As a young kid, marching band taught me more than just music, it taught me about leadership in a hands on experience. My experience throughout band in high school has shaped my leadership abilities.
Any type of student leadership before high school, at least what I saw, wasn't true leadership. My first exposure to peer leaders was my freshman year of high school when I joined my high school's marching band.
I quite don't remember my reaction, to the senior and junior squad leaders, but I imagined I was surprised that my band director had student leaders. For such a large group, there needed to be more than just one director. There needed to the director's ambassadors or a hierarchy so the band can avoid large amounts of process loss.
The roles that were given to these student leaders had a lot of flexibility. Therefore, it allowed upperclassmen to learn their specific leadership style (or lack thereof). However, it also allowed the followers (the underclassmen) to decide if their leader was effective while also playing with the thought of how they would handle the responsibility of leadership differently.
For me specifically, having to follow the lead of less than perfect leaders was difficult. As a follower, I had to hold my tongue and always follow orders and I couldn't let my emotions get the better of me. One year during band camp, I came home in tears because I felt personally attacked by one of the leaders. Looking back, and hardly remembering the exact situation at all, I realized that the student leader wasn't trying to be mean or specifically attack me personally, they were just trying to guide me. However, there had to be a way of leading that guided the group in right direction without being belligerent and cold.
From that day on, I decided I wanted to be a kind, patient but effective leader. And, as one of my followers told me very recently, I was. I took my negative leadership experience and I knew from there what kind of leader I wanted to be. And that negative leadership experience still motivates me to this day to be better.
I didn't write this article to toot my own horn, I wrote it so maybe past or current students in a group can see their peers in a whole new perspective.
Having to lead your peers for the first time... ever, is so difficult. All of a sudden you're in charge of something larger than yourself. And the power can be both invigorating and terrifying. However, good leaders learn not to abuse their power, but to use it as vehicle for inspiration and good.
And in some cases, some people never learn how to be good leaders. And unfortunately, you'll have to deal with leaders you think are shitty for your whole life. The important part is to never become the kind of leader what you once disagreed with.
Yes, all of this insight came specifically from band. This was one of the first times in my life where I had to work with a large group of my peers to accomplish common goals. Little did I know how useful this four year exercise is in the real world.
And yes, it was a real world exercise I'm applying to Editor in Chief of my school's Odyssey team and, hopefully, going into other leadership opportunities in the future.
My last bit of advice is: try to look at your leadership from the perspective of your followers. If you couldn't respect or even like you, then why should the ones you're (quite technically) serving. Respect always is a two way street.
