The Power of Voice: Finding Your Personal Soundtrack by Leonard Sweet

Can one person change the course of history? More now than ever.

This may have been a question for historians in the past, but no more. Now more than ever, it is possible for individuals to have that kind of impact on the world. The only question is how, what, when, or where one person will change history. There is now no such thing as an unhistoric act. Every person decides whether their footprints will last beyond a lifetime or sink in the sands of time.

THE POWER OF ONE

Visionary leaders see possibilities. Called-forth leaders actually turn those possibilities into realities. Hebrew history scholar George Adam Smith makes this compelling analogy from the natural environment of the Middle East:

Great men are not the whole of life, but they are the condition of all the rest; if it were not for the big men, the little ones could scarcely live . . . In the East . . . where the desert touches a river-valley or oasis, the sand is in a continual state of drift from the wind . . . which is the real cause of the barrenness of such portions of the desert at least as abut upon the fertile land . . . But set down a rock on the sand, and see the difference its presence makes. After a few showers, to the leeward side of this some blades will spring up; if you have patience, you will see in time a garden. How has the boulder produced this? Simply by arresting the drift.2

Now this is exactly how great men benefit human life. A great man serves his generation, serves the whole race, by arresting the drift.

When you think of yourself as a leader, is this how you think? Do you imagine yourself changing the course of history? For too long the church has abdicated that role to others, but it is my conviction that this is the kind of leader we are called to become. Everyone has the responsibility and right to write their own history. Leaders have the responsibility and right to write our common future.

What makes possible this phenomenon whereby the more global the economy, the more pivotal and powerful the individual, and the more every person can be called forth to become a soundful leader? The answer lies in the energy of the split atom, the genetic secrets of the Book of Life, the invisible connectivity of the Web. When these are added to our means, the Power of One has never been greater. One of the greatest tragedies of history is that so many times the Power of One will not make history: the child dying of malaria in Zimbabwe; the teenager whose life is snuffed out by landmines or smart-bombs; the middle-aged corporate climber driving to work in a spacious Mercedes to live his life in an empty, cramped cubicle; the housewife who plays the part everyone wants her to play.

We can no longer hide behind the excuse that only the gifted or the privileged can change the course of history. We live in a time when we are not bound by position or geography or circumstance. If you hear the summons — if you know your cause — nothing can stand in the way.

A DISTINGUISHING PERSONAL SOUNDTRACK

In my high school orchestra I played the bassoon. But in the marching band I played the cymbals or the big bass drum. You couldn't march with a bassoon.

Ever notice how the drum set is the only instrument we all think we can play without lessons? If there's a drum, we're drawn to it. A cymbal attracts pinging. A clarinet or bassoon is foreboding and off-putting. A guitar is hard to pick up. But not a drum. We immediately begin rat-a-tat-tatting on the snare drum. Everybody thinks they're Ringo Starr or Phil Collins.

Each of us has our own personal rhythm. We all march to our own beat, a beat we play out on the drums and cymbals of our lives.

What is the beat, the cadence, the cycle in your life? What is the soundtrack that fits your personal rhythm and voice? To leverage the Power of One, every person needs to find their own Power of Voice — a personal soundtrack that rings true, with a voice-activated aura that can become larger than life. As we read in the Old Testament the account of Samuel's becoming a great leader, it is important to remember that his mentor's eyes were weak. Yet Eli knew a summons when he heard it, and he helped Samuel answer the call. Only then did Samuel find his voice.

Older treatises on leadership that highlighted "charisma" were on the right track but had the wrong concept. It's not the power of the "charisma" that makes the difference. It's the power of voice. It's the development of an inner ear trained and to trust and try the inner voice.3

My favorite 20th-century poet, Denise Levertov, says,

I believe fervently that the poet's first obligation is to his own voice — to find it and use it. And one's "voice" does not speak only in the often slip-shod imprecise vocabulary with which one buys the groceries but with all the resources of one's life whatever they may be, no matter whether they are "American" or of other cultures, so long as they are truly one's own and not faked.5

Everyone is voice-activated because music is everyone's first language.6 All art, including and especially the art of acoustic leadership, aspires toward the primal and primeval mode of music. In fact, William Benzon talks about making music ("musicking") as a social phenomenon that actually creates a physical coupling between otherwise separate neurosystems. He suggests using "music" as a verb.7 Some have even suggested that the Berlin Wall and the Cold War were musicked out of existence.

All leaders music themselves and others in voice-finding and voice-making. The art of musicking is finding your own voice and learning how to control the voice you project. Leaders are pied pipers. Humans follow the music. If the choice is between a tonedeaf visionary and a dullard with a voice, guess who wins? But while every leader's voice is unrepeatable, it is not irreplaceable. There were arguably only two leaders in US American history whose voice was irreplaceable: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

You don't lead. No one does. You only exercise leadership. Leadership is not a position or office or appointment. Leadership is a function of voice, a process of discourse and discovery.9 The worst thing you can do is to take a leadership position. The best thing you can do is to create a leadership experience through a distinguishing personal soundtrack.

The church has it all wrong. It is trying to train leaders. Instead, it ought to train everyone to listen and to develop their own soundtrack. Only when you find your voice will you harness the God-given power to truly lead.

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Leonard Sweet holds the E.Stanley Jones chair at Drew University. Founder and president of SpiritVenture Ministries, he also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Fox University and is the chief writer for preachingplus.com.

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Excerpted from Summoned to Lead by Leonard Sweet (Zondervan, 2005). Used by permission.

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NOTES
2. George Adam Smith, commenting on Isaiah 32:3, as quoted in his The Book of Isaiah, new and rev. ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Doran, 1928), 1:257-58.
3. Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas propose that every leader needs four essential qualities to stay a leader: "adaptive capacity" (ability to survive setbacks and learn from mistakes); common vision and shared meaning; integrity; and a distinctive voice. See Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas, Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders (Cambridge: Harvard Business School, 2003).
5. As quoted in Valerie Trueblood, "A Fellow Feeling," The American Poetry Review, 28 (November-December 1999), 31-32.
6. "The first sound that every human hears is the sound of the mother's heartbeat in the dark lake water of the womb. This is the reason for our ancient resonance with the drum as a musical instrument" (John O'Donohue, Anam, Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom [New York: Cliff Street Books, 70]).
7. Benzon gives credit to Christopher Small for coining the word. See William L. Benzon, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2001) 1.
9. Thanks to Kirk Hadaway for this insight.