The Sacred Music Coach » coaching

The servant leader

Carl — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:45:03 +0000

You might have heard the notion of leader as servant. I imagine that it might be based in the model of Christ as servant of His people, I’m not sure. But I have some experience with the idea that I might like to share.

Here’s the core of the idea:

The group is the ones who deliver the value of the organization, much more than the leader personally.
The leader can have the most impact by helping his people to deliver that value, removing obstacles and facilitating action.
Therefore, the leader can be most valuable by thinking of himself as servant of the group.

But this is just the starting point, there’s more to the story.

Let’s look at Jesus Christ as humble servant.

Interested in this idea? I wrote more about it from a secular point of view on my business blog.

It’s important to note that Jesus didn’t take this idea of service to mean that nobody is providing leadership, or that everybody leads in their own direction. Instead, He provided incredibly strong direction, even when that contained messages which were hard for people to accept.

He also didn’t shy away from distinguishing between good and bad behavior, from articulating right and wrong. But He always kept this in the context of the big goal, the salvation of His people.

So as a leader and servant of your volunteer group, of your workteam, of your family … what does this mean? What are we to learn?

For me, it comes down to some key shifts in your mindset:

As leader, you have some specific jobs you need to do, the same as anyone else in the group. That includes leading the charge on promoting a common purpose and direction, stepping up for the tough decisions and tradeoffs, and letting people know how well they’re doing.
As servant, you should always be asking yourself: “What am I doing today to help this group be the best they can possibly be?”
This should all be done with an attitude of loving support, clarity of purpose, and the inherent value of each person.

Your group will see a big difference when it’s more about getting useful things done together than about your own ego.

Time to prune?

Carl — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:57:37 +0000

We lost a big chunk off of one of our big trees with last week’s snow storm, and I spent a lot of time today cleaning up the mess. It gave me some time to think about the importance of pruning, especially since this is the time of year that I look at trimming my obligations and commitments for the upcoming year.

Pruning is good, and it’s healthy.

Why would you prune a plant?

There’s deadwood, branches that just aren’t alive or sound anymore.
The plant needs help to put its energy into the most fruitful (!) direction.
You need to prepare the plant for transplanting.
You want to help form the plant into a pleasing shape.

The lesson we should take away from this is that simplifying our own lives, pruning them, is a healthy and useful thing:

We need to clear away the obligations that just aren’t useful anymore.
We need to create space to put our energy into more fruitful activities.
We need to prepare for and respond to life changes.
We need to move our life into more spiritual shape, focusing on who we’re becoming rather than just what we’re doing.

Pruning away activities can result in wounds, just as pruning a tree. But ultimately it’s necessary, healthy and useful.

Rather like taking care of your physical health by trimming away the excess, how would you like to trim away the excess obligations to help your spiritual health?

Remember why we do this!

Carl — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:08:46 +0000

One of my other roles at church is to help out with our parish’s RCIA program. Yesterday, despite a somewhat tenuous weather situation, we all traipsed down to the Cathedral in Denver for one of the Rite of Election services with the Archbishop. As always, he was a wonderful Shepherd for his flock, helping our RCIA Candidates and Catechumens to realize the magnitude of their life-altering decisions.

What does this have to do with Sacred Music?

Well, it’s really all part of the same tapestry of religious life. We spend lots of energy on instruments, techniques, musicality, and so on. Fine.

But in the end, the point is to help bring souls to God. This is the most important thing I can be doing with my life.

I have to remember that the rest of it all really is just ways to achieve that. So let’s not confuse the fifteen interpretations of the ictus with the Truly Important Work. Which is whether we are able to help people find God.

Stepping back and taking this perspective helps me, at least. It also helps me to remember that I’m not really in the driver’s seat. This is about service for God.

We can be powerful without being perfect

Carl — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:14:16 +0000

My colleague Tony made this observation in a discussion last week:

“We can be powerful without being perfect.”

It really struck me as an important concept, one that I need to constantly remember on my journey of life.

Like everyone, I think, I get hung up on the idea of achieving perfection. Nothing wrong with that – it’s what we’re here for. But somehow the concept of being imperfect has been linked with powerless.

