Someone’s gotta say it…I guess it will be me.

Years ago, I was in a rock band (Yes, I can hardly believe it myself.) It was a friend’s passion project, and we spent months practicing and planning and pulling it all together for our first big concert on April 20, 2012. This wasn’t just a concert. There were dancers and videos and costumes and lots of moving parts. 

The band’s founder had big ambitions, but like many bands, we weren’t as disciplined as we could have been and since we were playing all originals, we didn’t make it easy for ourselves. The songs were coming together okay, but what would happen when we were on stage with an audience? As the date approached we were out promoting the event and selling tickets, but I remember thinking, “Are we really ready?” I had doubts that our sound would live up to the hype.

On show night more than 400 hundred people crowded into a local venue to see us perform. By all accounts it was a fun night, but objectively speaking, we played terribly. Two band members doused their nerves with alcohol and were drunk on stage. I couldn’t sing loud enough to be heard over the instruments. There were technical issues with the videos. The dream proved to be too ambitious to achieve that night.

In the grand scheme of things, it was fine. We went on to play many more gigs, and as time went on, we really came together as a band. But there was a long term cost to that first performance. We never again packed a venue. A few years later, a friend who became a big fan of ours told me that he would tell people to come out and see us, but after seeing the first show, they just weren’t interested. As the saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a similar predicament. I’m part of a musical group that was practicing in earnest on a piece written by one of the musicians. Let’s call her Jane. She is not a trained composer, so the piece needed a lot of revisions and many of the parts were very difficult to play– including for Jane, who wrote the music. 

Despite having spent significant rehearsal time on the piece, it just wasn’t coming together, but no one seemed to have the will to say anything, and the composer seemed to think it sounded great. Just weeks away from our seasonal performance, there was a rehearsal where Jane happened to be absent. We ran through the entire program, but had to stop several times to regroup during Jane’s piece. The conductor asked if anyone had any thoughts about the program. 

I raised my hand, and the conductor called on me. “What if…” I said, then paused. The conductor told me to just say what I had to say. “What if we didn’t do Jane’s piece?” I went on to say that it’s not fair to anyone to play the piece badly and disappoint the audience, the group and most of all Jane. As Suzy Orman says, “Sometimes helping is hurting, and sometimes hurting is helping.”  To make a long story short, a discussion ensued and we voted to put the piece on ice and only play the other two pieces.

After the rehearsal, the conductor asked me to stay behind, so I could help her figure out how to break the news to Jane. We came up with what she would say and before I left, she clutched her hands to her chest and said, “I want you to know that I so appreciate what you said. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying that.” 

Normally speaking up this way would be something I would find really difficult, but for lots of reasons in this moment, it wasn’t. Maybe it was because I don’t have as much emotionally invested in this group as I did in the band. Maybe it is because I have a coaching toolbox that I didn’t have all those years ago. Maybe it was because I still regret not speaking up sooner the last time I was in this position. Maybe…just maybe, this is a situation where I learned from my mistake.