Starting the Journey 3What kind of models do we have for leadership?
Do we have a good map?
Why start the journey anyway? What prompts you? What
draws you to being a leader? Unusual circumstances? A per-
sonal crisis? Perhaps a person has come into your life and
changed your thinking. We all have defining moments in
our lives and often a person will act as a leader for you.
Sometimes we recognize it at the time, but not always.
I remember a seminar I attended a few years ago with
Eloise Ristad, a marvellous teacher who was Professor of
Piano at Colorado University. She gave workshops on music
and performance anxiety, a big problem for many classical
musicians. They are expected to give a flawless performance,
‘speaking’ with their instrument, which needs constant prac-
tice to master. The pressure can reduce solo instrumentalists
to glassy-eyed paralysis, like a rabbit caught in the glare of a
car’s headlights. Musicians are taught to play their instru-
ment at college, but they are given little guidance on how to
perform it. Eloise had written a book called A Soprano on her
Head^1 which I admired very much. She had a unorthodox
approach to teaching music, in which she used all sorts of
ways to interrupt performers’ stuck patterns. The title of the
book came from the way she cured a singer of stage fright.
She asked this singer (who was tongue tied in her presence
and could hardly croak a note) to stand on her head and
then sing. Ridiculous! And yet it worked. You might say it
gave her a whole new perspective on singing. It was certainly
the beginning of the resumption of her interrupted singing
career.
I remember coming back from that workshop thinking, ‘I
can write a book too.’ The fact that I had not written any-
thing beyond school essays at that time didn’t seem to
matter. A year later the manuscript was finished and it
started me on a journey as a writer.
The call is when you suddenly recognize you want to
change. One of my friends told me his turning point. He was
with a textile firm, in name a manager but in reality a glori-