This Christmas we enjoyed watching The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Rockettes signature eye high kicks, and precision choreography was memorable and intriguing. Talking to the Rockettes later - I learnt that they spend 11 months training for the show and do that every year. It takes years to get the perfection. It takes ideas from everyone to make the show original every year. The passion and determination of every rockette along with the personal commitment to keep up the 75 year old tradition of leading the New York musicals every christmas was infectious. New York Musicals have a special charm - I love them. www.radiocity.com
Radio City has a legacy. A legacy created as a result of leadership. This dovetails with what Piers Ibbotson writes in The Illusion of Leadership. “The best directors did not know in detail what was going to happen in the play until they saw me do it. They didn’t tell me what I should do because they didn’t know. This ability to carry on being in charge and maintaining the trust of a company, when you and I do not and cannot know in detail how things will turn out, seems to me to be at the heart of creative leadership in business and the arts.”
Because, Ibbotson believes, that people outside the arts generally misunderstand the creative process and the behaviors necessary to encourage creative teamwork, they don’t put a culture in place that promotes group creativity. It doesn’t come from competitive individualism and it needs boundaries and constraints. “The creative juices get going when you are up against a boundary, at the edge of what is acceptable, possible, or known.”
Ibbotson presents the leader as director. He explains how they release creativity and optimize innovation, how they give space to the creative drives of performers but still maintain an outcome that is true to the original vision and delivered on time and within budget. If the right culture is in place, innovation is not an issue.
Leadership is the art of telling less, listening more and encouraging more. Leadership is the pursuit of perfection not satisfaction.
