Do you know why you were hired?
I've heard some musicians share that when they win a job, they immediately feel the need to show that they've earned that job, that they are worthy of it. They feel like they can't just show up to their first rehearsal as the person who just performed a successful audition. They feel like they must suddenly perform significantly better, even though they clearly just won.
I can relate to this, too: when I receive a call for a gig, I am excited for a few seconds, and then I shift my focus to what can I do to not disappoint them, to prove that they made the right decision to hire me.
It's almost like I'm afraid I'd lose the job even before I've begun, which is ridiculous when I say it out loud. It makes no sense that anyone would hire someone and immediately be on hyper-alert looking for reasons to fire them.
Does this resonate, even a little bit? Why do we feel and think this way? I'm sure there are many reasons.
One that jumps out right away is: We don't know why we got hired.
It sounds too obvious and simple, but think of a successful audition or interview. How certain are you that you know exactly why they hired you? Would you bet on it?
Auditions can be mysterious. You can feel like you played really well in one audition and didn't advance, while feeling like you played OK in another audition and won the job. And we often don't get feedback - at least not something that's specific enough to be helpful.
When we don't have information, our brains fill in the gaps and start to make up stories. Some of that may be accurate. We also might just be making up reasons. We just don't know.
Not knowing is a dangerous place to be. We don't have any concrete, affirming reasons to use as our solid foundation of belief.
It becomes easy to doubt, wonder, and make assumptions. Maybe you played with technical clarity in a successful audition, which makes you assume that you were hired because of your technical chops. And in reality, maybe they really liked your sound and thought it would work perfectly with the rest of the section. To them, that was what made them hire you, and you couldn't have known unless they told you.
We can be rescued from our running imagination if we were simply told exactly why we were hired.
Leaders can remember to do this for new hires. This article advises us to reinforce the reasons we hired them. It says, "Don't just assume that reason is understood. Tell your new employee why you hired her -- not the role she will fill, but why she is such a great fit for that role. Praise her skills and experience, and praise her attitude and work ethic."
In addition to putting our minds at ease, this would give us points of reference that we can use to more accurately self-assess going forward.
(And because we need to be reminded we belong and are valued often, reinforcing the reasons we hired existing musicians is important as well.)
I invite you to think about a musician you most recently hired. Why did you hire them? What qualities did you find would be assets? Why? Find all the reasons why you hired them. Tell them. And reinforce them, again and again. We all need to be reminded.
Or if you were just hired, consider if you've made any assumptions about why you were hired. Would you bet on it? How could you find out for sure?
It helps us all to challenge our assumptions from time to time.
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