that the inverse is true. Organizational culture statements are often feel good statements defining “who we are”; however, those statements aren’t a system — they’re words. Platitudes ≠ outputs.

Alternative: Allow your cultures to pop up and grow. In fact, allow for cultural drift — the process of a culture system evolving and adapting to new demands. As leaders, create selection pressures that favor more effective team cultures — celebrate the groups (collectively) that are making the most valuable outputs. And be wary of rigid company-wide policies that may stifle cultural evolution.

Do My Ideas Work and Scale?

Yes. My ideas are not novel. Scrum teams and creative groups operate in similar ways. The teams I build need to be high executing and creative problem solvers — adopting ideas from software and collaborative arts makes sense.

Scaling is both easy and hard. It’s easy to allow cultures to form. As a leader, it’s hard to let go. I am comfortable letting go and allowing culture to form. It’s my experience that people want to feel trusted, and when they do, they create good work. Your mileage may vary.

Potential Downsides

My ideas may not be suitable for teams that need to run a certain way to be successful. More rigid teams or organizations may find my ideas too radical — and that’s okay. As a leader, you need to assess your own culture and determine what’s best.

Wrapping it Up

This blog is for people who are obsessed about talent — spotting it, cultivating it, retaining it, and successfully exiting it into better roles internally or externally. If you’re going to be that person, it’s critical that you create environments for talent to do their best work. That means, creating space for micro cultures to take root, evolve, and adapt.

Excellence is a process

I like this quote from Brad Stuldberg’s NYT article (NYT).

“Excellence is not perfection or winning at all costs. It is a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best performer — and person — you can be. You pursue goals that challenge you, put forth an honest effort, endure highs, lows and everything in between, and gain respect for yourself and others. This sort of excellence isn’t just for world-class athletes; it is for all of us. We can certainly find it in sports, but also in the creative arts, medicine, teaching, coaching, science and more.” — Brad Stuldberg

I studied music in college, and I made my living as a professional musician for a time. Excellence is the bar.

Imagine being called to work at firm. You are told you’ll have a week to prep for your first day. You spend the week learning all you can about the firm, the industry, and the people you’ll be working alongside. You show up day 1 and you’re put in front of executive leaders and asked to deliver your 90-day strategy, forecasts, and anticipated roadblocks and expected outcomes as your first meeting. Oh, and you are expected to be highly credible and people are supposed to instantly trust you.

That’s not a realistic example for an office, but it’s a realistic example for the type of stress and excellence required of a professional musician.

The way the professional musician makes her mark is her ability to show up. And her ability to show up and perform is a function of hours of careful and focused practice. She practices slow. She criticizes each move of her body and her instrument. She wonders if she can be even more efficient. She records herself. She listens to herself back (a painful exercise). She keeps at it until her execution approaches (or functionally is) flawless.

That professional musician shows up for her job — a rehearsal in the morning for the show she’ll be expected to perform that night. She puts the music on the music stand, takes out her instrument, tunes, and executes — near flawlessly. That’s the standard.

Two Takeaways

As a manager, practice and become excellent at your craft. I obsess about talent, I write about my perspective on talent. I read, I think, I practice, I write, and I share what I learn with you. Get better at the thing that makes you, you.
As a manager, teach your team how to practice like a professional musician. Identify the key behaviors your team needs to execute. Then, step through the behaviors slowly. Practice, give critique, offer best practices, and keep practicing until – finally – you’ve nailed it. There’s no substitute for work.

If anybody can do it, you can

I believe one of the most powerful gifts a leader can give the talent on their team is belief.

Loneliness could be a problem. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article reports “58% of Americans are lonely, religion is fading, and work doesn’t love us back.” People are turning to hobbies and the things they love — becoming super fans of the things they love and finding community through fandom. And community might solve for loneliness.

My speculative theory is that community gives us something bigger than ourselves to believe in. Our life begins to take on more meaning — we get a mission. And we get people, fellow community members, to join us.

Great leaders practice fandom towards their teams. They go to their team members and say, “hey, if anybody can do this super hard thing, you can, and I’m here with you the entire way.”

Beyond belief, statements like “if anybody can do it, you can” give talent something more — the sense that you trust them.

Imagine how it might feel to know someone who cares about you believes in your ability to succeed and trusts your judgment. You can be that leader for someone. If anybody can do it, you can.

Teams goals outweighing personal KPIs?

Tyler Cowen’s August 17th Bloomberg column (Bloomberg) highlights a significant shift in how how talent is evaluated and rewarded in modern organizations.

The Question

If the output to be created is a result of team-based functions, how do you determine who to put on the team and how to compensate that person for their inputs?

The Problem

Giving credit where credit is due. Who owns the largest % of meaningful contribution? How does that get measured?
The use of AI. How much was AI leveraged? Do you compensate people for improving the AI database? To reward or not reward for effective prompt engineering?
How do we find the right people to work on the team? Tyler notices that firms are starting to focus on ex ante signals of quality (a degree, signals of status, etc.) vs taking a chance on outsiders that may prove more beneficial.

My Take

Talent Spotters/Hiring Managers: Get better at spotting talent! Talk with other leaders about how they assess and look for talent. Talk with highly talented contributors and learn about their work. Learn about other disciplines and imagine how talent from that discipline may help you in yours. I found that engineering and music professionals are fantastic customer success managers.
Managers: Depending on your business, it’s possible you’ll need to rethink your KPIs. Perhaps team-based KPI and comp plans are best when the ideal outputs are a result of team dynamics.
Talent: Realize that the signals you put up to indicate your availability will need to change. Networks will become more important for people who have and don’t have credentials.
Managers: How do you reward people who improve the use and adoption of AI in the firm? It’s not enough to suggest good prompts. How are people incentivized to use AI as an efficiency and problem solving partner?

One Useful Action

If nothing else, simply ask yourself: do I have the right talent in the right seats? And, how sure am I that I’m not missing out on undervalued talent?

Problem Solving, Creativity, and the Receptionist

People often comment that they wish they could be as creative as me. 100% of the time they are surprised when I say: “you can.”

I see creativity like an input/process/output framework.

A problem presents itself. The problem demands a solution. The problem walks into an office and greets the receptionist and says, “Excuse me, I demand a solution.” Reception replies, “a solution, you say?”

The Problem, aggravated by having to repeat itself, “Yes, of course, a solution. I don’t want to ask again. I want a solution that addresses me, the problem.”

The Reception, “You’re the problem?”

The Problem, “Yes, I’m the Problem.”

And now for something completely different.

The strength to restrain

Imagine a scenario where a customer satisfaction rep drops the ball on an account. The sales person, who worked tirelessly to secure the deal, needs to backtrack to save the deal. The customer is frustrated, they want to pay less. A group message is started with all of the parties (except the customer) in copy. The Leader says “customer satisfaction rep, I think it’s best you don’t engage with this customer anymore, and here’s why…” It’s stressful, people are mad, and someone needs to be held accountable.

It’s important for leaders to demonstrate decisiveness and strength at times. They must be able to create and hold accountabilities, and be perceived to be able to punish as well as reward. That said, a skilled leader never publicly humiliates — causing someone to lose face in front of others.

Nothing erodes the trust, morale, or psychological safety of a team more than a leader who publicly humiliates. And, a leader who engages in that way may believe they’re sticking up for the sales person. I argue no.

The sales person, who may have worked hard and may be frustrated, is on the same team as your customer satisfaction rep. They don’t want to see people hurt. They don’t benefit from seeing someone shamed on their account. In fact, it may cause the sales person to think twice before making a mistake — thus eroding morale, trust, and psychological safety.

The better path is to strategically leverage “negativity” and re-affirm the mission. Here’s how it might play out.

(In a Direct Message) Leader: Customer Satisfaction Rep A (Person A), when you did (insert behavior) the customer became upset and distrustful of our product. Don’t do that. Next time, you’re in this scenario, use (insert approach) instead. If you do that, you’ll be able to produce (insert benefit) here.

