"It's so tempting to think it's all about me"

At the start of Itay Talgam's TEDTalk he says something that really caught my interest, and that I thought about for the rest of the video. He says "Out of small gestures come great music. And it's so tempting to think it's all about me." As a person with very limited choral and conducting experience, I had never even considered this before. Do conductors really believe that they are the ones responsible for the music or was that just my imagination? According to Itay Talgam, that was really just my imagination. Perhaps that thought stemmed from my concert band experience from grades 8-12. She never acknowledged that without us, she would just look like a crazy person, standing in front of fifty or sixty chairs, waving her arms. The students never received any acknowledgement, in performance setting or otherwise, that we were the ones who were making it all possible. I think that realizing that a group success if not just all about you is an important thing to realize as a leader in any situation. Sure, you may be guiding people in the right direction, but you are not the sole reason of the groups success.

The final conductor that Talgam shows in his talk really illustrates this idea. He doesn't once lift his baton or move his arms. He stands, arms crossed, throughout the entire clip, relying on the ensemble to make something beautiful and meaningful. This is a man who has realized that he is not the superstar, he is merely a member of a group of superstars. And that is what every leader should aim for. Not to responsible for the success of the group, but to simply be a part of the success.