 Hello everyone, I'm Randy, I'm a surgeon and I like or love to cut people up and sew them back together and I also teach young doctors and I like to introduce to you here's a conductor. Hi all, I'm here to tell you about my skills as a conductor. I've recently defended my PhD pieces about transferring my skills, the conductors, to Randy's profession. Randy has been my supervisor and the results have been developed in a close cooperation between the two of us. And we are here today to share the idea and our project with you. But first I would like to invite you to take part in a small experiment. My experiment I never before had the opportunity to conduct the chef's choir. So please help me on this one. Please help me on this one. All you have to do is to sing. Simple. I'm sure you know the song and we have the lyrics. So please follow me carefully. Please Michael, please follow. Okay I have to say this twice. Please follow me from the top. And please sing. Chefs came to Ding Deng Dong. Right? Ding Deng Dong. First time. Please follow. How do you manage to do it? No. I've been watching your cuisines and well okay. Come on. Ding Deng Dong. Twice. Last time. Ding Deng Dong. Bravo. I'm told today is two very brave chefs who like me have never been conducting the chef's choir before. In fact they have never been conducting before. Mida and Dave. Where are you? Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. You have to learn how to conduct what we call a basic four beat pattern. It looks like this. One, two, three, four. Simple. I teach you. We go one, one. Come on. And one, two, right? Three, four. Again. One, two, three, four. Now you should be able to do. Will you please start? Once again. No. Yeah. You go. You go. Okay. Once again from the top. Only one hand. Ready? And please tell them what you think of the musicianship. Once again. You aren't paying attention. Good. From the top. Beautiful. And we are going to talk about today's a little about this. You'll see more of this. So we invited here to share our product with you. And I think now I have to turn my paper that René realized that chefs face daily the challenge of leadership. And he understands the parallels between leadership in different intents and stressful working conditions. And here the chef working as chef. And here I am working as team leader in an emerging situation. And this is a training situation, a cardiac arrest. We have about 10 minutes to rescue the patient, give him medicine and a lot more. And the pressure is high and the outcome might be fatal. Like chef, surgeons are not formally trained for skills in leadership. But one day when I was watching a conductor, I got the obviously idea that asking him for help because he represents a profession where leadership is a core skill. When working with the leadership training in challenging and stressful situations, we found that it was necessary to address anxiety in the situation as well as fear of the situation itself. Evidence tells us that anxiety blocks for learning and anxiety blocks for performance. You may be familiar with the phrase freeze, fight or flight. The biological explanation for this is that the reptile brain, the one that treats the basic rights for food, sex, fight or flight takes over our rational thoughts during moments of stress and danger. When this happens, we are hit by the mcnulla hijack. If the conductor is afraid of the orchestra, she doesn't have a chance. He will be paralyzed, unable to overlook the situation when standing in front of the orchestra. Unable to think a rational thought. And certainly not able to gain respect and demonstrate authority or power. The mcnulla will have taken over his or her body and thoughts and the conductor will just want to get away far away. An anxiety can cause strong physical reaction. Some smile nervously, some laugh hysterically, some sweat, some get dry in the mouth just like I do, some shake, some choose to fool around to draw attention to something else, some open their eyes right open and some respond with unmotivated aggression, scream and shout. The list of reactions to fear is so much longer and the reactions are very personal and therefore very different. The body signals fear and uncertainty are clearly visible and read instantly. We feel this ourselves in the situation and then a self reinforcing negative spiral starts. There are many reasons for anxiety in different situations. Worry about personal recognition, the desire to please and be loved and be popular. Concern about the professional impact. In some cases the reason is a little alive for death. If I'm not a good team leader in the clinic, a patient might die but even lesser anxieties can be paralyzing. If I'm not a good conductor, the music won't sound right and you would get fired. If I'm not a good chef, I will get a bad review, guests will stop coming and the rest might go bankrupt and the people who are still having a job under my will lose their job. So what did we do? We designed a course for young doctors to train in team leadership in emergency situations but not in a clinical setting. To be able to train them we had to create anxiety but in safe surroundings. So two are designed musical