Play Your Own Music

As a professional change practitioner, think of yourself as a musician with your own radio station, specializing in a particular type of music that truly speaks to your heart. Your broadcast goes out in all directions, but only a percentage of the people it reaches have their radios turned on and only a few of those are drawn to the kind of music you provide. Many practitioners in our field judge themselves (and are judged by others) based on the number of people who listen to their “station.”

When this is the goal, the only way to succeed is to appeal to the widest possible range of interests and needs. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it means you can’t play the music you love and are uniquely good at (or you can’t play it often or as passionately as you feel it).

The upshot is, catering to what others want to hear comes at the expense of playing your own music—and keep in mind, this isn’t just the music you enjoy; it is also what you are best at.

If you interpret your task as seeking the largest possible audience, it doesn’t matter what music you play as long as it draws a big gathering. If you view your role as that of a virtuoso for a specific sound, you not only want to focus on playing that kind of music, you primarily want to play for people who can appreciate it.

The twist here is that, by limiting your audience, you gain, not lose—you enlarge your true fan base by playing to a more select market. True fans are the ones who not only praise what you play, they respect how you play, and they open themselves up to let the music have its intended impact.

As change practitioners, we each have our respective musical style, if you will. It is a composition that blends what we do (our concepts and techniques) with who we are (our character and presence). Both are important, but it is our distinctive character and presence that has us occupy space that can be claimed by no other.

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Play Your Own Music