Creating a Culture

Steven Hendricks, Kaysville Utah
Steven Hendricks, Kaysville Utah

Reprinted with permission from the Spring 2018 issue of the Utah Music Educators Journal

When you learn something from people or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it.

-Yo-Yo Ma

In recent years culture has evolved into one of the most oft used words in society. In fact, the Merriam Webster Dictionary declared culture the 2014 word of the year! Culture refers to the beliefs, traits, values, and practices of an organization.

The word culture is used to describe societies and groups in many ways, including demographic cultures, religious cultures, school cultures, and business cultures to name just a few. Some cultures have existed for centuries, but others are quite new. Corporate Culture is a relatively new player on the block—and this is probably why the word culture rose to such prominence a few years ago. Prior to the 1980’s, businesses looked more at the numbers than they did at the people, but a 1982 groundbreaking book shifted paradigms. In their international best seller In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Wasserman challenged the notion that businesses were all about the numbers, and instead postulated that successful businesses were, in fact, all about people. In 2001, Jim Collins followed up with a similar treatise, Good To Great, that further established the importance of getting the right people first—because the people determine the culture of the business. Today, thanks to these books (and a multitude of others with similar themes), Corporate Culture is the theme du jour in the business world.

Educators have used “School Culture” for years to describe the environment and expectation at their school. In my experience, the school culture seems to be pervasive; you won’t see many schools that have a reputation for excellence in just one or two areas. Great administrators get the “right people on the bus” when they hire—people whose mindset and vision match the desired culture—with a result of excellence across the board. I have been blessed to teach for the past three decades at a school with an established culture of excellence. When I first arrived, I quickly learned the level of expectation, and realized that I either needed to live up to that expectation or get off the bus! Realizing this, I set out to develop a culture in my band program that would accomplish two primary objectives: first, to establish values and practices that my students could live by for the rest of their lives, and second, to work with students and parents to develop one of the finest band programs in the country. Over the next three decades we created a culture of trust, unity, and respect that I believe accomplished both of those objectives.

  1. A Culture of Trust

 Trust is an integral part of life; in fact, almost everything we do involves trust, either for objects, people, or both. Have you ever set a wake-up alarm on a device you weren’t familiar with? I bet your sleep wasn’t as peaceful that night, because you didn’t fully trust yourself to set it correctly or trust the device to do its job in the morning! Take a moment to consider these questions: How much of your life is about trusting machines to work, trusting people to run those machines correctly, or simply trusting people? Would your life be easier if you knew you could trust everyone and everything?

According to Stephen M.R. Covey, trust may be the most important commodity in the world. In his book The Speed of Trust, He made this bold statement:

“There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. That one thing is trust.”[i]

We live in a time where it seems like trust is waning, which makes it that much more important for us to create a culture of trust in our own lives. People have always turned to trustworthy sources for answers. They will frequent businesses that they trust and vote for politicians they trust. Most importantly, when trust exists in the home, our most important culture—the family—will survive and flourish. The band room provides the ideal place to cultivate a culture of trust, both in the team and in the individual.

Teams exist in every facet of our lives from athletics to business to family to community. When there is a high level of trust within the team, they get things accomplished faster, are happier, and in general enjoy their association with other members. When trust is low, the team gets bogged down in excuses, pointing fingers, and handing out excessive mandates by their leaders in an attempt to get everyone in line. The band team provides a perfect example of how a group working in harmony, both literally and figuratively, can flourish.

Ask band members to give examples of times that they had to trust others on the team, and most will quickly cite an example from their marching band experience. Marching band members are regularly expected to cover a large distance at tempos of 160 to 180 beats per minute, often while moving backwards. Because they are facing forward to keep their instrument pointed at the audience, they can’t see behind them and have to trust other band members to stay out of their way. At band camp you can always pick out the rookies. They are the students who are constantly trying to look behind themselves when they are first learning drill. We point out to them that if they are worried about what was going on behind them, they will cause issues for the people who are in front of them. Eventually, students learn that looking forward and trusting people behind them to stay out of their way is by far, the best option. Over the marching band season, the trust level grows and along with it, their level of performance increases.

Marching band teaches students that it is always best to focus on what is in front of us and to trust others to do the same.

