Learning Leadership

“More than just waving our hands”

Many choral directors take on administrative responsibility with little formal preparation. Here are strategies to excel in the office and boardroom as well as the concert hall.

As a Westminster Choir College undergraduate a few years back, Lynnel Joy Jenkins felt determined “to make a huge impact through choral music.” With visions of grand artistic accomplishments dancing in her head, she found it peculiar when one of her professors assigned her the uninspiring task of building a budget. Not only that, she and her classmates also had to prepare a newsletter, write concert programs, and put together a chorus handbook. With these administrative exercises, she now realizes, her professor planted a seed: Choral conducting “is more than just waving our hands.”

Jenkins, now artistic director of the Princeton Girlchoir in New Jersey, was lucky to have the seed planted early. Many choral directors take on administrative responsibility with little or no formal preparation. They get sucked in when they realize the chorus they love to conduct has no one else to turn to. Or they have a vision to establish a full-time chorus and realize they’re the only ones to do it. Or they get a sudden promotion. Or they just need to make more money.


Ronnie Brooks, founding director of the Shannon Leadership Institute at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation

As founding director of the Shannon Leadership Institute at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota, Ronnie Brooks deals with this situation all the time. Of the hundreds of people she’s worked with at Shannon, she estimates that 20 to 30 percent come from arts organizations, and learning administrative leadership is one of their most frequent issues. “Too often,” Brooks says, “they think it’s just about artistic success. Moving from A to A-plus artistic work gets all the attention. They ignore moving from C-minus administration to B.”

No one disputes the importance of organizational efficiency. But for a choral director who didn’t happen to pick up an MBA to go with the MME or DMA, it’s no easy goal to accomplish. Artistic leaders expanding their purview face three big challenges, says Brooks: learning the necessary administrative skills, understanding how the chorus connects to the broader community, and staying in touch with their passion.

Learning Administrative Skills

In 1983, when she launched the Centennial Children's Chorus in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Peggy Rosenkranz says she didn’t know enough to be worried. “Then after I was way into it, I realized this is a huge job.” She had all of the administrative responsibilities, from chairing the budget committee to managing long-range planning to typing the programs. The planning was her biggest challenge, she says. As an elementary school teacher, she was used to cycles running week-to-week or at most month-to-month.

“Artistic directors tend to be engaged in all aspects of the organization-they feel guilty if they’re not involved. There’s a belief that it’s your job…you should do it all.” – Michael Kerschner

“Learning about budgets, marketing, and fundraising is interesting to some people and dreadful to others,” acknowledges Brooks, but she says most people can learn the skills if they want to. For leaders uncertain about where to start, she offers encouragement in the form of a Zen Buddhist saying: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Rosenkranz started by attending workshops. She recalls returning home with stacks of material from early Chorus America conferences where, she says, there was “a helpful focus on administrative issues.” Things really changed after a children’s choir workshop organized by the St. John’s Boys’ Choir in Minnesota. A board member who went along saw the need to get Rosenkranz some help. The chorus began hiring paid staff, reaching ten members by the time she retired in 2008.

Habits he learned as a teacher helped prepare Michael Kerschner to take over in 2007 as artistic director of the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. “As a music educator you’re producing concerts, advertising, stage managing, coordinating logistics,” he says. So at the YNYC it was natural for him to apply for grants, secure venues, plan advertising, and strategize about audience development.


Michael Kerschner, artistic director of the Young New Yorkers' Chorus

Before long, he began to question whether those old habits were still good habits. “The job becomes overwhelming. You start to lose your ability to manage the details,” Kerschner admits. Nonetheless, he hesitated to let go. “Artistic directors tend to be engaged in all aspects of the organization-they feel guilty if they’re not involved. There’s a belief that it’s your job…you should do it all.” Compounding the problem, he felt “hypersensitive” when it came to delegating because he didn’t want to appear terse or cold. But he says he’s learning from the example of board members that these transactions needn’t be emotional. They’re just business.

