26 Leadership Skills & Traits for Choral Directors

Jun 20

25 Leadership Skills for Choral Directors | Ashley Danyew

What does it mean to be a leader? And what does it take to be a great one?

Leadership has been defined as “the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” (source) Thus, a leader is one who inspires and directs that collective action.

This requires a certain set of skills and character traits, though experts say you can learn and develop these skills with time and experience.

You don’t have to be born with all of these skills and traits to be a great leader.

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." - Vince Lombardi

Leadership looks a little different in a choral music setting than in the business world. Most of the time, you’re not overseeing a group of employees or working to increase the bottom line.

In choir, leadership may look like motivating a group of volunteers, whether that’s a group of middle-aged or senior adults in your adult or community choir, a group of volunteers teaching and directing individual groups in a graded choir program, or a dozen teens in your middle and high school youth choir.

It may look like collaborating with a staff (of 2 or 8 or 20), organizing committees, or recruiting amateur instrumentalists. It’s sharing a common goal and inviting people of all walks of life to be part of that.

What does it take to be a great leader in these settings? Here are 26 leadership skills and traits for you to consider:

Presence

Presence is about the habits and qualities you bring to the work before rehearsal starts—your commitment to preparation, your willingness to keep learning, your honesty about what you know and what you don't. Directors who lead with humility create rehearsal environments where singers feel safe to make mistakes, ask questions, and try things.

Take a look at the five skills below and think honestly about where you're strong and where you want to grow.

Self-Direction - Taking initiative and ownership of your growth as a director without waiting for external prompts or oversight.
Lifelong Learning - Actively seeking out new knowledge, methods, and perspectives throughout your career. The best directors are students, too.
Humility - Recognizing that you don't have all the answers—and that your singers, your colleagues, and your own mistakes all have something to teach you.
Integrity - Showing up honestly and reliably. Doing what you say you'll do. Holding yourself to the same standards you hold your choir.
Dedication - Committing fully to the work and to the people in your group, especially when it's difficult or unglamorous.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

— Steve Jobs

Voice

This is about how you use language to lead others. Can you give clear directions without over-explaining? Can you address a problem directly without making someone feel singled out? Can you listen well enough that your singers feel heard, not just instructed? Confident communication doesn't mean talking more. Often it means saying less, more precisely.

These four skills work together, and developing them will change the feel of your rehearsals more quickly than almost anything else.

Communication - Conveying ideas clearly and purposefully, whether you're giving rehearsal direction, offering feedback, or explaining a concept.
Directness - Addressing issues honestly and constructively, without hedging or over-explaining. Clear is kind.
Listening - Taking the time to truly hear your singers: their questions, their concerns, and the musical feedback they're giving you in real time.
Confidence - Projecting trust in yourself and in the process. Confidence isn't about certainty; it's about showing up with a steady, growth-oriented presence.

Connection

People stay in choirs because of how they feel when they're there. Connection is about cultivating relationships—really knowing the people in your group, understanding what motivates them, and creating an environment where everyone belongs and feels capable of contributing. Empowerment and encouragement are about giving your singers the tools and trust they need to develop real musical independence. That's what keeps a choir engaged year after year.

Interpersonal Skills - Engaging with your singers respectfully, warmly, and thoughtfully—as individuals, not just as section members.
Empathy - Understanding where your singers are coming from and responding with genuine care, especially when they're struggling.
Respectfulness - Valuing each person for who they are and what they bring, regardless of experience level or musical background.
Inclusion - Actively welcoming all individuals and creating an environment where everyone feels they belong and can contribute.
Empowerment - Giving your singers the tools, trust, and freedom to take ownership of their musical development.
Encouragement - Supporting your singers through words and actions that build confidence and reinforce what's possible.

Learn the key skills + strategies you need to direct and lead your adult choir with confidence.

Join me inside Music Education and Leadership Skills for the Adult Choir Director, a 2-hour, self-paced, online training course for church musicians.

Packed with practical tools, resources, and strategies you can use right away, you’ll learn the basics of how adults learn, how to teach vocal technique and choral methods, develop sight-reading skills, choose music, and plan rehearsals.

Learn more and enroll

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

— John Quincy Adams

Direction

This cluster is about how you lead the room—making decisions, working toward a common goal, and adjusting when things don't go as planned. Good directors are organized without being rigid. They come in with a plan and know when to set it aside. They're proactive enough to anticipate problems before they surface, and consistent enough that their singers always know what to expect. Purpose fits here, too—knowing why the work matters keeps you grounded when rehearsals are frustrating or the season feels long.