(In a Direct Message) Leader: Sales Person A (Person B). I am so sorry that I dropped the ball on your deal. I identified the mishap, addressed the issue in our process, and it won’t happen again. I know you work hard on these deals, and it’s important to me, and all of us, that our sales team is successful. Thanks for you partnership.

(In a Group Message) Leader: Person A, Person B, and I spoke. Thank you for the quick connects. I identified the issues in our process. We fixed (insert what you fixed). Here’s what’s happening next… Also, Person A and I discussed our account management strategy going forward and here’s how we’re going to pivot.

This approach is more collaborative, positive, and seeks to build people up. It places the go-forward first. The leaders real strength is realized — the strength to take the hit personally and not publicly shame their team.

Special Note

If you’re working with teams that may be locally in countries where losing face is a major offense, it’s even more important for leaders to demonstrates restraint.
The space between stimulus and response is the space where you get to decide who and how you are. Don’t discount that time.

Forming impressions, the scientific method, and feedback

A simple way to share feedback is to invite conversation into forming thoughts.

Here’s an example:

“I’m forming an impression that your work is becoming delayed. I think I’m 80% misunderstanding the situation, and I want to check in with you for your thoughts. Have a few minutes to help me?”

The person you’re talking to will appreciate your humility and the invitation for them to participate.

On the call, here’s how you frame it:

“Thanks for helping me through this. Here’s the impression I’m forming – and I think I’m likely wrong – (layout your impression).

I am forming that impression because I’ve noticed (layout your observations).

Where am I misunderstanding things? Where am I wrong? What are your thoughts?

Caveats:

Communication culture matters. This method works if your team members are direct or indirect communicators. Why? Because we’re using the scientific method to share our feedback. The scientific method starts with a hypothesis based on observations. In science, hypothesis are crafted so that they can be dis-proven, that’s when we learn. As a result, indirect people appreciate that you’re not rushing to judgment and direct people appreciate that you’re being fact-based.
Performance Issues. Don’t use this method when there are clear performance issues or violations of codes of conduct. Those must be addressed head on.

Personal Prerequisites

Perspective Taking. It is imperative that you develop the see the worldview of your employee. You likely already have this skill if you’re skilled at negotiating or as a strategist. Leverage that skill towards your team.
Curiosity Your ability to actively listen, repeat back what you heard, and ask thoughtful questions before rushing to judgment are important. You should be curious and desire to learn as much as you can.
Vulnerable. I observe leaders struggle to demonstrate intellectual humility. The ability to admit you might be wrong and ask to be taught strengthens bonds with team members and gives you insights into how they work.

How do I teach my team to do this?

In your next 1on1 with a manager on your team:

Ask the manager to pick a team member they want to give feedback to and tell you the feedback they want to give.
Be Curious and Challenge the manager: How certain are you that the basis for your feedback is 100% accurate?
Be Curious and Challenge the manager to provide evidence and question the quality of the evidence.
Share with the manager your forming thoughts on their feedback. Invite the manager to give you their thoughts on your forming impression.
Go meta and ask the manager what just happened. “What did we just do and how did I do it?”
Ask the manager “How might you do this with your team members on your next 1on1?”

Doesn’t this make me less decisive?

No. The perceived quality of your decision making is improved by your ability to collect data inputs, analyze that data, and then make a data-driven decision. Your teams will trust you because you are a thoughtful decision maker.

In addition to your improving your leadership brand, you’ll also improve your talent retention. People on my team have declined offers that are 2x their current salary to stay because of the quality of coaching they receive from me. I know this is true because the team member shared the offer letter with me.

The collaborative approach I am pitching to you works. I know it works because I use it; employees tell me that they appreciate my collaborative nature and how it pushes them to grow in their roles and as people. There’s no magic. You can do it.

Cultural Stagnation = f(AI, and Creative Output)? And why team managers should care.

