Can Music Make You a Better Leader?

 Can music make you a better leader?

A leader is someone who is able to stay calm in chaos, be communicative, intelligent, and above all else honest; a great leader is able to delegate and take charge in their field without hesitation and with great compassion. The ability to multitask and check on many branches of an organization is essential in being a successful leader; this can be compared to the conduction of an orchestra. The conductor must be attentive, receptive, and constantly aware of all of the individual sections and players in an orchestra to make sure the piece runs smoothly and projects its artistic intention. Recently, I attended a seminar discussion led by Dr. Toby Dye, in which the subject of music and its long-term cognitive benefits were discussed. A study done by Clayton, K. K., Swaminathan, J., Yazdanbakhsh, A., Zuk, J., Patel, A. D., & Kidd, G. (2016) was discussed during this seminar; the study demonstrated how musicians are significantly better at identifying target sentences in a setting with many other speech sounds, or sentences, coming from different locations and auditory working memory. These skills are essential in a busy work environment, such as an emergency room, trading floor, production set, or broadcasting room; to be a successful leader in these settings, it is important to be able to hear and recognize communications from various locations to be able to have all the information possible to take the correct action or make the correct decision. To be a leader, one must be excellent in their field, but must also climb the ranks academically to stand out and secure a leadership position. A study done by Guhn, M., Emerson, S. D., & Gouzouasis, P. (2019) in the Journal of Educational Psychology demonstrates how music can also make one a better student; students who took school music courses significantly scored better on standardized exams across English, mathematics, and science categories. Music can lead individuals to being able to achieve what they want in life and be more successful when they have it. 

Resources: 

Clayton, K. K., Swaminathan, J., Yazdanbakhsh, A., Zuk, J., Patel, A. D., & Kidd, G. (2016). Executive Function, Visual Attention and the Cocktail Party Problem in Musicians and Non-Musicians. PLOS ONE, 11(7), e0157638. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157638

Guhn, M., Emerson, S. D., & Gouzouasis, P. (2019). A population-level analysis of associations between school music participation and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(2). https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000376