Bite 2: Why? Just Why?

So your first bite of the tour elephant was choosing your partner who can ensure your financial and group safety… NAILED IT!  And now here we are at the next bite!

The WHY – looking behind your decision to tour?

The beginning of every tour starts here: All tours have the same starting point, no matter where you are…working out why. What is your end goal? What are you trying to achieve? What is driving you to even tour?

This is going to require some self-examination

• If you’re a Music Teacher or Choral Director, you may want to gift your students the opportunity to see what other cultures have to offer with their music. You may want to prove yourself on the international stage and win an award or two.

• If you’re a Community Choir, your committee may want to put all your practice to use and share your hard work with the world.

• If you’re a Sports Coach, you may want to put your players to the test, they’ve gotten complacent playing the same old team, they need to extend themselves or you may just want to find a trophy to take home to put on the shelf

• If you’re a Spiritual Leader you may want to help your congregation reconnect with their faith in a deeply personal and real-life manner!

• Reasons are an individual as the people involved….

As part of this process, you will need to figure out who your key stake holders are and then talk openly, as your reasons drive the choices you make next.  If you’re not on the same page as the rest of the stake holders in the venture, your tour may well choke.

Without a purpose there can be no plan: once you define your purpose and reasons, move forward quickly to maintain momentum, if you don’t take this all important bite, you will literally be taking a wild punt at the type of tour you’re wanting to achieve and be left feeling unfulfilled.  It is important to do this leg work now to ensure that the rest of the bites are palatable.

When you’re looking at reasons why you’re touring, you need to be fully honest with yourself.  One of the best reasons we have had is a MD from California telling us that she takes her choir around the globe to create global citizens… her tours are experiential and are built on relationship forming and understanding so that her young choristers go back more aware of the world around them and that they move head in their lives as true global citizens.

So – What’s making you tick, what’s your motivation… plain and simple…WHY are we even talking?  Next time we’ll look at the type of tours that match your WHY as we move on to WHAT.