Ben Zander speaks wittily of his role as orchestra conductor calling it “the last bastion of totalitarianism in the civilized world.” No wonder that in job satisfaction, “orchestra players come just below prison guards.”

Anyone who has shared my experience of watching this flamboyant maestro lead the Boston Philharmonic is likely, in this one instance, to cast a vote for dictatorship.

In the rest of life, however, Zander says he favors a different type of leadership. He recently wowed some 80 Massachusetts Gerontology Association members, at our annual meeting, with a fast two-hour inspirational talk that left most of us dazzled with its freewheeling brilliance.

Among incidental highlights, it featured Zander at the piano playing some Chopin and later running an impromptu master class, with a young cellist performing part of a Bach suite.

For Ben Zander, the true leader must believe in the capacity of the people he or she deals with. Every leader should say “I have a dream,” one that brings out the best in others. Also vital to his approach is something he calls “the secret of life –  –  which is that it is all invented.” If this latter sounds enigmatic, some of its meaning appears in the experiences that Zander talks about.

With his New England Conservatory students, he engages in grade invention. Each September, he has them write a letter: “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because .  .  .” This device moves them “to live into” rather than up to a standard they have set for themselves. “I teach only those described in the letter,” says this resourceful instructor.

For him, most education is based on “spiral thinking,” the soul-deadening approach leading to underestimation of other people’s talents. True education, by contrast, requires the opening of new categories. You have to ask what assumptions you are making that you are unaware of. There is no problem that cannot be solved by a new framework, he claims.

Ben Zander believes that modern leaders must discover “new possibilities” that release the potential in oneself and others. Together with his wife, Rosamund Stone Zander, he has marketed this approach in a book entitled “The Art of Possibility,” and in inspirational speeches for businesses and other organizations.

Another requirement for the new leader is what the Zanders call Rule #6: “Don’t Take Yourself So Goddam Seriously.” Instead you should make yourself available to others: “Being available is the single greatest gift we can offer the world.” You should also be a contributor, Ben Zander emphasizes. If they wish a satisfying life, people should be players, rather than winners and losers.

Over against “you need, you must” stands “what if?” Once you allow yourself to find enthusiasm, to discover “shining eyes,” then you discover real power. A pianist, to be really good, has to do “one buttock playing,” sitting on the edge of the chair and feeling the excitement of performance art. Organizations can improve by a similar approach. The speaker quotes approvingly a CEO who boasts: “I transformed my whole company into a one-buttock company.”

These maxims come at you from Ben Zander with such charm and passion as to seduce you into believing life can be different. This 63-year-old spellbinder abounds in energy, his face, his whole body alive with varied expression as he shares his view of the world. The place to stand is in possibility, he urges; “You never know where the treasure is hidden.”

Skeptic as my years have made me, I yet felt disarmed at the power of this man’s spirit. Almost in spite of myself, I found his force of personality sweeping away my long-held convictions that life is more complicated than this inspirer would have it.

He confesses, however, not having been this way in the past. His old approach, he reveals, cost him two marriages.

To finish, Zander tells two stories to illustrate his buoyant approach to life. In the first, a woman runs along a beach picking up stranded starfish and tossing them back into the water. Someone accosts her and asks what possible difference it makes saving a relative few among so many. The woman answers: “It certainly makes a difference to this one.”

And the abbot whose monastery is dying for lack of new recruits goes to see a rabbi nearby to ask how it can be saved. The rabbi answers, “The Messiah is one of you.” After hearing this message from the abbot on his return home, the monks began to treat one another with extraordinary respect. And they also start to regard themselves with greater respect.

Thanks to the rabbi’s apparently irrelevant response, the community of monks changed, people were attracted to visit, and some joined the monastery. Thus the rabbi had answered the abbot’s question and “life is revealed as a place to contribute.”

Perhaps these parables come off corny in the reading. Told by a master of the spoken word, however, they deliver a punch and reveal some of the magic in his personality.

Richard Griffin