An alternative to feedback is feedforward, an idea I first heard from Marshall Goldsmith a couple years ago. In this post, I share what feedforward is and 1) how it helps us be future-oriented, why it works, how I used it as a rehearsal technique with my orchestra at Oberlin, and how it surprised me when I used it.

As musicians, what are our goals? For an orchestra, what are its goals? If you think about it, we enjoy our work the most in the company of others - whether it is the musicians sharing the stage with us or the audiences listening to us. I share what might be our actual goals and how we can frame our tangible goals around them.

The main thing that held me back from being a leader was simply not having a title. This lack of a title made me second guess my thoughts and resist my drive to take action. I found myself in limbo…simply waiting for "when.” I've learned that we can all be leaders regardless of our status and rank, and even without a title. I share 4 practices I've tried to help me overcome my tendency to wait.

Like most high-achieving leaders, I'm tempted to phrase compliments like this, "Great job, but it would be better if you did X, Y, and Z” Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls this "adding too much value," and he says this habit can backfire for leaders. I share how and what we can do about it.

"The Spurs don’t succeed because they are good at basketball. They succeed because they are skilled at a far more important sport: building strong relationships.” I share, via Daniel Coyle's work, 5 ways we can signal belonging.

Do you have a mission statement? Did you create it, checked it off your to-do list, and forgot about it? During both prosperous and tough times, our mission can be leveraged to validate us, challenge us, help us grow, and reveal to us the impact we are having. Consider which of these 8 ways your mission can be serving you.

I share what happens when we apply this Zoom community agreements to the orchestral context. Expectations, boundaries, safe spaces, values and guiding principles are what makes teams do extraordinary work - with great productivity and impact. This includes orchestras.

Substitutes are common. Our mindset can become one where musicians are replaceable, like a machine part. We end up separating contribution with its contributor. What if our premise is that every musician is truly irreplaceable? What if we put a bit of effort into connecting contribution with contributor?

"Feedback is often prompted by a problem.” It doesn't always have to be. Response to a problem is actually only one (out of many) reasons to give feedback.

What are our habits? Sometimes our expectations can stop being true. How can we audit culture through the lens of habits and expectations?

How tapping into the influencer industry for orchestras has the added benefit of increasing job fulfillment. My reflections on a conversation with Aubrey Bergauer and David Taylor.

How would you answer: Why do you do what you do? I share some prompts and resources to help us discover our purpose.

Employer brand (“who you say you are”) vs. talent brand is (“who you actually are”). Imagine the impact this distinction can have on recruiting, marketing, fundraising, risk management, and employee fulfillment.

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin coined the “the two concepts of liberty” - negative and positive liberty. Why is it easier to focus on negative liberty, and how what might positive liberty look like for musicians?

Imagine a service that matches compatibility between musicians and orchestras using purpose and values. What is the status quo for us to traditionally identify our "matches"? How can a Tinder for orchestras disrupt that?

In the marketing industry, a reform has been taking place to go from selling commodities to satisfying a need of the customer. Instead of telling a story where the company is the hero, marketers are starting to tell stories where the customer is the hero. We can learn from them.

Do you ever feel like things have to be "just right"? I realized that what is more important is to strive for connecting with the context of “now.” Lesson: Perfection is boring. Repetition is not.

I've been pushed to excel and achieve, but it has also limited my potential for growth and to learn from those around me. A lesson I learned from conducting opera: I don't need to know everything.

In the military, they observe if people would refer to their commander as "the" commander or "our" commander. I ask how many times would you use the pronoun "our" or "we" in our work?

Are you a perfectionist? I share the consequences of this perfection as a virtue and the expectation, using parallels in medicine. Plus four actions we can adopt to dispell it so we continue to grow, to perform better, and to be happier.