Our Farewell Post
Dear Subscribers,
Jewel: As with most things in life, our Tune InTo Leadership newsletter has run its course. After seven years, we’ve decided to bring this chapter of our leadership work to a close. It has been an extraordinary journey. Sharing our thoughts, ideas, and aspirations with you gave us the opportunity to ground ourselves more deeply in what it takes to lead with integrity and excellence.
At the beginning, I wasn’t sure I could craft the kind of cultural writing we talked about, as I hadn’t done any professional public writing. I just knew that I wanted to contribute my voice and experience to this leadership space. It didn’t take long for my style to begin to take shape, and I discovered that I delighted in crafting pieces that showcased elevated and inspired leadership. It has been an extremely rewarding journey of self-discovery.
Greg: Along with sharing our perspectives on leadership through the cultural model and method of jazz, what’s been most rewarding to me, Jewel, has been witnessing and participating in the development of your public voice as a writer. In the 25+ years of our relationship in life and business, you’ve been my best reader. Long before this newsletter, you read and commented on my writings. Since we’ve been co-writing for this platform, I’ve been able to return the favor by putting on my editor’s hat with your pieces. What I love about your writing is that the soulful and heartfelt qualities you exude in life—grace, poise, elegance, beauty—often became the very subjects you riffed on, relating them to leadership.
Jewel: I thank you for this, as well as your continued support and encouragement. Our writing collaboration has been a treasure… a wonderful extension of our Jazz Leadership Project (JLP) work. Coming towards the end of each week, we would share the idea that was percolating and then be the first to read each other’s finished post. Sometimes, a post would spark great conversation that further informed how we approached aspects of JLP that we’d incorporate into coaching and workshops.
Greg: I always appreciated how a post would inspire a reader to write a comment, either underneath the post or by email. In some cases, friends would call and share how they were moved or what thoughts it provoked.
When we launched the newsletter, which at that time we called a blog, one goal was to share evergreen pieces of content that would stand the test of time. Then COVID hit and changed everything. By necessity, we wrote pieces and interviewed people to provide insights that would help us get through that devastating time and inspire hope amid sorrow. That became part of our leadership mission, as a living extension of the underlying Omni-American blues philosophy of Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison. After we survived that worldwide calamity, we not only wrote articles on jazz as an expressive metaphor, but also on modern business, social, and even political challenges. My series, Leadership in the Age of AI, is the most recent example.
Jewel: As we continue to extend JLP to new sectors and build partnerships, we are taking on a new endeavor: writing a book! For the past ten years, we’ve been sharing the Jazz Leadership model through coaching, keynotes, and workshops at Fortune 50 companies like Google, Verizon, and JPMorgan Chase. We’ll write about the experiences, the insights, the transformations, and the impact the jazz mindset and practices have had on those we engage with. We want to deepen and expand people’s connection and understanding of what living this model looks like in the days ahead. We’re excited about penning Soulful Leadership in the Age of AI.
Greg: We’re also launching a new YouTube channel to expand the reach of our unique model for leaders and their teams.
Thank you for taking the journey with us!
Keep Swingin’,
Jewel & Greg
