This past weekend I went back to Northwestern University for my 15-year college reunion.

Homecoming weekends typically feature many events for alumni to come back and reunite with their peers, professors, and university leadership. But the reason that I like to return is to spend the day marching and playing my flute with the Northwestern University Marching Band (aka: NUMB).

I participated in marching band all through high school and college, and I continue to believe today that marching band (like many organizations or clubs with a music focus) helped to forge some of the most foundational concepts of collaboration, hard work, creativity, and positivity. These themes continue to influence and drive my own leadership style today.

This may sound trivial, but one of the most important constraints about being in a marching band is that you can’t do it alone. In an era where American cultural norms increasingly celebrate individualism, opportunities to practice a more collectivist mindset are rare and harder to come by. In this way, a marching band stands as a powerful–if somewhat old-fashioned–example of what coordinated, civic-minded efforts can achieve. (I’d argue we could all benefit from a little more of that in this country right now.)

The intricate technical and interpersonal dynamics of a marching band (think: coordinating dozens of people, each playing a unique instrument, to move in perfect formations on a football field) make it a living case study in teamwork and collaboration. The “leadership” of marching bands is not necessarily people who want to put themselves on a pedestal as the face of the entire endeavor; more so a smaller cohort of people who help keep time (quite literally, keeping the beat) and keep the energy level high, despite the obvious deterrents (ie: marching in the rain, losing football teams, battling exhaustion, hunger, not to mention all of the normal college stressors, like anxiety about midterms). 

Northwestern’s marching band has a particularly intriguing history in that the football team once carried the distinction of the longest losing streak in college football history. From 1979 - 1982, the team lost 34 games straight.

During these difficult years of zero wins, you might imagine that it was probably pretty hard to motivate and encourage people to continue to join the band and to show up with a positive attitude. To help with this, the band leaned heavily into the roles of a few student-appointed shadow leadership roles called the “SpiriTeam,” specifically designed to keep the band’s spirit up during tough times. Over the years, these cheers and rituals became increasingly absurd and irreverent, adding a light touch of humor and fun, even to the most dire of conditions. In many ways, this became a living lesson for all of us: When times get tough, you can strengthen the muscle of grit and resilience through the practice of play. This ethos—of resilience, collaboration, and finding joy even in the hardest times—is what makes a marching band such a remarkable example of teamwork in action.

There’s a lot to like about the so-called “organism” of a marching band—how students develop leadership skills by leading their musical sections in practice, how a large group manages to move in lockstep formations, or how a fun, positive attitude serves as the glue for group dynamics. But for me, today, 15 years out of school, one of my favorite traditions is simply this–that the band continues to invite back its former members not only to visit, but to join, if only temporarily, in the chaos and calamity of a modern football game.

Too often, the university experience is treated as a closed chapter, confined to a single four-year tour of duty. But this mindset overlooks a major opportunity for lifelong learning that extends well beyond the boundaries of campus life. That I have an invitation, through marching band, to quite literally get put to work again (that’s right, even us “stodgy old alums” take our instruments out of our cases to march and play with the band on the field again) is a unique and often untapped opportunity to foster mutual growth and collaboration. 

Every time I return, I come away with fresh takes about what’s new on campus and in the world today—things that didn’t exist during my time as a student. In turn, students get to engage with alumni, a group that has a vested interest in their long-term success. It makes you wonder… Why don’t we do more to reengage and reconnect with the most meaningful group experiences from our past?

I’d like to see more examples of organizations (consider: schools, workplaces, or other meaningful communities) getting clever about reactivating people with shared histories. In other words: Let’s create more homecomings. 

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