Norman Huynh on Why it Takes Presence to Lead

A 38-year-old conductor asks a single question that changes everything: "What would it sound like if we didn't shy away from that high note?"

Norman Huynh, Music Director of the Bozeman Symphony, doesn't lead like most people. He asks more than he tells. He builds competence and confidence at the same time. And at an age when most leaders are just finding their footing, he's already figured out what takes most of us decades to discover.

Foster and Norman dig into why questioning matters more than answering, what presence actually requires, and why the best leaders are often the ones quiet enough to listen.

Chapters: 

00:49 - Why a conductor matters in leadership 
06:29 - The role of a musical director 
12:10 - Clarity, presence, and the ask versus tell framework 
15:07 - The phrase that changed how he leads 
19:08 - Nonverbal communication and how you know people are getting it 
23:09 - On presence, meditation, and the noise that drowns out real leadership 
24:33 - The question nobody asks but should 
29:00 - Find more from Foster

More from Norman Huynh: 
https://www.normanconductor.com/
https://www.bozemansymphony.org/ 
https://britt.org/

More from Foster: fostermobleymt.com 
Get Leadersh*t: https://fostermobley.com/store/p/leadersh-t-book

#StepWise #Leadership #Conducting #Presence #Inquiry

Hosted by Foster Mobley
Learn more about Foster at fostermobleymt.com or follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn at Foster Mobley.
www.instagram.com/fostermobley
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fostermobley/

Produced, Edited, and Promoted by Zettist

Additional support from Amber Jillard Consulting

Music for Season 3 composed and performed by Philip Aaberg. Courtesy of Sweetgrass Music.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What was really very beneficial about my music education degree, we had to take a lot of psychology courses. It was all tailored towards working with a band or working with a group of you know elementary students. So there was a lot of can we try this versus do this.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Norman Huyn. Norman currently serves as the artistic director and conductor of the Bozeman Symphony, as well as the music director of the Brit Music Festival in Oregon. His past and future guest appearances include engagements with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Mobile Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica de Valle in Spain, and the Princess Galliani Vajana Youth Orchestra of Thailand. Okay, interesting for sure. But why stepwise? What's a 38-year-old creative talent got to do with leadership? As you will hear in this episode, he leads through clarity and inquiry. He works to bring the best, even to the last note, out of the musicians he leads, and does so with enthusiasm and charisma in a very infectious way. This is a fun episode for me, and I hope it is for you. Join me in welcoming Norman Wynne to Stepwise. Norman Wynne, thank you for uh participating, coming into Stepwise.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Thanks for having me, Foster. Looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Those of us in Bozeman know you. Please introduce yourself to the listeners that may not be aware of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

My name is Norman Wynn. I'm the music director and conductor for the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra and the Brit Festival Orchestra, which is in Jacksonville, Oregon. Guests conduct all over the country, sometimes across the globe. And what I do is basically wave my arms as a profession.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

Yeah. For the listeners, the Bozeman Symphony is considered a community jewel. It is a unifier of various parts of this community. And Norman has brought an energy and a vitality and education to the symphony that is so deserved and so lovely. So one thing Norman does is prior to performances, he will often have his guest artists come in for 45 minutes or an hour prior to the performance, and he will interview them on stage. One of the questions that you ask is, tell me about your calling into music. When did it hit you? When did you know you would uh devote your career and life to music? What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I started in band. Going into college, I I kind of like in high school, I thought maybe I should be a veterinarian. You know, for for me, it was like, okay, what can I what can I make a lot of money doing? I knew I didn't want to work in a restaurant, which is what my parents did. Just the amount of work was was a long hours, a lot of physical labor. So I was looking, oh, what can I do? And then eventually I just landed on, well, I really love music, I love band. And so I went to the University of Alabama to study music education. Well, roll tide. Roll tide, that's right. Being a band director, or at least studying to be a band director, it's like, all right, band is this is I'm gonna do marching band, I'm gonna have the the best high school band, and then eventually go and teach at a university. And then around my sophomore year in undergrad, I was browsing YouTube, which was relatively new at the time, and came across a video of a conductor named Simon Rattle, Sir Simon Rattle, and the City of Birmingham Symphony. And it was his final concert with that orchestra in this hall that he helped to build. Been there for uh, I think over 20 years as the music director, and really brought that orchestra into international prominence. And he was conducting Mahler's Symphony number two, came across the final like 15 minutes of this piece of music. I remember after hearing that and watching that performance, I had a moment where I thought, oh my gosh, I don't want to be a band director, I want to conduct that kind of music. And with that kind of level of orchestra, I remember calling my best friend who's also a conductor, and I was like, dude, I'm gonna be an orchestra conductor. Like, this is what this is what I want in. He was already on that path, and I had another friend who's on that path. We were studying with the same teacher at Alabama, and I talked to my teacher, and I was like, this is what I'm doing. So immediately I kind of was like, okay, I'm gonna stay and finish my music education degree because that would be a great backup plan for me, you know, because going into the orchestra world is so competitive in all aspects as a classical musician, but especially as a conductor, because you've got one conductor for an orchestra. That was my aha moment. And eventually just sort of looked at a couple of people who are a couple of years ahead of me, where what grad schools people were winning jobs out of, what teachers uh were having very successful students, and went that route.

