Miles Davis once explained his approach to jazz improv as creating “freedom and space to hear things.”27 The phrase is fascinating: not freedom and space to play things, but to hear things—what the other instruments were doing, even the sound of your own playing, and to respond. Any of us can have that freedom and space if we’re willing to listen. Whether we’re giving a speech, waiting on tables, or sitting in a corporate call center, the messier, improvised response is the one that takes in the entire context: the ambient noise, a customer’s tone of voice, the reaction of an audience, even
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