One of my true joys is translating great business concepts to the reality of being an artist. This blog is one of those creative endeavours that resulted in an empowering tool that can enrich the life of any musician. The aim of this article is to help you make better career decisions and connect more deeply with others by implementing the Golden Circle model by Simon Sinek. When utilised to its full potential, it will drastically transform your perspective on why you do what you do. Are you ready for some mind-expansion? Are you ready to answer the question: why do you do make music?
The Source
For an initial understanding of the ‘Golden Circle’ concept, please watch this 5-minute video from Simon Sinek. In it, he uses a company – Apple – as an example, but trust me, this concept works just as well for artists. Just think differently 😉
What Is The Golden Circle?
The Golden Circle is nothing more than a tool. A way to discover and live a more fulfilled life. A life with deeper connections with other people – be it fellow musicians, fans, press or music industry professionals. Using the Golden Circle will make you think about your identity on a more fundamental level. It explores your “why”, “how” and “what” and aligns them more strongly together. It visualizes your actions, approach and inner drives and results in a simple and clear overview of who you are. It also puts the right thing at the centre of everything you do as an artist: your purpose. After all, it is why you do what you do that matters most. In the words of Simon Sinek: “Most of us live our lives by accident. Fulfilment comes when we live our lives on purpose. Knowing your WHY provides a filter through which you can make decisions, every day, to act with purpose.“
Now that this tool is explained in more detail, it is time to focus on each of the three segments and relate them to being an artist. Counter to Sinek’s approach though, let’s start with your “what”, since that is the most straight-forward one.
What’s Your What?
All artists know what they are. They describe their “what”, usually by focussing on four different elements of their identity:
- What they are. “I am a singer and vocal teacher.” In other words, your career(s) and how you want to identify or label yourself.
- What they do. “I sing, compose and perform.” These are your main activities as an artist and, as a human being, your behaviour in general.
- What they create. “I create cinematic jazz, albums and teaching methods.” This is both your music description, the vehicles for your expression (songs, artwork), your connected products (album, EP, other merch) and services (workshops).
- What they accomplish. “I won the Thelonious Monk Competition and headlined North Sea Jazz Festival.” These are usually your most important career highlights, like important reviews, awards, venues played and so on.
What you are, do, create and accomplish. Sounds like your standard biography, doesn’t it? However, as a modern-day artist the conventional is your starting point. The magic, individual expression and deeper connections with others lie beyond its borders. Authentic creation and communication need more than tangible labels; it needs your humanity. So, let’s take Simon’s extended hand and dive one level deeper into his Golden Circle model.
What’s Your How?
All artists can describe their “what”, however, fewer artists are able to express their “how”. Your “how” is what makes you more you. It is what sets you apart in the mind of others and is what gives your art and identity colour.
There is a lot that shapes your “how”. In short, your “how” is the approach to what you do. The way you do what you do. Let’s highlight here three ways to gain more clarity on your “how”.
The first I want to highlight are your core values. The motives underneath your clearly visible actions (your what). See part I of a blog post on this subject here. When formulated as guiding principles it becomes clear that living in line with your “how” takes discipline and effort.In my experience with coaching artists and guiding them in their process of discovering their core values. Sometimes, one of your values can be the main-direction for your purpose – the one that seems to tie them all together. It’s often an easier process to start with finding your “how” then your “why”.
Secondly, your artistic vision. Formulating your artistic vision is a great exercise for gaining clarity on what you are about as an artist. The famous example in the arts for describing your artistic vision is of course the creation of an art manifesto.
Thirdly, seeing beyond the genre description and understanding your type of music as a cultural phenonema. Jazz is more than music. It is a way of life built on principles such as openness, improvisation, and freedom. Approach Jazz – or any other genre for that matter – instead as a culture with its own principles and traditions. Which ones are important to you? What is Jazz to you? That is your third “how”.
What’s Your Why?
After the tangible “what” and the artistic, personal and spiritual “how” we end at the heart of the Golden Circle: your Why. This is where the gold is to be found (forgive me the pun). Why? (Okay, enough now). In my experience, most people struggle to articulate their purpose. Ask an artist, why they create art, and often the answer stays with words like passion and feeling compelled, or sentences such as “I don’t know, I just have too.” However, being an artist is such a journey of self-discovery that it simply is impossible at some point to not answer this mother of all questions.
