A Revolutionary Approach to Leadership Training for Managers: 6 Ways the Best Bosses Lead Like Music Teachers

Providing leadership training for managers of your company is a worthwhile undertaking to make your team as successful as possible, but only with the right approach.  Too often, internal and third-party trainings miss the mark on generating impact and lasting change for organizations, because the core teaching techniques and philosophies intended to educate a team are missing.

We are here to change that with a unique method of leadership training based in strategies from a realm you wouldn’t see coming:  music education. 

Yes, music education!  The principles music teachers use to teach their students how to play an instrument, as well as the strategies used to train music teachers to give lessons, are the same concepts that translate to improvement in any domain.

Concepts like ‘leadership’ are taught from a perspective of connection, proven concept retention, and purpose.  These are all areas of musicianship and the way musicians train that leaders need.

Read more in our guide to leadership development consulting.

You Can Develop a Musical Mind for Leadership!

You don’t need to be a musician to have a musical mind and reap the benefits of artistic discipline.  We show you the core strategies classical music artists and educators use and that you can apply to ANY area of improvement to achieve meaningful progress.

Leadership training for managers and developing the strategies to manage others have a tremendous connection to the day to day skills music teachers need to perform their work effectively with students.  We present the essential learning and teaching concepts that will take your company’s leadership to the next level – no matter what stage of development you are in.

The AstroCat Story: Music Educators turned Entrepreneurs

The Founders of AstroCat – our business development firm – are both classical music teachers turned successful entrepreneurs.  Our mission is to educate business owners and teams on principles of success that intersect in both artistry and industry by sharing our unique experience and insights gained.

Read Heather’s Story and Aubrey’s Story. This is us in our teaching studio!

In our journey, we went from teaching students on piano and violin, to then teaching the teachers of those students how to master their freelance practice, then to developing a seven-figure revenue lessons business that serves a base of 800+ weekly students.

Through this experience, we had an opportunity to test our staff training ideas over decades of lessons and first-hand staff hiring and management experience with hundreds of professionals. 

Businesses grow through the classical strategies for improvement that are universal to all successful pursuits, but rarely do on-the-job techniques intersect between music teachers and corporate teams.  Until now.

The Typical Leadership Training for Managers

When you consider rolling out a leadership training for managers, or similar program for your staff, or hiring a consultant to deliver a leadership training course for your team, there are a few predictable models you will see. You can deliver a training through any medium (in person, virtual, or online course), but most share a common rhythm. 

• We start with a lecture and / or proposed best practice with explanation. 
• Then, this concept is discussed in small groups, or journaled, role-played, etc. 
• At the end of that topic, or section, there is some sort of assessment of understanding, or activity to reinforce understanding.

Of course, there are steps that can be added between, or different orders, but this is the core teaching strategy of the presenter.

This module of “present idea > apply > assess understanding” can be repeated several times through the workshop, or course.  In well planned trainings, each segment builds on the next to make the final segment the most impactful.

The principles presented in a leadership training are typically solid advice at the core and revolve around a few central themes:  how to communicate and delegate effectively, how to motivate, how provide feedback, and strategies for tough situations.  This list from Harvard Business Review covers most of the greatest hits.

Everyone can agree these are important skills for leaders need too.

When leadership training misses the mark

Speaking from a genuine, human perspective, these team training models are often stale. They feel like a few hours of hard work for the group to get collectively hyped.  It is not a presentation I would choose to attend, or be excited to lead, and at least 25% of people attending will not really want to be there – at least. 

These trainings feel obligatory and required to most individuals involved as a baseline sentiment. 

That being said, some presenters do a great job at amping up their participants too, and attendees leave with a mission and plan.  Even though trainings feel required, these gifted orators excel at making the process pretty painless.

The issue is that as soon participants exit any training, or get a little bit of space to return back to the “real-work world”, most concepts a leadership course was intended to build are quickly forgotten.  Even with the best of workshops and courses, including excellent virtual options, taking a manager from learning a concept to application is the greatest challenge ahead.

Managers and their teams revert back to old habits in time, even when they know the best practices and better approaches.  This is not a failing on the end of managers, but instead, data that can be applied to get to a better result. 

The strategy of presenting “how to be a good leader” with specifics and role-playing the scenario misses the mark for effective team trainings. 

Quizzes and three to six month assessment periods are failing at measuring true success and real outcomes.

If these methods do not result in effective leadership training for managers, how should business owners approach this need?

The 6 unexpected traits of a great leader

When you think of leadership books and common qualities attributed to a great leader, communication skills and characteristics that demonstrate a high level of insight and responsibility are frequently re-hashed. 

