by Sam Ogren
“I’ll play it and tell you what it is later.” Miles Davis mutters these words into the microphone at the beginning of “If I Were A Bell” and I have never found a clearer explanation of what jazz is. It is what it is. That’s jazz. If you look at the sheet music, there are a few markings for key changes and modes, a little phrase the musicians wanted to remember, and not much else. There aren’t syncopated triplets and quarter rests, no step-by-step instructions to the song: there’s barely a plan. And it’s beautiful. It’s teamwork, creativity, and vulnerability in the key of F Major. That’s jazz. If you approach mentorship like Miles with his horn, you’ll create something beautiful too.
Without a plan, how do you begin? Build your rhythm section. Drums, bass, piano—the beating hearts of the group. Identify partners in your company or industry who can contribute their time and expertise to provide a more complete experience for the mentee. Different perspectives in a brainstorming session unlock new themes. Expert opinions in a feedback session prompt a significant tonal shift. These moments can inspire and motivate both the mentee and the mentor. When we get offbeat, they can pull us back with a reminder that we still haven’t invented anti-gravity exhibit signage. Mentorship is not a solo performance; it needs collaboration for creativity to flourish.
Miles was a master among masters. Playing with John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, he demolished the structures of musical thinking and defined a sonic era with Kind of Blue. Even without generational talent in every seat, creativity is key to good jazz and a successful mentorship. Notes will be missed, someone will drop the beat, and project timelines will go out the window due to sickness or workload. How do you respond? Don’t get your tight black t-shirt and throw a chair à la Whiplash. Find the beat, feel the groove, and blow. Much of mentorship is about helping the mentee develop creative solutions through your own creative thinking. Play a few notes alongside them, run through the problems together, or try your hand at the design. Go back to the root of the chord and the theme of the project. Open up your experiences and knowledge and let your creative heartbeat along in time.
That heart. The emotion. Nina Simone. Ella Fitzgerald. Billie Holiday crying her words in “Strange Fruit,” or Sam Cooke singing about the coming change—their broken hearts are etched into the vinyl. It’s about being vulnerable and making them hear it. Without the context of “you,” the experiences and knowledge you share come out flat. No one wins awards for monotone—we can talk about Bob Dylan and storytelling another time—the winner is the one with soul. As we mentor someone, we shape them for the future. We don’t want to create a lifeless statue or an emotionless machine to work alongside us. We want a whole person, growing and improving, and we need to be an example for them. Talk about expectations and where they might fall short. Teach them how to create an infallible plan and how to pick up the pieces when things go terribly wrong. Tell them about the times you failed; those moments are as important as the wins. Be yourself, all of you, and they’ll give every bit of themselves. That’s how you create something beautiful. That’s how you prepare a workforce for the future and everything it will bring.
If you asked 1,000 people to name the greatest jazz song of all time, you’d get 1,001 answers, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s personal. Beyond record sales or weeks at the top of the charts, it’s about how it touches your heart when you listen. It could change from day to day or hour to hour or reach back across decades to unlock memories. When I think back on my years of mentorship, I can see the growth in myself and my teammates. I get LinkedIn requests from past students, notifications of their matriculation and new jobs, and I swell with pride. My last group just dropped off thank you letters. One is now considering universities with exhibit design programs. That was some beautiful jazz we made.
I can’t wait to listen to your debut.
“I hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know. And I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world’.” – Louis Armstrong.
