GM503 Unit 4 Orchestra Followership Analysis Example

What the Brass Held Back: A Unit 4 Followership Analysis of an Orchestra's First Season Under a New Director

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Purdue University Global

GM503: Leadership Theory and Practice II

Unit 4 Followership Analysis

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[Date]

The orchestra, its players, the music director and every event are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and studies cited are real.

The Season

The orchestra employs 64 full-time players under a collective agreement and performs about forty concerts a year in a city of roughly 700,000. Last season it hired a music director from abroad, a conductor in her early forties known for detailed rehearsal work and for asking section leaders to shape phrasing rather than simply follow her beat. Reviews of the season praised the strings for "a new warmth and flexibility" and described the brass as "accurate" and, twice, "lifeless." Subscription renewals rose slightly, and the board extended her contract.

The question for this analysis is why the same director, using the same rehearsal approach, produced such different results in two sections.

Two Frameworks of Followership

Robert Kelley sorted followers by two questions: do they think for themselves, and do they throw themselves into the work? Followers high on both, whom he called exemplary, think for themselves and put energy into the work. Those high in critical thinking but low in engagement are alienated: they see what is wrong but withhold effort. Those engaged but uncritical are conformists. Those low on both are passive, and those in the middle are pragmatists who do what is required and wait to see which way things go (Kelley, 1988).

Ira Chaleff proposed a related model based on support for the leader and willingness to challenge the leader. Courageous followers combine high support with high challenge: they back the leader's purpose and say so openly when they disagree (Chaleff, 2009). More recent followership research treats followers as co-producers of leadership whose choices shape what any leader can achieve (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014).

The Strings

The director's rehearsal method asks section principals to propose bowings and phrasing before she gives her own view. In the first week, the concertmaster and the principal cellist brought marked parts for the season's opening program, argued with her about tempo in the slow movement of a Brahms symphony and persuaded her to change it. The second violins' principal began holding sectional rehearsals on her own time to work through passages the director had flagged.

In Kelley's terms, the string principals behaved as exemplary followers, thinking critically about the music and engaging actively. In Chaleff's terms, they offered both support, investing in the director's approach, and challenge, disagreeing openly where they had a view. Section players followed their principals' lead. By midseason, rehearsal notes show the director spending less time on string details and more on balance and shape, because the strings were solving their own problems.

The Brass

The brass section had a different history. The principal trumpet and principal horn had both applied to serve on the search committee and been passed over, and the committee chose a director whose style was the opposite of the previous director's tightly controlled approach, which the brass had liked. At the first rehearsal the director asked the principal trumpet how he wanted to phrase a solo, and he replied, "However you want it." He played exactly what she indicated, every time.

That pattern continued through the season. The brass played every note accurately and on time. They did not propose phrasing, did not hold sectionals and did not raise disagreements in rehearsal, though two players complained about the director to the personnel manager. In Kelley's terms, the principals behaved as alienated followers: they had clear critical views, which they voiced outside rehearsal, but withheld the engagement the director's method depended on. In Chaleff's terms, they offered neither support nor open challenge.

The brass gave the director exactly what a traditional conductor demands, accuracy, and withheld exactly what her method needed, initiative.

Figure 1: Placing the Sections

Figure 1 places the two sections on Kelley's two axes. The string principals sit in the upper right, high on critical thinking and engagement. The brass principals sit in the upper left, high on critical thinking but low on engagement. Section players in each group cluster near their principals, which suggests that in an orchestra, followership styles spread through the principal players.

What the Players Contributed and Withheld

Set side by side, the sections' contributions differ sharply. The strings contributed marked parts before rehearsals, open disagreement on tempo and phrasing, sectional rehearsals and solutions to their own technical problems. They withheld nothing the method required. The brass contributed accurate, punctual playing and full compliance with explicit instructions. They withheld proposals for phrasing, sectional work and open disagreement, which they redirected into private complaints.

Why the Difference Mattered

The director's method is designed for exemplary followers. It asks players to bring interpretive ideas, and it produces its best results when they do. With followers who only comply, the method has nothing to work with: she asks for ideas and receives none, and accurate but uninflected playing results. A more controlling conductor might have produced better brass playing by specifying every phrase, but that would have undercut the very approach that transformed the strings.

This illustrates the central claim of followership research: leadership outcomes depend on what followers choose to offer, not only on what leaders do (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014). The same leader, the same method and the same season produced different results because two groups of followers made different choices.

What the Director Could Do

The analysis points to a conversation the director has not yet had. The brass principals' alienation began with the search process, not with her, and their criticisms reached the personnel manager rather than her. Chaleff's model suggests that courageous followership requires a setting where challenge is safe and taken seriously. The director could meet the brass principals privately, ask directly what they think is missing from the section's sound and invite them to lead one sectional rehearsal on a program of their choosing. That would offer a route from private complaint to open challenge, and it would test whether the section's withholding was aimed at her or at the process that chose her.

Conclusion

The new music director's first season split along section lines. The string principals acted as exemplary and courageous followers, contributing initiative and open disagreement that her method needed. The brass principals, alienated by the search process, gave exact compliance and withheld initiative, and their playing reflected it. Kelley's and Chaleff's frameworks show that the difference lay mainly in what the followers offered.

References

Chaleff, I. (2009). The courageous follower: Standing up to and for our leaders (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler.

Kelley, R. E. (1988). In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, 66(6), 142-148.

Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 83-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007