I’m thinking about the connection between AI and human creativity. The question is: what’s the connection creativity stagnation and AI’s transformative potential? And what can managers do about it?

I observe two things.

Scott Buchanan of Economists Writing Every Day writes that investors had high hopes for AI-related investments. The thinking is that AI would revolutionize the world. Recently, analysts wonder if they’ll see an ROI.
Ted Gioia of The Honest Broker writes that the entertainment industry is stagnating creatively. Music preferences are regressing to the past, the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century contained writers who were mainly known in the 20th century.

Here’s what I think I know.

AI is built on human knowledge.
Human knowledge is an output of humans — largely from some creative/scientific (they can be the same) production function.

Is it possible that we’re realizing that AI is not as revolutionary as we thought because we’re not as revolutionary as we hoped?

This is not the blog for people to learn how to adopt AI into their workflows. Plenty of smarter people are writing about that.

This is the blog for people who obsess about talent and want a (often contrarian) perspective. And because you’re a person who cares about talent, here’s how I believe like us act.

We do all we can to find generative talent. We open our minds to people who are different or don’t have the “perfect” resume and look for people with skills we can use. We increase the breadth and depth of our human capital!
We adopt management styles that promote creativity. We engage in brain storming, ask for talent to give us inputs into decisions, we give inputs, we let people experiment, and we help coach decision-making versus coaching outcomes.
We stop talking and listen more. We let talent give their ideas and we engage with their ideas. We say, “I think you’re trying to accomplish z, and you got outcome y, and and if you take path x your process may get you closer to z.”

Happy generating.

Feedback 101 – Engage vs Tell

Instead of thinking about how to give feedback, what feedback to give, or when to give it; consider engaging in your team’s work.

When team members first join my team, they typically ask how I handle feedback. I typically answer, I don’t give feedback. I get a puzzled look.

Many managers, perhaps you, engage with their teams by sharing their feedback on their work. They will offer balanced critique of what they like and then offer areas for improvement. Skilled managers help their teams grow by engaging in their development. That method works, but it positions the manager (in my opinion) more like a professor vs a fan.

I share that I am their biggest fan. And as their biggest fan I want to engage with them in their work. I want to help them strategize, be a second pair of eyes as they make interpretations of data, and be their negotiating sparring partner. I share that I’m happy to play the role of editor if they need. When they’re ready to pitch, I often ask if I can play the customer so that I can give them ideas at the end that will help them prepare. After their pitch, I’ll ask how it went — what did they expect to happen, what happened, and what learnings can we pull forward for the next pitch.

In that process I shared, where is the feedback? Where is the point where I ask, “may I share feedback?”

People want to tell themselves a story about themselves. In that story, they are doing work that matters. The best way to show someone that their work matters is to engage as a fan.

The paradox of grand change management

Why do change management projects often fail? I attended a seminar led by Diana Hong of Admired Leadership/CRA Inc to to help me answer that question. I took notes for you. Here are the takeaways:

Principle: Don’t overlook human nature and psychology.

Understand the adoption curve.
- 16% will eagerly adopt change.
- 16% will resist fiercely.
- Focus on the 68% in the middle seeking social proof.
- Map your organization to this curve.
Connect change to identity Use language like “We’ve done this before” and “You’re skilled at changing.” Reference past successes. People need to see themselves as capable of change.
Manage expectations ruthlessly Don’t oversell. Be optimistic about outcomes, pragmatic about the journey. Repeat: “We can’t predict everything. We’ll get smarter as we go. This is the right thing to do.”
Start small, scale fast Begin with early adopters as change champions. Use peer networks to spread adoption. Give managers clear talking points.
Make it the new normal Success is when change becomes habitual. Don’t declare victory too soon. Aim for small wins that compound over time.

If I had to to boil it down to a simple behavior, it would be for more leaders to say what Diana recommends:

Here’s the best case scenario;
Here’s the worst case scenario; and
Reality will fall somewhere in the middle.

