Beyond the Performance: What Music Taught Me About Leading With Purpose
How music and meaningful connection reshape what leadership truly means
Leading Through Connection: When Music Becomes a Bridge
For much of my career, I understood excellence through the discipline of performance. As a professional singer, I was trained to prepare every breath, study every phrase, and communicate with precision. That training shaped me as an artist, educator, and leader. Yet some of the most important lessons of my career came in rooms where polished performance mattered least.
They came while singing with older adults living with dementia.
In those spaces, music was not a product to be presented. It was an invitation to participate.
I have watched individuals who appeared withdrawn begin tapping a hand in rhythm. I have seen someone who could no longer easily carry on a conversation complete the next line of a familiar song. I have watched caregivers recognize, even briefly, the humor, personality, and warmth of the person they love.
These moments do not erase dementia, nor does singing replace clinical care. What they can do is remind us that a diagnosis does not eliminate a person's need for connection, choice, expression, dignity, and joy.
That realization transformed how I understand leadership.
Connection Comes Before Performance
Artists are often taught to enter a room prepared to demonstrate what they can do. Leadership sometimes requires the opposite: entering prepared to notice what others can do.
When I lead a music engagement session, my responsibility is not merely to sing beautifully. It is to listen, observe, adjust, and create enough emotional safety for others to participate.
Sometimes that means changing the tempo. Sometimes it means repeating a chorus, accepting a different lyric, inviting a memory, or leaving space for someone else's voice.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is meaningful participation.
This principle extends far beyond music. Whether we lead a business, classroom, nonprofit, healthcare program, or community initiative, people are more likely to contribute when they believe their presence matters.
Connection is not an accessory to effective leadership. It is the foundation that makes effective leadership possible.
Expertise Must Be Made Accessible
Professional knowledge has value, but its impact depends on how generously and effectively we share it.
My career has spanned performance, music education, community engagement, and arts-in-health programming. Each field has its own language and standards. However, the people I serve should not need specialized knowledge to benefit from what I know.
A person living with memory loss does not need to understand vocal pedagogy to experience the pleasure of singing. A caregiver does not need to be a professional musician to use a familiar song as a doorway to connection. A child does not need perfect technique before being welcomed into artistic expression.
True expertise should not create distance.
It should help us build bridges.
This belief eventually led me to found Music Heals Minds, a nonprofit organization that creates participatory music experiences for people living with cognitive and neurological challenges and for those who care for them. It has also shaped my doctoral work at Johns Hopkins University, where I am examining how musicians and caregivers can be better prepared to lead ethical, responsive, person-centered singing experiences.
I do not want this knowledge to remain confined to a stage, classroom, or academic paper.
I want it to become usable.
Leadership Often Means Building What Is Missing
One of the most difficult parts of creating mission-driven work is explaining an idea before other people have a familiar category for it.
When a program crosses professional boundaries, people may ask where it belongs. Is it performance, education, community care, or health and wellness?
My answer is that meaningful work does not always fit neatly into existing boxes. Sometimes innovation emerges precisely because someone notices a need between established systems.
I had to stop waiting for complete validation before beginning. I learned to pilot ideas thoughtfully, listen to participants and partners, study what worked, acknowledge what needed improvement, and keep refining the model.
Purpose does not eliminate the need for rigor.
It demands more of it.
Women with ambitious ideas are sometimes encouraged to make those ideas smaller, safer, or easier to explain. My experience has taught me that clarity is important, but conformity is not the same as credibility.
We can communicate our vision responsibly without abandoning what makes it distinctive.
Influence Is About Resonance
The word "influence" is often associated with visibility, authority, or public recognition. Those things can create opportunities, but they are not the whole of influence.
In music, resonance occurs when one vibration awakens another. I have come to believe human influence works in much the same way.
Influence happens when our knowledge helps someone else recognize their own capacity. It happens when a student becomes brave enough to use their voice, when a caregiver sees possibility within a difficult season, or when a person who has been defined by a diagnosis is once again invited to contribute.
My work has taught me that leadership is not always about being the loudest voice in the room.
Sometimes, it is about creating the conditions in which another voice can emerge.
That is the kind of influence I hope to cultivate: influence rooted in excellence, guided by service, and measured not only by what I accomplish, but by what becomes possible for others.
Whatever our field, each of us can ask:
Am I using my expertise merely to demonstrate what I know, or am I using it to create connection, dignity, and opportunity?
The answer may transform not only how we lead, but why.
