BENJAMIN ZANDER: There are a lot of stories about
conductors, mostly told by orchestra players.
And one of my favorites is the one about Toscanini, who was a
very great conductor, who had the ability to galvanize
people to great passion and intensity and expression, and
he also had a temper, famous temper.
Apparently, when he did one of these temper tantrums, he took
his watch and smashed it on the floor.
I heard recently he bought them wholesale.
Anyway, the story goes that in the middle of the rehearsal he
saw that one of the players in the double bass section wasn't
playing very well, and he shouted at him, "You're
fired!" This was in the days before the union.
We can't do that now.
But in those days, you could fire a musician without any
explanation or recourse.
That would be the end of his career.
So this poor man had to go home, tell his wife he didn't
have a job.
As he left the room for the last time, he turned around
and shouted at Toscanini, "You're a no good son of a
bitch." And Toscanini shouted back, "It's too late to
apologize."
[LAUGHTER]
That's the old style of leadership.
It's top-down, hierarchical, right-thinking, and male.
And it served humanity for about 75,000 years.
Now, I used to be that kind of a leader.
Not quite as extreme, but I was successful as a conductor.
But I paid a high price in terms of the energy,
well-being, and self-expression of the
people around me.
And then I had a quite extraordinary event that
happened in my life.
It was almost like a road to Damascus event for me.
I was 45 years old, and I'd be conducting for 20 years or
more, and suddenly I had a realization, for the first
time, that the conductor of an orchestra
doesn't make a sound.
Now, my picture appears on the front of the CD.
But the conductor doesn't actually make a sound.
He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other
people powerful.
And when that occurred to me, it was so profound, had such
an effect, that people in my orchestra said, Ben, what
happened to you?
And that's what happened.
I realized that my job was to awaken
possibility in other people.
Now, it became from there a real question whether I was
doing that.
And the way you find out whether you're doing that is
to look at their eyes.
If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.
And if the eyes are not shining, you
get to ask a question.
And this is the question: who am I being that my players'
eyes are not shining?
We can do that with our children.
Who am I being that my childrens'
eyes are not shining.
Now, from this moment and from this discovery, Roz and I
started exploring together a new kind of leadership.
Now, we distinguished two worlds--
two worlds.
One world we called the downward spiral.
The world of the downward spiral, in which Toscanini was
conducting his orchestra.
The world of the downward spiral is the world of
competition, competition in which you might be energized,
but you might also be demoralized.
The world of fear and pressure, in which you might
be galvanized to great things, and at the same time, you
might be paralyzed.
So the lines come down and they also go up.
It is the world in which we live normal life.
Most conversations take place in the downward spiral.
Gossip and all the magazines that depend on it take place
in the downward spiral.
TV shows that we're used to.
The Apprentice, a perfect example of
the downward spiral.
How To Be A Survivor.
We have another program, How To Be A Millionaire.
And I learned about another one today called
Million Pound Drop.
Those are all downward spiral conversations and games.
The stock market is a perfect image for the downward spiral.
Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.
And we have to constantly observe to see whether it's up
or whether it's down, which gives us much excitement and
also much dis-ease as it goes down.
That's the world.
Sports, of course, full of downward spiral, but in sports
it doesn't matter because we all go out for a beer
afterwards.
But our educational system is based on a downward spiral,
because there's nowhere to go from an A but down.
And so we shouldn't be surprised if our
children look anxious.
Right now, many of you have young children who are worried
about whether they're going to get into college and accepted
or rejected.
We have a 4-year-old who's worried that he may not get
into preschool.
So this is a world of measurement and a world of
comparisons.
Sometimes it seems as though it's the only world, which is
not the case, which is why I asked for another flip chart.
This world is called the world of radiating possibility, and
it has a completely different shape, going out like this.
This is a world of shared commitments, shared
involvements, of open-heartedness, of
open-mindedness, of
contribution, of love, of health--
both personal and
international and for the world--
collaboration, curiosity, and grandchildren.
Those of you when you get to my age will have this
experience of having grandchildren.
One of mine, who's six, doesn't walk, she skips
everywhere she goes, like this.
Now, you don't see this much on Wall Street.
They don't do that on Wall Street.
If somebody did that on Wall Street, they'd come along in a
white van and take them away.
But all my grandchild is saying is I'm happy to be here
and I'm happy you are here, too.
And there's a piece of music which goes with that, which is
the Beethoven's "7th Symphony," which some of you
know it goes like [SINGING RHYTHM].
That's actually a very hard rhythm to keep.
That rhythm tends to fall into [SINGING RHYTHM].
If you're a little lazy, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
[SINGING RHYTHM],
which is a march.
You can do that for hours.
This rhythm is [SINGING RHYTHM].