The paradox is as much as managers believe a grand, over optimistic, well-built change management strategy will excite and energize their employee, the opposite is likely true.

Embrace the paradox and manage for the mundane.

Effective change is habit change.

Who is your vacancy for?

A recent working paper by Anton Cheremukhin and Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria proposes splitting job vacancies into two categories.

Job vacancies that firms intend to fill with unemployed workers; and,
Vacancies firms intend to fill by poaching employees from other companies.

The dual approach, known in the paper as “dual vacancy”, offers a compelling explanation for the puzzling behavior of the Beveridge curve in recent years.

The puzzling behavior:

Historically, when unemployment went down, job vacancies went up, and vice versa.
Recently, the pattern changed. More job vacancies than expect given the unemployment rate.
That means that even with lots of job openings, unemployment isn’t decreasing as much as it used to in similar situations. Hence, some job openings may be for poaching already employed people.

The findings align with point 3 above. There’s been a significant surge in “poaching” vacancies compared to earlier periods.

In a complex job market, what does this mean for us as leaders?

Consider the vacancies you’re creating — who are they for? The poached or the unemployed.
Are we adapting our recruitment strategies accordingly?

The paper finds implications for monetary policy, but I’m more interested in what this means for our day-to-day talent management strategies. Are we clear on which of our openings are aimed at bringing in fresh talent versus attracting experienced hires from competitors? How does this impact our approach to retention?

My personal philosophy: talent is everywhere and there are opportunity costs of hiring employed vs unemployed talent. Consider that the unemployed person may be more generative and more driven than the person currently employed. For the teams I build, drive and generativeness are attractive qualities.

Optimizing employee recognition for the person, not the system

Many questions are asked about how to best recognize talent for their achievements. Questions like:

What are the best ways to recognize employees?
To incentivize or not to incentivize?
To shout out publicly or not?

Every person perceives the ROI of their work in a unique way. For some, it’s money. For others, it’s public recognition. Others may just want to build something other use. The list goes on.

Every organization develops channels to recognize employees. Perhaps it’s a public kudos board. Maybe it’s a company recognition program to award employees for their excellent performance — you see this with sales teams.

The challenge many managers face is: how do I find that happy medium between what a person needs and how my organization operates? Which channel do I optimize?

Principle: Find the equilibrium of personal and organizational culture, and if you have to choose, optimize for the personal.

Every person tells themselves a story about themselves. In that story, they want to be the hero. In that story, the way they become the hero is unique to them. Here’s how you discover that:

Ask: What’s important to you about work?
Ask: What do you want to say you accomplished here 3 years from now? What bullet points do you hope to write on your resume?
Ask: What would be the most cringe-inducing form of recognition you might receive?

You don’t have to ask those exact question — simply be curious about the employee and what matters to them. Listen carefully, make notes, and act in a way that optimizes for their preferences.

As AI rises, so to must creativity

Culture and music critic Ted Gioia, the Honest Broker, writes:

“The rapid rise of AI is actually the most profound evidence yet of cultural stagnation.” – Ted Gioia, gated source

I like culture, and Ted’s work, because culture is a factor in production and Ted blends culture + economics beautifully.

Culture influences ideas, human capital development, organizational design, work habits and norms, the preferences around customer consumption behavior, and the preferences around what firms people choose to work at. Culture influences everything!

Principle: To get the most from talent, deeply embed yourself in the culture.

Now you have my thoughts and why I like Ted, let’s consider:

Why does Ted think the culture is stagnating?

New and innovative music is not being introduced into the market.
Consumption habits are regressing to the past versus consuming at the margin.
Firms are optimizing for the formula that works. Look at the various remakes of old franchises: Marvel, Ghostbusters, and how much music sounds like hit music from days gone by.

What are some reasons Ted believes AI doesn’t help?

AI is fundamentally backward-looking relying on analyzing and re-combinating existing data rather than generating truly novel ideas or content;
AI recommendations biases existing preferences; and
AI-generated content imitates rather than innovates.

Why does this matter?