  1. A Culture of Unity

Over the centuries, we have had a wonderful and enormous catalogue of music written to capitalize on similarity of tone quality and timbre. The concert band, which found footing in the early 20th century thanks to John Philip Sousa, Henry Fillmore and others, offered a new way to approach composition, blending instruments of highly varied timbres to create an entirely new set of tonal colors. By the middle part of the 20th century many composers turned to writing for band, embracing the opportunities the many and diverse timbres of wind instruments offered them. Just as an artist would turn the multiple colors on his palette into a beautiful piece of art, they combined the clean timbre of the flute, the nasally sound of the oboe and bassoon, the  reedy tone of the saxophone, the mournful tone of the horn, the brassy sound of the trumpet, the rich timbre of the trombone, the beefy punch of the tuba, along with the unique sound of several other instruments to create music of unsurpassed beauty. In the symphonic band, it is diversity—not uniformity—that makes the music happen!

By the time music students graduate from high school they know the power of the team. In a final senior essay, one student described her experience so eloquently I had my own goose bump moment just reading it! She said:

“No song is played as well when played alone, even a solo loses its potency when unaccompanied. I have been taught by my peers and equals in the band program that music is much more gratifying and ardent when played in harmony than when performed solitarily.”

What incredible life lessons to take with them! In the band room, students learn that unity accomplished far more than individuality. They learn that diversity should be embraced and celebrated, and they discovered the endless possibilities available when a group of people join their collective consciousness to make something beautiful.

  1. A Culture of Respect

 Respect is an integral part of several ethnic cultures. Native Americans demonstrated great respect for their land, their leaders, and each other. A former student of mine, who now lives in Japan, told me that “saying Japan has a culture of respect is kind of like saying that fish have a culture of water. It is something that runs really deep and systemic through the people.” Respect is also an integral part of successful band programs, in part due to the fact that bands were originally rooted in the military.

I grew up in a vastly different world from today. Adults were respected simply because they were adults. We used the terms “Mr.” and “Mrs.” when referring to our teachers. Calling them by their last name alone didn’t happen, and calling them by their first name was unthinkable! The band room was a monarchy with the band director as king. We didn’t dare question or contradict our director, and fear was often used as motivation.

The culture I grew up in proved highly successful for most of the 20th century—but it won’t work with millennials. Teenagers today still show respect, but they want to be more than puppets, playing out the workings of one holding the strings from the podium. Students today crave engagement with the director working more as a facilitator than a boss. Late in my own career, I learned that one of the best ways to get results in rehearsal was to simply say “Why did I stop?” That question opened opportunities for the students to have a say in the result and feel a greater connection to the music as a whole.

Millennials don’t respect teachers for their knowledge; they have all the answers in a device that sits in their pocket. They don’t respect teachers who use scare tactics to achieve results—they may even shoot back! Millennials respect compassionate adults who are interested in helping them achieve their own dreams. In her book Compassionate Music Teaching, my sister Karin Hendricks explains:

Compassionate music teachers act as guides, supports, and champions of students’ self-selected dreams, using the students’ own aspirations for musical expression as a catalyst for emphasizing the practice of diverse technical skills.”[ii]

In the 21st century band programs, respect for leaders, classmates, and band members from other schools is regularly on display. Students are taught to respect their director by stopping what they are doing when he steps on the podium—not because they fear getting disciplined, but because they look forward to making music together. Acting as a facilitator, the director demonstrates respect and trust in the students by involving them in decisions about how to best perform the music. Throughout the rehearsal the students learn respect for each other when they participate in the music—even when their part has rests. At festivals and competitions, students show respect for band members from other schools by recognizing and applauding the great work they do.

A Culture For Life

I have always believed that I am using music as a vehicle to prepare my students for life. Creating a culture with values like trust, unity, and respect opens the door to making musical masterpieces and along the way, it also instills those values in our students for a lifetime. Your students may not continue with music past high school or college, but they will never forget you or the culture you created in your program!

[i] Covey, Stephen M.R. The Speed of Trust. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006

[ii] Hendricks, Karin S. Compassionate Music Teaching; A Framework for Motivation and Engagement in the 21st Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018

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