Unlocking Extraordinary Performance: Leadership Lessons From Virtuoso Musicians

Felipe Gomez steps onto the stage in Brussels, Belgium, and glances at the skeptical faces in the audience composed mainly of business professionals. The lights are dimmed and the giant screens behind him emit a mysterious purple hue. He starts speaking about what we can learn from the great classical musicians such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, then walks over to the grand piano on stage and sits down.

He is not just going to tell us. He is going to show us!

He starts interlacing his speech with a mesmerizing musical performance. By the time the talk is over, the audience’s thinking is challenged by his ideas about extraordinary performance and they are deeply moved by the power of music.

They come out slightly changed people.

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As a businessman and entrepreneur, Felipe never imagined that one day he would get to combine his two hobbies: music and public speaking, with his business experience and become a professional speaker, delivering over one thousand performances in twenty-five countries.

Felipe grew up in a very musical family in Bogota, Colombia, where his lullabies were jazz standards and bossa-nova classics played on his father’s piano. He would later spend 10 years taking piano lessons and exploring his interest in music as a hobby. During his student years at the British School, he also discovered his interest in public speaking through “The Speaker’s Corner,” a weekly activity (honoring the famous landmark in Hyde Park in London) where each student had to present something to the class.

The idea of becoming a speaker formed gradually in Felipe’s mind. Over the years he had been recognizing that his experiences living, studying and working across different industries in Egypt, Costa Rica, England, and Switzerland could provide valuable lessons to other executives and business professionals.

His first keynote, Attitude-E, was a more traditional story based on his life as an entrepreneur, highlighting the 6 attributes of a true entrepreneurial mindset. Clients consistently were asking him about his “next thing” because they wanted him to come back and speak to their teams.

Felipe decided to go on an adventure: he’d incorporate music into his work for the first time. That’s how he created a new keynote with a grand piano on stage, discussing extraordinary performance and what we could learn from virtuoso musicians to excel in our professional lives.

In his talk, Virtuoso, Felipe invites us to reflect on what triggers an audience to do a standing ovation at the end of a great performance and what we can learn from the great virtuoso musicians that consistently get those.

Felipe identifies 3 key elements about virtuoso musicians that invoke recognition, admiration and gratitude in audiences:

1. Method and Rigor: they have to perform their instruments with mastery, and this is achieved by following a method with rigor. This requires a lot of intentional and consistent effort. Growing in virtues such as magnanimity, discipline and perseverance are key to reaching true levels of extraordinary performance.
2. Attitude: they need to create strong and meaningful connections with their audiences and they achieve this through the attitudes they assume while on-stage. Strengthening the virtues of empathy, service and humility will contribute to this goal.
3. Passion: Technical expertise is not enough. To truly engage and move their audiences musician must play with passion and love because it is only through passion and love that the ordinary ceases and the extraordinary starts to happen.

The BIG IDEA for Leaders

According to Felipe, by balancing mind (method), body (attitude) and soul (passion), leaders can truly unlock their full potential and drive extraordinary performances.

Almost every company around the world is trying to become more agile and effective and expects its leaders and teams to contribute. Through method, leaders can instill the rhythm and routines to significantly raise the levels of operational excellence. They can achieve this with subtle adjustments in mindsets and behaviors, developing and strengthening the virtues (habits of good action) of magnanimity (thinking big and embracing an exponential mindset), and discipline and perseverance (a relentless focus on execution excellence).

There are no shortcuts. Just like musicians need to sit down every day to practice scales, arpeggios, and other exercises to reach mastery, leaders need to set an example of executing with mastery consistently.

In the era of artificial intelligence entering workplaces at a fast rate, our need to nurture our most intrinsic motivation - creating human connection - becomes even greater. The race is not to compete with AI (it will beat us!), the true challenge is to allow humanism, love, empathy, and passion to flourish individually and collectively in families, teams, and organizations.

These values serve as aspirational behavioral guidelines for employees but they need to be complemented by the leader’s attitudes and actions. Something as micro as making a habit of establishing eye contact and smiling at a colleague can close the gap between aspiration and reality. By working on developing the virtues of empathy, service, and humility we will set the ground for a true culture of serving.

Finally, any member of the audience can tell when a musician is performing with passion and love for music and the same principle extends to leaders and their followers. On stage, Felipe normally illustrates this point by playing Ennio Morricone’s music for Cinema Paradiso in two different ways. In one instance he performs as if he were a robot, a lifeless machine, and in another, he does so in a poignant way that stirs the audience's emotions.

Felipe’s experience is that love and passion are the fuel that leaders have for igniting extraordinary ideas and driving innovation. Only the people who are passionate about what they do are the ones that are constantly asking themselves: “How can we do this better?” “How can we create a better experience for the customer?”

Leaders can spread this love and passion to their followers by setting a personal example and developing the virtue of courage to ask those difficult questions that will allow their teams to experiment and ultimately find the best solutions.

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When Felipe isn’t globetrotting and speaking to diverse audiences, he likes to spend time with his family in Atlanta, enjoying the wonders of the surrounding nature. He is also working on transforming his talk, Virtuoso, into a book and developing a new keynote about the beauty of listening. It is a serenade to the life-enriching art of attentiveness as a wellspring of self-understanding, empathy for others, reverence for the loveliness of life, and leading with presence and intentionality. You can learn more about Felipe and his work here.