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00:00:00,000 [Music] I am welcome to the Sunday Lunch Project podcast for Sunday
2 May 2021. This is your host Nigel Creece and today we’ve got Gerald and Jay Leonard,
00:00:25,760 the Jazz Workplace Guy. Speak to you soon. Hi, just a quick one from
me, on sponsorship. We don’t carry a sponsor on the show. If anyone is
out there who is looking to pull out their business, obviously we have a niche
00:00:58,720 of project managers on here and if you are targeting towards that niche then please get hold of me and ping me an email at SundayLunchPM@NigelCreece.com. In fact if you wrote anything to
NigelCreece.com it comes to me, email radiate, that would be there. A lot of different options on how we can
00:01:22,560 accommodate you, just get in touch and I can chat through those with you. It would be great to have a sponsor for the show and on with a new one. [Music]
00:01:44,480 So this week I have, what have I been doing in the last couple of
weeks, I’ve been working on my health function on health lately. For the
last week I’m a minister accidentally bike cycle ride, two 21 mile rides in what was glorious weather and a few runs and we’re
00:02:07,680 working on dropping a few pains, a little bit of doctors orders and a few
things going on there which I want going to detail and bore you with the
details but try to address some of those issues. I’ve just did another
interview for a few weeks with Liz Hops talking about all things disc
00:02:29,280 mentioned disc on the show before now, it’s a behavioural model which
I think is fabulous and that’ll be coming up in a few weeks so looking
forward to sharing that one with you. I’m actually recording today, a few days ahead of release date on the afternoon of my birthday.
00:02:50,880 So I’ve had a chilled out day today opening a few presents, go for a bit of a wonder I don’t seem to be wondering in the cold and tidily wet weather here, where’s this been nice to sunny leave enough to today but that’s fine, I don’t have to bother you
00:03:03,600 last night with one socially distanced group of friends, sorry family with
us, so that was a bit unusual with the all corona lockdown stuff and
receiving a couple of little clue what to do with that, I’m deciding it really. So yeah it’s not been a particularly crazy busy week, writing,
00:03:27,920 done nothing, have the books in front of me, still keep looking at it, still keep thinking about it. And I need to get some more guests on the
podcast, I’m not scheduled any in, so I’ve kind of got a cliff at the
minute, so I will try and sort that out for the next few weeks but I’m going to do
00:03:45,200 feel free to get hold of me if you think that you own one of your colleagues would be an interesting guest on the show. But that’s
enough for me, let’s get on with the conversation with Gerald, I know you can enjoy it, so speak to you later.
00:04:10,800 So today I’d like to welcome to the show Gerald J. Leonard, who is a
professional bassist and has a unique approach in accomplishing more
productivity in a workplace. He’s a CEO of Principles of Execution and a certified minority business enterprise and a strategic project,
00:04:33,520 portfolio management and culture chain consultancy practice, with over 20 years of experience, working with large federal government
organisations and multinational corporations. And Gerald’s come to talk to me today about his new book, Workplace Jazz and How To Improvis.