And when I think of it, the logic is obviously flawed. The people who have had the most impact on my life have been far from perfect – and in fact, their imperfections are often a reason why they’ve affected me so much.

And the people who are most powerful in the world, in society, in any group you can think of – they’re nowhere near perfect either. They have certain attributes that I may want to model, but perfect? No.

So, when you get depressed on how your flaws seem to be holding you back:

You don’t have to be perfect to be powerful.

Thanks for that, Tony!

Celebrating small steps

Carl — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:53:39 +0000

I’ve observed a number of conversations recently where people are coming up against what appears to be a brick wall of tasks. There’s so much work to be done, an infinite number of problems to be fixed, a huge number of people to convince….

Daunting is a relatively weak word for what it feels like.

Let’s recognize that this is just a part of the human condition. Nobody is meant to have it easy, even for those who appear to have it all together. Where do we come up with the energy to fight the important battle?

One key trick I have is to celebrate positive progress, no matter how small. That will support my ability to maintain the optimism that anything is possible, only given enough time and focus. I have more resources than I recognize, there are others who have a similar passion to mine, and I’m making little teeny bits of progress every week, every month, every year.

Am I fooling myself? Yeah, in a way. Sometimes I don’t make any progress, even have to take steps back. But that’s life, and that’s other people’s actions. Despite that, it’s important for me to continue to maintain my mindset of possibility and optimism. So instead of moving into despair, my challenge is to learn as much as possible from the challenges and then to move on.

If you’ve been following my career blog, you know that I lost my job in Spring 2009. It was a deep emotional blow, of course. But my faith and attitude was core to my ability to work through the disruption. I’m not totally through the challenges, as my company isn’t yet showing a profit, but I’m working hard to celebrate the small steps and keep optimistic.

It’s a daily challenge, but worth the effort.

Honey or vinegar

Carl — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:49:09 +0000

A colleague today raised an interesting question which caused me to start thinking pretty deeply. Here’s the problem: How do we get someone to fix something that they’re satisfied with, but we’re not? If they have control of the situation, and they’re satisfied with it, it’ll take a lot of concerted effort to get them to change.

This can be especially true in a church context, because there are significant power relationships at work, and deep emotions. Both of these are even more exaggerated for church musicians.

So let’s start off with that well-worn phrase, “it’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar.” It has a core of truth, which is that people are more likely to cooperate when you’re creating a cooperative relationship rather than confronting them.

But it’s more than that If someone is satisfied with their situation, then it’s difficult to give them enough “sweetness” to want to change. So here’s where a deeper truth enters in:

People want help, not barriers.

Let’s say that you’re dissatisfied with the music in your church, but aren’t in a direct position to change it. That’s a situation that many readers can relate to.

What does the pastor, or the director of music, need help with?

Picking music that people don’t complain about
Fitting music to the liturgy (but there are many different views about what this means!)
Finding talented and spiritual musicians to play and sing
Complying with guidance of church hierarchy, liturgical committees, and so on
Doing all of this, regularly, week after week, year after year, in addition to all the other tasks

These are not insignificant issues! So the leaders need help, and here’s the trick. Help them to address the needs they know they have.

If you try to convince them they have NEW needs, you’re just adding more work – that’s not helping. What you want to do is to reduce their works by addressing their needs.

So first, you must find out what they think their needs are. You might have your own opinions, but they’re probably a bit different than the way they understand the situation. The fact that you’re dissatisfied probably means you don’t fully understand their needs and the way they think. Almost certainly there’s a disconnect of some sort. So ask. Listen. And learn without judging.

Then, only then, you can start to figure out how you can help them address those needs. And if you can truly help them, without creating new problems, they’re much more likely to accept your help.

Sure, it’s work. Yes, it can be painful. It doesn’t always work.

Humans are like that.

But many times it does work, and can lead to glorious, creative solutions.

Let God

Carl — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:06:38 +0000

“It is for us to make the effort. The result is always in God’s hands.” – Mahatma Gandhi

In our culture, we are very focused on results. Goals, money, achievement – things that represent the crowning results from our work. But you might notice that this leaves little room for God to work in our lives.

As we complete our Advent preparation in anticipation of entering into life with our Maker, it’s appropriate to remember that all these results are rather transient. You can’t take it with you when you leave this world.

