What can business learn from choir singing?

Singing is universal! Even if some might protest that statement, most people can sing, and even if some consider themselves can´t, they might still enjoy chanting or humming together, or by themselves in the car or in the shower. Most people have an innate ability to sing and clap along, and you see it in all sorts of contexts, in all sorts of cultures. Whether that is fans at sport stadiums, by the camp-fire, miners, religious services, or celebrations, when there´s a special occasion, we tend to sing!

6 Years back, me and my colleague Sietske founded the IKEA Choir Singplicity. Quite corny name, I know! A paraphrase on one of the IKEA key values, simplicity. On Wed lunchtime people from across the globe have met to sing together. Some participants have been seasoned choir vocalists and experienced singers, other “shower singers” with no previous experience of singing with others. All have been welcome! Some shows up with inbox back-log induced stress and tensions in their shoulders, some shows up saying: “I thought I didn´t had the time to come today but realized that´s when I really need it the most!”. Most leaves Zen. In the past few years, I have truly experienced the joy and sense of well-being of singing together with my colleagues!

I am not at all surprised when I learn about all the positive effects that choir-singing does for your health and wellbeing! But it is always nice when your intuitive feeling and own empirical research is underpinned with well-grounded research showing that choral singing elicits positive responses across different domains.

Firstly, choir-singing has shown to be an excellent community building activity! The feeling of connectedness increases with the oxytocin release that happens when we unite through our voice. And beyond bonding, the oxytocin is one of the best antidotes against stress, and it creates trust between people! Singing also releases endorphins, which also stimulates the social bonding.

Secondly, there´s also a fair deal of dopamine release. Controlling of breathing activates parts of the brain that controls emotions, awareness of the body and attention. With dopamine release, we are feeling good, and the more we practice singing together, the bigger the effect seem to be.

When we are singing, our heart rate starts to slow down, but what is also discovered in a study at the Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg, is that the choir singers even synchronize their heart rate patterns! There is definitely some fonky shit going on in between us when we sing together! We seem to get more than the sum of the parts!

Lately I have been experimenting with shorter choir exercises when I´ve been facilitating different kind of business development processes, and I found it very helpful for a various of reasons:

·       It seems like the embodied experience helps the participants to tap into other sources of human capabilities, beyond thinking, rationalizing, and analyzing.

·       And it helps to land in the room, body and soul. It´s simply not possible to think of the next response or latest mail whilst singing, one has to be fully present!

·       One become more attentive and attuned to others and what happen in between us.

I´ve learned that a simple singing or clapping exercise will do more for the following 2-days workshop result than any traditional introduction where we tend to fall into endless status-signaling activities “creeping death-style” (meaning that you present yourself, your fancy title, and how important you are, around in a circle. Takes typically 20 minutes. No-one listens. Everyone thinks of what to say next and you get increasingly stressed as it closes into your turn)

However, I understand that not everyone is comfortable with singing, not by themselves, not publicly, and certainly not amongst people they never met! I have big respect for that some don´t want to be forced to do things that they don´t think belong to the work context.

At the same time, singing is universal, singing is human, and it is proven to make you happy, to bond, to build trust & connectedness and reduce stress. I think we need more singing in our (work)lives! Or as my friend Robert Poynton put it, "music penetrate suits"! I don´t think singing necessarily is less appropriate than rationalizing or analyzing. We are just institutionalized to do more of the latter.

I am curious to hear your perspective! Does singing has its place in business (beyond the singing business)? Would you be comfortable singing together with your colleagues on your next work meeting? If not, why is that? Can you recall any collective singing experiences that altered your state-of-mind?