As the old joke goes, a man carrying a violin case in Manhattan gets stopped by a couple of tourists who ask him how to get to Carnegie Hall. The violinist responds, “Practice.”
So obvious, it’s funny–no one gets to Carnegie Hall without a ton of practice. It is usually the most ‘talented’ performers who practice most diligently. The talent onstage in Carnegie Hall is, as much as anything, a talent for practicing. A love of the hard work and focus that it takes to master one’s craft.
Rob McNamara writes in Integral Life about ‘The Necessity of Practice.’ Practice, notes McNamara, is preparation. What we are seeing and hearing onstage at Carnegie Hall is a performance informed by preparation. It is the preparation that elevates and defines the quality of the performance.
Everyone has a Carnegie Hall, a place or ideal they’re trying to get to. A vision for the future. And then, quite often, something happens. We get sidetracked. Distracted. Too busy to practice. We stop off at the Carnegie DELI and call it Carnegie HALL. Our ego tells us we have arrived. That’s when the unproductive patterns–sameness, repetition, redundancy, stagnation, smugness—set in. That’s the point where our performances become cyclical, begin to repeat themselves, and our audiences get bored, and begin wondering why they paid their money.
McNamara defines the act of practicing as ‘Engagement.’ The GameChangers Orchestral Model™ identifies six practices that generate productive outcomes in the world. Engagement is one of the six. The other five are:
Heeding (listening, paying attention, observing actively). In the Orchestral Model™, this practice precedes Engagement. As the social media doyenne, Sally Falkow, (@sallyfalkow) says, “You don’t go right up to people having a conversation at a party or social event and just start talking. First you have to hear what conversation is about, and then can you be part of it, and engage with people in a meaningful way.”
Learning. What is revealed to you as a result of your interactions with others, and with your environment? How does your network inform you? How do you turn learning into solutions? All this takes practice.
Creating. How does what you do make a difference? How does it make you unique? How do channel creativity toward innovation?
Performing. What are your criteria? What is your Carnegie Hall? Is it a seven or eight digit number? A place? A whale of a client? A standard you have set for yourself, or that others have set for you? How does your performance differentiate you?
Deciding. How consistent are you? What values do you represent? How clear and shareable are your decisions? What themes are important to you? Who and what influences your behaviors? If your deciding practices are weak, Big Trouble soon come.
Performing and Deciding are what we call the core practices. If you are not good at these–if you don’t have a clear vision of where you’re going, or if you are indecisive and wishy-washy along the way—the rest of the practices will not matter, because you’ll be too busy zig-zagging toward a mirage, rendering meaningless decisions in service of illusory goals.
So call the whole thing Engagement, yes, definitely! Practice it! Be engaged! Be present! Pay attention! Notice! That’s a good first step. Then refine your practices into the six different areas of the Orchestral Model™, like an athlete working on muscle groups or a musician working through different progressions.
And when call comes from Carnegie Hall, you’ll be ready.
