Listening & Improv: Barrett’s Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz

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A recent read through Fortune’s adaptation of Frank J. Barrett’s Yes to the Mess, Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz, got me thinking about the different approaches to leadership and how we collaborate at Text100.

In the excerpt, Barrett discusses how listening and improvisation–and the notion of taking someone else’s lead–has helped Jazz to thrive and evolve, exploring how it can do the same for business.

Let’s face it: the landscape in which we operate has never been so dynamic. While flexibiity is important to remain agile and move quickly, it is actually through listening–to one another, our clients, the market  and even ourselves–that enables us to thrive in business today. Through understanding our core strengths and how they map to those of our colleagues and partners, we can improvise our approach to achieve not only the best, but also the most timely results while creating opportunities for everyone.

In my almost nine-year tenure at Text100 working in two regions with teams and clients across the globe, I can truly say that the most successful leaders are indeed those that favor openness over familiar protocols, at times, taking others’ leads. The fact is, no one can be expected to know everything. By recognizing that everyone brings their own value,  we play on eachother’s strenghs. As Barrett  so eloquently puts it, we “accompany others’ thinking so that ideas achieve fruiting, just as jazz players comp each other’s playing to bring the music to its fullest expression.”

It certainly sounds fabulous to me!