What Leadership Means to Me

If I answered in one short sentence, I would say leadership means having the opportunity and responsibility to make a significant difference.

Expanding on this idea, I have felt in my own career a progressive and driving responsibility to myself, my profession, my Lord, my family, and the people in my charge. The more authority I am granted, the higher the expectations and the more responsibility I feel within me. Although leadership can potentially and often realistically be a burden, in general I enjoy the responsibility and thrive on the added weight of not just being successful but on helping others attain success as well. I see responsibility as an opportunity to grow on many levels.

And yet, while I recognize that leadership is about responsibility, this does not necessarily help with the process of applying responsibility to short term and long term accomplishment. What follows is about application of leadership in a multitude of ways.

Believing strongly that events that happen to us throughout our lives can and should teach and prepare us for the future, I realize that my own life has been full of the joys and challenges that make me a complete and potentially capable leader. Opportunities for leadership in high school including directing a church musical, leading the high school choir, and playing solo horn in various orchestras were met with success and the occasional failure. Looking back, I realize the failures were greater teachers and provided the impetus for future success.

Onward to college where I excelled in music and assumed leadership roles at every opportunity including being President of a large chapter of Phi Mu Alpha and running the All School Sing two consecutive years. Continuing as a solo horn player in orchestras and bands, I learned how to deal with people and how to wade through the murky waters of personalities, values, and human preferences. Little did I know that I would still be learning these same lessons many years later!

At the advanced age of 24, I was employed in a large state university in Louisiana where I once again played solo horn, taught music education, and taught applied lessons. Many mistakes and many achievements marked my time in Louisiana where I was considered one of the premiere horn players in the state and where my innovations in music education were gaining notoriety. But after 5 years and a low salary, I chose to move to Texas to teach public school. It was in public school teaching that I found my leadership stride.

Although subject to state rules, school rules, essential elements, and pressures from many sources, the day to day activity of being a public school band director is liberating and charged with expectations and responsibility. When there are 80 junior high faces staring at the leader, with each person holding an instrument hoping to make an acceptable sound, the responsibility to help them become successful is tremendous and, aside from certain variables, is solely dependent on the director in front of them. Each day I experienced the joys and challenges of teaching and accomplishing goals. I felt the burden of responsibility to overcome obstacles, to meet all the objectives, to use individual development that would ultimately enhance and raise the collective achievement.

This is now a mantra of my leadership style—to help individuals succeed with the target of guiding the collective whole to high attainment of overall objectives. When a leader keeps in mind the idea that one person at a time comprises the organization, then one never loses sight of responsibility to humans and the recognition of human potential. As a band director, I learned the essential management skills of meeting deadlines, watching the dollars and cents, utilizing labor, watching the supplies, taking care of the physical plant, responding to authority, and working diligently for excellence in all things.

I have enjoyed reading the differences and similarities between managers and leaders and am fully confident with my management abilities. It was as a public school band director that I learned management skills that have stayed with me in my higher education administration. But it is in the area of leadership that I continue to need refinement.

Following 5 years of successful public school teaching, I found myself once again in higher education, this time as a band director. I immediately sensed a change in the people in front of me. The students were less dependent on my teaching ability and more dependent on my providing a learning environment. I began to rethink my own leadership style to an extent and began to practice a bigger vision for leadership while providing a climate for others to solve the smaller details.

Eventually moving into college administration, I now believe and practice a variety of leadership techniques that never sacrifice the broad vision but demonstrate a willingness to change to fit the circumstances. In a way, my leadership approach leans on the laissez faire idea of find good people and create an environment that allows for their success. I do not use a heavy-handed approach to leadership although there have been times I had to make a hard decision.

Dedicated to an open door policy, I remain relentlessly committed to being the kind of administrator who encourages honesty and full communication with all people. Seeking after significant input in all decisions, I generally spend 3 days thinking through issues before making any final decisions. Carefully listening to all sides of situations, I try to weigh the impact that any decision I make will have on all constituents involved.

With a constant chess game in my head, I always think several moves ahead and try to anticipate any moves that will have an adverse effect on the game. This process allows me to think in the future before making decisions. It also allows me time to communicate to the personnel involved the projected response the decision will create in other people. While this process of anticipating responses is not without its flaws, it does mean fewer surprises and fewer explosions along the way.

As far as determining leadership priorities, I use a process of prolongation and reduction in my daily practice and in casting the vision for the programs. The theory is simple and allows for a cleanliness of thought and identification of potential problems and opportunities. Prolong that which is essential and which serves the overall vision, and reduce those peripheral and often elaborate distractions that likely are not essential to the mission at hand. Loving Baroque art and music and recognizing Baroque style of excessive and ornamental writing, when it comes to leadership, I prefer a concise thinking strategy that addresses the goals at hand without unnecessary complexity except where appropriate or required.

In spite of my lofty and philosophically pure motives as a leader, I find most decisions and in fact most leaders are steeped in murky ambiguity and have trouble determining the right and wrong of situations. It is easy to cast a broad net of vision and mission but much more difficult to apply all facets of leadership to that large objective. As a President once told me, when you are dealing with people, nothing is easy.

Learning from my mistakes, most of my leadership is spent listening to people, earning trust, affirming others, and acknowledging their expertise and giving them as much shared governance as possible. This system works quite well when all see the vision in the same way and are determined to take the steps necessary to accomplish the articulated goals. Unfortunately, in academia, we often find highly qualified people trained and skilled in singular disciplines that seem to struggle to fit their personal goals into the institutional mission. Thus conflict arises, often insurmountable and difficult to navigate.

Having seen and studied leadership, in academia often the most effective leadership is that of the “public figurehead” style without excessive detailed management adherence. When a leader is “popular”, it provides a glossy picture for the institution. Not only is this beneficial, it is ironically necessary in today’s world. This is not to diminish the importance of a university President who is the primary public face of the institution, but is to emphasize the necessity for a President to employ the finest people in administration that can be found and give them the latitude to be successful. 

A heavy-handed approach to leadership is generally ineffective and antiquated in today’s world of instant information and multi-levels of communication. Aside from the sluggishness of consensus building and shared governance, these concepts remain effective tools of administration. A bit sticky at times and often resulting in a feeling of less power, this approach results in decisions that serve the organization and allow for greater commitment to the organization. When a person’s opinion is valued, honored, and respected, it allows for a greater sense of ownership in the process. Ownership then is manifested in substantial corporate energy and group wisdom.

At this point I must say that my desire for leadership opportunities, my training, and my experience all point to the obvious result of being an effective leader at the highest level of higher education. Yet, truthfully, I need to develop all the skills necessary to make this leap. With much to learn, I anticipate growing in my knowledge and utilizing my gifts that will allow me to reach my potential as a leader.  Taking my responsibilities as a leader seriously, I recognize this could mean making diligent effort toward becoming a consistently compassionate and more assertive personality. As scripture states, “To whom much is given, much is required.” Continuing to relish an opportunity to provide leadership to a broader sphere of people while remaining in higher education, I, like most leaders, have much to learn.