Creativity - Approaching rehearsals and repertoire with curiosity and flexibility. Seeing problems from multiple angles and generating fresh solutions.
Purpose - Leading with clarity about why the work matters—to you, to your singers, and to the community you serve.
Decisiveness - Making informed choices and standing by them, even when the path isn't clear.
Adaptability - Recognizing when something isn't working and adjusting course without losing momentum or confidence.
Proactivity - Anticipating challenges before they arise and taking initiative to address them early.
Consistency - Showing up with the same level of preparation, communication, and musical leadership week after week. Reliability builds trust.
Organization - Creating systems and maintaining structures that keep rehearsals running efficiently. Good organization frees up mental energy (yours and your singers’) for the music.

Culture

Culture is what you build over time. It's the tone you set, the standards you model, and the way your group feels about itself. Patience is a leadership skill—it signals to your singers that learning takes time and that mistakes are part of the process. Gratitude, when it's genuine, reinforces what's working and keeps morale high. And motivational ability isn't about pep talks (though there’s a time and place for those!); it's about designing rehearsals and experiences that give people a reason to care.

Patience - Remaining calm and steady when learning is slow, or rehearsals are hard. Patience signals to your singers that growth takes time—and that's expected.
Gratitude - Expressing genuine appreciation for your singers' time, effort, and commitment. A culture of recognition sustains motivation.
Motivational Ability - Inspiring your singers to do their best work through the quality of your preparation, your presence, and the experiences you create together.

There are lots more leadership skills and traits I could have added to this list, but I think this is a good starting place. I hope this list is helpful to you as you think about ways to continue developing your leadership skills this year.

I'd love to hear from you:

What are your greatest leadership skills and traits? How have you worked to develop them?

Sources:
101 Best Leadership Skills, Traits & Qualities
Leadership Definition
Inspirational Quotes for Businesses About Leadership
9 Aspects of Being a Great Music Ministry Leader

A to Z: Must-Haves for Your Choir and Ensemble Rehearsals

It’s back-to-school season, which means it’s time for all things Fall, new school supplies, and the start of a new academic year.

If you’re a planner like me and like things to be organized, you probably spent some time this summer cleaning out folders and boxes, straightening up counters and rearranging chairs, getting the piano tuned, and planning music for the Fall semester.

Three Models for Organizing a Combined Choir

Choir is a meaningful way to build community, promote unity, and bring people together.

Whether you direct a community choir, a church choir, or work with a professional choir, combining with other groups can be a memorable, enriching musical experience for all involved. It's also a practical way to expand what's possible on a concert program: more voices, more opportunities for divisi, and a bigger sound than one group could create on their own.

24 Piano Duet Books for Recitals or Worship

Piano duets are one of the most enjoyable ways to make music with another person—whether you're adding something special to a worship service, planning a studio recital or informance, or just looking for an excuse to sit down at the piano and play with a friend or student.

In my experience, most piano students love the chance to perform together, and even small churches have at least one person in the congregation with some playing experience. Often, people just need to be asked and invited to participate.

A Score-Study Checklist for Music Teachers & Directors

The phrase score-study takes me right back to music history at 8 a.m. on Wednesdays (you, too?). Grout anthology in one hand, class notes in another, marking cadences and phrase structure and German augmented sixth chords.

Don’t worry—I’m not suggesting you analyze your ensemble music quite to that degree. However, the practice of studying a score—before teaching, rehearsing, or performing the piece has its merits.

How to Lead a More Effective Rehearsal

Making progress, learning, improving. A sense of accomplishment and achievement.

Whether you’re leading a choir, chamber group, studio class, or classroom ensemble, you know what a good rehearsal feels like—focused, efficient, and productive.

There’s energy and momentum and everyone’s engaged and working together.

Oh, What Fun! How to Host a Christmas Choir Kick-Off Party

Who doesn't love a Christmas party in September (even if it’s still shorts weather)?!

A Christmas choir party is a fun and festive way to welcome new members, build community, and generate excitement for the season ahead. Whether you're leading a church choir, community chorus, or small ensemble, this kind of event sets a warm, enthusiastic tone for the year and offers your choir members a sneak peek of what's to come.

The Introverted Musician: 8 Survival Strategies for Teachers & Directors

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Society often makes us feel like we’re either one or the other. But these personality traits are actually opposite ends of the same spectrum.

And the reality is that most of us fall somewhere in the middle (source).

