By Brian Fraser.
My favourite musical genre is jazz. It’s passionate, provocative, and purposeful. The best jazz musicians play their songs from their soul and stimulate a spiritual response in their audiences. They use their instruments to voice a vibe that creates value. They tell stories filled with emotion from the depths of their beings. I find that inspiring in every dimension of my life.
Most of my life, I have been a pastor, preacher, and professor. At my worst, I’ve told people what to do and how to think. At my best, I’ve convened conversations in which a space is created and sustained that allows everyone to offer their best, explore the insights of each other, and discover something deeper and broader about the matters that drew us together in the first place. The community has used the most common form of jazz or improvisation in human experience – ordinary conversation – to be passionate, provocative, and purposeful.
Over the past decade, I’ve added a new portfolio to my presence in the world. I’m the lead provocateur at Jazzthink (www.jazzthink.com). I use the wit, wisdom, and workings of jazz as a model in conversations that invite people to explore how to improve the ways they work together. I work with teams and their leaders to encourage them to be more effective. My inspiration remains a quote that I found in Miles Davis’ autobiography when I was launching Jazzthink in 2002 – “I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great music happens.”
Every team has a song in their collective soul that will serve the best interests of the Spirit. While my own spiritual tradition is Christianity, I understand Spirit, in broad terms, to be the creative and sustaining energy of Love that enables life to flourish in this universe. Every person has access to that Spirit. That Spirit desires its creatures to work together in the service of its Love. At the heart of reality is a love song that invites people to live every dimension of their lives in sync with enriching Love. At home, at work, at play, in leisure, in volunteer activities, in reflection – body, mind, heart, and soul are invited to align in community to be a blessing. That’s what it is to live the song in your soul in the service of Spirit.
I go through life these days looking for opportunities to convene hopeful conversations that generate flourishing communities. They are the songs that give expression to the spirituality in our souls.
It might be within our family – three sons, three daughters-in-law, and eight grandchildren. It might be with colleagues and students in the coaching community – calling forth deeper satisfaction for our coaches. It might be within the Christian congregation I minister with at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Burnaby, BC. It might be with organizations of all sorts in teambuilding sessions. It might be with members of various communities of practice in which I am challenged to review and refine my approaches to organizational development, performance improvement, and spiritual and ethical development in the workplace.
Those conversations, like jazz, have a clear structure that uses vocabulary and grammar to provide common ground for all those participating. But every time we open our mouths to engage in an exchange of information and interpretation, we improvise and do it differently than we have in the past. That’s where the potential for imagination, creativity, and innovation emerges. We listen for the opportunities to explore something new, something different, something better. We contribute the best we can imagine to achieve the purpose. We analyze the best options to pursue. We decide what to do. We figure how to support each other in the execution. We identify what to monitor and measure to ensure continuous improvement and build trust.
The key to initiating and sustaining this quality of conversation is curiosity. Contention, complaint, and criticizing pushes people away and close down the space for true collaboration. Curiosity about what others think and about what might be possible invites people in and opens up the space for soul and song to emerge and flourish.
Take a moment in the next day or so and find a jazz performance on You Tube – try Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander, or Diana Krall. Listen for the passion, the virtuosity, the collaboration, and the joy. Imagine managing you voice like these musicians manage their instruments. Try it out. You will find the song in your soul and be in closer touch with the Spirit.
Brian Fraser is lead provocateur at Jazzthink – www.jazzthink.com – and minister with Brentwood Presbyterian Church – www.brentwoodpc.ca. He uses the wit, wisdom, and workings of jazz to provoke SMARTer teamwork. He has ministered with Presbyterian congregations in Toronto and Vancouver, been dean of the Presbyterian college at UBC, and taught at Vancouver School of Theology. He does keynotes and workshops on teambuilding, coaches teams and their leaders, and writes widely on flourishing communities.
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