Helping others is leadership. It means noticing what is needed in a group, family, company, or community. It means noticing when others need assistance or attention and trying to provide it. It means cultivating empathy, listening, and being open to other people’s experience, and looking for ways and opportunities to be of service. Leaders regularly ask: How might I help?

FOUR: Accompaniment

“After the illuminating gaze, accompaniment is the next step in getting to know a person.

Accompaniment is a necessary stage in getting to know a person precisely because it is

so gentle and measured. As D. H. Lawrence put it:

Whoever wants life must go softly towards life, softly as one would go towards a deer and fawn that are nestling under a tree. One gesture of violence, one violent assertion of self- will and life is gone But with quietness, with an abandon of self-assertion and a fullness

of the deep true self one can approach another human being, and know the delicate best

of life, the touch.

Accompaniment is a humble way of being a helpful part of another’s journey, as they go about making their own kind of music.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.