Leadership lessons from choir practice

In a chorus, it’s not about overpowering another voice, but adjusting one’s tune to create a harmony.

– Patty Cuyler,

Early in 2018, 40 University of Chicago students, faculty, and administrative staff gathered at the business school for an unusual leadership workshop. Instead of a lecture or small-group exercises, management professor Harry Davis got everyone on their feet and formed a choir.

A onetime member of the Dartmouth glee club, Davis often incorporates the humanities in his curricula to get business-minded students to expand their perspectives. “As we look at the performing arts, there’s an enormous amount of value that can be taken in terms of experimentation and being open to other worlds that may contain useful raw material that could apply to our own world,” he says.

“We teach music to be better people and how to listen to each other,” explains Mollie Stone, a choirmaster and lecturer at the University of Chicago’s music department.

This event resulted in an article on https://qz.com as well as a Youtube video, titled: “Learning Leadership, Lessons from a Pop-Up Choir” uploaded to Youtube by the University of Chicao Booth School of Business:

https://research.chicagobooth.edu/har… | What can business learn from music? We convened a one-time Chicago Booth pop-up choir to find out. In three hours, forty students, faculty, and staff learned to sing together and performed for a live audience. In this documentary film, Harry L. Davis, Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor of Creative Management, and Mollie Stone, Choral Director and Lecturer at the University of Chicago, discuss the leadership lessons they learned.

Presented by the Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership in partnership with directorial team Jason & Blue.

Learn more about Jason & Blue: www.jasonandblue.com