Susan Cain, researcher and author of the New York Times bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking noted, "Extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best” while "introverts prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments." (source)

Five Ways to Celebrate the End of the School Year

From August or September until May or June, choir and ensemble members of all ages gather in communities across the country week after week. They sing, they smile, they learn, but most of all, they give their time to be part of something bigger than themselves.

It’s a commitment, and often one that includes the whole family. This alone is something worth acknowledging and celebrating.

But then there’s the wonderful work that you do together throughout the year—the music you learn, the songs you sing, the services and programs and concerts you present, the community you build.

Here are five ways to celebrate the end of another wonderful year and show your appreciation for your choir and ensemble members this spring.

5 Reasons Why Your Rehearsals Feel Monotonous (and What to Do About It)

You know what it feels like:

Uninspired.
Laborious.
Boring.

It’s easy to slip into a rut in rehearsals from time to time, but I think we can all agree: these are not things anyone wants to feel or experience.

You don’t want to feel like you’re just going through the motions each week; you want to feel excited and energized to sing or play and learn and make music together.

5 Simple Ideas for Creative Hymn-Playing

If you’re a church pianist or organist, you likely have lots of opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques (like, multiple times in every service!).

But knowing what to do, finding well-crafted hymn harmonizations, and accessing published resources can be challenging. In some cases, these resources aren’t available at all.

The good news is, you don’t need to rely solely on published resources to add creative hymn arrangements and harmonizations into your service-playing. You can learn to do some of this yourself.

4 Strategies to Help Your Adult Choir Improve Their Sight-Reading Skills

It's one the greatest musical skills you can help your choir develop: singing and reading music for themselves with musical understanding.

Just like learning to read language, music-reading comes after listening and interacting with music aurally and developing a musical vocabulary of tonal and rhythm patterns (these are like words in language).

Think of how you learned to read: You probably spent a lot of time following along in a book as you listened to someone else read to you. Eventually, you started finishing the sentences and pointing to the words as you went along.

You learned simple words like, go and dog and identified them in other books.

Learning to read music is no different. We learn to recognize tonal and rhythm patterns like familiar words in books.

15 Choral Anthems for Advent

'Tis the season to be jolly (in July, as you plan music for Advent!)

Am I right?!

As a church musician, you know it's never too early to be thinking about Christmas, so today, I thought I'd share a few favorite choral anthems for the Advent season.

I've mentioned a few of these in previous posts (Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir and Fifty More Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir), but I thought it might be helpful to compile everything in one post for easy reference.

26 Leadership Skills & Traits for Choral Directors

What does it mean to be a leader? And what does it take to be a great one?

Leadership has been defined as “the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” (source) Thus, a leader is one who inspires and directs that collective action.

This requires a certain set of skills and character traits, though experts say you can learn and develop these skills with time and experience.

You don’t have to be born with all of these skills and traits to be a great leader.

What Type of Choir Director Are You?

Take a moment to think about the choir directors you’ve had during your lifetime. What was your first choir director like? If you sang in a choir during high school, what was that director like? Think about the directors you’ve had as an adult, whether in a university, church, or community setting. What were those directors like?

Each one had a different style, right? A different approach to leading, conducting, organizing, and communicating with the choir. What makes one director a stronger leader than another? Which communication style is most effective?

Three Ways to Plan a Summer Choir

As you wrap up your school-year commitments and make plans for those lazy, hazy days of summer, now is the perfect time to start organizing a summer choir.

Here are three unique ways to organize and structure a summer choir at your church, plus some helpful strategies for making the most of your time together each week.

12 Anthems for Palm Sunday and Easter

Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are big celebrations in the life of the church and since they come back-to-back in the church calendar, it's one of the busiest weeks of the year for church musicians! Here are a few anthems to consider for your choir this year.

Reading Session Picks for Adult Choir

Music publishers often present reading sessions at music conferences, clinics, and professional development workshops. If you’re a director, this is a good way to learn about new repertoire and choose music for the year ahead.

In this post, you’ll find a list of reading session picks I’ve curated through the years. Some feature piano and organ accompaniment, and some include optional instrumental parts (flute, cello, violin, trumpet, brass quartet, timpani, chamber orchestra, and 4-hand piano).

13 Choral Anthems for Lent

Lent. A time of reflection, sacrifice, prayer, contemplating, and grace.

It's a time of stripping away, going without (for example, the practice of "burying the alleluia" during Lent), and quieting the heart and mind.

There are six Sundays during Lent, plus any services that take place during Holy Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter).

If you’re looking for a few new Lenten anthems to add to your library this year, here are a few of my favorites for SAB and SATB choirs.

