Learning to play ...

I started learning bass guitar a couple of months ago. My son lent me his bass, I had it tuned, and bought a small amp. Then I enrolled in an online program and started to practice.

My biggest learning is that my tiny little cognitive brain, with all its logic, rationale, and determination, hasn't got a clue. My first few days/weeks were really discouraging. The notes were simple, but my little brain couldn't think fast enough and my fingers just got caught in the strings. I blamed it all on my little fingers being too little. The instructor was whizzing around the frets but it wasn't fair - he has the most elongated little fingers I've ever seen! Watching him demonstrate wasn't helping. I got cross and thought about giving up. Then I googled 'playing bass with short fingers' and watched small children shooting around the strings with fingers moving at lightening speed. I compared my finger lengths to my son's finger lengths and found our fingers to be exactly the same length. I could do it - I just needed to find my own way.

So I stopped blaming the universe for bestowing upon me short little fingers and got my head down and kept going. And something remarkable started to happen. I got better without trying. I just made sure I practised for an hour every day, and stopped worrying about how quickly I was or wasn't learning. Each tune seemed impossibly hard to begin with, then after a few days I was just doing it. Another part of my brain, not my conscious brain, was slowly but surely learning. I learned to trust that part of my brain that I couldn't talk to, that was just getting on with it without talking to me.

Then it struck me that there are parallels with leadership. We often talk about leadership in terms of competencies to be taught in a classroom, to be learned in the classroom and then simply applied. But to become a better leader demands more of us than that. We often have to think differently, to become different people in a way, and it isn't a conscious process. We have to be patient with ourselves and to keep on going. We have to make sure we stay focussed on seeking to become more effective, whilst not berating ourselves every time we think we've made a mistake. We need to keep on doing, and keep on reflecting on that doing, having faith in that reflective process. We need to be both determined and kind to ourselves and to keep on looking within when things don't go as planned, rather than blaming others. We need to hold it all lightly, be patient, learn together, and enjoy the process ...