Marching Band Leadership Training: Week Two

Parkwood Band Leaders Communicate their Goals through Effective Relationships

Welcome to week two of our leadership training. We had a great planning session to work toward what we see as our role in the big picture of our marching band. This week we will be talking about how to take this big picture goal and communicate it effectively to members of our band that we are leading. We have established some of the ways that we would like to see our band improve, but this improvement will never take place if we do not learn how to effectively communicate what our goals are to our membership and cannot effectively work in our rehearsals toward our goals. Both leaders and Band Directors play a large role in this process. This week, we will focus on three habits that will help us make this into a reality. We will discuss one habit in our first online session and will discuss two habits in our second online session.

Additionally, I want to introduce to you the second half of our Leadership Application process for this year. Everyone who is applying to be a leader in our marching band this year will have to either record a conducting/playing performance (instructional team) or detail a project that they will complete to make our marching band a better place (equipment & logistics teams). This week, I want you to start planning toward these performances or projects. You will have two weeks until the recording/project will be due. More information about each project will be detailed below.

We will hold our second online leadership training on Monday, May 18 at 1:30 PM. Please plan to attend this session if you would like to be part of our leadership team.

Habit Three: Put First Things First

Where habit one allows you to recognize your place in your future and habit two allows you to creatively plan where you want to be in the future, habit three allows you to help make your future a reality. Highly successful people (i.e. leaders that make substantive change) understand that prioritizing your life so that first things are first will allow you to be successful in the end. Rather than simply provide you with text explaining this habit, I have made two videos where I do my best to describe the most important parts of this habit. Follow the links below to find the video:

Video #1: Big Rocks and Little Rocks

Video #2: Living in Q2

Performance/Project Guide Day #1

Everyone auditioning for a leadership role in our band program this year will be required to complete either a recorded performance or a project. To help you prepare for these performances/projects, I am going to provide steps to help you. Today's step for everyone except drum major candidates will be to simply start to plan for your performance or project. You will be asked questions about this in your End of Day 3 form. All leadership application materials must be returned by May 26, 2020.

Drum Major Candidates

For your application, you will be asked to submit a video recording of yourself conducting Celtic Air and Dance #2. I think that most if not all of you will have experience with this piece from Middle School. It is very simple, never leaves 4/4, and provides you to demonstrate both driving fast conducting and lyrical conducting. I have linked the score to this piece and a recording of this piece below.

Score

Recording

Additionally, I will be providing you with a series of videos to help you learn how to conduct. I will make some, and some will be provided from other sources. Today's videos will go into detail about the technique of being a drum major with regard to posture, ictus, and rebound technique.

Video #1

Video #2

Video #3

Section Leader/Captain Candidates Candidates

Section Leader/Captain candidates must submit a solo performance using the equipment that you would like to be section leader or captain of. Woodwind, Brass, and Percussion candidates should prepare a portion of a solo of your choice. Your solo must be at least 32 measures long. I will not dictate which solo you should use, but know that I will be grading your technical performance ability. For those auditioning for Color Guard Captain, take 60 to 90 seconds of a song and write a routine to accompany this music. At least 30 seconds of your routine should use equipment of your choice. Today, I want you to select a solo and provide me with the name of the solo, the composers name, and a recording if you can find one. Color Guard candidates should name the song that they plan to use.

Logistics & Equipment Team Candidates

To be considered for a placement on the logistics and equipment team or to be the chief of either of these teams, you will be asked to create a project that you will take on for the upcoming marching band season. This project must work to solve a problem or concern that you have with our band. I will provide you with a document to fill out about this project, but for today, I want you to put into basic words what your project would be.

END OF DAY #3 Reflection Form

Habit Four: Think Win-Win

&

Habit Five: Seek to Understand, Then to be Understood

I think that these two habits are perhaps the most important to what we will do this year, particularly after listening to our conversation over the past few leadership sessions. These two habits begin to weave relationships with others into our lives. Lets start by understanding each of these habits and then speak briefly about how to apply both to our band.

Thinking "Win-Win" requires understanding the difference between the scarcity mindset and the abundance mindset. The image below helps to describe the difference between these two mindsets.

Those with the scarcity mindset will try to add to are always focused on acquiring for themselves because there will not be enough. Those with the abundance mindset are unafraid of sharing with others and building them up because they know that there will always be more. When we learn to have an abundance mindset, we learn to accept our role in the big picture. We learn that our role is just as important to play as anyone else. Take as an example the video below:

When Wreck it Ralph learned to see his role in his game as valuable, his mindset switched. Instead of continually being a loser, he was playing a vital role. This will be incredibly important on our leadership team.

The second habit we being addressed today is "Seek to understand, then to be understood." This habit speaks directly to creating effective communication. The concept has been said in a variety of ways, but the concept of allowing listening to lead our communication with others is vital to both building relationships and being successful. The video below provides a unique (albeit comical) situation to demonstrate this idea.

Although the real concern in this video should be that the woman has a nail in her head, this concern cannot be addressed until the man listens to the woman's concern. It is a simple fact of life that people just want to be heard, but more often than not, we do not listen to others to understand. We listen to reply, we listen to fix, and/or we listen autobiographically (to provide examples of how we have had it worse). Instead, we should listen as outlined below:

If you do not leave a conversation able to fill blanks on the top of the image, then you have not listened. This is not to say that that we should never seek to be understood. In fact, we often have to put forward our own ideas and thoughts to help others see a different way, but first, we must listen intently and be able to verbalize the feelings of our co-communicator.

In the form linked below, I want you to answer the questions. Each of these questions will pose you with a situation where you will need to apply the principles of "Think Win Win" and "Seek to Understand, then Be Understood". Each of these questions will appear on your leadership application.

Below, I will post a few more videos to help drum major candidates prepare to record their audition. All other candidates should continue working on the task laid out to them earlier in the week.

Drum Major Video #4

Drum Major Video #5

Drum Major Video #6

END OF DAY# 4 REFLECTION FORM

5/18 Prospective Leadership Team Meeting