That's the rhythm of skipping.
When I did the recording of it-- which, incidentally, you
can get at amazon.com--
the orchestra, which was a wonderful orchestra, the
Philharmonia Orchestra, played, [SINGING RHYTHM].
After a while, they got a bit tired and played,
[SINGING RHYTHM].
I said no, no, the rhythm is [SINGING RHYTHM].
Oh yes, [SINGING RHYTHM].
It kept on falling back.
My job is to remind the players what the rhythm of
transformation is, because transformation lives here, and
the rhythm of transformation is lighter and brighter and
faster and more buoyant than the rhythm of
exhortation and blame.
You should, you would, you must, you need.
So what we know about this world over there is that life
unfolds in the story we tell.
It's, in other words, an invented world.
Now, you probably know the story of the two show salesmen
who were sent to Africa in the 1900s from Manchester in order
to find out if they could sell shoes in Africa.
And they wrote telegrams back to base in Manchester.
And one of them wrote, "Situation hopeless.
Stop.
They don't wear shoes." The other one wrote, "Glorious
opportunity, they don't have any shoes yet."
Now those two stories are told about
circumstances that are identical.
The circumstances hadn't changed, only what changes is
what we say about it.
And you notice that even the music of that statement,
"Situation hopeless, they don't wear shoes," and
"Glorious opportunity, they don't have any shoes yet,"
along with the hand motion, is a totally different world and
we get to choose at every moment of every single day
which place we're standing in.
Now, it may seem to some of you that this sounds like
positive thinking.
It is not positive thinking.
Positive thinking is saying something is great when you
know it's shitty.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's stupid, and it belongs in
the downward spiral.
Possibility is something quite different, and I'm going to
tell you a story.
My father who, as he told you, he was quite a remarkable man.
He had an amazing ability to turn things upside-down.
He used to say, there's no such thing as bad weather,
only inappropriate clothing.
That was his way.
And he was a survivor from the Holocaust. He lost his mother
in Auschwitz, and he lost eight brothers--
members of his family.
And he lost everything.
He lost his home, his belongings, his money, his
profession.
And he came to England with four children to
support and a wife.
And then he was interned.
They had internment camps in those days for Germans, and
they put them all in these camps.
There were 2,000 men living in tents.
And the state of fear and anxiety under which these
people lived must have been virtually unbearable.
Some of them were so stressed that they sat, my father told
me, against the barbed wire fence for the
entire time of the day.
Now, he looked around and said, there are a lot of
intelligent people here.
We should have a university.
And so they started a university in that camp, with
40 classes running regularly.
No paper, no pencils, no books, no blackboard, nothing.
Just people talking to each other.
That is possibility.
He didn't say this situation is great and pretend that it
was positive.
He simply made up his mind to create something out of
circumstances that seemed to have no hope and no
possibility in them.
That is the secret of possibility.
The art of possibility, which is the name of a book, is the
art of moving from here to there.
And leadership is taking people with you.
That's simply what it is, this new view.
Now, central to this is the notion of vision.
In the middle of this circle I'm going to put the word
vision, because that is crucial.
Now, there's a great deal of misunderstanding about vision.
If you go to the London Business School--
many of you have been there-- in the hallway of the London
Business School there is a very large stone plaque, which
says, "Our vision is to be the preeminent business school in
the world." I went to the director and I said, you know
that's not really a vision.
She said, I know, but it's written in stone.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, a vision, to be a vision, has to be for everybody.
There must be nobody who's left out.
The Boston Philharmonic has a vision.
Our orchestra is called-- our vision is "Passionate
music-making without boundaries." And that's the
thing that leads our organization.
Our orchestra's not run by a person, it's run by a vision.
And every conversation we have and every discussion is led by
that vision.
So we had a discussion recently about ticket prices
for next year.
They have to go up, yes, by all means, they will go up,
but not the cheapest ones, they've been
the same for 30 years.
Passionate music-making without boundaries.
See, that's how it works.
The Boston Symphony, which is the other great
orchestra in Boston--
the richest orchestra in the world, actually--
if you give your tickets back to the Boston Symphony because
you can't use them at the weekend, they resell them and
make more money.
If you give your tickets back to the Boston Philharmonic, we
give them to Rosie's Place, which is a homeless shelter,
because there are many people at the homeless shelter who
love classical music but they can't afford the tickets.
So there was somebody at a meeting I went to recently who
was standing over here firmly and said, 3% of the population
likes classical music.
If we could move it to 4%, our problem would be over.
I say everybody loves classical music, they just
haven't found out about it yet.
Now, the question is: how would you walk, how would you
talk, how would you be if you thought 3% of the population
likes classical music [MUMBLING]?
How would you walk, how would you talk, how would you be if
you thought everybody liked classical music, they just
haven't found out about it?
