Commitment Is The Price Of Leadership For Both Students And Teachers by Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and it is the actions that speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none – coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of, the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
Volumes have been written about leadership and management. These have been addressed, for the most part, to the corporate sector, but they are easily tailored to offer guidelines for success to the upcoming student leader as well as to any aspiring seeker of excellence.
Why this talk of student leaders? Because the day of one person being able to do it all is now history. There may still be isolated cases of Mr/s. Music Educator choosing to handle every detail from sorting music to counting the candy money, but the combination of tightened schedules, a full performance calendar, recruiting responsibilities, committee meetings and much more has made such dynamos a vanishing species.
Look back only 20 years and see if the music programs of that day even remotely resemble today’s. Consider such issues as yearly travel, expansion of athletic programs that can affect performance and rehearsal schedules, increased emphasis on fundraising, the burgeoning teenage work force, the number of local and national music festivals, and on and on. Music teachers can now be more aptly described as music administrators, which is not necessarily good or bad. But it does create a need for student help to complete some of the tasks at hand.
It may seem easy enough to select student leaders to take charge of the many projects that need to be done, but it is another thing entirely to assure the execution and completion of the assigned responsibilities. Indeed, a veritable ravine of possible catastrophes looms across the path to leadership effectiveness. Remember: A title does not a leader make! Most students (like most adults, for that matter) can become so enamored of “the title” that they forget why there is a need for leadership in the first place.
All too often, students leaders are tempted to interpret a position of authority as a simple mandate to tell others what to do and how is should be done. Nothing, of course, could be further from reality. Although delegation is recognized as one of the four major leadership styles, it is properly reserved for the executive level of management and, even there, should be used discreetly. For the most part, student leaders must be taught to lead by example, so that their displayed attitude can set the tone for those who they will lead.
For this goal to be achieved, a student must understand your expectations and – prior to being conferred with the leadership position – display a willingness to work toward those expectations. Of course, this increases the level of the fame, for you must now reach into your visionary goals and clearly define what you want done. Otherwise, your young helper might as well be working on a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the complete picture on the box. The more specific you make your instructions, the greater will be the likelihood of success for both you and the student. In your preparation of a student leader for a job that needs to be done, continue to ask yourself: Is it feasible? Is it explainable? Is it measurable? Is it necessary? In almost all cases, these qualifiers will tailor the task to the leader.
At this stage, many educators may feel that the preparation if complete and they’re “off and running” A cautionary note must be sounded, however, because one more ingredient must be added to the formula, an ingredient that is absolutely necessary for success. Without it, the rest of this information is useless. And what, you ask, is this elusive, all-important ingredient?
Commitment. It serves as the mortar between all the bricks of wisdom and is most assuredly the one quality that separates those who can from those who didn’t. Student leaders must make a personal commitment – a pledge of completion – to their assigned tasks. This is one of the most effective and most often overlooked exercises in the leadership-learning process. Once the mind accepts this challenge, the chances for success increase tenfold. The assignment/responsibility becomes a road map, as it were, and although there will need to be course corrections along the way, the destination is clear, the route is understood, and the individual is mentally committed to the completion of the journey.
The formula works, but only if the student works. And students work out of sense of commitment. While you cannot directly instill your students with commitment, you can tell them what it is, what it takes and the price it costs. You can tell them:
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and it is the actions that speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none – coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of, the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
It might not hurt to paste a copy of this short paragraph in every student’s folder, not to mention on the walls of every band room – and a few extra copies in the faculty lounge. The truth o f these works is the very essence of what separates success from failure. Failure only happens when someone chooses to give up.
Having conducted numerous leadership workshops, I have found that the success or failure of a “newly anointed” leader has little to do with the notebook of information that has been given to everyone in the room, or the examples cited from successful leadership patterns, or even the hands-on assignments in the seminar. In all cases, the leaders with the strongest potential for success are those committed to getting the job done, when it needs to be done, whether they want to do it or not. They are committed to completion. The power of a leader is measured by his or her ability to complete things.
As music educators, you can take tremendous satisfaction in selecting and working with student leaders. The habits they develop and the lessons they learn while growing into a leadership role will create a value system that serves many other facets of life. What greater gift could they receive than an understanding of their full potential? The positive impact you can have on your students is beyond measure.
The recipient of numerous awards, Lautzenheiser is the national spokesperson for MENC: The National Association for Music Education's "Make a Difference with Music" program and directs Conn-Selmer Institute, the preeminent educational workshop in the music industry. For more information, visit www.csinstitute.org.
