Drive innovation and embrace the new 

You are a champion for change, finding new and better ways to educate and bring our musicians, tutors and conductors together. You are a leader of change. You use your experience to identify new and better ways of doing things, and you use your leadership skills to inspire and get buy-in from the broader SYO team. 

Excellence is our attitude, not just an outcome 

In the same way that an excellent symphony is the result of thousands of individual notes played with excellence (often because of hours of excellent practice), so to, is your role the result of thousands of daily interactions and decisions. You pay attention to doing each of these to the best of your ability. In addition to this, as a leader, you hold others in the team to the highest standard. 

We are an ensemble, not soloists 

An orchestra is at its best when each musician knows their role and plays their part together. In the same way, we each have a role to play at SYO. As part of the team. you play your part and always look for opportunities to help others. As a leader, you provide clarity and direction to ensure your team also know their parts. 

Celebrate all contributions made to SYO 

You look for opportunities to recognise and reward your team, your colleagues, volunteers and yourself. You understand that praise from leadership holds a little extra weight, and you share it often. 

You are the day-to-day leader of the Concerts and Events Program. You are ultimately responsible for creating operational excellence. Specifically:  

• Be a Team Leader: Lead by example. Make yourself available to the team to support and motivate them. Communicate the vision. Provide clarity on priorities. Lift the team up when they are struggling and praise them when they deserve it. You give them enough “space” to grow and develop and are a safety net when required. 

• Resources Wizard:  You have an eye for detail, timelines, deliverables, logistics and resources. You can foresee challenges and effectively communicate them to the Senior Leadership Team. You drive the effective use of people, instruments, the music library and venues.  

• Be the Program Leader: You work closely with the Programming team in the preparation of touring and camp activities, concerts and events with a focus on continually raising the standard. You monitor the team of part-time and casual staff to ensure that the roll out of concerts meets an excellent standard. Your run sheets and risk assessments are a work of art, ensuring that all stakeholders are prepared to deliver world-class performances every time. 

• Be an Exemplary Event Manager: From inception to event day, you work with the programming team, venues, conductors and musicians to deliver events. You run a tight ship on and off stage but are able to stay calm and think on your feet when the moment demands it. You monitor and plan for risks and take the appropriate steps to ensure events and concerts are safe.  

• Be the Guardian of Operational Excellence: You hold people to a high standard and ensure that all processes are followed. You aren’t afraid to adjust and refine systems and processes when required. You have an eye for detail and exceptional communication skills.  

• Swim in the deep end: We are a small team, and you will be thrown in the deep end early and often. The deep end is where you grow. It’s where you prove to yourself that you’ve got what it takes. We want you to embrace a Growth Mindset, look for opportunities to shine, back yourself and also know when to put your hand up for support. 

• You: You take control of your career development. You communicate with your manager to make plans for desired training and development opportunities. You do what you need to, to make sure you do an excellent job but speak up early when you need help or feel like your life is becoming unbalanced (mentally, emotionally, physically or socially) 

The above is not everything that you’ll be required to do; we expect that you will seek out ways to step outside of these things to further your career, improve our ways of working, make SYO a better place to work.    

The nature of the job can mean that, from year-to-year, you will be repeating many of the same tasks. That being said, we look at the lifecycle of each role in three stages:  

1. Deliver – in this phase, you are focused on learning each element of the role, understanding how it all comes together and ensuring that key tasks are delivered to the best of your ability.  

1. Master – in this phase, you’re comfortable with delivering the requirements of your role; you’re now looking for ways to become more efficient or improve the quality of your deliverables.  

1. Value-Add – in this phase, you’re very comfortable with your role and have the bandwidth and desire to take on other projects in SYO. This could be projects outside the scope of your role within your own team, or projects to improve SYO more broadly.  

We will work together to ensure that your role remains engaging and challenging, identifying areas for you take on greater ownership or responsibility.  

How is this managed?  

Your career will be proactively managed through a program of goal setting, real-time feedback, quarterly check-ins and annual reviews.   

Your manager has been given the skills to help manage your career, though ultimately, you should take responsibility for this process. Make sure that meetings are booked in. Make sure that reviews happen. If you want feedback, ask for it. If you’ve got goals or development plans, make sure your manager knows about it.   

While we absolutely want the best for you and will do what we can to help you, no one can manage your career better than you.