I recently attended a Jazz concert to listen, Bobby McFerrin, David Worm, Joey Blake and the Gospel Choral Jireh. The concert was an incredible experience of sound, harmony and, melody. The interaction between the musicians was amazing and impressive in every song. The highlight of the concert for me was a moment when the audience was invited to sing different and simultaneous short melodies in tune with the professional musicians on stage.
It is interesting to note that the effect of the audience playing as a choir was possible just because of the engagement of a large group of people, not necessarily professional musicians. As an audience, we felt confident that we could be part of the concert by repeating our few melodious notes under professional guidance.
The experience made me think about the power of engagement for the success of work or community projects. As in the concert, we need to include everyone, highly specialized professionals such as the professional musicians who were on stage and also patients, customers and different players of the healthcare system, as the audience in the concert.
The highlight of a project happens when everybody is engaged. Each one brings a contribution, specialized or not, adding resources to make the result more vibrant, relevant and meaningful.
In the jazz concert, if the audience would not be engaged because lack of confidence or motivation, the result would not be so impressive and my experience much less significant. The conductor knew that we, the audience, could sing. He repeated the melodies with each group of the people in the audience until he realized that we were ready to perform independently. At last, we were for a moment a great choir.
I think that in work environments independent of the positions of manager, associate, customer or patient, our success as a group depends on the engagement of each one of us.
As managers, it is important to pay attention to the different learning needs of each team. Some people will need more time and guidance than others to be independent in their tasks.
As associates, we should always remember that the experience of the others depends on our performance as well. If we are not engaged in our own tasks, the experience for the whole group will be less meaningful.
Dear reader, what life lessons have you learned in your free time? Share with us, your engagement will improve the experience for everybody.