Business Shapers: Itay Talgram
Itay Talgram
Conductor and Author
Business Shapers from Mishcon de Reya
In association with Jazz FM’s Jazz Shapers
Well, I see myself as bringing a kind of distant mirror from my own perspective as an orchestra conductor and placing it in front of business people, or educators, or politicians or even army men who really want or need to look at themselves in a new way as leaders. What I do is just help them observe something which they, well, are happy say find very interesting. So instead of coming in and telling me look, this is my experience and since I am so, such a successful person you should learn from me. Which of course you know wouldn’t work at all. I have my own physical language and instead of saying you know come on this is irrelevant, we simply look at the gap between our two ways of seeing this reality and then we learn something together and this is actually the only way to learn something together. But really the only way to get full cooperation of people is to give them ownership, to work together towards their own emancipation and of course it has to happen in a way that not only every individual ego will be there, but they all in some way harmonise together. My greatest teacher Leonard Bernstein actually said that if for 2% of the time when he, he the great Burnside, is on the podium and he feels like everybody is in it with him, the audience and the orchestra, then he feels very lucky. 2% of the time.
I thoroughly believe in business, just like in music, if you have those golden moments and of course if you think it will happen all the time you are just going to be frustrated you know and lose your self-confidence which is not good, that’s why what I found what Lenny said you know that this 2% is very helpful because otherwise I would feel like a complete idiot every time I stood there and it didn’t happen. I feel like very much to be able to move my hand and get a wonderful ‘roooaaarrrr’ from an orchestra. It really is a beautiful moment, but I learnt how to translate other moments that may seem very mundane into the same kind of spiritual beauty.
Business Shapers from Mishcon de Reya
In association with Jazz FM’s Jazz Shapers