So these two words are absolutely separate.
The vision under which I run my life is that everybody
understands and loves classical music.
But let's experiment here and see.
We have a very interesting situation.
We have a young pianist, her name is Olga.
I have never met her before.
I've been told she's a wonderful
pianist. We've never met.
She has no idea what's going on here.
She just walked in.
And I've asked her to come and play for us.
And so we're going to see what happens.
She's going to play the first movement of the "Moonlight
Sonata" of Beethoven.
We welcome Olga.
Thank you for coming.
Please, go to the piano.
[APPLAUSE]
[MOONLIGHT SONATA]
BENJAMIN ZANDER: Now, first of all I want everybody to clap
because [INAUDIBLE].
[APPLAUSE]
Now, so Olga, you're an extraordinary musician and
you're a beautiful pianist, and you have amazing capacity
to hold the concentration of the listeners.
I have some good news and some bad news.
This is a group of people divided
up into three sections.
The first section are people--
it's quite a small section--
they are people who love classical music.
They will listen to classical music at every moment of the
day or night.
They have their radios permanently on the FM radio
classical station.
They go to the symphony.
They have CDs in their car.
Their children are learning instruments.
They go to the symphony.
They are passionate.
They would be willing to listen to you forever.
We don't have to worry about them.
That's the good news.
[APPLAUSE]
The second group of people in this room are--
they don't mind classical music.
You know, They don't mind it.
They come home from a long day in the office and they take a
glass of beer, a little Vivaldi in the background
doesn't do any harm.
That's the second group.
[LAUGHTER]
And then the third group are the people who actually never
listen to classical music.
It's just not part of their life.
But leave out the first group.
The second group, although they were absolutely riveted
on you at the beginning, gradually lost their
concentration.
I noticed a couple of them actually take
out their cell phones.
That's the sad news, isn't it?
And halfway through this movement, you had actually
lost all the people except the ones who were passionate about
classical music.
And there's a reason for that.
It's not because you're not fabulously gifted and a
wonderful pianist, it's because you've misunderstood
what Beethoven was trying to say.
All right.
So shall we look at this?
Let's look and see what happens, because my dream is
that we will find that every single person in this room
actually loves and understands classical music.
You know, one of the characteristics of a leader is
that the leader never doubts the capacity of the people
he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming.
Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, I have a dream, of
course, I'm not sure they'll be up to it.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
So they are up to it.
So let's see what happened.
First of all, the melody is not here.
[PLAYING PIANO].
That's not the melody.
So the melody must be in the left hand.
So let's hear the melody in the left hand.
[PLAYING PIANO].
So what's happening is it starts on a C sharp, it goes
down, [PLAYING PIANO],
and back to the same C sharp.
So could you play it in such a way that they hear the first C
sharp and the second C sharp are connected?
Here it is.
[PLAYING PIANO AND SINGING].
Should we get them to sing it?
OLGA: Yes.
BENJAMIN ZANDER: Let's get them to sing it.
OK, here comes.
All right, everybody.
You conduct.
Here.
Everybody's singing.
Are you ready?
[SINGING NOTES].
Good.
Can you get them to really hear that the first C sharp
and the last C sharp are identical?
I'll play this time and you conduct them.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
Great.
[SINGING AND PLAYING PIANO]
Ah, oh is that beautiful.
Did you hear how beautifully they sang?
Wow.
This is the--
it's the Google choir.
[LAUGHTER]
I heard both C sharps.
Now, I'm going to point something out to you that is
going to absolutely shock you.
Because if you do that again and I play the triplets, look
what's happened.
You conduct them again.
[SINGING AND PLAYING PIANO].
It's twice as fast. It's twice as fast. Isn't that amazing?
Now, for 180 years, which is the time that has elapsed
since Beethoven wrote that, the world has misunderstood
how this piece goes.
And the reason is because Beethoven didn't say anything
about moonlight.
You know that?
Do you know who said moonlight?
It was the publisher.
He thought it'd sell more copies if he said moonlight.
And he was right.
This piece has sold more copies than any other piece of
music in the history of the world.
And he thought, the publisher thought, that if he said
moonlight, and the pianists all went like this,
[PLAYING PIANO],
which is fine for the opening, because even the tone deaf
people would be moved by that.
But when you get to this, [PLAYING PIANO],
you've even lost the classical music lovers.
It sounds like somebody practicing.
[PLAYING PIANO].
It makes no sense.
It's clearly nonsense.
So should we find out really?
Now, what Beethoven wrote was not "Moonlight Sonata," he
wrote "Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia." A fantasy.
It's a fantasy.
So let's see where we can find a fantasy.
[MOONLIGHT SONATA]
[APPLAUSE]