Abstract
M.Ed.
In South Africa many opportunities are emerging for international conferences
which are at international standards. Therefore all the facets concerning these
conferences are expected to be at the same level. As South Africa is a
developing country with limited resources, increased responsibility is placed
on the shoulders of organisers and leaders to involve professional people who
would be willing to deliver their services on a voluntary basis to help keep
costs low. This could furthermore enable more delegates to attend the
conference at minimal cost.
In Fepruary 2002 such an international leadership conference was held in
South Africa by the Willow Creek Association. Everybody involved in
organising and presenting this conference was requested to do it on a
voluntary basis. A music team was essential for this conference as music
played a major part in the overall feel of the conference. A music leader was
asked to put together and lead a team of professional voluntary musicians for
the purpose of this conference. The researcher wondered what the specific
needs or issues would be for these voluntary professional musicians during
such a project. This conference provided the ideal opportunity for this specific
study.
In his preparations for the conference the researcher experienced a great
need for available programmes that could assist leaders in leading voluntary
professional musicians during an international conference.
The goal of this study was to explore and describe the lived leadership
experience of voluntary professional musicians performing at an international
conference. Based on the results and data of this research, the aim was to
describe guidelines for leaders and programme developers in order to
optimise their leading of the musicians, developing them, not only musically
but by improving their relationship skills and self-image determining their
future perspective.
A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was
used for this study. In-depth semi-structured phenomenological interviews
were conducted with all five voluntary professional musicians who met the
sample criteria.
To ensure trustworthiness, the researcher made use of Guba's (DeVos, 1998
: 348- 352) method. Data analysis was done according to Tesch's (De Vas,
1998 : 343 - 352) method.
The results of the study showed a striking paradox where leadership issues,
which were experienced as positive by some musicians, were experienced
negatively by the other musicians. In reviewing the interview transcriptions
where musicians expressed their different experiences of the leader's
leadership during the programme that was implemented, it emerged that they
were happy about a number of issues and unhappy about some other issues.