We commonly talk about ‘decisive’ leadership; about ‘authentic’ leadership. And use images from military command; and wild life – ‘leading the pack’ etc to describe leadership. We use the language of gender distinctions and roles, also – with some leaders being ‘silver back gorillas’; others being maternal in their pre-occupations and strength. Some are sage-like – some (even) in a zen-like sage-like way. C
onsider a form of leadership, which in itself falls ‘in between the cracks’, and
- is a felt experience of force-in movement-with a temporal contour, and
- a sense of aliveness, of going somewhere
- which does not belong to any particular content.
- which is more form than content, concerned with the ‘how’, the manner, and the style, not the ‘what’ or ‘why’.
Daniel Stern conjectures (Forms of Vitality pages 139/140) on,‘The role of vitality forms in intersubjectivity leads to a renewed interest in some of the basic notions on non-verbal therapies. ‘Improvisation music therapy’ provides an example. Tony Wigram (2004) describes what he calls the ‘basic therapeutic methods’ of improvisation music therapy. These include the following:
- Mirroring, imitating and copying. The therapist does exactly what the patient just did – its vitality form, rhythm, melody, etc – on the piano or drums or some other instrument
- Matching. This a partial and selective imitation. The dynamic features of what the patient did are maintained, but other features are altered. This is essentially a musically based affect attunement. It is one of the ‘most valuable improvisational methods that can be applied in therapy’ (p 83). Just as affect attunement (vitality form matching) has been shown to be so valuable in parent-infant therapies (Markova & Legerstee, 2006), so it is in all non-verbal therapies.
- Empathic improvisation. The therapist improvises a response that reflects (without imitation or attunement) the emotional state of the patient, his ‘way of being’ at that moment. It is a musical rendition of the patient’s state. This relies on some meta-modal matching of vitality forms.
- Grounding, holding and containing. The therapist creates a stable musical ‘anchor’ (eg. steady pulsed beats on a bass drum. This provides a dynamic framework that the improvisation can work within.
- Dialoguing. Turn taking is a major manner of dialoguing. Smooth turn taking involves sharing a convention about the time flow of the interaction. In adult conversation, dyadic speaker turn-taking pauses (when one ends and the other has not yet started to talk) must be mutually adjusted to the timing of the other. Otherwise there are constant interruptions or too long silences (Jaffe & Feldstein, 1970). This very fine tuning is not based on verbal content. Even infants during the first half of life learn to do it with their parents….In other words, it involves a form of intersubjectivity.
- Accompanying. The therapist provides an accompaniment that is different from what the patient is playing but lies ‘dynamically underneath the patient’s music’ (Wigram, 2004, p 106)
Consider what might be the value if a leadership system had the capacity to supply, when needed, qualities such as….
- Mirroring
- Imitating
- Copying
- Matching
- Empathic improvisation
- Grounding, holding, containing
- Dialoguing
- Accompanying
Slingshot