By the end of one of these books, or presentations, we are led to believe the ideal leader is the most insanely balanced person in the world. They are direct, but not harsh.  They use “I” statements.  They are easy to talk to, and they don’t micro-manage. 

Amazingly, though, they always have an eye on end-results and are ready to give constructive feedback at exactly the right moment…in exactly the right way.

Therein lies the problem.  A leader is very much a human, and the description we are met with for the ideal leader, is so balanced, it’s a perfectly unattainable standard.  When you are really on the job and leading a team, the timing for your feedback and tone will default to your authentic manager-self when the pressure is on, rather than this highly-curated image.  Those are the moments that matter for your business, managers, and entire organization. 

At the core, the robot-manager described above is missing a few critical, but possibly unexpected traits of a great leader:

• They have the ability to build self-esteem in team-members and others

• They have the ability to assess different individuals’ baseline states and detect variations

• They are a good match-makers

• They excel at creating outlines and micro-staging tasks to reach a goal

• They are excellent at performing and teaching others to perform

• They have a consistent temperament

In my experience and leading a team of 80+ staff members, I have found these six qualities contribute far more to a manager’s success in leading their team than any specific communication skills, or strategy for giving feedback will.

As a common theme, notice that all six traits described place a tremendous amount of accountability on the leader and what they are bringing to the managerial relationship with their team.

In our leadership training for managers, we emphasize these principles as a foundation for building trust, which is the most critical objective to make their teams successful.  Without this feeling of absolute trust, the magic your teams are ready to contribute cannot be manifested.   

This concept of building trust as a gateway to learning is essential for every music teacher to master and where principles of teaching classical instrumental lessons intersect with leadership training.

Here is the challenge: these six unexpected qualities of a great leader can be difficult to isolate and work on in the same way as traditional leadership training formats. To answer this need, our firm developed a revolutionary approach to leadership training and empowering your managers to be effective, and we share the key concepts for you to consider.

How teaching piano lessons prepared me to lead a team

Earlier, I mentioned our Founders of AstroCat – myself being one of two – started out as classical music teachers, and that is very much where my entrepreneurship story starts too.  The business world was new to me when I decided to take a franchise start-up opportunity for an in home music lessons company. 

I had been teaching private piano lessons for around four years when I dove in and started building this totally new school in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area.  My dream was working in music, and this seemed like a sustainable path. 

But to have a school, you must develop a staff of music teachers, and that was an intimidating aspect of the opportunity. 

Scheduling lessons and being on the front lines with the families for enrollment felt like second nature to me within the management of this school and day to day workflow.  But hiring and maintaining a full staff of teachers who needed to stay on with us for a minimum of one year to be a worthwhile addition to the team was a completely new challenge to me – not to mention, becoming effective at training and directing them.

At that point, in 2010 when I started the D.C. music school, I had never managed another person in any capacity.  However, I had taught lessons and managed my own group of students who took lessons with me week to week.  They all met individually for their sessions, and I was leading each student in their musical journey.

In onboarding my staff, the connection between leading my students and leading the teachers on my staff took – honestly – a couple years to dawn on me.  It’s never too late to revamp your leadership approach, though, and I started by changing my perspective. 

I started considering every member of our team as a personal student, just like those I was teaching piano to every week. They received the same level of routine care and attention as a client, and I saw my job as educating them – but in how to be effective teachers and professionals as the lesson, rather than how to play piano.

With this shift in my leadership approach, the results for our entire program started to change.

After the start of this new leadership effort, our business saw a sharp increase in student retention and growth metrics.  We went from net growth of 30-40 students per year from 2010 through 2014 to growing by 80+ students every year from 2015 – 2021.   

This concerted effort to develop a teaching-based leadership style for our team resulted in doubling our student growth metrics year over year.

Which music instruction skills apply to leadership training for managers?

Now, for the connection to our six unexpected traits of a great leader – and how they overlap with our background as music teachers, managers, and business owners…

To showcase our leadership training for managers workshops, courses, and coaching sessions and how these 6 traits are approached in our method, we walk you through these vital skills and how you, or your managers, can apply these concepts to leading teams.

Leadership Trait #1: They have the ability to build self-esteem in team-members and others

To be an effective leader, you must have the buy-in of the group you oversee.  Without this willingness and trust in your directives, literally nothing can get done.

Music teachers understand this concept thoroughly, because we experience the breakdown and results in real-time with our students when we have not been effective at winning the ability to guide them.  It truly is ‘winning’ trust in many cases too.

Music instruction requires participation from both sides of the equation – especially with the student.  They must be open to receiving and implementing our instructions sincerely, and patiently proving that we are safe individuals and will not react in a negative way if they make a mistake is paramount to success.