Growth happens at the margin.
Growth happens when people become more curious about the unknown and under-explored. Ideas are good!
Ideas gets the most utility when it’s tied to production. Talent needs to leverage their curiosity to make and ship new things.

What can you do about it?

Ask talent: What have you been curious about lately? What ideas are you exploring? What ideas do you think are under-explored?
Ask Talent: What do you think we’re missing here? Where do you think we need to spend more time and attention?
Challenge Talent: What’s one thing you could do today to leverage that curiosity and produce something valuable for the business? How can I help?

Want an example?

I work in Customer Success. I asked a new hire two questions:

Based on what you’ve experienced so far, what are we missing?
Where are we going wrong? I want your gut reaction.

The new hire introduced ideas from their previous role — they took an idea from their last culture and suggested our culture adopt the idea. Good thing the ideas are implementable.

We’re we stagnating before I asked this question? No, we’re in hyper-growth mode and moving fast. However, like Galileo’s ship, having an outsider give you their perspective gives you insight into what you might be missing.

How does this connect to my principle?

By actively engaging with a new hire and seeking their fresh perspective, I wasn’t just observing our culture from afar – I was deeply embedding myself in it. This approach manifests the principle in several ways:

I acknowledged that culture is not static, even in a fast-growing company.
My openness demonstrates valuing diverse perspectives, including those from outside our immediate cultural bubble.
I showed a willingness to question and potentially improve our current practices.
I facilitated the cross-pollination of ideas between different corporate cultures, which can drive innovation.

If you deeply embed yourself in the culture this way, you can create an environment where talent can thrive, new ideas can emerge, and you can actively combat the kind of corporate cultural stagnation.

Lensrental.com’s packaging via Rohan

Rohan writes the “A Learning A Day” blog. In a recent blog post he writes about lensrentals.com’s packaging. I’ll let Rohan speak for himself — read his blog.

My question: What kind of manager allows his teams to create such wild and engaging messaging?

My answer is a principle.

Principle: Create an environment for talent to be as creative as possible given x constraints.

I write about spotting, retaining, cultivating, and exiting talent. When looking for creative individuals, look for people who notice the un-obvious.

Is it obvious to write a long message on package tape? No. In fact, some firms may want to advertising on their packaging tape. Not lensrentals.com.

Is it obvious to write “We’re the best, but we’re not perfect”? No. A firm would always want to represent themselves in the best way possible. Not lensrentals.com.

Somewhere within lensrentals.com, there’s a person with ideas about how to make un-obvious interesting and engaging. And somewhere in that firm there is a manager that thinks: “How might I create an environment where this person can be as creative as they can be?”

Listen like a musician.

How many professional bloggers write about listening skills? While I may be one of the many, I come with a unique perspective — I’m a trained musician. And as a trained musician, I can give you insights about listening that others might not.

Principle: Listen to how people respond.

To learn how to listen like a musician, consider learning to play an instrument. You’ll pick up an enriching fun hobby, and you’ll learn how to critically listen to how an instrument responds to you.

In your music practice you’ll learn how your actions influence the timbre and tone of an instrument. You’ll learn the upper and lower limits of the instrument’s capability. And if you’re playing with other musicians, you’ll learn how your sound (or voice) interacts and blends with the voices of others.

No instrument? No problem. In interviews, practice curiosity. When you ask a question – watch how someone responds and what they say. How do they respond when you ask about their interests? How do they respond when you become more curious about the things they’re interested in? How can you connect those interests to a concept at work? Are the answers you’re receiving more insightful than the (likely) prepared answers you receive from candidates?

Think this is poppycock? Perhaps I’m bridging too big a gap. But I’m not. I practice these ideas daily. My teams report that they value that I’m a good listener. Candidates are quick to tell me that they wish all interviews could be the way they had it. Allegorically, this method works.

Exactly how the instruments responds to the artist, so to do people respond to people. If you want to become skilled at interviewing or managing, you need to understand how things respond to you — you need to listen.