exercises and we use them over the course. First the doctors learn how to conduct a basic four beat pattern. Just like you did. You saw how I did it. It looks quite simple but as you saw as it turns out, it's not. An important purpose was to throw the course participants into a completely unfamiliar situation far from their comfort zone. This creates uncertainty and fear of performing but as exercises were about conducting something as friendly and simple as far as yuck and playing with ghetto blasters and not professional skills for the doctors. The frame was most safe. As you will see, there's a lot of fun on the course which is very important. What did you do? I didn't do anything. You go back. There's some technical stuff here. A little further please. A little further down. I have to read this text. There it is. By teaching simple conductors exercise we give the students an unreasonably or even ridiculously difficult obstacle. You just saw it. Which they do not have any strategy to handle. Everyone starts at zero which creates cohesion and safety in the classroom but also a fear of performing. Conducting is a surprising element that helps participants concentrate and focus. Here from the course four ladies learning to conduct a forebeat pattern. It is not simple. Look at her. Oops. Okay. Crossing the legs, scratching the throat, twisting the hands, throwing the hair back. Okay. The conductor is specifically trained to lead. Traditionally over the course of 100 years this training takes place through apprenticeship. And the very first thing the conductor, the aspiring conductor learns is that his fear of the situation is the first thing he must overcome. He does this by getting control of his body language. He learns to stand up straight and erect, raises his chest and raises his chin in order to radiate calmness and authority. This confidence will be instantly read by everyone on the team. The conductor feels this and now so does the orchestra. The self reinforcing spiral becomes persistent. Basically anxiety is related to the perception of yourself in the situation. It is a mental battle between you and you or me and myself. Here is a student from the course whose fear is making her struggle with herself. Before we can address fear we have to decide to act as a leader. It is absolutely necessary to have taken the mental decision to take on leadership before wearing this model of authority. This can't be done halfway. This can't be done hesitantly. As a professional leader of a group you assume all the responsibility for the outcome of the entire group's work, whether it's good or bad. This decision will help you to focus right. As a leader you are no longer a part of the team. You are not friends with your team. You are simply in front of the team and thus responsible for the professional outcome. But you can of course choose to be friendly. Focus is no longer about being popular, well-liked or loved. The focus is to raise the team's professional potential to a higher level than the sum of the present skills. The development doesn't take 10 years. It takes three hours as this video shows. At first she is not really comfortable, but after a short instruction she improves, straightens her back, starts to use her eyes, but it's not really there still. But now you will see how it looks when she makes the decision to assume the leadership. It is about clear communication without interfering elements. Leadership is basically communicating a message, whether it is communication to the whole team or to individuals. The communication must be absolutely clear. No noise on the line. But noise to communication happens often without our knowledge, especially when we are stressed. My own noise, my own reaction in a stressful situation as a conductor was surprisingly my lift thump. Because I've been playing trombone for 20 years standing like that before I took up conducting. So I got used to stretching my lift thump when creating music. So when I started conducting it looked like this. I didn't notice until a colleague conductor pointed it out for me. Wow. For sure I would like to be known as a good conductor and not just the guy with the strange thump. A rubber band around the finger solves the problem. I'm good. But this is only to say we all have a version of my lift thump when challenged in a stressful situation. And now for very short before after we do it. You have to look carefully because they are very short. So please. This is another René and this René is thrown out of his comfort zone a bit. But now look at his back, look at his chest and now he raises his chin and he gains authority. It works. You can respond to anxiety in many ways. Fooling around is another valid response. We got him straightened up in control of his back. And just and she is very serious I must say. We just have to add a few comments to the next video. This is a young woman with a huge problem. Her smile. It is a wonderful smile. But whenever she feels anxiety the smile blocks her face and takes her authority away. And in acute emergency situation in the hospital this smile is totally inappropriate. It is a huge problem for him. It is real. But indeed it is a wonderful smile. And