00:04:52,160 So welcome to the show, Gerald. Nigel, thanks so much for having me,
I’m really grateful to be here. Yeah, it’s great to have you. So Workplace Jazz, I’ll be frank, when I got the message
00:05:07,760 through that I’ve got someone who’s a bass player wanting to come on the show and me being an amateur, very poor bass player, hack, it
made kind of maybe think, “got to get you on, got to get you on.” And having had a look at the book and then for people to see,
00:05:25,440 yes, to see that’s what the book looks like for our YouTube videos, not
very good for radio, but great for YouTube when I put it up on there. I
thought I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve had some thoughts myself before now about how music and how
00:05:41,600 projects and business kind of have that flow, but I’ll be honest as I
always say, I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I’ve started looking at
different bits of it and started going, “Ah, yeah, I can see that, that’s peaked my interest immediately with the way that you’ve
00:06:00,560 talked about it.” So, what do you want to tell us, I’ll give you that intro,
do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your background, and
then we can delve into what we do and how we improve cultures within organizations. Excellent, excellent. Well, as you said, I mean,
00:06:16,640 musician or bass player, and I started out honestly playing guitar at 10
years old. In fact, I talk about this in my TEDx talk and then I tell this
story a little bit in the beginning of the book that I was sneaking into my sister’s room when she wasn’t there to grab her guitar to play it,
00:06:37,200 because I was actually taking piano lessons, my older sister played
piano, I was supposed to take piano lessons. I really didn’t like it as
much, but I was really intrigued with my sister’s guitar, it’s like this little
wreck toy guitar, but one day she caught me playing it, and she let me,
00:06:52,320 she decided let me have it. Now, that can be two ways, right? As a
sister, let you have it, and she also let me just have the instrument
because it wasn’t something she was going to play. I fell in love with
playing, and within a year or so I joined a band, and now one of the guys in a band
00:07:09,840 was, I think, at a time he’s 14 years old, he sounded like Jimmy
Hendrix, no joke at that time, and I just knew at that point, you know,
I’m not the guitar player for the band, and so I switched to playing bass. And as you know, when you’re playing bass, you have to know the whole song, you got to
00:07:26,960 know the bridge, you got to know the chorus, you know, you’re the
foundation of the music, because everybody else is kind of doing their
thing, but you’re holding the on the bottom, and you’re kind of setting
the pace of how things go. It’s kind of like I always say to drummer friends of mine,
00:07:39,440 the bass player keeps the drummer in time. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, I mean, it was a time in Lakeland, Florida in the United States, where they had just opened something called the Lakeland
Civic Center. And so, all of the, so imagine being this 12-year-old kid, you know, playing a
00:07:58,800 instrument, and you’re getting to see Lewis Johnson, these are, these
are various bass players, you’re getting to see Bootsy Collins, you’re
getting to see all these phenomenal bass players back in the the the
70s and 80s that you hear about that kind of set the foundation for R&B and
00:08:15,680 so on and so forth. And I got into jazz and so on. And I went to college
in, in graduate school. So, interesting stories that after I got married and had kids, I really didn’t want to be on the road as much. And so, I
switched careers and got into IT. And it was around a time where if you could
00:08:30,720 spell IT, you could get it. So, so what was interesting about it was, you know, I had developed some leadership skills from some volunteers and some work I had done with the church. And the interesting thing
was is I was playing, I’ve always played music along with anything else I did. And so, when I
00:08:50,640 switched to be there for my kids and raised them and so on and so
forth, I kept playing. I played work shows, I played shows, I played different venues and so on and so forth in the New York City,
Westchester area. Well, as things were going on, you know, I realized, do I go back and get another
00:09:08,560 master’s degree because I already done my master’s. I found myself,
you know, kind of pursuing certifications. And that led me to really grow
in business in a way that I think if I was just went back to school, I wouldn’t have. But again, I was playing. So, I started having these experiences
00:09:25,040 where on one hand, I’m playing music and working with a band. On another hand, I’m going and working with clients and doing business and, you know, project management. I started getting into project management and so on and so forth. And what I started noticing was how much a really good project
00:09:44,640 for business felt more like being in a band because in the project where
I learned a band, let’s go there, you know, everyone works together.
Everyone is really serious about their instrument, right? I mean, if you’re
going to be a drummer, you got to which set, you got to practice. You know, be a piano player,
00:10:01,520 guitar player, whatever you’re playing, you’re that’s your instrument that
you got to hold down. But to make the music work, what do you have to
do? You got to listen. In fact, one of the things we do as musicians is
we spend hours and hours and hours by ourselves listening to records or listening
00:10:18,160 to ourselves play in the language of music, right? And so as a band, we do that. And so what I found was that really good business groups would have the same mentality where, you know, you have a business developer, you have, you have a software developer, you have a, an analyst, you have a QA person,
00:10:41,200 you have an infrastructure engineer, or you have the business, the
business lead or whatever. And for the project to go, well, everyone had to work together as a really cohesive team. But one of the most
important things is they had to listen to each other. And just like when you’re playing the jazz,
00:10:57,920 you know, as I got older and do music, I played jazz, where you’re
playing in one person solos and one person is, everyone else is kind of supporting that person. Then somebody else solos and everybody else
is supporting that person. Well, in business, it was almost the same where one person’s leading
00:11:16,080 and then everyone else is kind of supporting them. And I’m sure as
you’re listening and you’re thinking about what you’ve done and what
you’ve played music or if you’re with your business, you’re thinking
probably the best projects that you’ve ever been on is when the team is really cohesive,
00:11:32,000 they’re kind of have a vibe going on that become more than friends that
become family in a way they treat each other and they really support
each other and they know when to ask for help and when to give help.
