University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Leader's Playlist
Book

The Leader's Playlist

Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership and Your Life

Susan Drumm
River Grove Books, 2022
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Bold
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Consulting firm CEO Susan Drumm, who has worked with CEOs, billionaires, and government officials as an executive coach, offers an original perspective on leadership development. She explores the effects of childhood trauma on adults, and connects those traumas to the emotional triggers – most notably music – that drive leaders’ behaviors. Drumm links emotions to music and that makes her book title far more than just a metaphor. By showing ways to use music to deal with strong feelings and even with trauma, she offers leaders and everyone else an imaginative path to transformation.

Summary

Music creates or strengthens neural connections and pathways.

Music can change your mood, spur your energy, and reduce your stress. It can affect your state of mind and activities on many levels. For example, when you exercise to music, you feel less fatigue, require less oxygen, and experience more endurance and energy.

Biometric experiments in the workplace have tracked the way employees’ heart rates become linked to the playlists they are hearing. This research has tested dynamic soundtracks that change with a worker’s pulse. To increase productivity, the soundtrack’s beat slows when the worker is anxious, and increases when he or she is sluggish. 

Late-stage Alzheimer’s patients don’t react to most stimuli, but music is an exception. When an otherwise expressionless patient listens to music, it can generate up to 10 minutes of lucidity, including smiling and talkativeness. Babies are willing to listen to music for twice as long as they will listen to adult voices.

Changing your playlist from sad songs to empowering music generates a cognitive and emotional change that endures. For example, ...

About the Author

Susan Drumm, CEO of Meritage Leadership, is a Master Certified Leadership Coach serving major companies. She provides a free quiz at susandrumm.com and free resources at theleaderplaylist.com for those who want to research childhood trauma and its effects.

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