Music sometimes teaches simple but profound truths that apply far beyond the concert hall. I often talk about the capacity of music study to teach patience, perseverance, and cooperation. It enhances creativity and appreciation for beauty. Studies show that it stimulates brain development. A recent experience brought to mind an unpleasant musical incident from my college years in which music also taught me several valuable lessons about how to be an ineffective leader or, by inverting the lesson, to excel in leadership.

The music school of my university held an annual performance competition and show-cased the winner in a full-length concert. My junior year, the winner was a pianist. In what was no doubt a cost-saving measure, the music department engaged the best instrumentalists on campus for the orchestra, filling in vacancies, especially in the string section, with professional players from the local symphony. Students comprised something under one-fourth of the orchestra and all of the trombone section. Two of my friends were in the first and second chairs and I played the bass trombone. The pianist’s professor conducted.

Also probably to save money, the department scheduled only one rehearsal. I cannot now remember the duration of the rehearsal, but it would not have been longer than two hours. From the trombonists’ perspective, the rehearsal was a disastrous waste of time. In the concerto programmed for the evening, the trombones do not play until well into the movement, when they enter majestically into a silence, restating the opening theme in heraldic fashion in octaves. The conductor and the professionals had difficulty working together. He was an academic and a pianist, himself; they were union musicians who had played the concerto many times in their careers. They debated tempos, entrances, and dynamics; he seemed to want some ephemeral perfection. At the end of the hour, when the concert-master, who doubled as the union shop steward, insisted that, since their contract specified an hour for rehearsal, the symphony musicians leave – which they did. We had not yet gotten to within twenty measures of the trombone entrance.

Part of the difficulty involved the conductor’s conducting style. A conductor’s most basic duty is to establish the tempo, for the movement in question, one, two, three, one, two, three. In the most rudimentary fashion, a conductor indicates this through the pattern traced by the baton through the air. A conductor indicates the first beat of a measure of music, no matter the time signature, with a downward motion, stopping at the bottom of the motion to indicate “one.” Musicians refer to this as the “down beat.” It is key to maintaining cohesion. In fact, musicians sometimes joke that if everyone in an ensemble makes it to the downbeat together, everything will be fine. Of course, conductors, especially of advanced ensembles, do not simply “beat time” in a mechanical fashion throughout a piece. Good musicians should be able to “keep time” in their heads, once the conductor has established it, or reestablished it after a pause or a change in tempo or time signature. Instead, conductors also indicate changes in dynamics or mood or feeling by means of a wide range of idiosyncratic gestures, postures, and facial expressions. Our conductor excelled in these gesticulations. His arms swept broad flamboyant arcs; he lunged bodily into dramatic passages; he stabbed emphatically with his head to indicate accented phrases, his hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes again and again. All of this contributed to the impression of a romantic musician with profound emotions of all kinds able to feel the music physically and psychically with immediacy and dynamism. Our conductor did not, however, indicate the “down beat.”

The trombones sat through the rehearsal without once taking our horns from their stands. Again, we did not make it to our entry that evening, so we had no idea what cues we might pick up from the woodwinds, say, that our entry was imminent. Have I mentioned that the conductor eschewed “down-beats”?

For the trombones, the performance proved a disaster and an embarrassment. In order to understand our plight that evening, those who have never played an instrument in an ensemble or sung in a choral group need to understand what it means to count a rest. The sheet of music before me that evening noted only the part that I was supposed to play. It indicated the section I was to rest with the number of measures I was to remain silent. Counting rests (1, 2, 3/ 2, 3, 3/ 3, 2, 3/ … ninety-nine, two, three, etc.) is key to playing when one should and resting when one should not play. I do not remember precisely how many measures the trombones rest in the concerto movement we played that evening, but in my traumatized memory it was a hundred or more.

At a certain point, when by my count we were ten measures or so from our entry and I was very unsure of my count (no down-beats), I leaned over to the second trombonists and gave what I thought was the count, lifting my eyebrows to indicate that I was asking a question. He shook his head and gave a different count. We both panicked a minor panic and turned to the first trombone giving the second trombonists count. He shook his head and gave a third count agreeing with neither of us. We raised our horns, hoping that the conductor would cue us. I have mentioned that the conductor eschewed “down-beats”; well, he also eschewed giving the trombones cues.

Just then, suddenly, there were two measures of absolute silence before the entire orchestra joined what should have been the trombones in elaborating the restatement of the theme that the trombone section had failed to play. We were chagrined, embarrassed, and more than a little angry, but I learned three hard lessons in leadership.

First, good leaders do not emphasize their individual performances. They do not command the spotlight. Their chief responsibility is the success of the unit.

Second, good leaders focus their attention on preparing, equipping, and encouraging the members of their organization so that the unit may perform up to its ability. In turn, the success of the unit will result in the success of its leader.

Third, good leaders give clear, regular down-beats. They state goals and objectives, clearly and often. They recognize that success involves unit cohesion, keeping everyone headed in the same direction. Cues are good, too.