So that’s really how I got started in coming up with these concepts of, you know, my first book,
00:11:48,320 Culture Is the Bass and my second book, Workplace Jazz. And that’s how I came up with these concepts. I’ve just seen the similarities
between those two parts of our life. Really, you know, it’s funny that saying that I just just thinking about it, it’s,
00:12:03,920 and I’ve used this phrase before now when when you’ve had a project
team or a number of people who work together in different, like I’ve portfolio management and things like that and when sometimes we’ve
got a situation where we’ll go to the different areas and then we’ll come back together
00:12:19,920 at certain time because we’re paths cross again and we start working
on the same thing and I’ve used the phrase we’re getting the band back
together to kind of the old classic sort of cliche thing and it’s that kind of
feeling, isn’t it, where you’ve got those people who were in that you were
00:12:36,320 part of a team and you felt like you were successful, it was working and
it clicks, isn’t it? And again, the more you think about you, think of, I go
to the parodies in my mind of spinal tap and things like that of bands
and but the reason that parodies and cliches is because that’s what it’s really like.
00:12:56,480 And you have those where you’ve got a band where you have a pre-moderner who is the, whilst they can drag the band to success,
actually holding the band together for a long time, doesn’t happen, does
it? And that’s where you get the arguments, disagreements and all that sort of
00:13:13,920 stuff. Right. And it’s the same with a project if you’ve got a project
manager or a, or a, or a, a business generally, if you’ve got someone
who is just about them and doesn’t allow that sort of others to step to
the front and get the sport from you know, this, that immediately, you see,
00:13:30,560 I can see the, really see the correlation there. Yeah, exactly. But you
also think of the, and but then if you think of the bands where everyone
plays a really critical role and one band I think about, that I listened to, I
think I probably listened to them in college, definitely after college,
00:13:48,560 I heard them because the bass player is a singer. And I think the drummer passed away, not too long ago. You’re gonna say rush. Yeah,
yeah, as soon as, as soon as you said that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but think about what, what allowed them to have such a long standing career? Yeah, is that,
00:14:04,480 you know, you have, you have three people, you have a bass player, guitar player, and a drummer. Every one of them were phenomenal on
their instrument, but when they played together, it sounded like there was more than three people on stage. Yeah. And they, they, they all knew, they, obviously,
00:14:20,240 they all knew their instrument, they all knew their part, but they all
played well together. Yeah, yeah, you know, each one of them had their
moment in the sun and everybody else supported them. And so that led
them to create this phenomenal, that we call rush, that, that so many, you know,
00:14:38,000 that people loved, right? Yeah. And, and, and, and they really, they
really enjoyed the whole concept of them working together. And really, I
think that’s what it is. It’s like for an organization within small teams that
if you can create that same vibe, which, you know, there are skills and techniques of
00:14:56,640 what you can use to create those concepts and those, those
experiences within a team to really make things work. Yeah, I think that
just that, as you say there with, with Russ, I rush fan, seeing them and,
and Neil Peele is just incredibly, Neil Peele was the reason that I, like them,
00:15:16,000 just I saw them on exit stage left video and, and the drumming on that
song is just on the, where Neil Peele does his drum solo. And, and the
fact that you’ve, you’ve got the rest of the team step back and let him
take, is it 10 minutes long, that solo or whatever it is and take, that takes
00:15:37,200 all of the adulation, doesn’t it? And that, and that’s been in the, in the
band as part of that, is that appreciation for the band as part of the,
whatever musician is going to feed off. And, having the confidence in
each other to know that one you’re going to be supported doing that for
00:15:53,520 something that big and the same with the, with the, I suppose, with the business with a project and anything like that. If you’ve got that
relationship where the person who’s getting the chance to shine rather
than it, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a unusual area where you can sit back
00:16:12,960 and it, everyone gets there day in the sun, something. Yes. In fact, in, in
my book, I called that, I have a chapter that’s related to that and it’s
called “Surrendered to Support.” And, I actually highlight another bass
player who’s, who I’ve actually gotten to know and, I would say, became an
00:16:30,560 acquaintance of mine. His name is David Dyson. Now, David has
played with, you know, Gerald Albright, Najee, Mesa, Jonathan Butler,
just some, some phenomenal jazz musicians in their own right. But the
thing about David is that he initially first started off, he went to Berklee College
