Wat volg is my kort opsomming van 'n paar "learning points" in Zander se boekie, en dan ook die YouTube links vir die twee clips. Johan
I was so intrigued by his method and principles, that I embarked on a little journey of my own around Zander’s work. I found clips on YouTube and also worked through this book “The art of possibility”, and used his principles in quite a few leadership sessions I had to facilitate, and it even surfaced in a few sermons! I would like to summarize some of the learning points from “The art of possibility” here.
- Any situation has at least two possible takes on it – the one of hopelessness, and another of hope or possibility. It’s a matter of perception, which makes all the difference. Cf a frog’s vision. A frog can only see clear lines of contrast, sudden changes in illumination, outlines in motion, and curves of outlines of small, dark objects. It suffices for a frog, in accordance with its needs to eat and to avoid being eaten. Human perception is obviously much more developed, but still information are being selected, and reality is only partially taken in. That’s where different perspectives come in. Two shoe salesmen goe to a country to invest a possible new market. One writes back, “Situation hopeless, they don’t wear shoes here.” The other reports, “Send stock, nobody here has shoes yet!” This would be the self-assessing question: “What assumption am I making, that I’m not aware I’m making, that gives me what I see?” After that question has been answered, ask the next one: “What might I now invent, that I haven’t invent yet, that would give me other choices?”
- Zander recalled dinner-table conversations. His dad would ask, “What did you do today?” He new his dad meant, “What did you achieve today?” and it freaked Zander out. He felt he would never be able to accomplish and therefore impress his father as much as his siblings and he thus grew up with “an undertow of anxiety that lasted into my middle age.” If that’s the rules of the game, you are set up for a win-lose situation with the fear of failure always lurking in the dark surroundings. Zander decided to change the game to “I am a contribution”. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side, and it is not arrived at by comparison. Questions like “Is it enough?” and “Am I loved for who I am, or for what I have accomplished, are replaced by the joyful question, “How will I be a contribution today?”
- The possibility to change your life in a positive manner is illustrated by Zander in the delightful story of Sarah, an 83-year old lady who rocked up at a speaking engagement in a Jewish old age home, which Zander reluctantly agreed to. When he got there, only Sarah was there yet, moving to her seat in the fifth row. Zander asked, “why don’t you move to the front,” to which Sarah replied, “I always sit here!” Zander jokingly added, “Well if you move today, perhaps something new can happen in your life!” She grudgingly moved one row forward. It did become eventually a joyful afternoon of story-telling and singing. One of the ladies in question time asked in a heavily German accent, “You are ze famous Ben Zander! Vy do you come and vaste your time on a bunch of old people like us?” Zander admitted that earlier that day he asked himself the same question, but look what happened since! He was searching for words, and his gaze fell upon Sarah. “Take Sarah over here as an example. When I came here she was sitting in the 5th row, and now she’s sitting in the 4th!” To which Sarah jumped up, through her arms in the air and exclaimed, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, I just got started!” And everyone applauded, not only for Sarah, but for new beginnings.
- Zander, an internationally acclaimed conductor of orchestras, once with a shock realized that the only person in an orchestra not making a single sound, is the conductor. That made him realize something about leadership, namely that leadership is about letting the people around you realize (and realize) their potential.
- Remember rule number 6: “Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously!” What are the other rules? There aren’t any!
- Possibility is a kind of language – you can speak “Possibility”. That would mean being really present to the way things are, but not resigning to it. It means firstly clearing the “should”, in other words, stop wasting time and energy about the way things should’ve been, and instead realize how things are. Secondly it means closing the exits of escape, denial and blame, thereby staying with the way things are and the feelings you have on that. Thirdly you can clear judgements of whether a situation is good or bad, for depending on perspective, it can be good and bad.
- For Zander passion is everything. He emphasizes: 1. that you should notice where you are holding back, and let go of those barriers that keep you separate and in control, and let the vital energy of passion surge through you, connecting you to all beyond, and 2. to participate wholly and allow yourself to be a channel to shape the stream of passion into a new expression for the world. This is where he uses his famous explanation of Chopin’s piece (Prelude op 28 no 4) to illustrate “one-buttock playing” (where the music “takes you there”) and feeling the “long lines” (finding the larger narrative, beyond the detail of everyday living). Zander calls the decision to go to “one-buttock living” the “Beyond the Fuck-It”. He got that from a student who realized that living within the box, will never satisfy, and therefore said “Fuck-It” and moved to one-buttock playing!
- Zander makes much of “lighting the spark in other’s lives”. To him the question is a personal one. If others don’t live out their passion, he asks himself (e.g. as conductor), “Who am I being, that their eyes aren’t shining?
