Three Minute Leadership: the Beauty of Many Voices Creating One Song
To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning
A very dear friend recently shared with me composer and conductor Eric Whitacre’s TED video, A Virtual Choir 2,000 Voices Strong. It is Whitacre’s beautiful and incredible story of creating a choir of voices from across the world – collecting the blended voices of 2,051 videos from 58 different countries, then magically combining them into the beautiful work Sleep, the Virtual Choir. I implore you gently to invest a precious 14 minutes and 34 seconds of your life to experience, learn and enjoy the magnificent beauty of what could be – in our business, personal life and community – when we sing with one voice.
Whitacre was struck by two learnings from his experience: “The first is that human beings will go to any lengths necessary to find and connect with each other…. And the second is that people seem to be experiencing an actual connection. It wasn’t a virtual choir. There are people now online that are friends; they’ve never met. I feel a closeness to this choir — almost like a family.” His words give pause for reflection to great leaders. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, wrote: “In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.” It is the great leaders’ challenge and joy of bringing people together with a common, shared purpose. Jim Collin’s captures this in his words “the right people on the bus.” When this occurs, there is magic and the world hears the true sound of music. Be it a trio, quartet, quintet or choir, each voice brings its beautiful richness and individuality and adds to the song’s magnificence and meaning. May your music fill the hearts, minds and souls of those whom you touch. May yours be a song without end.
Have a beautiful day and a magnificent week!!!
Mike
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