Celebrating Women in Music Month: Church Music by Women Composers & Authors

In March, we celebrate Women's History Month around the world. And for those of us in music, we often celebrate women in music, as well.

There are festivals honoring the contributions of women in music, concerts celebrating repertoire by women composers, and publications about women writers and creators who have been relegated to the sidelines throughout history.

In church music, there is a rich history of women composers and authors sharing poetry, hymns, anthems, and service music. To celebrate Women in Music Month, here is a collection of church music written by women.

55 Hymns by Black Composers

In February, we celebrate Black History Month—an annual observance in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the U.K. (and perhaps other places, as well) honoring the history, achievements, contributions, sacrifices, and struggles of African Americans.

A Quick Warm-Up Routine for Piano Teachers & Accompanists

Remember in college when you'd get into the practice room in the morning, unpack your books, and launch into a warm-up sequence? Maybe it was scales, chord patterns, or arpeggios. Maybe it was a finger-strengthening exercise. Maybe it was a technical etude.

Whatever your routine, warm-ups were an important part of each practice session.

Songs of the Season: A Celebration of Winter Holidays

Fall is here, which means the return of Georgia football (Go Dawgs!), puffer vests, and apple everything (sorry, PSL).

It also means lots of repertoire planning and rehearsing for Christmas programs, musicals, and holiday concerts.

I recognize that some of you are in positions where you may be programming a holiday concert or program, whether that's a school or community setting or an interfaith musical celebration with area churches. If you're looking for choral music that touches on various Winter holidays and celebrations, I hope the list of anthems below is helpful to you.

5 Things You Should Know About Directing a Church Choir

Many of you faithful readers have probably been directing a choir for what feels like ages.

But I recognize that some of you are new to this: maybe this is your first church job or your first time directing the choir at your church after serving in another capacity. Maybe you have choral conducting experience, but not in a church setting.

New Choral Settings of Old Hymn Texts

Hymns tell the stories of our faith.

Stories of faithfulness, prayers for peace, and songs of abiding love. Stories about Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection. Prophecies, promises, and words of hope and assurance.

As the great St. Augustine once wrote, "To sing is to pray twice."

When we sing these stories of our faith, we internalize them. We remember them.

How to Help Your Adult Choir Learn to Read Music

For those of you who work in a choral setting, you know that a big challenge is working with adults who don’t read music. How can you teach music-reading in a group setting when your rehearsal time is limited each week? How can you empower your adult singers to develop these skills on their own?

Doug Hanvey—a pianist, adult educator, and composer—has a few teaching tips (and a free printable resource) to share so you can help your adult singers learn to read more confidently and develop their sight-singing skills. Enjoy!

25 Church Choir Anthems for Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time, for most Protestant churches, begins the week after Pentecost and runs until the beginning of Advent. Some churches also consider the period between Epiphany Sunday and Lent Ordinary Time, making it the longest season of the liturgical year (source).

Are you doing the math? That's 33-34 Sundays in Ordinary Time in any given year. That's a lot of anthems!

I thought today would be the perfect time to share some of my favorite anthems for Ordinary Time. Most of them work really well with small choirs (or large choirs—whatever you've got!).

Without further ado, my top 25 anthems for Ordinary Time:

What Makes Something Singable? A Guide for Congregational Singing

When we talk about singing, especially singing in a community or congregational setting, we often ask, "Is it singable?"

This simple question may sound arbitrary but there's actually a lot of care and thought that goes into determining the answer.

Q&A: How to Celebrate a Church Musician's Anniversary

Sometimes I get questions in my inbox that I think others may be wondering, too. Here’s a question I got recently about celebrating a church musician’s anniversary.

How to Manage Your Music Budget: A Guide for Church Musicians

It’s a new year and that can mean only one thing: a new budget for your music program!

Most churches run on a January-December fiscal year, which means it's time to pull out your budget worksheets and start fresh.

When you do this, you suddenly remember that budget worksheets are boring, black and white Excel files, with heavy black grid lines, plain font, and pages that run on forever, which sort of puts a damper on the whole happy, fresh-start thing.

Does this sound familiar? If so, I made something for you.

How to Write an Annual Report for Your Church Music Program

For most churches, January is the start of a new fiscal year, which means it’s almost time for that long-anticipated after-church event that may or may not include finger sandwiches and decaf coffee…

Annual Meeting (and your written annual report).

Today, I’m sharing a few outline ideas for writing an annual report, a simple checklist of things to mention or include, and a few real-life examples for inspiration.