How To Magically Motivate Your Staff With Music
Tim Harper
Leadership Principle: Use music to awaken emotion and engage people in their work. “At night I remember my music; I meditate in my heart, and my spirit ponders.” – Ps 77:6
In our company’s staff meetings, the mood lightens and chattiness increases when a background melody welcomes people into the conference room.
The biblical writers were keenly aware of the power of music on human emotions. Over a span of 1,000 years, a few authors, including David and Moses, penned 150 poetic works that became the book of Psalms, the hymnal of Israel.
Modern studies have found that a part of the brain called the insular cortex helps process music, translating to all kinds of positive responses.
At the University of Newcastle in England, researchers studied a 52-year-old radio announcer who lost his emotional response to music after a stroke. When they discovered the classical music he once adored no longer moved him, they traced his lack of reaction to a damaged left insula.
Albert Einstein said, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.” He considered Mozart a genius, praising his work as “so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.” He saw similarities between Mozart’s compositional symmetries and the laws he himself was discovering throughout the cosmos.
The “Mozart effect” theory says that listening to his music can enhance parts of the intellect. Whether this is true or not, Baroque music, typically clocked at 60 beats per minute, has shown positive results in task-focused people. It enhances concentration and focus by relaxing the heart rate and blood pressure, allowing a calmer mind to focus on the task at hand.
In 1940, the BBC was the first radio broadcaster to play music on the air. Its program, called “Music While You Work,” primarily targeted factory workers. The live bands on the show played medleys at a constant rhythm that kept the workers’ attention and maintained productivity.
Because music increases psychological arousal, quality of work increases, and on-the-job accidents decrease. Music also plays a role in morale, mental health, and mood.
Music is a simply way to tweak productivity and employee work satisfaction. Any church or business can benefit from treating its people to soothing sounds on the job.
George Eliot said, “There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
From: www.churchcentral.com Adapted from chapter 19 of Leading from the Lions’ Den: Leadership Principles from Every Book of the Bible (B&H) May 31, 2012
The above article, “How To Magically Motivate Your Staff With Music,” is written by Tim Harper. The article was retrieved from www.churchcentral.com, also found in the 19th chapter of Leading from the Lions, Den: Leadership Principles from Every Book of the Bible, on May 31, 2012.
The material is most likely copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study and research purposes.
