Over the course of the summer, I’ve delved deeply into Dr. Brené Brown’s work on leadership, and tried to apply her lessons specifically to choral leaders in the rehearsal environment. I’m going to try to tie up loose ends and look back in this final post of the Dare To Lead Summer Read-Along.
First, a look back:
Introduction: Brave Leaders and Courage Cultures
Part One: Rumbling With Vulnerability
Section One: The Moment and the Myths
Section Two: The Call To Courage
Section Three: The Armory
Section Four: Shame and Empathy
Section Five: Curiosity and Grounded Confidence
Part Two: Living Into Our Values
Part Three: Braving Trust
Part Four: Learning To Rise
This was a lot of leadership information to process. Dr. Brown says that she wrote a book that could be read cover to cover in one flight – “New York to L.A. With a short delay.” (5) But I think that I really needed the whole summer to read and process this book. She really has taken the many insights from her previous four books (The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, and Braving the Wilderness) and put them into a single book with new insights specifically for leaders. Phew.
It’s going to take a lot of intentional work to carry her work into my work as a choral leader, which is why I’m so glad for the 9,000 words above–I’ll return to them (and the book) to remind myself of the change I’d like to create in myself as a leader.
But for me, here’s the core of what I’m taking away from Dare To Lead.
- I can be more intentional about wholehearted behavior as I approach my work and interact with students.
- Leadership is a human-centered path: learning to recognize and support the human needs of my singers is vital to transformative leadership.
- The time I spend learning to understand and use the tools Dr. Brown offers will pay off in more effective rehearsals and performances. If I had an extra hour for either score study or daring leadership work, I would not open a score in that hour.
- “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” Since I read those sentences, I have found case after case where that has been an excellent guiding motto. I anticipate many more once I’m deep into the rehearsal process.
Dr. Brown is so generous with her work – she’s done decades of research, and gives us the salient details – more than we could hope to implement in five years of diligent work – for less than $30. I’m hoping to honor her work and her generosity by taking that work and making it the core of how I approach leading musical teams from here forward.
One note – I pointed last week to Dr. Brown’s new “Daring Classroom” tools. She has since taken down her integration plans as they begin to develop a version that lives more clearly into her organizational values and does a better job of spreading her work effectively. She said in an email about it, “We live and work by this belief: Getting it right is more important than being right.” What a great example of daring leadership – to pull down all of these highly anticipated resources until she can make them right. If she can lead that daringly on a global level, we can definitely do it in our classrooms.