SPEAKER_03 5:45

That's amazing. That's a great story. And your instrument of choice prior to that moment?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

The euphonium or or baritone. Basically, it's a small, small tuba. Wow. Yeah, which is also unusual for an orchestro conductor. Conductors are pianists or string players. Pretty rare to have a uh a low brass player. Although my my two colleagues also euphonium player and tromone player.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

So kidding. Wow. So you are called musical director and conductor in uh Bozeman Symphony. What is the role of a musical director?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

A music director, especially in North America, is multifaceted. My primary job is to program the season, decide what music to play, the guest artists to bring, and to be the main conductor of the orchestra. There's also deciding on personnel issues, um, hiring and uh letting go of musicians in the orchestra and building the vision and creating the vision for the organization. On the flip side, there are administrative duties for a music director, a lot of community engagement, giving talks, going to nursing homes, to schools, rotary clubs, and speaking, essentially spreading the gospel of the symphony, building an audience and helping with fundraising and having conversations with donors about uh support. As a nonprofit organization, over half of our revenue comes from individual gifts. Yes. Um, not ticket sales, actually. It's a very multifaceted position, but those are my main roles as a music director.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Norman, the um programming that you design is always incredibly diverse, at times challenging for not only musicians, but for the audience to really learn and stretch. What goes through your thinking when you're programming a season?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

I start with what are some pieces that get me excited that I really love. And a lot of that comes from the standard, the standard orchestral repertoire. So Beethoven symphonies, Brahms, Mozart, um, Govorjak. I have my own personal goals of like to conduct all nine of Beethoven's symphonies before I turn 40. You know, and that's a big it's like, oh, that would be a nice feather in my cap to get all nine in. I start with what are what's music that really gets me excited? Because I find that if I'm excited and passionate about a piece of music, it's easy for me to get other people excited about it. And the other part is what guest artists do I want to bring and feature? And then there are more logistical questions. You know, how long do I want this concert to be? Okay, if this Tchaikovsky Symphony is 50 minutes long, that means the first half has to be a little bit shorter. Then I zoom out a little bit of thinking about the overall uh whole of the season. You have the opening weekend, which is a great opportunity to do a big showy piece to get everyone excited. There's also the the season ender. But another part uh in April, it's typically when we launch next season's programming and announce it to our audience and have uh subscribers be able to resubscribe. That concert also has to be impressive and showy. So it's it's all of these different aspects and layers to it. But at the end of the day, I think do I like the program? Do I feel like the orchestra can can handle it in the amount of rehearsal time that we have? And is the musical journey fulfilling? A lot of times it's about pairings of different works. You know, you don't want to have a program that's just depressing and heavy the entire time, right? You've got to balance it with some lightness. If I'm programming Beethoven 9, for example, the big ode to joy at the end, it's it's a piece that guaranteed to get people uplifted and and excited at the end. That gives me an opportunity to program something that people may not be familiar with. Yeah, stretch our listeners a bit.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

It's very nice. And describe the demographics of the Bozeman Symphony. Aren't the majority, if not all, of these musicians volunteers?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

No, everyone's paid in the organization. Yep, there's two levels. There's principal musicians. So these are the the first chairs, right? And they have a higher service pay, and then there's section, which is the the the rest of the non-principal players. But what's really unique in in Bozeman is that we have a wonderful mix of musicians. There are musicians who only do music, that is their sole source of income. They freelance and play in many different orchestras. And that's the case for most full-time professional orchestras. What I find really unique and fun for our organization is that about a third of our orchestra have full-time jobs in another discipline.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Yeah, I think that's where I was going with. I volunteer is a wrong term, but people for whom this is a secondary passion, not necessarily their day job. Right. I'm fascinated by watching you lead the orchestra, how you uh interact with the community. So I'd like to move into kind of leadership, communication, stuff like that. If you had to pick three to five words to describe Norman, how would you well, what words would you use? One thing that occurs to me, just listening to you, is that there's an achievement orientation to you, both not only how you approach your conducting education, but also, you know, I want to do all Beethoven's nine. By the time I'm 40, there's a there's a goal, there's a goal orientation to that. And I wonder if that's if that's part of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

