Navigating the Long and Winding Road: Inspiring Leadership Insights from Paul McCartney’s Life

Paul McCartney recently celebrated his 81^st birthday. He is not showing any sign of slowing down. His recent album release was on 11 March 2021, McCartney III Imagined, an album of “reinterpretations, remixes, and covers.” As a huge fan of his from his time with The Beatles, I marvel at his staying power. He is as relevant today as he was in the 60s as a music leader. His life journey has some gems of lessons for leaders who want to make a lasting impact.

McCartney is mostly a self-taught musician, influenced by his jazz-playing father and American musicians, such as Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly. His music career as one of The Beatles is well documented. While he started out as the bassist for the group, he also played keyboards, guitars, and drums, sang lead in close to half the songs, and was the co-creator of the bulk of the Beatle’s songs with John Lennon. After the dissolution of The Beatles in the late 60s, McCartney started his solo career and formed the band Wings, one of the most successful bands of the 70s. McCartney continued career as a solo artist in 1980. Since then, he has released many chart-topping songs and collaborated with artists such as Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, and Rihanna.

While there are so many lessons to be learned from McCartney’s exemplary legacy, here are five that every leader can take to heart.

Collaboration

John, Paul, George, and Ringo came together, bringing each of their strengths (and weaknesses) to create music magic with The Beatles. As youngsters with a burning desire to succeed in the pop music arena, they succeed beyond their wildest dreams to be hugely successful. While all four members were collaborative, McCartney is credited with keeping them together during their troubled times to continue co-creating.

The collaboration between songwriters Lennon and McCartney produced some of the most legendary songs. Post Beatles, the formation of Wings and their work produced many successful songs such as “Band on the Run” and “Live and Let Die.” In the 80s, his collaboration with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Costello produced some memorable hits.

McCartney’s humility has to do a lot with his success in collaboration. In an interview, a reporter asked The Beatles, “How highly would you rate your own music?” Paul answered, “We’re adequate but not very good.” Humility, versatility, growth mindset, optimism, energy, and ability to empower his collaborators are some of the reasons why he has been so successful.

• Tips for Leaders:

In today’s complex world, none of us have all the answers. Great leaders of today value collaboration to solve thorny problems. They are humble and don’t hesitate to accept that they don’t have all the answers and ask for help. They bring optimism and enthusiasm to their teams and model the behavior they expect. They empower their teams to get things done.

Combine humility with vulnerability—asking for help— to become a great collaborator.

Innovation

The Beatles came together as four individuals and created magic with their music. While each of them was outstanding in his own way, at different points in time, McCartney showed he was an innovator throughout their journey.

In the entry “Recording Practices of the Beatles,” Wikipedia says, “The studio practices of the Beatles evolved during the 1960s and, in some cases, influenced the way popular music was recorded. Some of the effects they employed were sampling, artificial double tracking (ADT), and the elaborate use of multitrack recording machines. They also used classical instruments in their recordings and guitar feedback. The group’s attitude towards the recording process was summed up by Paul McCartney: ‘We would say, ‘Try it. Just try it for us. If it sounds crappy, OK, we’ll lose it. But it might just sound good.’ We were always pushing ahead: Louder, further, longer, more, different.’”

Experimenting is key to innovation. In The Guardian article, “Paul McCartney: Why I experiment,” McCartney says,

“The thing about experimenting is that it’s good fun. It’s interesting to do something you don’t normally do. It takes you to places you didn’t plan to go to. That’s quite an interesting aspect. Linda always liked to go for a drive and try and get lost. Most drivers don’t want to get lost – but she’d like it. And that idea of losing your bearings, as long as it’s not in the deepest Africa, is something I like. I’ve always liked it. Because when you don’t always know what’s going on, that’s when you can really surprise yourself.”

McCartney adopts new technologies even today. In 2014, McCartney was one of the artists to embrace a virtual reality platform when he released a free app showing his San Francisco concert. He is also using artificial intelligence in his latest project to extricate John Lennon’s voice from an old recording and produce a new release of The Beatles.

• Tips for Leaders:

To stay relevant, you must continuously reinvent yourself. Be innovative by taking calculated risks and experimenting. Embrace advances in technology and processes.