So, what is your why? Your why is your purpose. It is that thing that drives and inspires you. It represents your dreams and goals. It is your shining North Star that guides you when times are dark. And, as Simon Sinek highlights in his video and book Start With Why: your “why” is what will draw people closer to you. People that can help you and artists that would love to create new music with you. But most of all, it will pinpoint you towards the people you can help and serve through your art: your audience. As Miles Davis said: Jazz is social music. Your “why” puts the social in your music and career. It is the change you’re trying to make in society at large and the individual listener at Smalls (jazz joke).
So, perhaps it is about time you answer that most dreaded question of all:
Why do you make music? And maybe in addition: why should anybody care?
What’s Your Why Statement?
Turn your answer into a Why Statement in which you mention your contribution and how that contribution serves a higher purpose – the impact. You can use three criteria for that:
- No ‘what’;
- Simplicity;
- It serves a greater purpose than yourself.
For inspiration, below two great examples, and mine:
Simon Sinek: “To inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that, together, we can change our world.“
Spotify: “To inspire human creativity by enabling a million artists to live of their art and a billion people to enjoy it and to be inspired by it.”
Pieter Schoonderwoerd: “To empower artists to create more great music and built thriving careers so that they can enrich the world with their gifts.“
Need more information? Read this article with great tips on formulating your very own why-statement.
Together these three elements look like
If the Golden Circle would be a tree
Instead of it being a circle, let’s try to picture the Golden Circle as a large apple tree, to stay close to Sinek’s original Apple example. Let’s start at the bottom.
The roots of the apple tree represent your DNA (upbringing and genetics), your culture, religion, society and so forth. They are the macro-factors that shape all of us and were out of our control at birth and the early stages of life. The trunk of the tree is your “why” (your purpose) out from which your “how” and “what” grow. The branches are your “how” (values, artistic vision) and the apples are your “what” (careers, activities, creations, accomplishment). So when your actions are aligned with your “why” and “how”, your apple tree doesn’t grow bananas. It means that your “what” will feel natural to you and to others.
Is your tree bearing the right fruits?
Using The Golden Circle
Some fundamental thoughts on utilising the Golden Circle to its utmost potential:
- The more you live from your Why the more it becomes a habit.
- Your Why is meaningless when it only lives on paper. It is when practised in reality that it becomes alive; you have to live your why.
- Integrating the Golden Circle in your life & career will make you more YOU. Apply it to your everyday. Are you applying for a dream job? Does your CV start with why? And, does your album cover express your how’s?
- Use your Golden circle like a compass when making important decisions – does option A bring you closer to your Why?
- Choose environments (institutions, workplaces, colleagues, friends, relationships) that align with your Why & How. Ex. You are a rebel – your core values are an open mind, experiment, and unconventional. The phone rings and you get a job offer to teach at a highly conservative music school – would you take it? When analyzed through your How and Why: the impact of the environment will be that to perform at your best will be impossible… So, when you get offers that steer you away from your purpose, you can express that and communicate the environment you need: I say yes, but on the condition that: “I want to bring artistic experimentation into the curriculum.” If the necessary conditions (changes) are not possible, you can politely say no.
This is where the word credibility comes in and why artists worry about that. It takes years to built credibility (= trust) but a second to lose it. So, walk your talk. Integrate it into your daily life and test opportunities and important decisions again and again with your Golden Circle.
A Challenge For Deeper Connections
Challenge: if you feel inspired by this concept, commit to articulating your own Why, and please share it with others. Do you notice the difference?
Hopefully, this article inspires you to use the Golden Circle model and live according to it. Let it be a powerful tool for your career decisions, but also in how you describe yourself and your music. Be purposeful, personal and artistic.
Pieter Schoonderwoerd
Your Jazz Career
Three great resources on this topic are two books by Simon Sinek and the podcast:
- Start With Why
- Find Your Why
- Start With Why Podcast
In a previous blog post, I wrote passionately about how to create your very own art manifesto (your “how”). Read it here. Another tool for formulating your “how”, are two blog posts about discovering your core values. Read the first part here.
Find an empowering ebook on developing your artistic vision and writing a compelling artist biography here.
I’ve been coaching and educating jazz artists for years to achieve their creative and professional ambitions. If you are a high-performing artist and interested in transformative career coaching, you can read more about it here.
Be More Of You. Be Creative!