The OffBeat #48: Taking a Leadership Cue From "Over-Listening" in Jazz

Channeling your inner Miles Davis

In Frank J. Barrett’s Yes to the Mess, he talks about the role of “over-listening” in jazz. The iconic trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, for example, changed jazz music forever by seeing opportunity in the unknown—hearing beyond the obvious.

To describe just one anecdote, during the 1959 recording of his seminal record Kind of Blue, Davis presented his quintet with mere sketches of songs—incomplete and unconventionally written—and instructed them to simply play on the scales. This might not have been unusual at a rehearsal or even a casual gig. But this was a recording session. The record consists entirely of first takes, despite the fact that the musicians were collectively improvising the entire time, as the music for every track was unfamiliar in some way, be it unusual scales, unpredictable patterns, or a strange number of bars. Davis’s transformational vision delivered a landmark event in jazz history and the best-selling jazz recording of all time.

Barrett writes,

“Provocative leaders are not good listeners in the traditional sense. They don’t hear just what’s being said. They hear more than what’s being said; they “over-listen,” hear the overtones of what might emerge, and read more than what is on the page.”

Davis heard not just what was fresh in jazz at that time and what his musicians were capable of, but what would be cutting-edge tomorrow and what his quintet didn’t even know they’d be able to play.

Over-listening comes to life in a few ways in the workplace:

• Peering around corners for the new and next: The most visionary leaders are excellent at anticipating. They ingest lots of “junk” and constantly make mental connections to intuit the trends and truths that will impact their strategy. In this way the idea of over-listening, or stretching a sense beyond its surface capacity, applies not just to hearing but to vision.

• Tuning into colleagues’ individual time signature: Traditional jazz tunes are in 4/4 time, the typical 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 rhythm that’s easiest to dance to. But often jazz is in 3/4, or 5/4, or 9/8, or another unique time signature. The job of the drummer is to keep the beat steadfast, even when the time signature is gnarly. At work, listening for people’s time signature means taking heed of how their metronome ticks. What motivates them, what makes them feel heard and respected, what’s their sense of humor? What soft and hard skills are they working on? What are their aspirations and how can you help them get there, within the confines of the organization or beyond? This all requires the ability to over-listen, or lend an ear to the undertones and overtones you can only pick up by instinct.

• Managing up, down, and sideways: To operate effectively as a senior leader in the workplace, you need to build and leverage relationships not just among the team you manage but with your own manager, your peers, and other senior stakeholders across the organization. (This is why I believe in year-round leadership training for ALL employees, not just people managers.) You can’t do any of that without acute over-listening skills. You need to detect what other people’s motivations and goals are, foresee how they’ll react as good things and bad things play out in the organization, and build a bedrock of human connection with them, stratum by stratum.

I love this Anaïs Nin quote: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” You can only imagine or deduce things based on what you’ve encountered or pondered. The key with over-listening is to be cognizant of when and how you’re applying a personal bias “sound effect” to what you’re hearing. As you channel your inner Miles Davis to look around corners, tune into your teammates, and manage up/down/across, also lend an ear to how your own background, experience, and perspective is affecting what you hear.

Have a great week,

Allison