What Jazz and Crisis Situations Can Teach Us About School Leadership
I love jazz music and it has marked significant milestones in my life. I remember Miles Davis and Chet Baker keeping me calm during school exams when I hadn't done enough work. Gregory Porter provided the mood music as I bobbed up and down by the sitting room window. Passersby looked at me with pity as I tried to soothe my first child who was crying so loud it could penetrate brick. Derrick Hodge's 'New Day' has helped me through a number of professionally challenging situations.
So, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised and a bit sceptical when the excellent Boss Class podcast from Andrew Palmer of The Economist opened its most recent episode linking jazz improvisation, crises and corporate meltdowns in terms of lessons about managing through uncertainty. I thought it was mildly interesting until he told the story about Ella Fitzgerald's 1960 performance of 'Mack the Knife' in Berlin. The song starts as you would expect but part way through, Fitzgerald forgets the lyrics and sings:
‘What’s the next chorus, to this song now’
For a singer, forgetting the lyrics of a song is a disaster, made even worse by the fact that the performance was being recorded. This could have been a monumental failure but it became a success. She even won a Grammy for it.
Chris Washburne, who was interviewed for the podcast says,
"She's scat GPT. In this particular setting was, there was a structure, there was a song that had a melody, it had a rhythm and it had harmony. And as soon as there's structure, it's actually easier to improvise."
I had listened to Fitzgerald sing that version before, but I had never thought of that performance as a crisis. I thought it was Fitzgerald playing with the audience. But a crisis it was, and what made the difference was preparation, trust and values.
For me, the Fitzgerald example and the podcast with a separate interview with Baroness Minouche Shafik, offered a few important lessons in terms of leadership:
Purpose binds people together. One way to do this is through purpose or values. Many schools have values printed, laminated or on websites. But in times of difficulty, you really do get to see them as lived. Are these values part of teaching, hiring, pastoral care, marketing? Are they reflected when things (inevitably) go wrong?
Blame kills trust. In cultures where people are 'thrown under the bus', it destroys collaboration and stifles initiative. Schools that can weather crises are the ones that have built psychological safety which should be secure if the purpose is clear.
Baroness Minouche Shafik, who has held senior roles in government, universities and the World Bank, suggests that there are two very different macro cultures that exist in the places she worked. “Doing good” organisations are full of mission-driven optimists, whilst “preventing harm” organisations require risk-focused planners. Schools have these two aspects before they even think about the unique workplace culture, and there needs to be a way to manage these competing cultures in tension.
Planning is indispensable, but improvisation is inevitable. I am a huge believer in scenario planning as an exercise that should be part of tabletop planning exercises too. Moreover, these should not just be confined to senior leaders. Heads of Department and pastoral leaders need to be included in routine training and cultivating improvisational mindsets.
In jazz, when something goes wrong, the best musicians adapt, respond, and find beauty in the unexpected. The same holds true in schools. Leadership is not just about eliminating crisis, but also learning to improvise with integrity, rehearsed practice, and clear values to find the beauty and brilliance in the moment.
A tough ask, but something worth aspiring to in the unpredictable rhythm of school life.