A short speaking reel in which Susan Drumm explains how childhood experiences create entrenched neural ‘playlists’ that limit leadership effectiveness, and argues that music—by increasing neuroplasticity—can help create new behavioral patterns. She references over 20 years of executive coaching, client types (CEOs, political figures, entrepreneurs), and her USA Today bestselling book, The Leader’s Playlist, as the basis for this approach.
Chapters
We all have a program or playlist that is running in the background and acts as a ceiling on our leadership effectiveness. Do you ever wonder why certain things trigger you or get under your skin? And when that happens, do you find yourself losing your cool? Why? Call this response your 8 lane highway to hell. And that is a neural pathway that's been grooved in so many times. All we need is a triggering event and we're speeding down that highway. It's as if we can't help ourselves. What happened to us in our childhood shows up in our leadership. After more than 20 years of coaching senior executives, I know what holds leaders back from being effective has to do with their childhood wounds. They sustain it colors how they collaborate and communicate with others. Some leaders are aware of this and some are not. And although we may want to change, we're inherently terrible at making the changes we know we need to make. And it's because we're not good at interrupting ourselves and we're not good at creating new behavioral patterns. There is an enormous body of research showing that music is one of the fastest tools that you can use to increase neuroplasticity or wiring new pathways in the brain. Music primes the landscape to be able to make change stick. It's a powerful access point to understand old patterns and create new ones. I've had the privilege of coaching billionaire CEOs, high profile political figures and incredible entrepreneurs set out to disrupt the marketplace. And each of them had their own patterns that got in the way of their leadership effectiveness. And for each of them, we were able to use the power of music to shift those patterns. I love the connection between music and the grooves in my brain and what it means for me today as I show up as a leader. It's an activity that applies to so many different kinds of challenges or situations that people might be facing, so it's immensely tailorable to organizations. The Leaders Playlist, which is a USA Today best selling book, teaches you how to unleash the power of music and neuroscience to transform your leadership in life. I would absolutely recommend Susan. She's excellent speaker, she is articulate and interesting, her stories are relevant and she's really good at interacting with the audience. It's probably hard to find anybody with more qualifications than her, but she's also experienced that she has life experiences that connect with her work and I think that's very positive when people can see that and feel that from a speaker. When you don't know what's happening, you have no power to access or change it by connecting the defining moments of your life to specific emotions you were feeling, interesting patterns emerge. And those patterns are your default playlist. They're the soundtrack of your behavior. Now, the question is, if you could create the soundtrack of your life, and I believe you can, what would you want that soundtrack to be? Experience this unique approach to create a new, more powerful playlist that will transform your leadership and your life.
