Becoming the best choral leader you can requires a lifetime of committment, hard work and a never ending willingness to learn and grown. Consider the following principles on your journey to maximizing your impact as a leader both inside and outside of the rehearsal room.
- Build up those around you by identifying how serving the organization can allow individuals to meet their own needs, delegating important responsibilities to them then mentoring to success.
- Identify a preferred future that is appealing and compelling than remind everyone of their shared stake in reaching that future. Remind them often!
- Become an expert in your chosen field by relentlessly pursuing mastery of your craft
- Be a role model in who you are, what you do, the priorities you set and the goals you seek
- Challenge the status quo if it isn’t serving the organization or the individuals in the organization
- Put people first, always above their role in the organization
- Be willing to do every task you ask others to undertake
- Identify your strengths and use them
- Identify your weaknesses and while finding ways to overcome them, bring partners into your organization that excel in those areas
- Identify the strongest leaders you can to partner with you in your endeavors
- Put yourself in circumstances that challenge and stretch your abilities (we don’t grow when we’re comfortable)
- Avoid using authority or power. Rather, try to create win-win situations in which followers choose to do what needs to be done
- Identify an exceptional leader in your field and get them to be a mentor to you. You can be their student through their writing and their work. Some of my best teachers (including James Jordan, Howard Swan, Robert Shaw and Frauke Haasemann) are people I have never met.
- Become your own best follower by developing personal disciplines of study, devotion, healthy living and pursuing your chosen priorities
- Make sure you are pursuing worthy ideals
- Plan a yearly time for an extended retreat, reflection, evaluation and goal setting. Do this alone.
- Become a student of people that are doing what you want to do at the highest levels. Analyze everything they do and adopt appropriate practices that will help you achieve your goals
- Take an inventory of how you spend your time. Cut out the unimportant and unnecessary
- Make sure relationships have the proper priority in your life
- Identify where your passions, experience and abilities align with the world’s great need and become an agent of positive change
- Never compare yourself with others to see if you’re achieving your potential…
- Build your organization’s culture by establishing the way people (students, parents, peers, administrators) should be treated and the way goals should be pursued
- Have very high standards of excellence and don’t compromise them
- Have interim goals allowing small wins on the road to achieving larger objectives
- Unravel bureaucracy when it impedes progress
- In challenging situations, look for specific and tangible things that you can change each day to improve the situation. Don't despair that the culture can't change overnight.
- Through persuasion and vision casting, enlist the help of others in achieving the preferred future
- Be willing to take risks and experiment. When mistakes and failures occur, learn from them without penalty. Creating an environment that encourages risk is essential to artistic expression, great growth and the freedom to try new things.
- Foster collaboration inside and outside the choir to build spirited teams.
- Always speak positively about the people in the larger community.
- Strengthen others, helping people realize they are capable and have important contributions to make.
- Recognize the contributions and accomplishments of others. Be liberal with encouragement and accolades when they are deserved. Celebrate and make people feel like heroes.
