A dip into Brené Brown's Strong Ground

Are You Playing Your Instrument, Or Conducting?

A dip into Brené Brown's Strong Ground and what Daniel Pink's symphonic thinking means for NZ leaders

I've been reading and rereading Brené Brown's latest book, Strong Ground. This isn't a book you race through. It's a handbook. Something you return to when the week has been hard and you need deeper understanding, and more importantly, the language for what you're experiencing.

So, I'm going to take it one idea at a time and share it with you.

Daniel Pink's symphonic thinking was music to my ears. The clarity of his descriptions and the quality of his explanations are easily accessible and well worth a read.

The Bassoon Player and the Conductor

Pink's concept of symphonic thinking refers to the ability to see patterns across seemingly unrelated things. To synthesise, not just specialise. To connect dots that others haven't noticed are even in the same room.

Pink uses an orchestra as his image. The bassoon player is technically exceptional, years of practice, deep expertise, genuine mastery. The conductor does something entirely different. They hold the whole. They hear what's missing. They integrate everything happening across every section of the orchestra simultaneously.

Both roles are essential. Only one of them is leadership.

The Problem I See Every Week

Most SME leaders I work with got to where they are because they were outstanding bassoon players. Brilliant at something, sales, operations, their craft, their profession. That excellence is what built the business. And then, somewhere along the way, they became the conductor. Except nobody told them the job had changed. Or gave them ongoing, systematic training in the new skill set of leadership.

So, they keep playing their instrument. Brilliantly. Heads down in the operational. Deep in the detail they're genuinely good at. Meanwhile the orchestra, their team, is waiting for someone to look up, read the room, and hold the whole piece together.

This isn't a criticism. It's one of the most human things I observe in leadership. The pull back to what we're good at is strong, especially under pressure. But symphonic thinking asks something different of us. It asks us to notice patterns. To connect the conversation in the team meeting to the dynamic in the client relationship to the tension sitting in the culture. To see across, not just into.

The Personal Bit

I've been working on this in the raw since I learned to think, probably. I've always had a different way of seeing things, and 85% of the time never shared it, but rather sat in silence, observing and further honing my craft. I've also been shut down often by action-oriented, sequential thinkers as I've inadequately attempted to explain how I see the challenge and the solution. Do we still need sequential thinkers? Hell yes. We absolutely do. We need managers to keep the trains running on time, and to keep our symphonic thinkers in the game.

I sat with Pink's ideas for a few weeks, pondering and percolating. New insights kept popping to the front of my thinking as real life rolled on around me. My main focus: so, what next?

What Does This Actually Look Like?

What does the application of symphonic thinking look like in our everyday leadership behaviours?

• How do we notice our own dominant thinking strengths? Because clearly some of us will be better at this than others.

• How do we notice the thinking strengths of the people around us?

• How do we encourage people to show us their raw, unique thinking? The talents that come to them naturally, so we can partner people intentionally and make the best of everyone in the orchestra.

  
  

As Pink writes towards the end of his chapter: "What separates the long remembered from the quickly forgotten is the ability to marshal these relationships into a whole whose magnificence exceeds the sum of its parts. The conceptual age demands the ability to grasp the relationships between relationships."

Seeing the big picture means integrating and imagining how the pieces fit together.

This Week's Honest Question

Two questions dominate my thinking, and I'd love to know your honest answer to both.

How do we ensure leaders who naturally lack symphonic thinking don't stifle those around them who are attempting to develop theirs? And how do we ensure leaders notice strengths outside their own, and don't subconsciously quash the very skill set they've hired, by mentoring people through their own limited lens?

After all, an orchestra dominated by bassoon players would not be music to our ears.

This is part of my ongoing series of short dives into Strong Ground by Brené Brown, one idea at a time, with my own lens on what it means for leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand.