Leadership, Drum Major Style
PURPOSE
I found my leadership philosophy in a box of childhood junk.
Not long ago, I was at my dad’s house cleaning out my old closet, reliving memories through the various things my parents kept for me. That’s when I found the aged notes from when I’d attended Drum Major Camp. Before I started reading the handwritten pages, circa 1994, I chuckled thinking, oh, this will be good.
Then I began to read.
At seventeen, standing on a practice field in Oklahoma, I wrote down ideas about leadership that I’ve watched executives with decades of experience who fail to grasp. I didn’t know it then. I’ve spent twenty years in technology, architected environments for over a hundred organizations, led teams through impossible deadlines and impossible politics. And somehow, the foundation for all of it was scribbled in a spiral notebook by a kid who just wanted to lead a marching band.
This post isn’t about drum majoring. It’s about what a bunch of band kids understood about leadership that your organization probably doesn’t.
WALKTHROUGH
Leaders Are Driven by “We,” Not “What’s In It For Me”
My notes made a distinction that still holds: followers are driven by ego and feeling good. Leaders are driven by the mission and by knowing, not feeling.
I’ve watched this play out in every organization I’ve touched. The person chasing the title, the promotion, the credit? They’re followers wearing leader costumes. The person asking “how do we solve this” instead of “how do I look solving this” is actually leading, regardless of their org chart position.
In my technology career, I’ve seen this constantly. The engineer who designs for their resume builds complexity. The engineer who designs for the team that inherits it builds clarity. One is leading. One isn’t.
You Cannot Lead Unless You Can Lead Yourself
This was one of the “Four Pillars” in my notes, and it’s the one I’ve violated most often in my career.
I deal with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. For years, I didn’t manage it. I pushed through, white-knuckled deadlines, and told myself that was strength. It wasn’t. I was a liability dressed up as dedication. You cannot steer others when you’re barely keeping yourself on the road.
Leading yourself means knowing your limits, managing your energy, and being honest about your capacity. It means the self-discipline my notes listed under “Drum Major Attitude” isn’t about grinding harder. It’s about grinding smarter so you’re still standing when your team needs you.
People Don’t Get Better by Making Them Feel Worse
My seventeen-year-old self wrote: “Leading is about Forgiving and For Giving.”
I wish I’d remembered this earlier in my career. I’ve been the leader who thought accountability meant making people feel the weight of their mistakes. It doesn’t work. Fear creates compliance, not growth. The most powerful thing you can do for someone who failed is give them the space to try again without the shame of the first attempt hanging over them.
This doesn’t mean no consequences. It means consequences without cruelty. The difference matters.
My notes also had a formula I dismissed at first as corny self-help stuff:
self-esteem [outside sources] + self-image [inward sources] = self-worth
But there’s something here. When you tear someone down after a failure, you’re attacking both sides of that equation. You’re the outside source telling them they’re not enough, and you’re feeding the internal voice that already agrees. You’ve just made it harder for them to recover, not easier.
The notes drew a distinction I think about constantly now:
A good leader, people will admire and respect you. A great leader, people will admire and respect themselves.
Good leaders build loyalty to themselves. Great leaders build people who don’t need them anymore. When a team’s confidence depends on approval from above, that’s followership with extra steps. When a team’s confidence comes from what they’ve proven to themselves they can do, that’s the beginning of new leaders.
This is the real work. Not managing tasks. Building people’s self-image so they carry their own worth instead of borrowing it from someone else.
Inspiration Over Enthusiasm
Here’s where my camp notes got surprisingly philosophical. They distinguished between enthusiasm and inspiration. Enthusiasm, from the Greek “en theos” or “in the presence of the divine,” sounds impressive. But my notes warned that enthusiasm fosters feelings of superiority and showmanship. Inspiration fosters cooperation and creation.
I’ve seen enthusiastic leaders. They’re exhausting. They pump up rooms and burn out teams. They confuse energy for direction.
Inspirational leaders are different. They make you believe you can do something you didn’t think possible. Not because they hyped you up, but because they showed you it was real.
Maintain Control Over Tempo
This one was specific to conducting, but it translates perfectly: stay the course, do not get ahead or fall behind.
Every failed project I’ve seen has been a tempo problem. Leaders who sprint ahead of their team’s capacity. Leaders who fall behind on decisions and create bottlenecks. The job isn’t to go fast. The job is to set a pace that the whole organization can sustain.
CONCLUSION
After reflecting on all of this, two commands from my notes stand out as the north star:
Leaders make other leaders. If you’re the smartest person in the room after five years of leading, you’ve failed. Your job is to grow people who outgrow you.
Leaders inspire others to do things they never thought possible. Not through hype. Through belief, through patience, through showing up consistently when things are hard.
If you find yourself with fleeing, disengaged, or angry employees, it’s not because you ran out of beer in the breakroom or the ping-pong table is broken. Look inward. It’s always the leader.
Everyone gets better when the leader gets better. And people will follow a leader who’s always real over one who’s always right.
I learned that at seventeen. I’m still learning it now.
The line about everyone getting better comes from the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, which I highly recommend: Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Photo by Galen Crout on Unsplash
Oh, and for those that are curious…
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