00:16:52,240 music, but even before then at the, when he started around, playing,
playing around 12 years old, he, I would say about the time he was 14
and I talk about this in my book, he was playing weekend studio gigs as a teenager, making 50 bucks an hour, making 50 bucks a session, recording, you know,
00:17:13,360 recording music. Yeah. And what he learned from that and going to
college at Berklee and, and working with Walter Beasley was that, you know, to be a great bass player means to provide that support. And
then it’s okay to be surrendered to just to lay that, that your role is, is to lay
00:17:30,880 down the groove and to support the band. Now, he became a
composer, he became the music director, he had all these other roles
that he led, but when it came to performing, he would have times where
he would solo, but the majority of the time, if you ever watch any of the videos or any things about
00:17:47,600 him, and in fact, I have a link to a video on my book about him, he
simply sits back on a songs that he wrote and he just plays the bass
line. And he’s just, he’s just laying, he’s slapping the bass, like, like your
t-shirts says, he’s slapping the bass, and he’s just laying down the bass line and really,
00:18:05,920 you know, setting the, setting the tone for the music never takes a solo,
never takes a solo in this clip. And the music is just like, wow, and in
fact, it was, it was, I think it was a concert that they were brought into
the R&B Hall of Fame up in Detroit at Motown. And so, but you think, you know,
00:18:27,920 you would want to stand out and shine, but no, his role at that time was,
hey, you know, this song is the right song, I wrote it, but I don’t even,
I’m not even, you know, taking a solo, I’m just playing the bass on it, but he is like now one of the hardest working bassists. And I would say around today,
00:18:47,440 and one of the reasons is that everyone who hires him knows that he’s going to be there to support them. Yeah. He’s going to lay down the
bass track and they’re going to give him his moment to shine, but they
know that that’s not what gets him off. That’s not what gets him going. What gets him going is
00:19:02,640 being there to support the band and really lay down the tracks. And so
it’s, it’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. And one of the things I
talk about too is the neuroscience, because what I see is, you know,
you can have project management skills to do the things that project managers do. But when you
00:19:22,400 understand the neuroscience of how people operate, then it also allows
you to use some of the soft skills or your communication skills in a way to pull the team together. And the reason I decided to use a lot of neuroscience is when my son was growing up, I watched him go through some challenges. And so it
00:19:41,200 made me inquisitive about neuroscience. So I started during a lot of
reading. Didn’t go to medical school or anything, but I just read a lot of books about neuroscience. Then I read a book called Conversational
Intelligence. And it was really focused on the concept of culture, right? The concept
00:19:58,800 of culture and how conversations drive relationships and how
relationships drive culture. And if you know as a project manager, you
can have the software, you can have all the technology, you can have
the business team. But if the end user for which you’re building this project for
00:20:20,000 doesn’t accept your project, doesn’t accept the solution that you’re
rolling out because it doesn’t fit their culture, then you got to fail project. Even though, you know, the surgery was successful, but the patient died. You’ve heard that one. It happens in project management. Sometimes one of the
00:20:38,320 main reasons that happens, and this gets me excited because I think a
lot of project managers really need to understand this is that one of the main reasons that it happens is that people forget about thinking through what’s the cultural impact on the end user. Because as a project team, many times
00:20:57,520 we’re not interfacing with the end user. We’re interfacing with the
business owner. And they may have a trainer, or we may have a trainer
on team and they go out and they do the training and they’re talking to
the end users, right? But as a team, we’re kind of focused on making sure that the person, the main
00:21:16,320 person’s happy who’s going to sign the check or who’s going to approve the project. But if they’re not the end user, then they may, we may
actually build something and roll something out that they’re not going to embrace. And so by focusing on the cultural aspect and the conversational aspect and ensuring
00:21:38,880 that what I’m going to build and what I’m going to roll down is going to be adopted and accepted by the end user, then I know I’m going to
have a successful project. Even if there’s some technical challenges, as
long as I know they’re going to accept it and they’re open to it. Yeah, I get that
00:21:55,840 and it’s I think it’s it is that thing of the the and I’m going to repeat
myself because I do quite regularly. I like to say is that we have the the
time cost quality. We’ve got all the tools that we talk talk about that how to get the time cost quality. But again, that’s the the basics.
