Hey everyone... editing work on Be Part of the Orchestra and travel outside of the country will continue our newsletter hiatus for another couple of weeks. However, since we know many of you are the planning stages for your student leader training and band camp, we thought we would pass along some of thoughts and ideas about how to best prepare your student leaders for future success.

The leadership trainer in me is always seeking higher truths and greater understanding when it comes to developing student leaders. The band director in me is looking for concrete and practical applications that can make an immediate and measurable impact on my program.

As a director, it is difficult to find the balance between the practical and the philosophical when training your leaders. You want to challenge their minds and enrich their souls, but let's be honest, the band room needs to be cleaned and the truck must be loaded.

Below you will see five philosophical concepts alongside five practical applications to teach your student leaders. This is not meant to be a complete training guide, but rather a "greatest hits" list. Together, they create a leadership training guideline that will help to address both the conceptual and the concrete.

5 Philosophical teachings

Process vs. Product (which is more important and how one affects the other)
Parameters (what student leaders can and can not do)
Equity vs. Equality (teaching/treating people based on what they need)
People vs. Performance (which is more important...the player or the person?)
Permission (giving students permission to make leadership choices and decisions without fear of failure)

5 Practical applications:

One thing a student leader should do before every rehearsal
One thing a student leader should do during every rehearsal
One thing a student leader should do for their section every week
One thing a student leader should do for their director every day/week
One thing a student leader should do to do to make band more fun

I am also attaching a copy of my 25 Discussion Starters and 50 Leadership Activity Ideas. These six pages alone could keep any leadership team busy for weeks. If you are looking for more leadership training materials, click here. The PDF is below.