Today, artificial intelligence is everywhere & in all parts of our lives. We are being bombarded every day by the new shiny objects that AI is creating. There is one area that is still a very human endeavor, something that all of us must have, an extra ear! World-class violinists Itzhak Perlman and Renée Fleming, who have performed at prestigious venues such as the White House, the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and the Super Bowl, both use an extra ear to enhance the sound of their playing for audiences. So how do you get an extra ear & why is it important?
Extra Ear
A description of what Perlman means by an “extra ear” appears in the essay “Personal Best” by the writer and surgeon Atul Gawande. His essay "Personal Best" delves into the description of what Perlman means by an "extra ear" and how it can help stop you from plateauing at your job or hobby or anything else, actually.
Perlman is one of several elite musicians Gawande interviewed. Another is the opera soprano, Renée Fleming. Both swear by extra ears, which are simply people you trust to give you candid, constructive feedback on how you sound.
“The significant challenge in performing is listening to yourself,” Perlman told Gawande. “Your physicality, the sensation that you have as you play the violin, interferes with your accuracy of listening.”Perlman therefore considers himself lucky to receive constant coaching from his wife, Toby, a concert-level violinist he met at music camp more than 50 years ago. Toby has been Perlman’s extra ear ever since. “She’d tell him if a passage was too fast or too tight or too mechanical,” Gawande explains. “Her ear provides external judgment.”
Fleming uses a slightly different term to describe her extra ears—she calls them her “outside ears.” But she finds them no less essential. Her reason? “What we hear as we are singing is not what the audience hears.” The extra ear fills that divide.
The above thoughts flashed by in my mind as I worked with my last client. He had a choice to make: leave a comfortable job and take on a risky CEO position with a much smaller company. Often as coaches, one role we play is of being that “extra ear”, of asking the right questions. Apart from what we do in our sessions, for us as leaders, a lot of questions come to us from our context, doing things we love. For me, the context that has been richest in giving me the correct questions to ask myself has been talking to people I respect, running for an hour in the morning, trekking in the Himalayas, cycling in a forested path, playing with my dog,walking anywhere & reading accompanied by great music. All the above give me my “extra ears”.
Here is one such ramble in the outdoors & the important questions that it raised for me & how it became my “Extra Ear”:
Home is in the moment
We were at 16000 feet altitude; the air was thin, and I was struggling with my breath as we trudged uphill. Every meter was a struggle, and every step was laborious and heavy. The body was creaking, and the mind was fearful of the narrow path and the altitude. Heights scare me; I am not a natural for terrain like this. There are often moments like these when I am outdoors in the Himalayas and wonder why I undertake this torture.
But the raw beauty of the mountains kept me going. The ever-changing Himalayan peaks mesmerized me as the angle of the sun dipped, taking me to another world. It was cold; the air was clear, and the expanse of mountains in the background looked like the painting of a master! Time had slowed down, and sometimes the beauty of the mountains took me into a deep meditation. Having left the hurry and stress of my urban existence behind, despite my exhaustion, it felt like nirvana.
And then suddenly, out of the blue, we heard a loud crack. It felt like a giant had taken a large log of wood and snapped it across his thigh. Crackle,thump, ka twang. the sound was fun and interesting at first, but in a second, our trek leader shouted, “Avalanche bach ke rahna, find a large rock and go behind it.”
The next 5 minutes were like a movie being fast-forwarded: stones hurtling down, limbs flaying to get traction on the slope, finding a giant rock, and throwing myself behind it. In a bizarre few minutes, the heady beauty of the mountains had turned to torment us and show us how puny we were.
And yet at that moment, as the rock flow subsided, I realized that I had survived and that I could find my breath again. That giant rock became my home for the next hour. And I realized that home is where you feel safe “in the moment.”
Even today, when I go through a crisis of any sort, I instinctively look for a big rock to go behind, shelter in, and make my home. The rock is often a person or persons, someone who shelters me from the avalanche of life. I realize that I am living moment by moment in new homes that make me whole again.
What’s your extra ear telling you?
Thank you for sharing this Ajay, this is awesome and found it so very valuable
I always needed help with the word Home. Your writing again raised the same question!
What is Home? Or the question needs a change! Who is home? Why not- where is home?
To me, home is where I read and make coffee. Home is also a conversation where I am me and safe. Is it also a moment when I am centred?
Thank you for writing this Ajay.