Marcom HRsay

Have you ever hit a drumhead covered with water?

Yeah, I know. Neither have I.

But imagine it for a minute — we attempt try to drive our own tempo in business and life, even those around us, and no matter how good we get, it still gets messy.

That’s why when I work in and on a business, I visualize being the drummer, because it’s the drummer who has to be aware of every other instrument’s and vocalist’s movement in a room –

Each fluid hand and foot, each elevated arm and leg, every synaptical inhale and exhale, must all play in symphony with each other as well as others’ –

The emotional self-awareness and regulatory independence that drives the interdependence of everyone else around them –

Sorry, I’m splashing all over the kit right now, but I hope you get my point.

The irony is that drummers always get dumbed down as being, well, dumber. Don’t make me trump you with the Neil Peart card (he is known as “The Professor” you know).

Note this:

“A study recently published in Psychological Science has found evidence that people from higher-class backgrounds have lower emotional intelligence (EQ) than people from lower-class backgrounds…

…A body of research indicates a strong relationship between business performance and emotional intelligence. EQ impacts a variety of business measures, including recruiting and job selection, sales results and leadership performance. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions to improve work and personal life.”

The point here is that the band (biz) leader isn’t always the emotional self-awareness and regulatory independence that drives the interdependence of everyone else around them.

It could be your second in command, or your CFO (hey, it’s possible), or your VP of marketing, or your HR director, or your customer service supervisor, or your latest hourly store employee.

Another way to look at it is that the best (drummers) in the biz are also adaptable and resilient, which more and more “emotionally intelligent” firms are screening for. Consider this article on same said subject from the March 2011 Talent Management:

“Put simply, adaptability is the ability to recognize current or anticipated future change and adjust one’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to effectively handle it. Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from setbacks and remain optimistic in the face of adversity, stress and pressure.”

Not everyone is in touch with these abilities, but emotional intelligence and interpersonal effectiveness skills can certainly be learned and developed with practice.

Early in our lives and careers, each of us is a startup, a garage band of sorts, raw with fiery emotion and limited if any impulse control. No amount of education or intellect can quell this Keith Moon self-destructive behavior (although he was one amazing drummer).

I’m not suggesting that some of us with frenetic ideas and progressive time signatures with potential skip out on higher ed for entrepreneurism, like this San Jose Mercury News article suggests.

Says Steve Blank in the article (who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford, UC Berkeley and a joint Columbia University/Berkeley MBA program, and who started several companies without a college degree):

“A startup is not an IQ test. A startup is a combination of emotional intelligence, resiliency, agility; not whether you got A-pluses at Stanford.”

That’s what brings a business all together. Here’s to a lot more cowbell and wet snares.

 MarcomHRsay.com is an HR and Recruiting B2B blog for the real world and companies small, midsize and the entire enterprise, focusing on what helps people thrive and businesses grow.