I was involved recently in a wonderful workshop fronted by Dominic Alldis of musicandmanagement.com

I always welcome workshops like this – people who come in to the business world from music, or theater, or improv, or sculpture, or meditation, or sport, or whatever – who ask those of us immersed in the theory and practice of organizations and leadership, to re-consider our tightly-held beliefs (one of which is that beliefs about leadership in business are more real than beliefs about leadership in the arts etc, but let’s let that pass).

Dominic’s workshop balanced demonstration – he’s a mean classical and jazz pianist (and as someone who can’t read a note of music I’m sure Dominic will be touched to hear me say that) – with lots of discussion and a good amount of practical application (we got to create a piece of music – most of it, to be fair, in the end, erm, ‘experimental’ in nature).

During one of the discussions, an interesting topic arose. Dominic had suggested that one of the dynamics that exists in a classical orchestra is that, when it’s all working as it should, the musicians are striving to please the maestro, the conductor.

I know people are listening to a speaker when the energy in a room shifts quickly, and it certainly did when Dominic said this. Hands went up. Someone had a question. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be concentrating on pleasing our boss?” they asked.

I knew what they meant. Its part of the development of our relationships with bosses in our culture. Back when I was a boy, the weekly adventures of Reggie Perrin in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin showed me that one the inevitabilities of corporate life, apparently, was that I wouldn’t get anywhere without pleasing the boss. Reggie had to do as he was told by the increasingly crazy CJ, undergoing all manner of humiliation (including sitting in the ever-farting leather chair that CJ made visitors to his office sit in) if in turn he was to get what he, Reggie, wanted (which was, largely, a sane life outside of work).

Over the last twenty years of organizational development, there has been an understandable backlash against the sort of creepy relationship that Perrin satirized. Gone are the behaviors of the toadying, obsequious Yes Men. In (maybe) are the behaviors of telling the truth to the boss, of using the boss as a coach and colleague etc etc.

So hearing Dominic brush off and re-present the old concept of ‘pleasing the leader’ made people stop in their tracks. What sort of throw-back is an orchestra, we thought, compared with our own modern, progressive ways?

But something that Dominic has said just before this interaction shifted my understanding of what he was talking about.

He’d said that the job of the conductor is to set and hold a vision for the piece of music being played. To understand the music deeply and to describe – through rehearsal and through the conducting – a vision for that music. So profound is that embodiment of the vision, said Dominic, that you believe, as one of the orchestra members, that the conductor has literally been on the phone to Mozart (or insert name of other dead composer), getting first hand from that composer their own instructions about how to perform it.

That’s some lineage. That’s some responsibility. That’s some commitment.

So pleasing the conductor is pleasing Mozart. No, beyond that. It is pleasing the genius of some of the best music in the world.

No, beyond that.

Is pleasing that part of me – the violinist, or the oboe player, or the trumpeteer (that’s not the word!) – who ever got the idea to pick up an instrument when I was a child and to work on through all those Saturday mornings of squeeking and squarking and a thousand missed notes because that part of me had been moved, profoundly, by music and I wanted to live my life like someone who cared to share something of value in the world.

So that’s why I’d want to please my boss. Because they stood for something I was deeply connected to. The joy of creating great marketing, or an efficient supply chain, or a powerfully win-win relationship with our customers. Or the power of purpose – making a difference. That’s what I’m pleasing, that’s what I’m nurturing, that’s what I’m serving. I’m not here to please the personality, the form, of the boss. He or she is as probably as crazy as CJ, or as I am. Nothing worth pleasing there. No, I’m looking for what the boss is connected to, is a stand for.

And if I’m a boss, I’d better be clear on that.