One of the pitfalls of leadership—of feeling responsibility for everything—is loneliness. That’s the most painful part, says Brooks, “so inside and outside the organization you need to have pals, people with whom you can share the challenges you face.” That approach has worked for Gary Cannon, who leads three community choruses in the Seattle area: the Cascadian Chorale, the Vashon Island Chorale, and Sine Nomine, a Renaissance ensemble.

When he got started there in 2008, he says he felt confident about what he was doing artistically. “But fundraising and budgeting techniques, functioning with a board…those things were very new to me.” Cannon approached four conductors he admired, asking them to be his artistic advisory group. When he meets with them for lunch once or twice a year, most of the conversations focus on administrative rather than artistic issues, he says. 

Asking for help can be hard when your new job seems to demand that you come equipped with all the answers. Especially daunting for some is the prospect of consulting the person who just left the job. If you have a predecessor, both Rosenkranz and Jenkins argue it’s worth it to reach out. “Your biggest ally can be the former director,” says Rosenkranz. “They truly are the only person who understands what you’re going through.” Jenkins adds a word of caution: don’t expect the former director to take the first step. “Only when I inquire will she offer advice,” Jenkins says. “She wanted me to make my imprint.”

Connecting to the Broader Community

Good mentors also demonstrate that there’s much more to effective administrative leadership than balancing the books. As a close observer of the teachers he’s had over the years, Kerschner found himself reflecting on how they approached the process of building successful choral programs: “Was their leadership strong and visionary, or was it wavering and weak?”

This points to what Brooks considers the second great challenge facing choral directors moving toward organizational leadership: “to nurture and develop useful skills that help you connect with people in a different way, and particularly to learn a broader context for doing the work you do.”

A natural place to begin is the boardroom, the first and deepest point of engagement between nonprofits and the communities they serve. By tapping into the energy and skills on their boards, conductors often find allies to help advance their artistic vision. Feeling they were ready for “bigger things,” Kerschner and the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus sought and won an invitation to sing at the 2011 ACDA conference. To get there, they turned a “legal” board into a “normal” board, one capable of managing, planning, and fundraising for the tour. The move also created an infrastructure the organization could build on.

At that point, the leader’s responsibility becomes keeping the board engaged, which requires a different kind of attention than maintaining the singers’ morale. “I try to spend a lot of time and energy valuing the efforts of board members,” says Rosenkranz. “If you give them a job, make sure they know you appreciate their work. That way they’ll buy into your vision and help you.”

Engaging the board is only the first step toward the larger community, but because arts leaders often have to struggle just to remain standing, they may find it tempting to venture no further. Brooks sympathizes but cautions, “that’s not going to help them meet the challenges of the future.” To do that, she believes, leaders need to travel outside of their boundaries. Otherwise, their perspectives become narrower and narrower.

“The way in which people engage in the performing arts, the way in which they schedule their lives…those things have changed enormously,” Brooks says. “The kind of flexibility and segmentation that have become important to the community are not fully reflected in performing arts organizations.”

In her four years at the Princeton Girlchoir, Jenkins admits she has succumbed to “tunnel vision.” Occasionally she may not have taken her singers’ lives fully into account when scheduling rehearsals, for example, or deciding who will advance to the next-level choir. “Being on a concert stage and singing in a beautiful setting may be what I want, but parents may want their daughter to be in a wonderful social environment and just have good friends. With every decision you make, you gain a different perspective.”

“Baby steps. You just have to identify the skills you want to learn and implement them first. Don’t expect you’re going to be an administrative genius over the weekend.”– Gary Cannon

Still, societal change of the kind Brooks describes calls for engagement at an even deeper and wider level of the community. She believes arts leaders must get out among the audiences they want to reach and learn from them. “What makes beautiful music, what makes a satisfying experience for your singers…you hold on to those things.” But, she adds, you don’t stop there. “The more interaction you have with the community, the more models you can discover in order to succeed and nurture yourself. It’s important to be more open-minded than many of us have been in the past.”