There are definitely sort of larger goals that I've set for myself. I would describe myself on the podium as clear, not only in my physical gestures, but what I say to the orchestra, knowledgeable about the the score and the repertoire. And and now I I experienced. I'm 38 years old, which is relatively young in the the when you think of the average age of all the conductors in the world. But I've I've been doing it professionally now right out of grad school. So I've got over a decade of of work experience, and that's rare for someone my age. You know, now it's it's I'm I'm no longer the the young conductor. I'm bringing experience. I'm I've conducted works many times before. So it's it makes a big difference on the podium.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Clarity is one of those things that I pick up in watching you, both in performance and in rehearsal. When you think about good leaders, what's a good leader to you?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

A leader that gets me excited and engaged is someone who knows their stuff.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

Competence.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Competence. That's what I love about Jacob so much. The executive director at Bozeman Symphonies, he just you can ask him any question about anything about the organization, and he can give you a high-level answer or a 30-minute answer just on that one budget item and why. And when I watch really great conductors conduct, they are so knowledgeable about the score and they they understand why things should happen and why they're asking for something, but also fix and make adjustments very quickly. They can hear something and it's they can zone in on the issue, isolate it, and then all of a sudden everything else just opens up. I also love watching passion. When someone has a fire an internal fire for what they're doing, it's really infectious.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

The phrase we often use is leaders go first, and you can't expect others to be passionate about something if you're not.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

This stepwise episode is proudly sponsored by Mountain Mule. Our goal is to make sure your experience in Montana is unlike anything else. At Mountain Mule, we provide private chauffeur service and Yellowstone National Park Tours. Whether you're traveling to or from Bozeman, have a private event, or want a once-in-a-lifetime tour experience, we'd love to get you there. Book at Mountain Mule.com and use code Stepwise.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

From Everest Summits to the Halls of Government, Higher Ground, How the Outdoor Recreation Industry Can Save the World, tells the story of how the outdoors can transform lives, communities, and economies. Written by renowned mountaineer and outdoor advocate Luis Benitez, this powerful book explores why access to nature isn't just about adventure, it's about mental health, physical well-being, and the future of our world. Higher ground is a call to protect the wild places that ultimately protect us. Most high performers don't need more ambition or vision. They need better support infrastructure and daily practices to hold it. Wholeness at work offers leaders real tools for meaningful growth, lifelong impact, and sustained performance. Explore our holistic tools, insights, and practices for working in a way that actually feels like you. Visit our wholeness at work.com. There's a phrase that you used in the rehearsal, I believe. What would it sound like if we didn't shy away from that high note? And you were talking about getting people to perform maybe beyond their comfort or their fear, certainly within their level of talent. But what would that be like if we didn't shy away at all? Five percent from that high note.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

I find, especially on the the podium, there are some questions that I ask that are extremely effective. For example, a couple weeks ago I was at the Brit Festival Orchestra, and there's this moment in the planets, the Mars movement, where the full orchestra is just playing triple forte, and it it's the same rhythm, bad, dum, bad-da da dum, and we get there, and I was a bit underwhelmed. I could have said, Hey, we need to play louder here. Actually, I did. I said, Let's play louder here. It's triple forte. Did it also like a little underwhelmed? And then I asked the question can everyone play their loudest? Like, I want you to give me everything just for these couple of measures. And we did it, and it was just like, whoa. And I said, Okay, let's remember that. We don't have to when we come back to this part again, because it takes a lot of energy to like give that all the time. But at the performance, that's what we need to go for. Asking questions sometimes, you know, in terms of like working with a group in the moment, there's so much group psychology to understand. Yeah, so that's that's why I do that sometimes. It's it's a work in progress.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

That was one of the things that I most noticed in watching you work with uh with the orchestra, and a lot of people listening to this will not have symphonic experience. It was amazing to see this notion that I think is universal for leaders, which is this relationship between ask versus hell. And I watched you play that more on the ask side. How is that occurring for you? Are you hearing them? It really amazed me how many questions you ask that get people to think for themselves and to engage themselves. Where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Did you have a mentor that did that? What was really very beneficial about my music education degree is that we had to take a lot of psychology courses. It was all tailored towards working with a band or working with a group of you know elementary students. Everything was always group, group psychology, classroom psychology, because you're working with 20 kids at a time. So there was a lot of can we try this versus do this, framing what is being said with the group in mind versus the the individual. It's just sort of my style now that I've sort of developed on my own. Some some of it is watching other great conductors work, some of it is is also reading and applying it to just my own discipline and how I work.

