A Breath Between Notes

Explore what musical improvisation can teach us about collaborating in business, within sights from multi-instrumentalist Anna Tréa.

People are often blown away by the way jazz musicians improvise, playing incredible tunes without rehearsing. Talent is a factor, but not the only one. Great improvisation requires a set of skills that can be honed by anyone, and used to thrive in your professional life.

I first heard Anna Tréa’ s music in a smoky bar in Barcelona. Wandering through the crowd, I was struck by an unusual rhythm, soulful and jazzy, then the rich sound of an alto voice. I followed the melody to where Anna was perched on a stool in a spotlit corner, strumming a guitar, a man on a keyboard beside her. Between songs, they chatted casually with one another, and explained to the audience that they’d just met. There was no discussion about what to play next. One of them would simply start to pluck a tune, and the other picked up the cue without a moment’s hesitation, adding a harmony or simply joining in. Their chemistry felt electric. I had the sense that I was eavesdropping on an intimate conversation.

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It was the kind of intense, yet effortless, collaboration that I’d also experienced playing music. Before I became a business leader, I was the front man of a punk band based in Konstanz, Germany, near the Swiss border, known for its eponymous Lake Constance. A picturesque city with a preserved medieval section, Konstanz was beautiful but conservative, a strange place to play punk. With few hip venues to choose from, my tiny apartment became the meeting place for the city’s aspiring musicians. We often stayed up until dawn, composing songs, experimenting with new techniques, riffing on each other’s ideas. I remember crawling into bed as the sun came up, still buzzing with creative exhilaration.

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Then life changed. I left Germany for Silicon Valley, and the guitarists and drummers I once spent my evenings with were replaced by tech-nerds and aspiring CEOs. As they say, the artist cannot thrive in isolation, and, within a few months, the punk chapter of my life had come to an end. But I never stopped feeling like a musician. In meetings, I caught myself listening to my colleagues with the same curiosity and sensitivity that I’d brought to those nocturnal jam sessions of my youth. Funnily, even my posture was the same as it had been listening to my friends riff on their guitars; I’d lean towards the speaker with my palms facing upwards, a stance that made me feel attuned, alert, and receptive. I never really attributed much significance to these habits—they seemed mostly like personal quirks—until Anna told me her own story about becoming a musician and how she found her voice as an artist.

Growing up in São Paulo, Brazil, Anna’s cultural education began early. As a child, she had access to a variety of free classes at the local community center, part of a government initiative that allowed her to sample different mediums and see what inspired her. She studied poetry, singing, acoustic guitar, and dance of all kinds, including hip hop, contemporary, breakdance, and Afro-Brazilian. She loved discovering that she could express herself through sound and movement.

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In her early-20s, Anna formed a trio with two friends—a bassist and a drummer—and they started to play gigs at a beach bar outside the city. The bar opened directly onto the street, and their music was sometimes completely drowned out by revving engines and honking horns. Some performers would have been frustrated by this, but Anna wasn’t. Noise was interesting to her, whether organic or man-made, intentional or consequential. Rather than see these simultaneous sounds as an impediment to what they were playing, the trio experimented with incorporating them into their music.

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This spontaneity became a signature part of the trio’s performances, evolving into body percussion that sometimes took her and her bandmates into the audience, using tables and chairs as their props. She recounts the time her drummer used his stick to hit a glass jar holding a candle, which created a beautiful, tremulous sound, until the glass shattered. “It was a crazy moment,” she explains with a smile. “But we just kept playing. It became part of the act.”

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Improvisation and physicality became vital aspects of Anna’s music. When we chatted about it that night in Barcelona after her set, she told me that neither composing nor performing are rational processes for her. “I take all the information into my body and let it lead me.” A huge part of that is ensuring that she’s collaborating with musicians that she has a natural connection with, a true “artistic affinity,” as she calls it. “It means that I just listen with my heart open and trust whatever impulse I receive. There is so much intuition to it all.” I knew exactly what she meant. Except I wasn’t using these techniques for music any longer; I was using them to thrive in business.