Dipping the Bucket into the Well

When leadership responsibility pulls people away from what they’ve come to love, it poses an enormous challenge, says Brooks. Individuals become artistic directors because they love music. Then they get promoted or stretched in other directions. As the demands of the job multiply and heat up, they start to feel duty-bound to move “selfish” interests toward the back burner. At this point, Brooks finds, they may become dissatisfied because “they’ve lost the passion and the fuel that comes from being directly involved in what they love.”

The phenomenon is not unique to the arts. Guiding hundreds of participants in the Shannon Institute’s yearlong programs, Brooks has noticed the same thing in fields such as human services, working with children, and elder care. She asks leaders on the brink of burnout to contemplate a metaphor: “It’s useful to know where the well is. Have a regular practice where you dip your bucket into the well.” In other words, think about what nurtures your spirit and stay connected to it.

One way to stay connected to music is to let go of other responsibilities. Kerschner happily turned the responsibility for budgeting over to his board. “I’m proud of my ability to create a season that won’t put us in debt, but I don’t know anything about filing taxes,” he confesses. Learning to let go has freed him artistically, he’s found. “I feel more prepared to give rehearsals that are joyful because I don’t enter them with any sense of stress.”

Jenkins shares leadership responsibility with an executive director, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. She gets involved with administrative issues only when they’re closely tied to the choir’s artistic vision. “I’m not tempted at all to get involved beyond that. I have to be a good steward of the time I have.”


Gary Cannon, artistic director of the Cascadian Chorale, the Vashon Island Chorale, and Sine Nomine Renaissance ensemble.

And if you don’t have administrative staff? “It would be very nice to hire a manager but until we get to that point financially, I’ll do what needs to be done,” says Cannon. He admits he felt overwhelmed at first, most of all by a fear of failure. But he survived his short-lived panic, realizing that he relished knowing that his choruses needed administrative help and that he could provide it. The secret to his approach? “Baby steps. You just have to identify the skills you want to learn and implement them first. Don’t expect you’re going to be an administrative genius over the weekend.”

Then there are those who have the option to let go, but choose not to. Often, leaders fitting this description are founders. They’ve succumbed to “the founder syndrome,” which, as Brooks describes it, afflicts leaders who have been closely attached to an organization’s mission and success throughout its history, so attached that when they lose their effectiveness they are unable to recognize or admit it.

In the early days of the Centennial Children’s Chorus, Rosenkranz confesses that she wanted all of the control. But before long she realized the chorus needed more than a single person can manage. As a founder herself, Brooks has a strategy to guard against the syndrome. Each year she sets three objective criteria by which she can judge her own effectiveness and desire to continue. The danger for founders, she says, is that they sometimes have no vision of their lives without their work. “They haven’t been out in the community, they haven’t nurtured their own lives. That’s an important thing. Don’t be just an administrator or just an artist; have a vision of your whole life.”

Applying your Values Across the Board

“Don’t be just an administrator or just an artist; have a vision of your whole life.” – Ronnie Brooks

In keeping with that holistic view, Brooks advises choral artists becoming leaders to aim for a coherent approach to their working lives by asking themselves, “How should these values I hold deeply as an artist be applied now that my responsibilities have changed?” High artistic expectations apply in both the performance hall and the office. But beyond that, consider: How do I define high expectations for fundraising, marketing, or personnel? If I value risk in my programming, how does that apply on the administrative side? “Don’t be one person here and another there,” Brooks urges. “Stand for certain things; that’s what makes for trustworthy leadership.”

Brooks sums it all up this way: “Take time to get clear about the purpose of your work and the values you would like your work and life to constantly display. And be kind to yourself and others in the process of pursuing those goals.”

These strategies for learning leadership are drawn from a presentation by leadership consultant Ronnie Brooks at Chorus America’s 35th Annual Conference, as well as follow-up interviews. Brooks is the founding director of the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation. Now in its 20th year, the Shannon Institute provides a yearlong renewal experience for foundation and nonprofit organization leaders. Learn more at www.shannoninstitute.org.


Don Lee is a media producer, editor, writer, and amateur choral singer who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously at NPR in Washington, DC, he was the executive producer of Performance Today.

This article is adapted from The Voice, Winter 2012/2013.