SPEAKER_03 18:42

Excellent. It's apparent. It's it was fun to watch. Well, thank you. And and frankly, so this is a bit of ageism. When I saw you, I think you were 37. I did not expect a 37-year-old leader to have that wisdom about drawing people out in a very technical craft. Each of the musicians have to have mastery over their instrument, but they also have to learn very quickly to master the piece, and then also, oh, by the way, play in an ensemble where we're playing together. They say that the best leaders inspire competence. You bring competence out, but they also inspire confidence because you could have somebody extremely competent who may not have the courage to stand on the front of their skis and really let get to that last little bit of what they could produce. Or you've got people who are wildly confident and not competent, and a good leader does both. And that's apparent from from watching you. One of the questions that I had for you, I mentioned this to you when we when we talked last, is about nonverbal communication. An awful lot of what you do is communicated strongly and clearly, but non-verbally. How do you know people are getting it?

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Is it just the performance that I know when I can hear the difference of something or really the the impulse of it? And a lot of times I get the best results when I do less. When I really want to bring something out, for example, especially before the moment happens, I make sure to just do less and then give the impulse of what I want. And then when I can hear the orchestra respond to that impulse, then I know that that has worked. Another thing that I I feel like some moments that I can tell are are effective in a performance is in the audience perspective. I know an audience is engaged when it's very quiet. When people are coughing and shuffling around, that means they're not engaged. Especially in moments where the music may be meandering a little bit and it's just kind of like or like there's a huh, and then more that starts to get other people to start coughing a little bit. When people are in it, especially in the soft music, and it's just absolute silence behind me. It's like, oh, everyone is like waiting to hear to see what happens. And so that's also another moment of where I know what we're doing is is making an impact.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

To listen there, to listen and notice here, to know the score in front of you requires it, it must require incredible presence. Are you just wiped at the end of a performance from having to be so attentive to all those different elements?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yes, I am. Performing takes so much out of me. There are more days that I've been conducting than not conducting in the last five weeks. This is my first day off in I think like 20-something days, in terms of there's no performance or conducting. But the my conducting got so much better and my my listening got so much better w after in 2019 I discovered um Sam Harris and his app called the Waking Up App. It's all about vipassana meditation. And mindfulness meditation. And what I found that got in my way was I was not listening to the orchestra. I was what was in my head was a lot louder than what was actually in front of me. The art of conducting is so technique driven. I mean, it's sure, anyone can come up, start waving their arms, get an orchestra can typically play on their own. On multi-levels deeper, you know, there's the hearing, there's the knowing why something is going off based on the score. But the physical gestures of conducting, if an orchestra comes in on beat two and not on beat one, there's a way you have to have your hands physically to make sure that what you're giving before is clear enough so that people come in on beat two together. That's where the clarity comes in. And now that's just second, I can look at a piece of music and know how to conduct it physically without having to practice it. So what that does is it just opens up my ears. Wow. More because I don't have to think about the physicality of conducting anymore, because I have that experience. There are many layers of shedding that one has to do when they're a conductor. Knowing the music well enough so you don't have to think about it, you can just listen. Knowing the conducting technique, the physicality of conducting well enough so you don't have to think about it, to really just sit back and listen, because that is the biggest part is of a conductor is to listen. Which I imagine applies to many aspects of leadership in the corporate world. How do you listen to an organization?

SPEAKER_03 23:42

You know, I've devoted my career to that, and it is fascinating. And it's interesting too because I'm I'm drawing a contrast in my mind. A leader in a corporation, let's say, knows his or her craft really well, as you must do as a conductor. Unfortunately, given the pace of what they do and given some other complexities and politics and all that kind of stuff, many times that competence overwhelms their ability or interest in listening. They d distract and they become less ask and way more tell. And the better leaders that we work with do that. They are present enough because they've quieted some of the noise in their head, either through mindfulness things like meditation. I meditate and have for many years. They have quieted those noises enough to say, Norman, I don't actually know how to handle this right now. You're a little bit more technically grounded than I am. What do you think? And that takes an awful lot of presence and patience and confidence and vulnerability and courage and all that kind of stuff. And that's why people like me as executive coaches have so much work to do because the workplace is not always conducive for that kind of thing. So for the fact, again, the fact that you're at 38 and you figured this kind of stuff out is fabulous. It's a great story. What's the question nobody asks you but should?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, I would love for people to ask me more about what's some music to to listen to, especially if if I'm not uh someone who listens to classical music or orchestral music. What are some gateway pieces of music to to to kind of get people hooked?

