The story is told of a mother who wished to encourage her young daughter’s interest in the piano by taking her to a local concert featuring a prominent concert pianist. As they arrived in the foyer of the venue, the mother bumped into an old friend and the two stopped to chat.

The little girl grew bored waiting for the conversation to end and wandered off, unnoticed by her mother. When the mother became aware of her daughter’s absence, she frantically started looking for her child. Staff at the venue were notified and an announcement was made asking the audience to be alert for the little girl. 

Everyone was already seated in the theatre, and the curtains were then duly opened in anticipation of the guest pianist’s appearance. And there, sitting at the grand piano, centre stage, was the little girl, concentrating on the keys, quietly picking out the tune of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. 

At first, members of the audience were amused by the child’s innocence in making herself comfortable at a piano intended for the guest artist. Their amusement soon turned to intrigue as the guest pianist appeared on stage and walked across to the little girl, gently saying to her, “That’s lovely. Please carry on playing.” 

The pianist sat down beside her and whispered something into her ear. He then began quietly to play a bass accompaniment to the tune she was playing, and then a few bars later reached around the little girl to add more to the tune with his right hand.

At the end of the completely unrehearsed performance, the audience applauded loudly as the concert pianist took the little girl to be reunited with a mother who didn’t know whether she should be embarrassed or relieved to get her daughter back!

There was hardly a dry eye in the auditorium as the audience responded to the humility, vision and flexibility in the face of an unexpected disruption of a performer who could have thrown a tantrum at being upstaged, but who chose rather to demonstrate qualities that were not necessarily intended to be a part of his performance.

Question … If you were that pianist, booked to demonstrate your musical prowess to an audience of paying patrons, how would you have reacted to the little girl on “your” stage? Would you have been irritated that she had dared to steal the limelight from you, or would you have seen the opportunity to take her humble talent and use yours to create something special and unforgettable?

Judging from the performance of leaders in these times, my guess is that most would have huffed and puffed at being upstaged by a child.

A disturbing trend in the workplace is the increasing number of people who chase after leadership positions as a means to secure for themselves position, power and possessions. Many of them forget what leadership is really all about or do not fully understand what it is in the first place.

They greedily race to secure a leadership position, not to work with others to achieve something long lasting for the good of their company, community and country, but to secure as much for themselves as they can. When they inevitably fail or are exposed, they then have the cheek to demand huge payouts to go away quietly. And, sadly, some companies fall for this.  

The companies – and the staff – they were supposedly “leading”, as well as the country, are the ones who suffer.   

What a difference a humble attitude makes in a competent leader who is committed to motivating and inspiring their people to rise to greater heights.

There were a lot of qualities at play in that pianist for him to do what he did. The question you need to ask yourself is: when you encounter people who are not as good as you at what you do, do you find ways to show them up and make yourself look good or do you think about what you could do to make them “play the piano better”?

Maybe if you got alongside them you would create magic …

Being a competent leader today is not simply about possessing certain leadership skills. It’s also about developing and demonstrating certain qualities. If you’d like to find out more about how to develop such qualities, email me!

Alan Hosking is the Publisher of HR Future magazine, www.hrfuture.net and @HRFuturemag. He is an internationally recognised authority on leadership competencies for the future and teaches experienced and younger business leaders how to lead with empathy, compassion, integrity, purpose and agility. In 2018, he was named by US-based web site Disruptordaily.com as one of the “Top 25 Future of Work Influencers to Follow on Twitter“. In 2020, he was named one of the “Top 200 Global Power Thought Leaders to watch in 2021” by peopleHum in India. In 2022, he has been named on the Power List of the “Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership in 2022” by LeaderHum.