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Leadership Styles of Music Ensemble Conductors
By Ty Gioacchini
The study of leadership is valuable, as it provides current and future leaders with tools to hone their craft. Various leadership theories and models identify leadership styles and their strengths and weaknesses. This serves as a foundation for understanding the type of leadership different situations call for. Leaders are more prepared to think critically about how to approach challenges and help others in their efforts to achieve goals. It is critical, though, that students of leadership theories genuinely understand the concepts and models they are presented with.
Frequently, the text and resources used to support leadership studies provide practical, real-world examples of concepts in action, such as case studies. These are often focused on leadership in corporate organizations and governments. Some people might find this to be generally applicable. However, there can be value in exploring and presenting leadership theories as they occur in other practical contexts.
Having a background in the performing arts, I often connected the concepts presented during my graduate studies in leadership to experiences I have had as part of music ensembles. Doing this helped me to understand the concepts more thoroughly as I considered how certain behaviors and tactics affected the group.
This study will discuss how music ensemble conductors are leaders. It will present how some conductors execute certain leadership qualities and highlight commonalities in their habits. Adding this information to the existing literature about conductor leadership will contribute additional practical explanations of leadership habits and serve as a starting point for more research into what we can learn about leadership from music ensembles.
Literature Review
Conductors as Leaders
It is easy to identify the conductor as a leader when thinking about leaders and looking at music ensembles. They are in a role that positions them physically before the musicians, typically elevated on a podium. While the initial glance and untrained eye may see only swinging arms, this role is much more purposive. Conductors bring together groups of people to execute a task, sometimes with a timeline of only a few days. Leaders need to navigate the stages of group development while maintaining an environment where musicians can and want to perform at their highest capability (Kerres, 2012).
Katz (2014) provides three essential skills of leadership: technical skills, conceptual skills, and intrapersonal skills. For conductors, these are their music and organizational skills, artistic vision, and charisma, respectively (Zel & Onay, 2012). Each skill is influential in leadership, but the value of each as part of leadership in the music ensemble context can vary. Jansson, et al. (2019) surveyed conductors on the relative importance of musical-technical, situational-relational, and existential foundation competencies and found that con