How Fascinating! – The inspiration of Benjamin Zander

Have you heard of Benjamin Zander? If you are a classical music buff, you might. He is the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, a teacher, a master cellist and an inspirational speaker.

In October of this year, Zander spoke at the PopTech Conference about the power of inspiration.

Zander opened his talk talking about “The world of the downward spiral” or as he puts it, “the world of ‘it can’t be done’”.  The other world, as he shows on the second flip chart, is the world of radiating possibility. The world of human potential.

I found Zander’s talk not only to be personally inspiring, but he has a real message to businesses. You can inspire your employees to be more and encourage them to accomplish more by leading them towards “embracing life’s possibilities rather than living in the downward spiral”.

He uses the story of the shoe salesmen who go to Africa in the 1900’s. One writes back, “Situation hopeless, they don’t wear shoes” while the other one writes “Glorious news! They don’t have any shoes yet!”

Given the choice, wouldn’t a business be better served by the employee who is always seeking the opportunity rather than the who bemoans the lack of it?

The video is about a half hour long and is one of the more inspirational videos on this topic I’ve seen. If you have the time, I highly recommend watching Benjamin Zander and his fascinating speech.

‘Chelle Parmele
Palo Alto Software

Tags: , , ,

You should follow us on twitter here

1 Comment »

show or hide Trackback by Clif's Notes on 2008-12-18 09:31:17

The Art of Possibility

Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. “Zander is a prophet of human potential…Watch as he helps unlock the boundless potential of a 15 year old cellist and …

 
Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
Your website
Your comment