You can build your risk-taking capacity by first taking small risks and gradually increasing your tolerance for risk.

Tenacity

McCartney’s musical journey began in the late 50s and continues today. That kind of longevity is possible only when you are tenacious.

The Beatles started their journey with gigs in Hamburg, where they played in bars and strip-tease joints in the nightclub district. Even though their first recording contract was in 1961 in Germany, they endured countless rejections from recording companies before being accepted in their homeland by EMI’s Parlophone label in 1962. As one of the Beatles, McCartney dealt with the pressures that come with being popular, the backlash associated with the comment that they were more popular than Jesus, and the death of their manager, Brian Epstein. That required grit. While the Beatles came apart in 1969, that didn’t end McCartney’s career.

His passion for music kept him going.  With his resilience, he overcame self-doubts and external criticism to continue his career with a new band, Wings, in the seventies and had a successful solo career starting in the 80s. Always the innovator, he continued to experiment and collaborate, exercising his flexibility. The article “The Twilight of the rock gods: The Pros and Cons of 17 veteran musicians” says,

“McCartney has managed to balance between what his legacy represents (he performs all the classic Beatles songs you’d expect in his three-hour concerts) and experimentalism. He’s teamed up with much younger talent like Kanye West, Rihanna and Nigel Godrich and recorded avant-garde music under the moniker The Fireman.”

McCartney’s life embodies what it means to have tenacity.

• Tips for Leaders:

Outstanding leaders have longevity. They have accomplishments to show throughout. You can learn to be tenacious by being passionate and cultivating grit, resilience, flexibility, and audacity.

Stress Management

“And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me.
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

When McCartney sang Let It Be, he gave us all a mantra to cope with stress.

He wrote this song during the period when The Beatles were going through a tough time in their relationships with each other. He said the lyrics came to him after waking up from a dream in which his mother, Mary, appeared and told him everything would be all right and let it be.

McCartney has had enough stress throughout his life, in addition to the breakup of The Beatles. The legal battles and negative press following the dissolution added to the stress. Prior to this, the constant media scrutiny and incidents such as the arrest in Japan and spending more than a week in custody must have been contributory. Losing the love of his life, the source of support and inspiration, Linda, who was his wife for 29 years, to cancer must have been devastating. Establishing a solo career after The Beatles must have brought on enormous pressure to succeed.

Yet, when you see him today, you see a person who gracefully weathered the difficult periods and kept going.

A CNBC article talks about his simple exercise routine, including yoga, meditation, and horseback riding. It also mentions eating well.  These strategies have helped him stay healthy and manage his stress. The power of music to help relieve stress is supported by some studies, and having music as the center of his life is sure to have been extremely beneficial for McCartney’s life.

• Tips for leaders:

Leadership in today’s turbulent world is stressful. Those who can manage it will reap the benefits of a long and successful career.

Handle your stress with resilience, flexibility, and optimism. Use coping mechanisms such as having a support network and self-care. See my article Stressed? Listen to The Beatles, and Let It Be for details.

Intuition

“Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay

Oh, I believe in yesterday.”

Those are the opening lines of “Yesterday,” one of the most covered songs in music history. McCartney heard a tune in a dream that sounded magical to him. He was certain he must have heard it before. He went around asking everyone if they have heard it. He wasn’t sure whether it would appeal to the audience and critics. His intuition told him to go with it; the rest is history.

Intuition is defined as recognition by the Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon. He says a cue in the situation leads us to access our memory bank to find answers.

In a fascinating post called Paul McCartney’s freakish memory, author Ian Leslie says,

“The unconscious squirrels away memories we didn’t know we’d gathered and don’t know are there and releases them, sometimes in a transfigured form, into the conscious mind at unpredictable moments.”

• Tips for Leaders:

There are times when you have to make a quick decision, and there is not enough data to help you. Trust your intuition or guts if you have experience in a specific domain. Or trust the intuition of experts who have knowledge of the specific domain. Of course, you need to make sure your expert is reputable.

The Long and Winding Road of Leadership

Your leadership career has many twists and turns. Your ability to collaborate, innovate, manage stress, stay tenacious, and use intuition can help you achieve outstanding success. McCartney’s life shows you the way to navigate your journey.

Written by Shantha Mohan Ph.D.

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