09/23/2026
Show them, “Follow me!”
At some point, the shiny newness of the new season starts to wear off…
The first performances are behind us. The new uniforms aren’t quite as new anymore. The excitement of band camp has been replaced by schoolwork, sore feet, late nights, early mornings, weather, buses, loading equipment, forgotten water bottles, missed assignments, schedule changes, and the realization that there is still a whole lot of season left.
People get tired. Students get tired. Directors get tired. Parents get tired. The college kid teaching visual after class gets tired. The adjunct who drove an hour to rehearsal gets tired. The booster president gets tired. The volunteer pulling a trailer, serving food, fixing props, moving speakers, sewing flags, finding extension cords, or standing behind a concession counter gets tired.
And this is usually about the time when leadership gets harder… Because leadership is easy when everybody is excited, but it is much harder when people are frustrated.
When something changes at the last minute. When rehearsal goes badly. When the score isn’t what you hoped it would be. When a student makes the same mistake for the fifteenth time. When a parent disagrees with a decision. When somebody doesn’t communicate well. When equipment breaks. When somebody drops the ball. When someone is overwhelmed. When YOU are overwhelmed…
That is when people start looking around, and whether we realize it or not, they are asking a very simple question:
Who am I supposed to follow right now?
That question has shaped a lot of how I think about leadership.
Years ago, I started using two words to describe it:
FOLLOW ME.
Not “do what I say.”
Not “because I’m the director.”
Not “because I’m the section leader.”
Not “because I’m the booster president.”
Not “because I’m the adult.”
Not “because I have been doing this longer than you.”
But simply, FOLLOW ME.
Watch how I respond when the plan falls apart. Watch how I speak to someone when I’m frustrated with them. Watch what I do when nobody is giving me credit. Watch whether I help when the job isn’t technically mine. Watch whether I make the room calmer or hotter. Watch whether I protect people or embarrass them. Watch whether I listen before I react. Watch whether my behavior changes when the person standing in front of me has less power than I do. Watch me carry something. Watch me clean something. Watch me apologize. Watch me admit that I was wrong. Watch me do the boring work. Watch me keep going when I’m tired.
Then decide whether I am worth following…
That philosophy isn’t just for student leaders. In fact, it might matter even more for the adults… Because students are watching all of us.
They are watching directors and assistant directors. They are watching student teachers and techs. They are watching the former band kid from the math department who shows up to help push equipment. They are watching the parent who always seems to know where everything is. They are watching the booster board. They are watching the volunteer crew. They are watching what happens in the parking lot after rehearsal. They are watching how we talk about people when those people aren’t around. They are watching how adults handle disappointment. They are watching how we respond when something feels unfair. They are watching how we treat the kid who is struggling. They are watching how we treat the kid who is difficult. They are watching how we treat each other…
And somewhere in all of that, they are learning what leadership looks like.
Not because we scheduled a leadership seminar, but because we showed them through our actions.
I believe that is the part we sometimes forget is ever present in almost everything we do.
A marching band program, or a choir, orchestra, theater department, athletic team, classroom, booster organization, or any other community built around young people is not just teaching the activity. It is teaching people how communities behave.
Every rehearsal is a demonstration. Every meeting is a demonstration. Every disagreement is a demonstration. Every stressful Saturday is a demonstration… Every adult interaction becomes part of the curriculum whether we intended it to or not… And when the season gets long, that curriculum gets very honest.
So as we move deeper into the fall, I think there is a worthwhile challenge for all of us.
Students. Staff. Parents. Volunteers. Administrators. Adjuncts. Techs. Teachers. Alumni… Anyone fortunate enough to have influence over the people around them.
Before asking people to follow you… give them something worth following.
Be the person who steadies the room. Be the person who helps. Be the person who communicates. Be the person who can disagree without destroying relationships. Be the person who remembers that inconvenience is not always an emergency. Be the person who can solve a problem without first finding someone to blame for it. Be the person who remembers that the exhausted teenager standing in front of you is still learning how to be a person… And be the person who remembers that sometimes the exhausted adult standing next to you is doing the best they can, too.
Nobody gets this right all the time, because leadership isn’t perfection.. It is the willingness to keep modeling the thing you hope other people eventually become.
Because long after the trophies collect dust… long after nobody remembers the recap…long after the uniforms change, the props get dismantled, and the music from this season disappears into somebody’s old playlist… there will be young people who remember how the adults around them behaved when things got hard.
There will be student leaders who become teachers. Students who become parents. Techs who become directors. Volunteers who become board presidents. Kids who someday find themselves standing in front of another group of people who are tired, frustrated, scared, or unsure of what comes next… And in that moment, somewhere underneath everything they have learned since, there may still be an example they watched years ago.
Someone who didn’t just tell them what leadership was, but someone who showed them. Someone who simply said, through their actions:
Follow me.
Let’s raise the bar, together.
