The Importance of Communicating with Your Team

Recently, I completed a week of marching band camp. For some context, I have been a part of the marching band for four years now, and over the years I’ve developed a stronger sense of communication with my peers. It’s vital to communicate to leadership what your needs are, because as I say, “I’m not a mind reader!”

However, this year, I am now the leader of my section, the flutes. I work with the section leader of the clarinets as well to aid in leading the woodwinds.

An image of me (left) teaching my section and the clarinets in the march.

Entering this position, it took some time to get fitted. I am not the best of marchers, nor the greatest of flute players. In fact, members of my section outdo me in those areas oftentimes! However, as band camp progressed, I learned the best approach for communicating upfront and honestly with the team. Telling them you’re wrong as well! As a leader and a fellow marcher, it’s core to acknowledge your mistakes to your team, so they can understand you and learn from them. One solid example of this was telling them stories of my freshman year.

My freshman year, we were required to learn the school fight song, or the Notre Dame Victory March. In all honestly, I was unable to learn it fully by the first football game! However, I learned two major lessons at that moment:

1. The band has your back. If you are sick, the other members will do their best to aid you in catching up or covering if you’re struggling with the very new music. Trusting your team in and out of band is an important part of immersing yourself in your working environment.
2. New things are difficult! It took a lot more effort to ingrain that into my memory than I initially put on, and giving myself that room to grow and understand that change isn’t going to be easy made the actual process much, much simplier.

Amongst that whole learning story, I could have lied to my section and told them I was confident with the march. However, by honestly communicating and openly discussing things with your team, you teach them what you’ve learned. Additionally, you hear their input on where they are at. Do they need more aid with this part of the music, or is it their marching that they want to focus on? By demonstrating to your team you are human too, you make it more comfortable to talk to you. Am I a perfect communicator, musician, or marcher? Not at all! I have much more improvement to see. However, this is still something important I learned through my last year of marching band camp. That’s all for today, be sure to check out my YouTube channel and LinkedIn.

a picture of my section performing at the water park for our final day of band camp as a sweet note to leave on :). Both pieces of photography featured in this post are from Daniela Trivelli, a historian for our department. Both images are free to use.