Shilpa Johnson tunes in to a session where music becomes a tool to sharpen your business skills.
A lot of leaders think from the head. Very few use both their head and their hearts to lead. That’s what I’m here to teach,” says Wolfgang Heinzel, chief conductor, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck. One of Europe’s most celebrated orchestras, Philharmonie Merck visited Mumbai to treat the city’s western classical music lovers and to commemorate 60 years of diplomatic relations between India and Germany.
Founded in 1966, the orchestra was meant to perform only for the employees of Merck, a global pharmaceutical and chemical company. “The orchestra had started out with amateur musicians. Today, a professional orchestra, Philharmonie consists of up to 80 professional musicians who are brought together for certain projects,” says Heinzel who took over as its chief conductor in 2003. This is the Orchestra’s third visit to India in 10 years and as part of a seven-city tour, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck is scheduled to spend the next set of days performing in Pune, New Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.
But this wasn’t all that the ensemble had up its sleeve. The Philharmonie Merck held a session for students of the city’s B-schools in order to demonstrate “Leadership and the Art of Music.” Held at Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, the session intended to teach students similarities between leadership and the orchestra. “The very thought of relating music and leadership qualities appealed to me. The moment I heard about this session, I knew I was going to attend it,” says Jharna Jagtiani, a student, of K C College of Management Studies.
The students occupied the seats expecting to watch the orchestra and to allow it to sweep them off their feet. However, that wasn’t quite Heinzel’s idea of teaching. “I am going to ask the students to join the musicians on stage and be seated between them in order to learn how an orchestra works in sync to create a mellifluous piece of music. They are going to watch me train the musicians. They will not participate but I know they will learn,” says the Conductor. With no pen to take notes with and no paper to write on, the students were introduced to a method that not only kept them glued to their seats but also taught them crucial management lessons.
The non-interactive session allowed for the group of students to merely watch, observe and learn as the ensemble performed works by Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms. Each time one of the musicians played off-tune or forgot his/her part, the students would watch Heinzel patiently get his point across and get them to perform in sync. “As a student, I was instructed on how to behave and what to learn. But that is not the method that I wish to adopt. I want students to realise that in order to become successful leaders, they must win the trust of their group. It works the same way in an orchestra,” says Heinzel.
Heinzel successfully demonstrated to the students how his job as a leader was not to teach the musicians about their instruments. “Each musician knows more about his instrument than I do,” he says. “My job is to combine all that energy and create a flawless piece of music. That’s what is expected of a leader.”
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“After I got onto the stage, sat between the cellists and noticed that all the conversation took place in German, frankly, I was disappointed. But I soon started understanding what had been going on around me and I am still overwhelmed by the whole experience,” says Ritu Mishra, student, AICAR Business School.
By the end of the session the bunch of nervous students had been transformed into an assertive, self-assured group, hopefully better equipped to lead in the future.
