Harvey Seifter and Fred Mandell - Arts Based Experiential Learning Part 1

Harvey Seifter & Fred Mandell are the founders of Creating Futures That Work, a company that uses teaching creative arts to people as a way to foster and develop the ability to innovate and collaborate with others.

Harvey and Fred share each of their unique leadership journeys and lessons and insights they gleaned along the way. Harvey speaks to his experience working with Orpheus, an orchestra made famous because it’s a conductor-less orchestra. Fred shares his experience working in the Financial Services industry and how it has shifted to focus more on the consumer. They both discuss the parallels they observed between the creative process and how it impacts organizations and organizational decisions. Finally, they provide advice to executives on how to implement successful conflict resolution strategies across their organizations.

Key Takeaways:

01:38 – Today, we have a two-part episode where I’m speaking with Harvey Seifter & Fred Mandell, founders of Creating Futures That Work

08:45 – Seminal moments from Harvey and Fred’s leadership journey

12:07 – Ensuring missions and shared visions get communicated to the team

16:53 – Insights gleaned from working in the conductor-less orchestra, Orpheus

24:03 – Fred speaks to how the Financial Services industry has evolved throughout the years

28:36 – Advice Harvey and Fred would give to executives on implementing conflict resolution strategies

Tweetable Quotes:

“For me, theatre was an incredible laboratory into all kinds of things, but especially into leadership. The whole process of bringing a bunch of people together and taking a script and exploring it and understanding the motivations of different characters, that was a constant set of opportunities and challenges and learning experiences.” (09:03) (Harvey)

“What I tried to do at the beginning of my relationship with the team, whether it was a newly formed team or an intact existing team, was share with them my aspiration that the work that we do together as a team would be the very best work experience they’d ever had.” (10:44) (Fred)

“One of the hardest things is overcoming something that we’ve tended to culturally learn as a business society. And that is that you actually are helping people when you give them clear and direct feedback. And the best way to give feedback is to answer questions honestly, sincerely, directly and as helpfully as you can.” (20:03) (Harvey)

“There has been, I believe, a positive shift in the relationship between the Financial Services providers and the consumer. The consumer today is much more empowered.” (25:25) (Fred)

“Every time that you present an idea, you have tremendous opportunities to learn more and ultimately to make it better. And that’s where feedback comes in.” (30:51) (Harvey)

“It is harder to be a leader today than at any other time that I’ve been around. And that’s because the general context within which leaders operate has become so disruptive, uncertain and complex. And the impulse in that environment too often, that I’ve been able to observe, is that leaders take the ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach. In other words they jump to action. One of the things I would encourage would be not to act right away but to reflect.” (31:44) (Fred)

Links Mentioned:

Dino’s Email – dino@al4ep.com

Dino’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/al4edp/

Dino’s Twitter – https://twitter.com/al4edp

Authentic Leadership for Everyday People Website – https://authenticleadershipforeverydaypeople.com/

Authentic Leadership for Everyday People Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/al4ep/?ref=page_internal

Creating Futures That Work Website – https://futuresthatwork.com/

Harvey’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hseifter/

Fred’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredmandell/

Harvey’s Email – hseifter@futuresthatwork.com

Fred’s Email – fred.mandell@futuresthatwork.com