Audience: An Important Element for Success
Article by Herb Rubenstein
Introduction
When the brilliant classical pianist Steve Lubin plays Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, or Bach, he says the actual composer of the piece he is playing is listening to him. He means it.
What he really means, of course, is that he is playing for them and they are in his audience. He is playing to please the composer, to pay respects to the composer and the work the composer created, and honor the work and the composer. This is as true for Steve Lubin if he is playing alone, which some might erroneously call “practicing,” if he is playing to help him prepare for a concert, or when he is giving a performance for a large audience. Mr. Lubin and I were fellow faculty members-in-residence at Rancho La Puerto, and I would be the lone person other than him in the room in the mornings listening to him as he prepared for his concerts in the evenings. He played, it seemed to me, with the exact same passion, attention, and attention to quality those mornings just as he did when everyone at Rancho La Puerto would show up for his concerts and the discussions he would lead in the evenings.
Steve Lubin told me about the research he did about the occasion when Beethoven was performing, and Mozart was in the audience. Both Beethoven and Mozart knew that Beethoven benefitted greatly from the work of Mozart. He says it must have been amazing for Beethoven to have Mozart in the audience.
Steve talked with me about the burden Beethoven must have felt as he defined the “audience” probably from most every musician who lived in his time, or before or after him. Who was Beethoven’s audience? It was not merely the important people in the room, the other composers who played his music. Beethoven had a goal. His goal was that the music he created would be so far superior to all of the music that had ever been created that it would be listened to, appreciated, and influence the future of music for one thousand years. That is an amazing concept of the simple term “audience.” Some athletes don’t just try to succeed and be better than their contemporaries and all of those who preceded them, they seek to create records that will last for years, even decades, but no one today thinks in terms of setting records that can last for centuries the way Beethoven did.
For Beethoven, the concept of the “audience” shaped his music to be not only the “best it could be,” but “be the best for centuries.” Such an expansive definition of audience created a huge burden for Beethoven himself, but it informed and helped improve Steve Lubin’s performances and can help improve how you lead your life and how you perform. The term “audience,” is not written or explored enough in the leadership literature. Even in my own books on leadership, I barely mention this important concept. This article will show that one’s definition of one’s audience is foundational in how one sets goals, defines success, and can be a huge motivational factor in how all humans, and especially how leaders perform.
Your Audience
In our everyday life, we do not often ask the question “who is our audience?” it could be our boss, our teacher, our family, those to whom we give a speech or presentation, those we expect or hope reads what we write, or could be a more general “audience.” Some believe that the “audience” can create pressure, but this is a complete misunderstanding of the source of “pressure,” or “nervousness” when we perform in front of others. Pressure or nervousness comes from our lack of confidence that one can produce the desired result or can “impress” the audience. However, the goal of any action must be solely to do the best that one can, and not “impress the audience.” When Nadia Comaneci performed the first “10” in the history of women’s gymnastics at the Olympics, everyone in the audience was “impressed.” However, after twenty years of silence about her performance, she said “she had done it better in practice.” For Steve Lubin, he puts the most critical observers, the most knowledgeable observers, the actual composers in his audience when he plays their works, not to impress them with his ability, but rather to please them with what they hear when he plays their work.
For many of us, just say the word “recital,” or “bar or bat mitzvah,” or “presentation” or “speech” or “showing,” or “audition,” or “opening night,” and you strike fear, doubt, questioning, and nervousness in the very heart, soul and body of the “performer.” However, using a proper concept of the term “audience,” one can transform this fear, doubt, questioning, and nervousness into self-empowerment, self-appreciation, self-confidence, and guarantee yourself a very worthwhile experience in front of any audience.
Today, with the internet one can have a larger audience than one could ever have had without the internet. Steve Lubin invites the great composers to his audience when he plays their works because his audience inspires him, creates meaning for his playing every note with all that he has, early in the morning when he is the only one in the room, and in the evenings when he fills the concert halls.
