Conducting myself as a manager..

There are some conductors that have found a way to carve out happy niches for themselves and to happily work within the contexts of their organisations or own businesses - but happily employed or self employed conductors seem to be a minority.  Most often, when you talk to conductors working all around the world, there is an undercurrent of frustration; frustration about not having choice in or control over the programs they conduct and frustration about restrictions and rules and policies for their organisation or governing and funding bodies that get in the way of what they see as best conductive practice.  For years I have been advocating for conductors to step up and take lead roles in organisations providing Conductive Education, and for organisations to look to conductors to build, shape, and manage programs.

I can certainly confess that I was a frustrated grumbler in previous places that I worked - and though I am not sorry that I fought for what I thought was right for my participants and for CE, I am sorry that I was not mature enough, or clever enough to to find ways to thrive within organisations that were trying to support me and CE. When I look proudly back at what has been achieved by my baby, the program at Dimes Canada, I realise how impatient I was, wanting everything to be perfect and perfectly my way right away, and that I was not able to see how hard the organisation was working to bring about change or to appreciate how much behind me - and CE - they were and still are.   I now realise that I got too frustrated with the teething pains of a new program and too caught up in what I saw as the good fight to engage well with management or to step up and take the reigns even with ample opportunity.

Now, years later in another time and another place, after years of successful private practice, I find myself sitting in a very different position as a managing conductor in an organisation brimming with potential but working through transition. A exciting position within an organisation that has chosen to give a conductor the opportunity to build and shape programs; a tenuous position working with frustrated conductors dissatisfied with previous management; an unfamiliar position within an organisation and a program that I haven't personally built from scratch.      

I am emotionally unattached to the history and politics of the organisation but respectful and empathetic to the frustrations of the conductors I am working with and their relationship with what has been, and their resulting demotivation. I do not feel threatened or needing to fight with senior management or board members; I accept they do not necessarily think like conductors but appreciate that they are supportive of seeing our program continue to succeed and grow, and accept that part of my job is to liaise between them and the conductive team. It is an oddly mellow headspace to be honest, an odd combination of bustling passion and excitement and calm clear-headedness that I haven't experienced in any other CE job that I've had.

I have had the opportunity to reflect on how I conduct myself as a managing conductor.  As I've said time and time again, and as Andrew told me years ago, being a conductor is not about 'what you do' but about 'how you do everything that you do'.  In this job there are times when I'm working as a conductor, and times when I am working as a manager, but I know that when I am wearing my manager hat I still think and feel like a conductor.

I have a general manager that I love working with who I have been blessed to have as a mentor - DB is a compassionate and dedicated manager with vast experience in management, governance, and leadership in non profit, disability, and education organisations.   He has given me structure and space to grow and learn, and challenges me to find a way to take this role on my way, conductively, and is patient as I try to find my equilibrium as a conductive manager.  I dare say that he is in fact a 'conductive' manager.

I have stopped trying to see conducting and managing as different - in the classroom I conduct my participants, and I the office I conduct myself and my team -- and I assure you conducting conductors is by far the harder of the two.

As in the classroom, I find myself digging my heels in about believing in my team, about expecting the best from my team even when they are under-performing, about believing it is always worth trying to find a way forward even when my team do not see it.  I still strongly feel responsible for being part of the solution, and believe that it is possible to find a solution even if I'm not the one to find it.  When things haven't gone well I wonder what I haven't done well, what as a manager I should have done better; when things are going well I feel really proud of my team and enjoy their success and the levity it creates in our office.

Even after challenging days or minutes with my team I find myself falling back on an attitude of rugged positivity and tenacious determinism - the very same attitude I have always had with my participants.  Even after a challenging day I still come back in the next day ready to try again, and hoping that this might be the day when we find the break through that moves us forward.

I want to be able to find ways to motivate and inspire my team, to give them opportunities to grow and thrive, to figure out how to bring out the best in them, and to learn how to respect them for where they are at.  I feel badly when I am not able to create that conductive environment for them, or when they choose not to run with opportunities I think that I have opened.  I try to understand my disappointment in myself as a manager who isn't always able to provide an ideal environment or to lift my team in the context of my expectation that as conductors they should be able to create this environment for each other, for our program assistants, and for themselves.  I try to balance this by being transparent in my efforts to bring a conductive approach to my management style, hoping that they too will be conductive with themselves and each other outside of the classroom, and wondering if that is an unreasonable thing to hope for.

It has taken me a while to have the confidence to start to voice this.  I know that there are going to be days and moments that are better than others and I'm a lot more okay about that than I was a few months ago when I started this job, with bright eyes, bushy tail, and rose tinted glasses.  Reflecting conductively helps me remember that as long as I am doing my best in any moment, it is the best that I can do, and thus helps me reflect more kindly on my own successes and challenges. I am so proud to be a part of a profession that has taught me to do everything that I do conductively, and so excited to bring my conductive approach and mindset with me as I step up and into my new role here.

