switching between melody and harmony
When I was a teenager and twenty-something, I sang and played bass in a number of post-punk/rock bands. Triumphs of Faith, Dino’s Lucky Eggs, The New Resistance, Enclave, 45 North, and Average Joe are all names you probably haven’t heard, but they took up a whole lot of my creative energy and time (and probably largely kept me out of trouble).
In most of these bands, I partnered with Drake, my best friend from Junior High. Usually I sang lead, but often he did, too. Depended on the band, the song, or even the verse. When writing scores of songs together, we fell into a rhythm of figuring out who would sound better singing melody or harmony at any given time. It usually wasn’t intentional; whatever felt right and sounded better is just what we would go with. We both felt comfortable either way.
In leadership you are either singing the melody or supporting with the harmony. Some people can only do one or the other, but I contend that the best leaders are those who are comfortable with either. Even if you are the “lead singer”, there have to be times when you can effortlessly shift into harmony to support someone else who is taking the lead, and then shift back to melody again when it is appropriate.
Though the shift seemed effortless in the middle of a show, we didn’t just “wing it” while preforming; by then we knew very well who would be taking each part. Every once in a while, if we were working out a tune on stage “in the moment”, that would cause an awkward situation where we would feel like we were stepping over one another’s parts. The concert went better when we were each clear on where we would be heading, and how, by the time we got on stage.
In the same way, when you are working with your team regarding who will take the lead and who will support, it’s often best to decide how it’s going to roll out ahead of time. Give a team member the responsibility for leading a meeting, and then really let them lead. Maybe you can allow an associate to run point on a project, but you need to allow them to truly take it while you provide the support. Then when it’s time for you to step back in, you can clearly do it without an awkward leadership moment.
The great thing about leading like this is that it trains other people to be the “lead singer”, and allows the primary leader to come under and serve and support. Someone once said that real discipleship happens in four stages:
1. I do it, you watch.
2. We do it together.
3. You do it, I watch.
4. You do it without me.
As a leader, knowing how to switch between singing both melody and harmony, and being comfortable doing either, is an important part of fully developing the leaders on your team!