Bands and businesses have more in common than you might think.

As you may know, I’m a musician (Denver, CO-based singer, songwriter, musician) on the side. I’ve been playing professionally in bands for 25 years, from LA to San Francisco to Austin to Denver. Over the years, we’ve played clubs, parties, corporate events, weddings, and festivals.

Like many workplaces, most bands struggle with drama, egos, and dysfunction.

I wasn’t willing to play in chaos. Just like I help leaders sustain purposeful, positive, and productive work environments, I applied our culture change process to the bands I was in! I facilitated discussions with everyone—players, sound professionals, and even roadies—to clarify our servant purpose, values, and behaviors that would ensure people were respectful to one another while still meeting performance goals.

The result? Less drama, more enjoyment, better music. Sometimes players chose not to “play” in our new values-based band and they’d self-select out of the band. That was fine. Moving forward, we made our expectations crystal clear when we recruited replacements, and most everyone embraced them.

When someone didn’t align with our ground rules, we coached them. Some responded to that coaching. Others did not. Without getting mad at them, we agreed that our group wasn’t the right fit for them. We lovingly set those folks free. We cycled through four musicians in the first five years. We held onto our plan for our ideal band culture.