Guests

In this episode, I was deeply fortunate to sit down with two amazing guests: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander. Ben is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Youth Orchestra. Rosamund was a therapist and an accomplished painter and sadly passed away in September 2023. They are the authors of The Art of Possibility – a life-change book if you adopt its twelve practices. Roz was the author of a follow-up volume, Pathways to Possibility.

Summary

Some readers and listeners may have the tendency to place these two books in the category of “self-help.” But as the authors point out early on in The Art of Possibility, “the practices presented in this book are not about making incremental changes that lead to new ways of doing things based on old belief, and they are not about self-improvement.” The practices are more transformational. This is not about playing better in old constructs, it’s about playing in new constructs of our own making.

As you listen

1. How might Roz and Ben’s respective roles – Roz as a therapist who listens for the stories that clients tell and Ben as a conductor who helps musicians break through barriers – apply to the roles that educational leaders and teachers play?

2. How people live in what they think is reality when it’s really just their interpretation. It’s an invention.

3. Why living with a spirit of possibility has to be created and practiced.

4. Ben’s and Roz’s explanation of one of the practices, “The giving of an A.” In the book they write, “This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.” The ownership of the “A” shifts from the traditional bestower, the teacher, to a co-created relationship with the student. How might this apply to education in our schools?

5. What “Being a contribution” is dependent on.

6. How Ben defines “leadership.”

7. What leaders who follow the practice “Lead from any chair” believe in.

8. How “Being the board” eliminates the need for blame.