00:22:17,120 It’s the sculptor knowing how to sculpt something. It’s the sculptor
knowing how to use a hammer and how to use a chisel. But then you’ve
got actually just because you can use the chisel and you can use the hammer doesn’t mean what your carving is good. You know, you may use all of the
00:22:34,000 techniques, the feathering, the whatever you do. But if that’s not what
people wanted to be if you have a sculpture of an elephant, someone’s
wanted a sculpture of a penguin, then it doesn’t matter. And also it’s
again, it’s about that artist, isn’t it? It’s and I always say that about the fact that it’s
00:22:50,080 the the anyone can learn the skills to sculpt. But once you’ve learnt
them, then you’ve got to learn how to put the art into it and it draws its
music as well. You learn your scales, you learn the basics, you can do
all that stuff. Why haven’t I just messed around with it? But you know what I mean? You can
00:23:06,880 you do if you’re if you do it sensibly, you learn those tools and then as a
friend of mine, who’s a great guitarist, I’ll give him a shout out, but and
he was talking to someone once and he said yeah, that’s it, and who’s learning the the all the chords, all the perfect and he’s saying,
00:23:25,360 you kind of got to get a bit dirty with it now. Now you know what you can do. Now you’ve got to break them rules to where you know where
you can break the rules a little bit or bend the rules and that’s the
essential thing isn’t it? It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s not just one way or the other you’ve just
00:23:44,320 got to go and blend with it with all the rules and break them a little bit.
Exactly, exactly. You know I I kind of look at and I got this I got this idea listening to a book by Victor Routon and one of his books on music lessons and Victor is an amazing bass player five time Grammy winning basses. I
00:24:03,280 got a chance to meet him at a Gerald Beasley bass boot camp up in
Philadelphia area where I’ve where I’ve just been introduced to a ton of really interesting bass players and and you know again just being inspired to grow can tell me grow no matter how you know how great the hair gets or how old you
00:24:20,080 gets. Yeah, yeah, you don’t stop learning you never stop learning, but
one of the things that that that he did and I love this analogy and it is
learning music is like learning a language is like learn to speak. You know when we learn a language let’s say we grow up and you know about the
00:24:41,200 first of speaking English, English. I know you’re in Europe I’m in the
United States now in the United States. We’re we’re we’re pretty bad at
this. It’s like majority of us only know English right? If we’re lucky we you know because Mexico or Spain is our yeah, Mexico rather is as close to us we’ve
00:25:00,000 learned some Spanish, but other than that you know unless you’ve been brought up in an environment where you had someone who spoke another language like French or whatever you don’t you really don’t learn those languages. Well the bridge the bridge suggests bad. In many cases most of us bridge when we try
00:25:19,120 to learn another language it includes volume rather than anything else.
You say the same thing like that and that kind of works it and and I
would argue just for some of my colleagues in the UK that I’m not sure you guys do speaking English over there. But you know what I’m saying? Yeah, you’re right.
00:25:35,600 You’re about to put it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right. You tend
to speak multiple languages. Well here’s the thing that I’m trying to get
to is when you’re speaking when you’re growing up and you’re learning
to speak a language. What do you do? Well you’re you’re this infant that that is like
00:25:49,680 trying you’re hearing the language a lot. But every day every day every
second every hour you get to practice with professionals. Yeah, right?
