Chick Corea’s Cool Tips For Bands & Business

Chick Corea is a legendary musician/keyboardist/composer having a career that spans over 60 years whose music is now accepted as Standards in the Jazz community! He was schooled by Miles Davis and essentially helped to create an entire genre of music. Here is a sampling of some of his tips on playing music. Amazing how they instantly apply to business. For the complete list click here:

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“Make your sound blend. Listen to your sound and adjust it to the rest of the band and the room.”

Immediately he talks about listening to the other people in the room and working with them to help crystalize other people s ideas. It’s exactly this collaboration that makes teams reach incredible results.

“Guide your choice of what to play by what you like–not by what someone else will think.”

Not surprising he talks of confidence. Having confidence to initiate new ideas. Note that confidence is a 2 way street. In order to have confidence in saying your idea you have to have confidence and trust in your group that they will listen and not ridicule as everyone has have to have bad ideas in order to come up with good ideas. Almost like a sales numbers game. Sound familiar?

“Play to make the other musicians sound good. Play things that will make the overall music sound good.”

Feed the idea. Add your influence upon it but make sure that your influence is guiding the idea towards the overall goal and strategy. Constantly ask your team, “Is what we are currently working on getting us closer to our overall strategic goals and objectives?”

UPTEMPO! is a one of a kind learning experience where the participants learn communication, flexible thinking, creativity, shared leadership, empathy and teamwork while watching, listening and most importantly interacting with the UPTEMPO! band. After taking part in various learning exercises, the participants break into groups where they collaborate along with one of our musical processionals and write their own song apropos to the meeting. The groups then perform their songs with the UPTEMPO! band.