For Steve Lubin, like Arthur Rubinstein, the great pianist, or Bill Melhorn, the great golfer of the early 20th century, there is no such thing as practice. There is warm up. There is preparation. But, when Steve or Arthur play the piano, they have in their mind their “audience,” and they play for that audience with zest and quality. For Bill Melhorn, the golfer, his audience even when he was alone on the practice tee, were his competitors, and he was imagining a shot he would likely face in the golf tournament, and turn his attention not to the open practice area of the driving range, but the trees, bunkers, lakes, wind, uneven lie, cold temperature he expected later that day, the following day, or the following week when he would be called upon to execute that shot well in order to win the tournament. Melhorn’s created in the 1920’s a sense of audience that would last the test of time and today, he would have added the tens of thousands of people who attend golf tournaments to see the best play the game of golf on tough golf courses.
The purpose of Melhorn’s concept of “audience” was exactly the same as the purpose of Lubin’s or Rubenstein’s concept of audience. The audience is always present, at each keystroke, for each golf shot or putt, and the audience confirms that there is a lot at stake to reward excellent performance and to give the performer a chance to learn how to improve if the performance does not meet their own standards or the audience’s standards.
It is a myth that numerical size of an audience dictates the importance of the performance. For the musician, for the athlete, for the public speaker, it is not the audience that determines the importance of the performance. It is the performer.
When you know your purpose for the presentation or the performance, when you have set your own high standard of excellence, when you have prepared thoroughly for the event, regardless of the size of the audience or the size of the prize for success, your mind will be clear and focused on what you need to do to perform well.
So, Steve Lubin’s composer in the audience is not a distraction. It is a source of inspiration, a true guiding force, , just as Melhorn’s precise visioning of the potential demanding golf shot he might get to attempt to win the golf tournament. I have always said the hardest speech to give is not to 5,000 people, but to six people since they will listen to every word, be able to ask the tough question, show you their displeasure at any moment, and can demonstrate as you speak their disagreement. The good news is that when one gives a presentation or speech to only six other people, you have the real opportunity to change their lives, to improve their lives with such a presentation or speech.
Connecting With Your Audience(s)
If your goal is to connect with your audience, there are four key steps. First, realize that for each action, performance, speech, golf shot, etc., there is always more than one audience. There are audiences and you are always a member, a very important member of your audience. Second, you must know your audiences, their hopes, their expectations, and why they have become part of your audience. I once heard a young girl, a pianist, say she hated recitals because her audience wanted her to mess up, and she actually heard them laugh at her while she was playing. I have been in the audience for this girl’s recitals and the audience always wanted her to succeed and always clapped for her, never laughed at her. How you view or experience your audience, even the tough ones, is an essential element in how you perform. All performers, public speakers, athletes are in conversation with those who helped them prepare, their teammates, coaches, etc. while they are performing, listening to their guidance given to them during their preparation. Yet, this “conversation,” is not a distraction because it takes place not as noise, but as supportive guidance in your subconscious. Because when you perform at the highest level, you relate to who you perceive the audience to be.
Third, as you connect with your audience, it will naturally grow when you perform well, meaning consistent with your high standards. Some say the past does not exist until it shows up in an event. As you perform you are bringing both the past and the present into reality for others to appreciate, learn from, and your presentation or performance is a gift from you to them, and to yourself. Generally, we do not experience fear, nervousness or pressure when we are giving one a gift.
Fourth, and finally, when the stakes are high for a performance, those stakes represent your upside, your potential for success, not your downside or potential to “mess up.” We want to play for higher stakes. It should please and empower the performer or presenter as much as it pleases and empowers the audience.
Conclusion
What Steve Lubin did was make his audience part of his team. The composer of a piece of music to a pianist is a key part of the pianist’s team and Steve marshalled all of the real and imagined energy and support from this team member, the long dead and famous composer, to be a key supportive element propelling him to playing the composer’s work very well and being a success in the eyes of himself and his audience.
I hope this article expands how you view, and how you experience “your audience.” There will always be someone who is in your audience. For all of us, it is one’s self. For many of us it is God. And, the more you know your audience(s), the better you can relate to them and the better you can relate to them, the more supportive they can be helping to propel you towards success.
While preparation is the key to any successful performance or presentation, knowing how your audience(s) benefit you, and knowing how your performance or presentation will benefit your audience are essential elements of transforming your audiences into a source of empowerment rather than a source of performance anxiety. Make sure to include, at least in your imagination, your audience(s) when you prepare for anything in life. When your audience(s) do show up for you, you will be prepared for both the challenge of performing/presenting well, and be prepared for this audience in your presence, and the larger audience(s) that will follow.