SPEAKER_03 25:16

I love that. Yeah, and so truth in advertising, I am a newly installed board member of Bozeman Symphony, and it's a question that you know I'm I wanna I love your answers because my job is to bring other people into the symphony who don't necessarily have that exposure. What's the lesson you have to keep learning yourself over and over?

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Have the hard conversations sooner than later, because holding on to unresolved tension takes way more energy than to just have the conversation. And typically, I usually feel a lot lighter after that, regardless of the outcome, but to just talk.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

If the younger you showed up and tapped you on the shoulder, what would you say to him?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Just invest 12% now. My my parents always was like, Yeah, Norman, save your money, save your money, save your money. I didn't really know what that meant. It was like, oh, I've gotta save this $200 that I now have. Heck no, I'm gonna go buy a video game and do this. Just put a percentage away, 12% now, and forget about it. My mom's an immigrant, my dad's a refugee from Vietnam, and we were lower middle class, and we don't have generational wealth. My generation and Romeo's generation, there's an opportunity for me to start building generational wealth now.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

And learning it now is really a really a big deal. It's it's never too late to start, and and uh that's great. Same kind of deal. Lower middle class income uh upbringing for me. I didn't know we didn't have stuff, we just didn't have stuff, and that's been the hard part. One of the hard parts about moving to to Montana is that the people that we are friendly with, you know, many of them are Ivy League grads and went to boarding school and have generational wealth. And I'm thinking, wow, that is not my experience at all.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Right. And it's like, but I I want that. Maybe it'll take a little bit for me, but I can at least set up Romeo.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

And then Norman, this is for you only. Have you gone out fly fishing yet? I have twice. Excellent, good.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Someone took me out a couple of years ago, and then I bought a beginner's guide as a date for for me and my wife to go and and try it out together. Very funny.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

I'm hooked, no pun intended, but I mean it's my reason for asking this, just for anybody to know, is that when I first met Norman, I think we were in, I don't know, it was a post-concert thing, and and you said, you know, the one thing I really would like to do is go fly fishing. That's the one thing I haven't done since I've been in Bozeman. I went, oh my god, gotta do that. So I'm glad I'm glad you've gotten out. Okay, Norman, thank you for all of this. So, what can we promote for you? What do you want listeners to know or do as a result of our time here together?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

When orchestra season starts back up in September, whether it's the Bozeman Symphony or wherever you live, go buy a ticket. And if you can and you really enjoy it, donate some money to the organization. Live music and orchestral music is one way where we bring our community together and where we are having uh uh an uninterrupted experience off of our screen. There's so much research now that going and engaging with the performing arts actually slows down the aging process as much as exercising. That is brand, that's new research that's just come out a couple of months ago. If you feel like you don't know what's going on in the music, that's okay. It's like drinking wine for the first time. You're like, I don't know what's going on, but I don't know if I like this, but okay, cool. And then next time it's a little bit better. But know that your brain and your body is thanking you for it. And that uncomfortableness is a good thing. That's a sign that your brain is getting bigger.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

If this conversation was worth your time, and I hope it was, do one thing for me before you close the app. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's how people like you help people like me find this show. And if what we talked about today sparks something in you, there's a book called Leadership: Rethinking the True Path to Great Leading. Yes, that's the real title, that goes deeper into this territory. It's on my website at fostermobley.com. And then sign up for our email list to be notified when my next book, Honoring, goes into pre-sale in 2027. And if there's one person in your life who needed to hear this episode, send it to them. Not because we need the numbers, because they need the conversation. Set the table, invite cool people, magic happens. I'm Foster Mobley. As always, friends, step wise. Our music for season three is composed and performed by Montana musical legend Philip Auburg, courtesy of Sweetgrass Music. Phil's recent passing was felt by many, including those of us associated with this podcast. We thank Patty Auburgh and Sweetgrass Music for access to this beautiful piece.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Thank you for listening to Stepwise. Stepwise is produced, edited, and promoted by Zedist with support from Amber Gillard Consulting. Find more episodes and resources at fostermobli.com and follow Foster on social media at Fostermobley. We'll see you next time.