How to empower your band -- Do you want to know a secret?

September 1, 11:29 AMSalt Lake City Entertainment Industry ExaminerChristopher Harding

 What’s the secret to empowering your band?  Well, in spite of what a famously entitled book may say, empowerment and the power of intention is not a secret.  A bit of mystery, perhaps, yes.  But as Oprah Winfrey once said, “The secret to life is, there’s no secret.” 

So what is empowerment anyway?  Great question that is asked far too seldom in the musical world (and in life, for that matter).   In an attempt to do some justice to this subject, I’m going to break this topic up into several articles.  Truth is, empowerment has far more to do with our success than we may initially believe. 

To begin with, we can say that empowerment starts with the act of taking your power back from all the places where you’ve given it away, allowed it to be taken, or have let it leak out.

 To look at it more formally, empowerment can be defined as the choice a person or group makes to function at their full capability; to continually expand that capability; and to inspire others while creating an environment that encourages us and them to perform at our best.  Does that sound like the environment you and your band mates create?  If so, good.  If not, you’re stacking the deck against yourselves (and as we all know, the odds are reportedly pretty dicey in the music business). 

What is also inherent (though perhaps not obvious) in the definition above, is that empowerment cannot be bestowed.  In other words no other person can empower you.  Thinking otherwise is a big mistake that many of us make—a mistake that often leaves us waiting for someone else to show up and rescue us from ourselves.  Now, can we create an environment that encourages others to play all out?  Yes.  Can we influence people to choose to perform at their best?  Yes.  But only each person and each group decides at what level they want to play the game. 

If you decide you want to play full out in your musical career, here are some key elements that will help you do so: 

1. Your story: What’s the story you’ve made up about the music business and your role in it.  It’s a story you create in your head, so you might as well make it a good one (one example might be “the music business is a fun, clever game and we have and/or will gain the power, influence and talent to be a major force in that world). 

2.  Your role: Almost everyone’s familiar with role playing games.  Well, life is a role playing game as well.  You’ve chosen (or accepted) a role in life and in the pursuit of your goals.  Is it a powerful role or a more meager part (i.e. are you a mover and a shaker or a victim of the industry; the misunderstood artist or a someone in the process of generating wild success)?  If you haven't chosen a powerful part for yourself, why not adopt a role that is powerful?  We, after all, are the ones who create and act out our roles in life.  And if you want to know just what role you’re really playing, ask others to tell you honestly how they see you. 

3.  Your mind state: We all induce ourselves into trance states.  Did you know that?  We convince ourselves that our story is, in fact, reality (and we can convince ourselves of some pretty amazing things).  We then act out our part—doing and not doing the things that are consistent with our role and our story.  This mind state shows up as our attitudes and our beliefs about what’s possible.  Are you positively focused or do you have the attitude of “life’s not fair?”  Do you look for ways to create solutions or do you stew in your problems? 

4.  Your actions: We all behave in ways that are either consistent or inconsistent with our stated goals.  Do your actions (the things you do) and your inactions (the things you choose not to do) consistently point toward the goal or outcome that you claim to be seeking?  How can you know?  Look at the results you’re generating.   

There’s an old axiom that I heard stated by a good friend of mine, Bill Guillory (he’s also co-author with Phil Davis of the hilariously informative book, How to Become a Total Failure).  “The result bears out our intent,” Bill told me one time when I was frustrated with my career.  You can imagine how much I loved hearing that, but the more I sat with it, the more true it felt.  Now before we get into a discussion as to whether that’s an absolute truth or not, if we just presumed for a moment that it was true, that means that if things happen different than how I think that I intend, I either didn’t intend clearly enough or I have a limiting belief lurking around in the basement of my mind that is sabotaging my conscious intent. 

 So how do you confront your limiting beliefs?  Start doing the things that will lead you to success and pay close attention to what comes up for you (your fears, the discouraging little voices in your head, your excuses).  It’s not too hard to surface those little viruses, once you’re aware. (We’ll talk more about how to transmute those beliefs in a later installment.) 

5. Your outcome and accountability: The results of our actions provide us with great feedback, if we’re willing to own our outcomes.  If I don’t own the results (i.e. I blame others or myself or make excuses) I learn little or nothing and am very likely to simply repeat the same pattern over again (with the same people or with others that I have re-cast in those roles).  Blame is an attempt to evade responsibility, even when I’m blaming myself (more on that in the next installment).  Remember, the ability to learn from what didn’t work is one of the main distinguishing characteristic of those who regularly generate success.   

Another key to accountability is to catch yourself (and others) doing it right and reward those actions (even if they are small incremental steps in the right direction).  How do you reward right action? Acknowledge it authentically.  Say “thanks” or “way to go.” And if it’s you, you’re acknowledging, give yourself a high five.  These types of acknowledgment actually light up our neurology and release the body chemistry that reinforces our behavior. 

Learning to be genuinely gracious and grateful are also important keys to generating success and creating relationships with others that support our success.  Teddy Roosevelt once said that “to the degree we resent the success of others, we prevent our own success.” 

In our next installment, we’re going to dive into the power of responsibility and give you a chance to explore a vital ingredient in your success that you may not have taken full advantage of.  As a parting thought for now though, here are a series of questions to ask yourself when you face a challenge or are seeking a goal: 

• What is the outcome I seek (how do I want this part of the story to turn out)?
• What role can I take on that will best help me create that outcome?
• What mind state do I need to induce in myself to keep me on the right track? 
• What could I do and what could I stop doing that would give me the best odds of creating the outcome I want?
• Who can I enlist as my peer coach who will challenge me, encourage me, and not accept my excuses? 

The process of empowering ourselves is very straightforward and yet it does take practice and time to master, so be patient and persistent.  And it may help to remind yourself, where will you be in a year from now, if you don’t begin the process of fully empowering yourself?  Where might you be in a year from now, if you do? Ah, now that gets interesting, doesn’t it?

 If you want to leave your thoughts and comments on this topic, please do so below.  Or join the conversation on this topic, by dropping by the Passionate Genius blog on How to Empower Your Band.  We'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you enjoyed this article, here are three more you might like “20 questions every band should answer,” “What you need to know about do it yourself music: part 1?” and “Before you record your music: part 1.”