Yeah, that’s right. You’re dad, you have your siblings, your brothers and your sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone is going to come and talk to
00:26:09,600 you. Yeah, and very soon you developed the mindset of the neuroscience to the neurons and be able to speak the language and you know you’re kind of flubbing the language and you’re not ever
saying everything right. But know whatever makes fun of you they just kind of correct you and keep talking
00:26:27,200 and keep speaking and everything is about the language. And pretty soon you become pretty versed in the language. Then you learn the
dialogue you learn, you know, I can say dirty whether you learn all the nuances and all the you know how to combine certain words to fit where you grew up that
00:26:43,120 and so on. They can tell which part of the country you’re from based on
how you speak. Yeah, and then you go to school and then you learn the
mechanics. Yeah, right? And so a lot of learning to play jazz is the same
way. It’s really you know finding it’s putting yourself in a place where
00:27:04,880 you get to work with professionals or and if you can’t work with them
personally, well you can listen to their records and you can play along with their records. You can learn their solos. So so jazz is like a language. Well, project management and some of the skills that we have to learn in project
00:27:23,440 management. At first for me it was like learning a whole new language,
you know, Gantt chart, bar chart, or just all the different parts of of what goes into understanding, you know, project management, all the the technical aspects of project management. But then once you’ve mastered those and once
00:27:43,280 you have a good handle alone those things and for me just also I would say when I was learning project management, I’d use the mindset and
this is where music has played a big role in my life. I use the concepts
of how I learn music to learn other things. So for instance, as I said when you’re learning jazz
00:28:03,440 you’re learning a language and how do you how do you learn that
language? Well, you put yourself around other experts who speak that language so you can pick up on the nuances. So when I started and I
got into project management, I read every book so I could listen to the language of project management.
00:28:18,400 I watched every podcast or every webinar that I could get my hands on
to. I joined the Microsoft Project User Group because I used a lot of
Microsoft Project at a time. In fact, I became the project, the president of Microsoft Project User Group in the Baltimore DC area for nine years. So every month
00:28:38,880 I was going to an event, a networking event where I was talking shop with other people who spoke my language and they would speak the language in a more sophisticated way. And I didn’t know about that. How do do? And so again, I use the concepts. So sometimes the idea of the workplace jazz is not that I’m playing
00:28:57,840 music at my clients. It’s that I’m using the concepts that I’ve learned as
a musician to introduce them that, hey, here’s a here’s a natural way to
actually develop some of these other skills to help you grow faster and to create better teams. And so that was how I learned project management and a lot of
00:29:16,720 other things that I did with project management and business
intelligence and so on and so forth was to embrace myself, put myself
around and find mentors, find guys that who wrote five or six books or a couple of books and as I wrote my first book, reach out to them and build relationships and
00:29:34,160 network with them and I did a podcast for a while and interview them.
And so what happens is by doing that you naturally began to learn how
to use those tools and skills in a way that if you’re just kind of doing it
by the book and taking the test that you’re going to limit yourself in what you
00:29:52,720 can really do. Yeah, it just gives you a part of it, doesn’t it? And it’s that
finance, isn’t it? Exactly, yeah, yeah, that’s that’s it. Yeah, I really
understand that. I think just do the one, um Well, I hope you all enjoyed that interview with Gerald. The second part is coming along
00:30:20,560 in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you’re a new listener, there’s
plenty of back-of-the-listing. If you are an existing listener, hopefully
you’ve listened to all the backlog, but if not, why not take a chance to
have a listen? If you want to support a show, anything is grateful, a review, a share on
00:30:42,240 social media, a bit of cash on Patreon, it’d be lovely. If you want it to grab either one of my books or a copy of any of Gerald’s books, pop
along to Nigel.crazy.com, NigelCriset.com, and go to the shop section
and in there I’ll get a little kick back or if you wanted to grab one of my books, go and grab one of them.
00:31:07,280 But as ever, the most important thing is for you guys to come back next
week and listen to the second part I firmly urge you to do so. That’s it
from me, so thanks and have a wonderful rest of your day. Well, it’s goodbye from me, NigelCriset, and it’s goodbye from him, the Sunday lunch pm. Goodbye.