What you can take with you is the relationship you’ve developed with God, and hopefully, with your loved ones around you. So it’s worthwhile developing in deep love, in helping others, and letting them help you.

It doesn’t mean that we should just lay back and wait for God to fix our lives. Our hard work is necessary and vital. But in the end, there’s deeper results for which we should be working alongside God.

“It is for us to make the effort. The result is always in God’s hands.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Pro” – really??

Carl — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:17:42 +0000

I had the opportunity to sing Compline with the schola from another parish last night – a wonderful and prayerful experience. But earlier in the week, the director tangentially referred to me as “the professional.”

Say what? I mean, I’m a neophyte at this chant, and have only been working on it for a few years. No college training in music.

That exchange got me thinking about what it means to be a professional at anything. “Amateur” derives from the sense that you’re doing something because you love it (amor), but that’s not exclusive of being professional.

There’s two ways to define “professional”:

One who makes a living from a certain field of work;
One who develops deeper expertise in a field of work.

I guess the second might apply to my situation, as I do take Sacred Music quite seriously and endeavor to constantly learn more and develop expertise. I don’t see myself ever getting paid as a musician (despite occasional high school fantasies) so the first definition isn’t going to apply.

What does it take to become an expert, the second kind of professional?

Pick a particular area for your expertise, even if it’s not (yet) an acknowledged Profession.
Continue to learn and gain skills in that area
Share your expertise with others to establish your leadership

In a way, I guess, I’m moving into this with Sacred Music. But I feel like such a newbie!

The economy of volunteerism

Carl — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:41:11 +0000

Here’s an interesting idea I get from Clay Shirky’s video above (if you can’t see it, try this link): Many useful things these days are being done purely by volunteers.

That’s a huge change from the way we usually think. We tend to focus on what organizations do through their employees, and by money changing hands. But in fact, the new economy is doing more and more based on volunteers.

Let’s think about this for a moment. You spend, say, 40 hours a week doing things that someone pays you for. That’s 24% of your 168 available hours in the week.

Let’s say you sleep 8 hours a night – that’s another 33%. So this means that 43% of your time during the week – 72 hours – is available for doing things that nobody’s paying you for. And because we’re massively connected, you can make a difference to people who are anywhere in the world.

Presumably much of your time is spent on contributions to your family and maintaining your mental, physical, and spiritual health. But for the remaining time you have, here are my questions:

Who do you want to make a difference to?
How will you connect with those people, so that you do in fact make a difference to their lives?
Who will you build upon, and partner with, in order to make a difference in the world?

These kinds of questions can help you to put some laser focus onto your precious discretionary time and effort. And when you team up with others who share similar goals, amazing things can happen. World-changing things.

I love the vibrant sacred music community over at www.musicasacra.com because they’re focused on achieving amazing things for the Catholic Church – almost entirely just building on each others’ volunteer efforts.

And when you’re a volunteer, you get to make the contribution that you decide is most important – unconstrained by the power of the paycheck.

Gearing up for the Big Event

Carl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:12:09 +0000

We now have less than two weeks to go until we have the scholas from 3 Fort Collins parishes join together to sing a single Mass on November 15th. Actually, I found out that we can claim four parishes, because a gentleman has joined us from Greeley who is the “one person schola” for his parish.

It’s a bit of test for our faith.

First, we only have ONE chance (next Sunday) to practice together as a single group, and no doubt a lot of decisions are going to be made that afternoon. The Ordinaries are different (Mass XI) than what my group is used to, so they’re having to learn this in a short period of time. The group has also found out how much I re-draw each of the songs, because now we’re singing some straight out of Parish Book of Chant and other sources. It’s not like I do a lot, but even subtle things by putting the end of each line at a breath mark – that’s throwing people off.

But we have to learn sometime, this is as good an opportunity as any.

It doesn’t help that my group is also singing a Mass next Sunday, so we had to spend most of the practice time yesterday on THAT music (which is sounding great!) rather than the music for the 15th.

I’ve learned to trust in the Holy Spirit, and to remind myself: We don’t have to be perfect. Our job is to remind the congregation that GOD is perfect.

And it helps to have a sense of humor, not to take it all so seriously. We’ll do fine.