As music teachers, we learn to build our students’ self-esteem through the music they learn by consistently encouraging them forward.  This aspect of teaching is equally as important as the musical content.

We do not let mistakes go entirely as teachers, because music students also want to achieve the best results.  We give helpful and forward moving feedback that keeps a student going, because we understand that maintaining a student’s positive view of the learning experience is so essential to keep them ‘open’.

As a manager, or leader of a team, consider the average entry-level employee you are training and what they share in common with the same music student.  They want to prove they are a good fit at your company and are trying their hardest, especially at the start. 

If you fail at nurturing their self-esteem and feeling of belonging in your organization, they will take another offer for a better company-culture fit as soon as they can. 

If you prove to be a leader who does not excel at bolstering others, or applying equal attention to all members of your team, this is the skill you should be developing and focusing on with a therapist, or relationship coach. 

Leadership Trait #2: They have the ability to assess different individuals’ baseline states and detect variations

One failure we see frequently with leadership training for managers and typical courses and workshops is the stress put on leaders to over-standardize, or systemize their management of teams.  Typically, efforts are placed on efficiency and keeping operations lean ahead of personalization, and we believe the best managers do the inverse.

Music teachers know first-hand why leading and instructing through a fixed system does not work for every student.  Each student has their own, unique baseline performance level, and pace that works for receiving and retaining information, even if they appear to be the same level.  Even if they are twins!

There is also a big difference in practice capacity between students and what can be learned successfully in a set amount of time, due to each student’s natural differences in aptitude, performance level, etc.  As music teachers, we should be aware when a student is having an off-day, or if they are maintaining a pattern of non-engagement…or above-normal performance!

However, every student should be in the appropriate level as a categorization until they are ‘advanced’ (like level 1, level 2…) to best serve their retention of fundamentals.

This same need different music students have to be taught and trained as individual learners is present in corporate teams too, and great leaders will sense shifts in their employees’ baseline state and performance so they can take action.

For example, when I would have a high performing instructor suddenly drop the ball on routine items they never normally miss, I would take time to reach out and check in, even if they were still in an acceptable performance range we would not typically address for another staff member.

Understanding the typical disposition and performance of every member of a leader’s team – or every department under their oversight – equips leaders with proactive insights that (again) build trust with your team. 

Teaching a manager to develop this insight requires immersion with their team and working with them on day-to-day items.  This sensitivity should be cultivated with high priority for managers.

For leaders who like to be hands-off and sit back, a lot of communication will be needed to make up this missing support and interaction with your team to create a comparable result.  Though we can train leaders on customizing to individuals, gaining this personal knowledge takes only time and work.

That time and work can easily be the part your manager is missing and what AstroCat uncovers in leadership training for managers.

Leadership Trait #3: They are a good match-makers

Not the Cupid kind! Notice, I didn’t say what kind of match maker a good leader is, and this is intentional. 

The matches a manager makes can vary widely between industries, but as a skill, they need to be good at making connections for their team and clients.

Music teachers are great match-makers for finding the perfect equipment set-up for their students.  They are awesome at recommending professionals for instrument services, like piano moving. 

My favorite match to make as a private piano teacher was finding the perfect song for my students when it was time to select for performance events.

What the AstroCat team was well-known for with our music school was curating an amazing staff and making the perfect client-teacher match.  When we got that relationship pairing right, it meant years of uninterrupted, recurring revenue for our business.

Understanding people, goods, and services that complement one another is a talent that can be grown, but the underlying skill that makes effective match-making possible will be very familiar:  becoming a great listener.

Match makers are observant, and they mentally categorize information they receive, so they can make future-connections.  Musicians tend to do this mental filing as a habit and as part of the thinking style that leads to their success learning an instrument, but there are many other professions that rely on the ability to match-make. 

On a fundamental level, sales and recruiting are both match-making endeavors, for example.

As a starting point – if you are a leader hoping to hone your match-making prowess – start with simply listening and taking in information.  When you are in a mode of receiving, the connections happen.  You don’t have to force it.

Leadership Trait #4: They excel at creating outlines and micro-staging tasks to reach a goal

The best leaders are great at…well, leading.  They know how to break down complex ideas into their simplest form, or smallest set of steps, then bring those steps together to reach a goal.

This is the concept that music education and instruction is built on too and the way music instruction curriculums are approached.  We start with the most basic concepts, then build the difficulty of excerpts over time as each next-step is mastered.

Music teachers also apply this strategy to learning and teaching complex individual pieces.  They break down challenging passages into simplified excerpts and exercises that build up in difficulty as a progression. 