I’m lucky to run a company with my old friend Tim, someone I trust and know so well that I can often guess what he’s going to say before he says it. In tricky situations, a client presentation that’s going off the rails or when there’s bad news to share with our team, I have noticed how much our ability to read each other saves us. With Tim at my side, a presentation can become a dynamic, multi phonic duet.

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The story that leaps to mind as an example is a proposal we put together for a legacy brand in the early days of our business. The brand was different from those we normally work with; it was old-school and conservative, with a hundred-year history as a leader in their niche market and a customer-base that valued continuity and tradition. We made the classic rookie mistake of giving them what we thought they wanted—a proposal in line with their usual content-–rather than considering why they’d hire us. As a progressive start-up with a reputation for edgy work, we should have inferred they hadn’t come to us for their usual fare.

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Midway through the pitch, I knew the idea wasn’t landing. I met Tim’s gaze and could tell he knew it, too. So I pulled a U-turn. “We actually have a whacky second idea up our sleeve,” I said. When the panel’s eyes lit up, I started to talk without any real sense of where I was going, saying generic things about finding what was mysterious, enigmatic, and ineffable about their brand. I was moments away from spinning out of control, when Tim jumped in with a brilliant tactic. He asked the executives to write their “secret fantasy” for the brand on a slip of paper and, when we read them aloud, it sparked an incredible conversation about where the campaign could go.

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It was a combination of skills that let us land the contract. We’d prepared the wrong presentation, but through listening, reading the room, responding to each other, and remaining open, alert, and ready, we steered the pitch in a better direction and effectively saved the deal. There’s a tendency to think of business as just brain-work—logic, strategy, analysis, insight, critical thinking and staid experience. But this contract reminded me how physical and somatic my work can be, too—the subtle ways that it demands many of the soft skills, instincts, and creativity that were vital when I was jamming and composing with my friends.

Now that I’m aware of this throughway between my past life as a musician and my current one as a business leader, I make a concerted effort to keep that channel open. In meetings, negotiations, and presentations, I remind myself not to anticipate what’s next, but to stay present in the moment, listening attentively, attuned to everything that’s going on in the room.

For me, it’s critical that I get out of my head and ground myself emotionally and physically. I’ve discovered that biofeedback practices and somatic awareness improve my ability to adapt, listen, and pivot quickly when I need to. The more I tune into my body’s signals, the easier it becomes to stay present, focused, and effective at work, to hear the music and chime in with my own melody. Here are some techniques that help:

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1. Fight, flight … or breathe? - When caught off guard with new information, we can experience a surge of nervous energy. Our heart rate increases and many people (myself included) feel tightening across their chest. To handle this information, absorb it, and pivot in a new direction, you need to ground yourself. I make sure that I’m breathing; I take deep, focused diagrammatic breaths that calm my nervous system and put me at ease. Then I’m able to ask the right questions and stay curious. With two feet planted firmly on the ground, I can be optimistic and proactive about the sudden change in plans.

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2. Listen actively to understand, not just respond - Active listening requires you to be fully present, which can feel like a subtle but powerful shift in energy. When you’re really taking in what someone else is saying, your mind is calm. You may notice a softening of your posture as you focus on truly hearing them, with no tension in your jaw, neck, or shoulders. This stance not only relaxes you, but it also slows you down. In my business life, I’ve noticed how much more trust, goodwill, and confidence is engendered when I’m listening actively. I think it deepens my emotional intelligence, making it easier to respond thoughtfully and supportively and to connect on a deeper level.

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3. Embrace the accident - Just as a jazz musician improvises around an offbeat note, business leaders who embrace the "accidents" and mistakes that happen along the way often find new, unexpected solutions. These moments are opportunities to adapt, learn, and explore creative paths you might not have considered before. By shifting your perspective and welcoming the unexpected, you cultivate a mindset that allows you to remain open, flexible, and innovative, key traits of successful leaders. Mistakes aren’t failures; they’re part of the beautiful improvisation that leads to unanticipated breakthroughs.