“Learning To Rise” is the fourth and final part of Dare To Lead. It addresses a core concern of businesses, but also of educators everywhere: to empower the people we work with to deal with setbacks and rise from failures.
This article will unpack the chapter, discuss its implications specifically for choral leaders, and then ask you the questions I’ve been asking myself as I read.
Learning To Land
Dr. Brown says, “We can’t expect people to be brave and risk failure if they aren’t prepped for hard landings.” (241) She points out that, “often, leaders and executive coaches gather people together and try to teach resilience skills after there’s been a setback or failure. It turns out that’s like teaching first-time sky-divers how to land after they hit the ground.” (241)
Of course this is vital to educators in general, and choral leaders specifically! Choirs are failure machines. Particularly at the secondary level, we are taking students in the midst of the adolescent voice change and in the midst of adolescent emotional turmoil, and trying to guide them to make art. In public. Choirs are built to fall a lot on their way to success, and it’s paramount that we help our singers land safely after those falls so they can keep getting up, learning, and growing.
As Dr. Brown says, “My experience is that millennials and Gen Zers lean in and learn hard. They’re starving for the ability to put courage into practice.” (243) But she warns, “Here’s the bottom line: If we don’t have the skills to get back up, we may not risk falling.” (243)
Our singers are hungry for these skills, and choirs are built to give them the perfect opportunities to develop them. But we need to intentionally help them through the process.
Breathing & Calm
As Dr. Brown discusses our human tendency to offload emotions rather than reckon with them, she drops this knowledge: “The most effective strategy for staying with emotion instead of offloading it is […] breathing.” (256) She goes on to talk about a specific technique called box breathing or tactical breathing. That’s not as important as this: breath is at the core of what we do in choir. How much time have you spent in your career talking about the process of breathing, and literally helping your singers learn to breathe. (As if they didn’t start learning it from the moment they were born!) We are daily helping our singers unknowingly practice a key method of productively handling emotions.
Later in this section, Dr. Brown says, “Calm is a superpower because it is the blame that heals one of the most prevalent workplace stressors: anxiety.” (256) There’s ample evidence that anxiety has become epidemic in young people especially, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that access to choir helps heal that anxiety in many ways. As leaders, we can make this a conscious part of our work, rather than something we sense but don’t acknowledge.
The 3-Step Rise
Reckon. Rumble. Revolution. Dr. Brown describes these three steps in great detail, from the willingness to acknowledge and reckon with our emotions, to the rumbling with the stories our minds make up, to the revolution that happens to us and our communities when we live into these values and change them for the better. The tools she gives here are the ones I want to give my students.
Reality Check
“The reality check around our creativity: Just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. And just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change its worth or ours.” (267)
Dr. Brown says that narratives that diminish our creativity are “one of the three most dangerous stories we make up.” (267) Even as we empower our students to circle back and put down the armor, it’s even more essential that we help them stomp out any narratives that diminish their creativity. The fact that we hold the power to create situations (like auditions) that might let them create those kinds of narratives makes it so important that we keep checking in, circling back, and clarifying the stories they’re telling themselves.
Questions
How do you prepare your singers for the inevitable falls in performance?
What offloading strategies (252-255) are most likely to be seen in your choral rehearsals? What about the choral rehearsals you trained in?
Our singers don’t have the data or perspective on choral music that we do. They are overwhelmingly amateurs but choral leaders are professionals. What kind of stories are they likely to make up in response? (258)
Dr. Brown suggests feedback with built-in circling back. “You can do this by scheduling two meetings–one for the initial conversation and one for the story checking.” (266) Do you check back in after offering feedback, or audition results, or receiving feedback at Festival? What kind of stories do you hear from your singers?
Dr. Brown’s Reckon-Rumble-Revolution process leans heavily on conversation to uncover, clarify, and combat the stories we make up and move towards growth and achievement. If you implemented these strategies inside your choral environment, how would it change the day-to-day look of your rehearsals and process?
This concludes my chapter-by-chapter close read of Dr. Brené Brown’s fabulous book Dare To Lead. I’ve found it to be insightful, challenging, and full of ideas I’d like to try to implement in my own choral rehearsals. What about you?
I will have one more reflection on the book as a whole, with key takeaways and applications for choir. Look for it on Monday, August 12.