This is a very common practice strategy when approaching new musical material for students and artists of all levels.  This is also the type of systematic thinking music students learn by studying an instrument.

As they say, “learning music is beneficial to your brain.”  I’m sure you’ve heard studying an instrument makes you good at math too.

Though I cannot personally attest to any direct intelligence benefits I have gained from being a music teacher and student, I do know that my ability to break big problems down into smaller and more manageable pieces – as well as implement plans to reach specific goals – is directly related to the systematic thinking style I developed through piano study.

In a corporate setting, being able to break down large, or difficult work into a manageable plan of action is one of the most valuable skills you can have.  It’s also the same skill needed to map out step-by-step instructions when explaining new concepts to your team, or clients.

Both goal mapping and step by step explanations rely on a leader’s ability to take large challenges and simplify them, as well as instruct from an empathetic space – respecting the specific level of experience your trainee, or student has. 

The best training for simplifying complex tasks and goal-mapping large challenges is exposure and experience.  Until you can place yourself in the frame of mind of a ‘beginner’, or experience an in-the-moment struggle with navigating a large challenge, you cannot lead from a place of full understanding.

Your team will sense this gap, if you are not effective at goal-fulfillment as a manager – and it will break their trust.  However, the leader who is not afraid to the same work they delegate to their team is unstoppable, because they garner their team’s respect through rolling up their sleeves.

Leadership Trait #5: They are excellent at performing and teaching others to perform

This is an obvious forte for music teachers and the goal of their instruction with students.  As we trained music teachers on being as effective and successful as possible in their lessons, we would give them specific strategies like, “instruct your student to count out loud as they play,” or “do mock recital run throughs before the big recital day for extra performance-practice.”

And yet, the teacher is also a performer on the student’s recital day.  They are embodying the role of the music teacher, and we coached our staff on when to arrive, how to dress, how to greet students, and many other parameters of the event days to help them contribute to a great experience for our mutual students.

Excellent leaders in any field know how to embody their role and perform as a leader – even in times of uncertainty.  This may equate to being a good actor, or being good at masking their imposter syndrome.  Ultimately, these leaders do what it takes to present themselves well and as an authority.

In training their teams, these leaders provide mentorship, explain their thought processes, and work with team members who are struggling on improving in their lessons, or with retaining their students.  They also amplify the confidence of those they oversee, so ‘performing’ their role is comfortable.

These leaders know that the performance of the individuals on their team all ties into the company’s mission, so they work hard to lift everyone up and help them perform their best.

Leadership Trait #6: They have a consistent temperament

A final, and very important, quality of both great music teachers and outstanding leaders who build trust with their teams is so obvious, it may not even come to mind:  they have a consistent and even temperament. 

These individuals put employees and students at ease, rather than raising the cortisol of the room when they make an entrance. 

But what makes some leaders more approachable than others?

Mood and attitude consistency can be elusive to pinpoint when missing, but can very-well be a reason a particular boss, or manager puts you on edge.  They could have any type of reaction at any moment, and at times, subtle cues you get from them make you question who they really are. 

If you are a consistent leader, that means you are predictable, and anyone who is connecting with you, or working with you, knows what to expect from your disposition…across a wide variety of situations.

Building trust in this area can be difficult at first, though, because the trainee, or student must be vulnerable enough to make a mistake and receive the reaction of the manager, or teacher.

When the corrective guidance from a leader is not hostile when faced with a mistake, or condescending, they are showing their team they are a safe person who is not going to raise hell over human error.

For the music teacher, establishing this trust in the same way is essential to freeing students to be creative and not fear reprimand if they miss a note, or rhythm.  We’ve all heard the tropes of the ruler-bearing music teacher who smacks your hand when you make a mistake. 

In music education, we are fighting that perception consistently and working with students of all ages (even adults) on not fearing the learning process, or teachers giving lessons.  We are also teaching our instructors to avoid contributing to that stereotype around classical music instruction.

Though this may seem like an easy challenge to address, leaders are human and experience different emotions day to day too.  It is easy to be approachable for a week, but the level of consistency we are talking about will need to endure for years.

Learning the art of compartmentalization and to strategically avoid presenting yourself as frustrated, or bothered, are strategies that help with managing your optics with your team and protecting their work environment. And yet, finding the authentically positive leadership voice that works for your management must be grown from within to really work. Your guidance and oversight must feel easy to the recipient, not forced. 

Working with a business coach, or within a peer group to vent frustrations are perfect outlets to manage your energy and present your best self to your team.

A revolutionary approach to leadership development training

Leadership training for managers is held in a variety of settings and through different outlets, but these mediums frequently fail to create the ideal environment for participants to retain the information they are receiving.

