Davos Annual Meeting 2008 - Benjamin ZanderShow Video Details ↓ Benjamin Zander: Clause has given me the privileged of ending up this great week and he has asked us to go out into the world and make a difference to the world, to change the world and that's a matter of leadership, in the sense that every single interaction between two human beings is always a matter of leadership. Now it may not be wise to ask the conductor of an orchestra to talk about leadership because the conductor is the last bastion of totalitarianism left in the civilized world. We stand on a podium, we have 100 musicians in front of us, sometimes more. I just conducted a marvelous 8th symphony with 690 musicians. Children's choir, great choir, huge orchestra, everybody has to obey me. [laughter] Now, everything changed for me when I was 45 years old. I'd been conducting for 20 years and suddenly I had a realization almost like a road to Damascus event. I realized that the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD but the conductor doesn't make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. When I realized that, it changed everything. So much that people in the orchestra actually came up to me and said "Ben, what happened?" And that's what happened. I realized that my job was to awaken possibility in other people. You know I had an experience. I was in a German hotel years ago. I was having my breakfast and there was a little girl at the table near, in the hotel, and she left her table and she kind of wandered towards me. Like 5 year olds don't go directly from one place to another and eventually she came towards, she came up to be and said hello, hello she said like that. Everything was open, everything. Obviously nobody had said to this child don't speak to strange men. Probably by the time she got back to her table they would say that. But at that moment there was nothing between her and the possibility of a relationship. The question is how can we have that hello be the rallying cry for this new world we're going into? And we have many strategies about getting out of this voice but I want to tell you about one of them right now. I came home from class one day and I said to Ross, who is my partner and my coach. Ross, I said, what can we do? What can we do? These students are so anxious, they are so concerned, they are so worried about the auditions, about the grades they are getting and the competitions and they are so anxious they cannot take the risks with their lives that they need to take in order to be great artists. What can we do? She came up with this beautiful idea and this is what I do and I'll share it with you exactly how it works. I come into my class at the beginning of the year and I have 40 students or so in the room and I say to them, "Your grade is an A. That is your grade for the rest of the year. You are an A student on this one condition. You have to write me a letter in the first two weeks which is dated at the end of May when the class ends." So the date at the top is May of next year and the letter must begin like this, "Dear Mr. Zander I got my A because...". Then you have to write a letter as it was written in the following year and describes who you will have become at the end of the year. And when I come into the room, they write about who they would be and who they could be and who they see themselves as if only the voice would stop telling them they can't do it. And when I come into the class, the person I teach is the person that they have described in their letter. You see, I only take A students. [laughter] [applause] … Now it's interesting, there are a few people I see in the room looking a little confused saying "How can he do that?". Now the thing is you can give an A to everybody, you can give an A to anyone, to a waitress, a taxi driver, to your mother-in-law. You can give an A to anybody. [laughter] And what happens when you give an A is that the relationship is transformed. The relationship is transformed. Think about it. And Ross is a therapist and she says "when there is a break-down in a relationship, you're not giving somebody an A." Think about it... What grade are the Arabs giving the Israelis and what grade are the Israelis giving the Arabs and how are they doing? These two worlds are totally different worlds. Totally different. This is a world of a fixed realty. Here the reality is fixed. The resources are fixed. So naturally there is a lot of competition, domination, control, hierarchy, survival. Because there is only so much to go around, so we have to compete over it. Over here, there is an infinite amount. So over here it's an abundant conversation, a totally different conversation. Over here we have goals. Have you noticed how goals tend to be rather grim? We have a goal. We have to have a goal. Over here you can have a goal as part of the vision, and if you make the goal, great and if you don't, how fascinating. You know, I always say to my students... [laughter] This is a very important thing because you know players in an orchestra are always worried about making mistakes and they are very anxious and they play as if they don't want to make a mistake. I say to them if you make a mistake, you're like this how fascinating. Try it out on the golf course, it's very hard to do. So it comes down to three things. This whole thing is invented, it's all invented. Standing impossibility and rule number 6. It's very simple. Is it easy? No, it's not easy. It is not easy because this is like gravity, this has the power of gravity. Within a minute and a half of leaving Davos, you will be in an downward spiral conversation. And then the question is who enroll who? Will you enroll them or will they enroll you? That's the question. The leader, the new leader, is the one who can first of all can distinguish the downward spiral and then has the capacity to move people over here to radiated possibility. That is the new leader. Everybody can do it. Anybody can do it. An 8 year old child can do it. The question is can we do it reliably, ongoingly and predictably? And for that we have to practice. This is about a power that is available to every single human being at every moment of every day. It's called possibility. And I have a dream, I have a dream. That for a week after you get home, every single conversation and every interaction would be a possibility. I have another dream, a bigger dream, that for a whole month after you get home, every conversation and every interaction... No actually, I have a bigger dream, that you will lead the rest of your life in possibility. And I want to thank Clause from the bottom of my heart for allowing us to be together on the last day to discuss, not the economy, not fear, but the possibility to live as we're all human beings. That is a privilege. Thank you.. [applause] Now to celebrate... Thank you. [applause] We'll we have to see... I want you to know that this is the song they played in Tienanmen square during the revolution. This is the song they played when the wall fell down in Berlin. This is the song we sang with the policemen and the firemen and the survivors of the World Trade Center in Carnegie Hall. This is the song of the possibility that human beings are. And need I tell you that's who you are. That's who you are. You are the possibility that human beings are. So knowing that, could we sing it one more time, BTFI? [laughter] [music] … [music] [music] [music] … … … … … … [silence] [music] … [applause] … … … |