Do you hold back around certain people at work? (What busking taught me about leadership)

I used to be a weekend busker. I would hit the street, usually with my sister, and we would make enough money to tame our student overdrafts.

No - this is not a reminiscent piece about my long-lost creative dream of becoming a film composer. I’ll save that for another time.

There is similarity between my experience of busking, and how it can feel inside many meeting rooms in the corporate world. If you want to speak up more at work, but find yourself inexplicably holding back, this musical metaphor may help.

A client I worked with earlier this year was struggling to voice his opinion at work. He had so much to offer: so many ideas and opinions, so much desire to make a difference. But he was clamming up around certain people, and in particular his peers, in their monthly meeting with their boss.

It felt hard for him to speak up: Some of his team-mates were blatantly clearing down their email whilst on the video call. Some seemed only to be interested in voicing their opinion. One of them had a habit of pulling apart any idea that anyone shared for the sake of it. On top of that my client believed that he was the only introvert in a room of extroverts.

Maybe you have sat in rooms, virtual or otherwise, that feel a bit like this. I know I have.

For my client, how it felt was causing him to hesitate, overthink and not say the thing he really wanted to say. He kept missing his chance to contribute.

Now back to the busking…

Some days my sister and I would make around £200 in a few hours. Not bad for a couple of students. Other days we’d make less.

But as well as people who appreciated our music, there were plenty who ignored us.  Some even rolled their eyes and told us to get a job. And worse still, we’d get groups of kids who’d hurl abuse and laugh. Sadly, playing the violin and cello didn’t carry much street cred. And we cared about being cool back then. We really did (My daughter tells me now that ‘cool’ is not a word that’s used anymore, but that’s how I describe it and you are likely closer to my age than hers).

So how did we muster the courage to hit the street and play our tunes?

Some days it wasn’t easy, but we did our best not to put our attention on those people. If we had counted every person who ignored us, we would have never got our instruments out of their cases.

We focused on playing our music and entertaining the shoppers. We loved chatting to the people who stopped to say hello.

We tried to stay unattached to the outcome, and instead focused on what was important to us and what we enjoyed: Making music and making people smile.

We were offering our gifts to the world and expecting nothing in return.

This stance to leadership can be a powerful one to choose. Particularly when the ‘pleaser’ in us gets rowdy. That part of us that is convinced people may be uninterested in what we have to say. Or our ‘inner judge’ - that part of us that is worried that our contribution may not be good enough.

As we take action or speak up, when we put aside the visible response we would ideally like (e.g. social media ‘likes’ or people immediately and enthusiastically agreeing with us) we free ourselves to create the change we want to see.

I offered this busking metaphor to my client and it resonated. He realised it was unlikely he would have the teams’ undivided attention before he spoke up, and that if someone challenged him it might lead to some interesting debate. This freed him up to start speaking up more, and as he did so he started to make a more powerful and valuable contribution to his team and organisation.

I believe we are each here to play our unique music.

Yours, like mine, may be a bit out of tune. And it won't be for everyone. But it's yours and it is needed.

So keep on playing :)

I always love receiving your responses to my blogs. Email me at claire@clairemackinnon.com with your reflections, comments and questions, or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

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