Leadership experience | Juwon Ogungbe

I was drafted in as a young artist, to work with someone who had a lot more experience of the terrain than I did. It wasn’t exactly the path of development I wanted for myself, but it was useful for networking and learning the ropes.

Perhaps due to the way my mind works, I was soon given responsibility for keeping tabs on musical arrangements in band rehearsals. Most of the music making I had been involved in before that time was with people who presented fully formed ideas, so this was something new for me to deal with.

The leader always spoke of the potential of what we were doing. In the future we would have roadies, and the whole operation would function at the optimum level in our business.

Intuition told me however, that it was likely that the act was going to remain on the same level for far too long. I sensed this because of my knowledge of the leader’s drive and vision. I decided to move on.

When I became a band leader myself, I could see musician colleagues, similarly sizing up the situation. Leadership skills are not evenly distributed in any field of activity. We can all have a go however, to find out what we’re capable of doing.

Originally published at https://juwonogungbe.com on May 2, 2020.