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  1. Home
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  3. Teams, talent and trust: the trinity of making things work
  1. Home
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  3. Teams, talent and trust: the trinity of making things work
Singers

Teams, talent and trust: the trinity of making things work

Fri, 8th November 2019

Published


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  • Insight

Six singers help explore how people work effectively together ‘in sync'.

Last year there were four singers; this year there were six; and the obscure madrigal that had been unearthed to give them a public sight-singing challenge contained Elizabethan echoes of a range of contemporary issues. Plus it was written by a colourful character who presented his employers with a dilemma that may be familiar (though hopefully only in a diluted form) to many managers today.

Dr Pegram Harrison’s In Sync sessions, part of the Engaging with the Humanities series, are gaining more layers every year. The event on 25 October 2019 yielded many lessons and prompts for reflection about talent, teamwork and trust as we listened to the singers, ‘this team that isn’t really a team,’ … ‘cohere around their expertise’ and sing the madrigal Thule, the period of cosmography –  without having seen it before, rehearsed it, or even talked about it.

  • Laura Ashby, Soprano
  • Fleur Smith, Soprano
  • Tom Hammond-Davies, Counter-tenor
  • Will Anderson, Tenor
  • Andrew Bennett, Tenor
  • Florian Störtz, Bass

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  • Insight

Creating teams

Madrigal singers
Madrigal singers

As Pegram explained, the In Sync sessions explore the notion of ‘ensemble’ through watching singers come together to learn and perform a piece. In previous years he has focused on mechanical detail, and how the singers have used the structure of the music to help them work together. In this case, however, technical knowledge was necessary but not enough: ‘What makes this music is the emotion,’ he said. And it showed in the audience questions afterwards, which focused intently on questions of trust and feelings of relaxation and playfulness.

‘We all know that when we add emotions into a system, things – while they have the potential to improve – also have the risk of falling apart. You add emotion into a team, emotion into a process, and it will pull apart, or try to pull apart, the mechanics. That juggling act is exemplified in the music – the way it alternates between fast and slow, high and low, tonal and modal … there are contrasts built in. North and south, major and minor: in that constant oscillation there is a statement being made. It also supports the idea that what matters most is the struggle. Because out of that clash and uncertainty and imbalance comes innovation.’

What price talent?

Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes

Thomas Weelkes, the composer of Thule, had held prominent musical posts from a young age. He was organist at Winchester College and at Chichester Cathedral, before taking a BMus at New College, Oxford, in 1602. However, during his later career he ‘misbehaved, with increasing intensity,’ said Pegram. He had clearly become an alcoholic; he was disruptive and ruined things for other people, while at the same time, ‘creating things that were so enticing, so fascinating, so innovative, marvellous and influential that he was indulged.’ In 1616 he was fined and suspended from duty for drinking, swearing at the organ, and urinating on the Dean. In 1619 he was sacked, re-employed, and then sacked again. He died four years later.

This combination of prodigious talent and bad behaviour is famous in music (think Mozart) but it is not unknown elsewhere. How often are star performers in organisations forgiven behaviours that would land average or even good performers with a stern talking to or worse? But even if you do not indulge them, they can still disrupt their teams and the organisation as a whole. How far do you allow such people to go before the need for organisational harmony outweighs the benefits of their talents?

The importance of trust

The singers discuss trust
The singers discuss trust

The first question from the audience asked the singers how soon they started to trust one another. ‘About half-way down the final page,’ thought one; ‘not until I started to trust myself,’ suggested another.

Many commentators have responded to hand-wringing about the ‘decline of trust’ in institutions by pointing out that organisations should first prove themselves trust-worthy. It should not be up to individuals to be more trusting. But if the singers had waited until each of them had proved themselves trustworthy before starting to sing together, it would have been a very long session. As Florian said: ‘On a fundamental basis you have to trust your fellow singers before you even start. You’re putting yourself on the spot and if your team-mates don’t … play by roughly the same rules as you do then it doesn’t make any sense. So you go in with a feeling of trust already.’

Perhaps it is a case of being open to trust, of choosing to believe that new team-mates are trustworthy and thus allowing them the space to confirm it. This was illustrated during a discussion of the embellishments that Andy had added to his part.

Adding embellishments is common in music of this period, and there are certain ‘rules’ about it: you have to know how and when it is appropriate to do so. But as Laura said, it also helps to build trust: ‘You hear someone else put in an embellishment and you think, good, they know what they are doing and they are in control enough to put in those extra notes.’ It allowed her to relax, she said, and be more playful with the music in her turn.

Certainly this was easy enough with this particular group of singers, who were all used to performing at a very high standard. But what happens when there are people of different abilities, asked one audience member. ‘In the business world we don’t always get to choose our team.’

The solution in the performing arts industry is probably only that you need more time, suggested Tom. ‘As long as there is a feeling that the person who is the weakest link can get to a level beyond that which they set for themselves, because of the encouraging conditions.’ Andy agreed, but added that the person who is the strongest link also needs to feel challenged, and find something that they can be doing productively beyond waiting for others to catch up. If people of very high ability feel that they are wasting their time it can be ‘disheartening.’

Fleur concluded by observing that, even in a skilled group of singers, there are different sorts of skills. ‘Maybe someone sounds really good but they can’t read [the music] as quickly. You’ll sometimes end up being the person reading the notes and saying “this is how it goes,” and they will then bring what they can which is the quality of the voice. You end up with two voices blending together really well, and it happens more quickly than if they were doing it by themselves. Everyone’s strengths together make it work.’

Teams, talent, and trust

Pegram Harrison (L) with singers
Q&A with singers
Madrigal singers
Madrigal singers
Dr Pegram Harrison
Q&A with singers
Madrigal singers
Madrigal singers
Dr Pegram Harrison

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