engaging The Fall…

I rarely run across a song and a group that I have never heard. And not bragging… just when you make it your business to notice and know music, it is a shock. Recently people have given me the tagline “… and his encyclopedic knowledge of music” It is why I love listening to Sirius XM Deep tracks… and Wikipedia 😉 Between them, I can still occasionally reward my brain with something that it has to process for the first time… and, wonder is something that only gets better when you use it… often…

renewing and ReLaunching leadingWithMusic

The days of summer are waning, and I hope you have had a chance to renew a bit. We have had the great fortune to gather with our extended family a number of times, which helped me reflect a bit on what the last few years have taught us.

renewing Powerfully

As we were standing in the small conference room off of the Vice-Chairman’s office, we were surveying some of the memorabilia that he had collected over his Powerful career. One of the few engineers to actually ascend to this stratospheric level, he had been my idol when I started. If he could make it as an engineer, I had a chance also. Our President was playing with a ball-bearing race, with the silver rolling balls exposed that he was gently nudging around the circle. He turned to my boss and said, “… at least one of these is mine”

Power execution

Our dinner out that night in Manhattan was lovely and relaxed. Mostly because we were killing time… until an overnight flight would deliver a replacement card for a demo scheduled the next morning. In setting up our demo at THE seat of Power of IBM at that point, 590 Madison Avenue, in the boardroom no less, I had discovered the hardware was dead. And, there was something called DeltaDash that at that point was slightly more common than FedEx, and would bring us a new one at 3 am. No problem, we would drive back and have a few hours before our 10 am demo.

The wonder of Power

As we deplaned in Atlanta, we were looking for directions to the private jets section of the Airport. Catching a taxi across the tarmac, we arrived where the Powerful people fly, and waited for our Division President to arrive. We were due for an important update on the project he was the Executive Sponsor for, and the only time we could find was to fly back with him from Atlanta to DC… So if you are wondering, we flew down from DC to fly back with him … to DC.

observe the Power of Power

“Who the ___ are you anyway?” was the exasperated shout from the senior Engineer and IBM Fellow from our Austin facility. With the precision of my national debating days, I had just reduced his arguments against what our small (but growing team) was doing into shreds and now I had him calling me names. Perfect. Victory. The facility manager who had brought all of his Power to this meeting had to step in and calm the waters. “I will take your ideas back for consideration and we will be back in touch.” And with that, we observed his team gather their things and leave…

Power partners

As I finished talking about our project, there was a pause in the conversation while the Senior VPs were considering what I had shared. My boss, now my partner, was leaning back as he always did, even though he knew most of these very Powerful men well. By now he had confidence in my ability to communicate difficult concepts quickly and convincingly, which freed him up to study and read what was really happening and not being said…

About Leading with Music

Brought to you by empoweringLEADERS; authored by Mark K. House.

While there are many blog sites on both Leadership and Music, our site aims to deepen the understanding of both – and do it in the length of a song.

Select a post (like the one above),
Hit play on YouTube, Apple Music, or Spotify for the music selection
Read a short article about Leadership

In less than 5 minutes, get an artist to explore further with a bite-sized leadership point as you dive into your day. Buttons below take you to the previous or more recent post to keep reading. Join us on LinkedIn to leave a comment, and subscribe below for Daily or Weekly email updates. Share your own findings about #leadingWithMusic on LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Each week we select a Band of the week to emphasize a Leadership theme. Daily we emphasize one of the empower leadership competencies (to the left here). For example, Monday will always be about engage, and Sunday will always be about renew. All include real-world best practices learned from many years of global leadership and many mistakes that you can avoid.

You can Browse or Search for music or topics of interest to you. We are always looking for new Leadership Topics or Bands to cover and welcome your contributions to those lists. Workshops using the power of music either virtually or in person are also available.

About the Author, Mark House

Mark has been immersed in music and singing since his youth, including singing in a Boys Choir at the 1968 Methodist Church Global meeting. He also watched as his Dad returned from meetings at IBM with his “songbook”, charged up by singing at offsite meetings regularly. He helped lead music for his high school and college Youth Groups, and was part of a Bluegrass Gospel group as the bass player for over 15 years. As he noticed the absence of music and creativity in the workplace, he wrote “musical skits” in his corporate roles at IBM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and VeriSign.

As he transitioned from corporate roles, he co-led singing for every session of his coaching cohort at Georgetown University. It was there he saw the power of music to get strangers and teammates to bond quickly. Backed up by the science in Daniel Levitin’s great book This is Your Brain on Music, he began a 15-year focus on bringing music back into the workplace.

This led to offering multiple Music Makes Me workshops at Georgetown and other commercial and government organizations. He is now structuring offsite and meetings around music, and as an anthym certified consultant, can work with virtual teams around the globe. More details are here. He is recognized for his ability to find a song or build a playlist for just about any occasion and looks forward to your tune.