for the first time there she is able to show power in front of other people. And this is another smile. A very proud smile saying I did it. So if you are able to calm yourself and know how to control your body and if you have fully understood the responsibility as being a leader you are on your way. And then you are able to deal with the next elements of the world work as leader in front of the team. It is most important to establish confidence between leader and team. Confidence that the leader is competent, confident that the leader is able to pursue the project and focus on the work. Confidence that the leader can identify the human and technical resources available and that he or she is able to respond to them and make it all play together. To establish this confidence the leader must appear credible and it is actually possible to consciously work to establish credibility. Does the team sense that the leader is professionally focused, that he knows what he wants, that he has a global view of the whole picture? Does he act with the calmness the team needs to feel confident and safe? Does he have presence? That is does he demonstrate the ability to actually see every individual on the team and respond to their work? If so, he achieves a high level of credibility. This is the end point, the ghetto blaster exercise. We show a little about it later. The purpose of the course is this authority you see here. Now the participants have forgotten everything about their anxiety and focus instead fully on their project. It is not something they simulate, it is not something they imitate, it is something they are feeling. If the leader is able to show that he or she is committed to the project, that the project is important, she or she gains even more credibility. But it requires the courage to show vulnerability. It may sound like a paradox in a situation requiring authority, control and competence and power, but it is met by the team's respect and thus gives high credibility. This is the last before and after meeting. It is interesting because this guy is trained in the military and has therefore awareness of his body language. He really does a fine job and imitates what he has seen too or do, but takes a closer look and he doesn't seem so confident. The slips are gone, he hits big holes in the air and he is not present and even listening at all. There is a slight panic present in his eyes. After a brief instruction he begins to listen to the team and ends up providing a small but proud smile. A very important tool is the ability to improvise. Improvisation is not a card you choose to play in absence of a better one. It is actually the strongest card you can play, but it requires that you are well equipped professionally. Improvisation is at this level enables you to get above normal standards, procedures and check marks and actually find the best solution in a given situation. Improvisation shows a high level of presence and provides very high credibility. Improvisation includes the courage to turn off the PowerPoint presentation and talk without a script. Improvisation is the courage to choose another tempo at the concert. Improvisation is the courage to try out new ways if they can improve the moment. It is the courage to come up in the middle of a service with a new scallop dish because you realize the oysters aren't good enough. Improvisation enables you to embrace the unexpected. So please listen carefully, I repeat. Improvisation implies that you rely on your own assessments, intuition and judgment in the situation. Improvisation requires extensive knowledge and experience in your field. We designed another exercise, the Ghetto Bass exercise, you saw part of it before. The intense feeling of leadership is experienced exactly as when conducting an orchestra. The focus is the sensation of leadership, the feeling of dealing with a complex situation, including many people performing different tasks. Many leadership parameters are at stake in this exercise. It is all about presence, engagement, the courage to show vulnerability. It's about taking decisions under pressure and finally about improvisation. The feedback is given at our course, it's very personal, each individual has his or her own challenges. I allow myself to be subjected based on my own knowledge and experience for what is needed. My feedback is intuitive and swift. I interpret and respond to what I see. The students later tell me that they are happy about what they call straight-on feedback and as it can be seen, I'm allowed to come very close to each individual. As someone said, no matter how much training you have or how many books you have read, nothing can fully prepare you for the challenge. In this respect, leadership isn't easy, it's difficult, necessary easy. You have to practice leadership to learn it. Tourist research resulted in the five Cs, command, with means, authority, professionalism and power, credibility, your trustworthy, competent, the ability to handle in this situation, calm, create calmness for the team and communicate clear. Three days ago we recorded the next video from service at NOMA and here we'll see an incredible lot of Cs. So, we'd like to say thank you. Thank you.