Reflections on life and death and love and happiness

Every once in a while you meet someone and for whatever random reason you seem to already know each other - your souls seem to recognize each other - and you are able to connect and form an instant, deep friendship that exists in a realm beyond the superficiality of most casual acquaintances.   I felt this when I met MC a few months ago during my ocean swim training- I think that he probably has that effect on many people. He went out of his way to take care of everyone when we were swimming in the ocean and we all knew that he was caring for his beloved partner in her final months of a long and awful battle with colon cancer.   Though I've only known MC for a few months, I had an overwhelming urge to be at his beloved's funeral earlier this week.

Many in my swim squad had the same instinct - and we were all so glad we could be there for MC.  We had no way of knowing how his beloved's ex-husband and his family would dominate the funeral, no way of knowing that our urge to be there to support MC would add so much balance for him, it was just an instinct that being there for him was important.

Funerals by nature inspire deep reflection and I found myself thinking about Frank Bailly.  My grandmother was very proud to say that she had only ever said 'I love you' to two men - my grandfather, and Frank Bailly.   My grandparents had a fantastic, happy marriage.  My grandmother was absolutely beautiful, incredibly intelligent and articulate, and fascinated by people and the stories they would tell you if you dared to ask; she was an editor of a magazine and was well known.   My grandfather was the most wonderful of men, with this child like love of life that was beyond contagious, and to this day I feel his spirit in the fun moments of life.  My grandfather hailed from a family of legendary longevity, so everyone was shocked when he died young and suddenly of pancreatic cancer. No one was more shocked than my beautiful grandmother who spiraled into an angry and very dark depression...until Frank entered - or shall I say re-entered the scene. 

Frank and my grandmother had wanted to date in highschool but were not allowed to court due to a difference in religious backgrounds, and he went on to have an wonderful happy marriage and was a well known big band tenor saxophonist.  His wife died around the same time my grandfather did, and as widows my grandmother and Frank enjoyed a few years of a loving courtship.  They hit the town, dinners and concerts and theatre and music halls.  When my grandmother started to get sick Frank stayed by her, and even at the end he lit up the nursing home with regular visits and kept her company during her more lucid moments.

I was thinking about Frank at the funeral earlier this week, hoping that at my grandmother's funeral he had people around him supporting him, and that my family was suitably grateful, respectful, and honouring of the love and happiness he had given my grandmother in her last years of life.

My friend MC was trying to reach an enormous fundraising target of $10 000 through sponsored long distance runs and open water swims before his beloved passed, as a living tribute to her and a way to honour her.  He and his beloved were not cynical about cancer research -- they believed that she had an extra four years of life because of medical treatments and that these four years gave her precious time with her daughters and a chance to meet her granddaughter who was born on her birthday a few months ago.  

This drive, this determination he showed under circumstances where he might have wallowed in helplessness reminded me of DB, a client and good friend of mine with cerebral palsy.  I was remembering DB from a few years ago when he was trying to cope with his mom's pending death, also of cancer.  

I had know DB for several years at this point, and in all of the years I worked with him previously he had been happy to do things to help him maintain his ability to get into and out of his wheelchair but was happy not to be pursuing any sort of free standing or balancing due to hip and back pain.  Suddenly one day, standing up from his wheelchair unassisted and being able to stand and balance independently became a very important priority to DB and we started working feverishly and determinedly towards this, eventually achieving it.  I asked him why after all of these years this was suddenly so important to him, what had changed?  

His answer was mind blowing and humbling.  DB remembered how happy it made his mom when he learned to stand after years of hard work with an incredibly uncooperative body.  He knew she was dying, and was respectful of her choice to have no further treatment after a long and difficult battle.  He felt that if he could stand at church he could make her happy.  It was his way to offer a living tribute, to honour her, to do something positive for her in her final days.  

I have told this story previously in public presentation under the context of understanding the  motivation behind a goal, the why behind the what, looking at the bigger life needs and individual reasons that something might be important to somebody.  And I recognized DB's why in the fundraising my friend MC was doing -- the need to do something positive, to honour, to pay tribute when helplessness was not a satisfactory response.

I was thinking about DB and about MC was inspired and moved by their ability to turn sad situations into something positive, to lift people when they needed it most, and to serve the people they love instead of being trapped in their own grief and helplessness.  I hope that if there is ever a need for me to be that person, I can find the strength to get past my own issues and find focus on doing something that will honour and lift, or bring happiness to someone who needs it.

MC is still fundraising for Cure Cancer Australia - to donate and help him continue to honour his beloved, please follow this link:

Help MC raise money for Cure Cancer Australia

MC - this your beloved's favourite song was so beautifully performed at your beloved's funeral; I hope you don't mind me sharing it here.  My thoughts are with you friend.

Chasing Cars