The reasons for this failure is a mix of information overload, plus an uninspiring setting, mixed with classes…and classes feel like school. 

Some other consultants and organizations that give corporate and staff trainings have picked up on this too.  And this is where you get the weird training ideas. 

I’m sure some brilliant team-leadership pioneer out there was also a revolutionary of his time when he broke out that first trust-fall as a method of building community.

However, this is just one idea that quickly became trite. The need for innovation in the education space does not stop, and this includes corporate trainings. 

Training the next generation of professionals to be their best at running a team will require creating new and fresh ways of conveying one thing:  how to connect people to keep collaborating successfully towards a goal.

This objective cannot be achieved with single strategies and seminars. It requires a radical shake-up where a leader learns how to make themselves trustworthy to follow – and that’s a big challenge.

The AstroCat Approach to Training Leaders

Though new ideas will always be added to our repertoire, and staying dynamic is important, there is a central theme to our approach in training leaders…

We strategically set up ways to keep our coaching and training participants from phoning it in and getting bored as we build their skill.  You can’t bullshit us.  We will call it out.

Our leadership training is action-based, and you won’t realize you are learning leadership while it is happening.  This is why it works.

As a business owner, or executive, you will feel the impact of our strategies in the data you see. There will be positive increases to KPIs for your manager(s) and staff retention, as well as increases in profits, sales, and productivity over time.

The benefits go on and on when you have a stellar leadership team running your organization that gets results.

A healthy company is a lot like a healthy person. When an issue dragging you down is solved, the whole body – and many different systems within – all improve. They are connected.

In a typical leadership training workshop we do in person, there are no handbooks, or workbooks.  There are no pre-set presentation slides, or even a conference room.

We find it way more impactful to set managers to task on a real and meaningful project AS their training. Their points of evaluation are not realized until they are collected, but a central task must be completed that is related to their actual work. 

Though there are no escape rooms involved, the task is typically something participants find value in and is outside of the norm.

With this approach to our training, we can provide targeted guidance to every individual learning with us that taps into why team members are / are not naturally drawn to working with them in an optimal way and how they can make it better.

For example:  in order to improve the retention of our teaching staff, we rolled out two specific new initiatives in tandem that our staff was unaware of…

• We started making recitals 100% required for all teachers to attend if they have participants performing, which was an area where we gave a lot of exceptions pre-pandemic, but stopped when in person recitals returned.

• Right after the pandemic, we also started hosting quarterly teacher appreciation gatherings that were basically a party that had a lot of appeal for the staff, and we rotated the location to give equal opportunity to everyone to attend.

What our staff did not know is that we were evaluating attendance across both sets of events to determine staff engagements against student retention metrics and assessing overall performance that included these two areas of participation.

The parties were actually set up to invite more hands-on help requests from our team, who were chronically over-serving their own issues that the office could help on.   Though we appreciated the engagement from our teacher, their assistance often led to more issues than good.

These gatherings, and consistent outreach about them to all staff members, invited the communication changes we were hoping to see organically by ‘opening the channel’. Our task of “reaching out to staff” in the office was made natural by setting up a consistent occasion to make contact.

Even those who were not attending heard from us every quarter to talk about some type of event, and this invited open and comfortable dialogues. We also saw an increase in the proactive outreaches we received from our quietest teachers.

We became familiar to all 85 of our staff members with this campaign to connect, and our operation grew to record-breaking heights during the years after the pandemic.

By 2023, our company had grown to over 200 students larger than our flagship school’s previous record by exceeding 850 weekly students enrolled. We were bursting at the seams of the parent company’s infrastructure capacity, which is an amazing problem to have as a business owner.

This approach with leading our staff effectively was the magic that made this record-breaking acceleration possible for our school.

Start leadership training that works for you and your team!

For business owners and executives – we know setting up leadership training for managers you oversee is an item on your to-do list, and we want to help you make the experience as meaningful as possible.

If you are seeking a way to improve the performance of your teams, but everyone is tired of the stale, seminar / webinar style presentations that feel more like due diligence than generating real improvement, we would love to show you a new way forward.

Imagine your next leadership training for managers actually accomplishes a business initiative you need to complete, while actually making your team better at their jobs.

This result isn’t a corporate fairy-tale – it is at your fingertips!

Whether remote, or on location, we provide custom leadership coaching that inspires your team, increases your bottom line, and brings you peace of mind – all at the same time.

Are you ready to start a leadership training program for yourself, an employee, or your team?  Book a free discovery call with us through our contact form, and receive a customized action-plan and next-steps.