Over the past three years Venu Dhupa has been contemplating cultural leadership. In the process she has referred to 21 books and 37 articles in the press, attended 2 seminars on the subject, looked at the leadership opportunities on offer in the cultural sector nationally and internationally, undertaken personal development work, commissioned detailed research with 19 cultural leaders and spoken to many more informally. She shares her findings here.
There are numerous theories about leadership and what defines a good leader, but there are two main camps of opinion. The first is that leaders have certain traits. You?ll have heard them described as honest, charismatic, single-minded. This view is often put forward in the press to build mystique or notoriety: the ?enigmatic? or ?driven? artist leading from the front. This view is, in my opinion, old fashioned with resonance of military or imperialist leadership models. It is also indirectly linked to a western view of creative endeavour, being generated by the individual in a secret process of discovery behind closed doors. The second view, generally thought to be the more useful, is that a leader demonstrates certain behaviours that are associated with leadership. They can be seen, for example, initiating, communicating, summarising and planning. A range of technical competencies undoubtedly accompanies this style.
Typologies
To add to this there are thought to be three types of leader. Type ?A?s envision, initiate and tend to be highly visible and champion a range of causes. Typically they understand less and are concerned less about delivery. Type ?B?s tend to lead the delivery mechanism; and Type ?C?s assist by heading up elements within a complex delivery system. Furthermore, there are thought to be five or six management styles that can be separately defined ? the most obvious being ?Command and Control?, ?Tell and Sell? (initiate an idea then try and convince those around you of its worthiness) or ?Consensus? (discover the route of action and the solution together).
The best leaders are believed to be able to ?flex? in their style and display these behaviours and competencies according to the situation in which they find themselves. However, this takes experience, judgement, practice and confidence.
Recruitment and development
Many Type B leaders are headhunted or recruited in a haphazard fashion, often to rapid timetables, without clear job descriptions or remits and with the brief to ?hit the ground running? or ?save the project.? It begs questions about the knowledge, competence and vision of the recruiters. How open are they to different leadership styles? Are they looking for traits rather than competencies? Are they looking for those in their own image who will attempt to deliver ?without rocking the boat?? Most of us are not well placed to suggest training for our appointers, let alone for Type A leaders or the pool of the ?great and the good.?
When appointed, the environment in which cultural leaders operate will affect their ability to build experience, judgement and confidence. What are the key issues? Firstly, that there are hardly any affordable development options. For example, Executive MBAs, bespoke residential courses (national or international) and personal leadership coaches cost four- or even five-figure sums. With current salary levels and employers? general reluctance to invest significantly in their senior staff, these are rarely feasible. Arts Council England will have detailed information on what percentage of turnover is spent on the development of senior staff, but in my own experience even if leaders of cultural initiatives could find the precious time away from their hectic schedules, they can rarely justify the expenditure. One-off modules may be more affordable but many providers can?t ensure they are filled with an appropriate mix of delegates: if they are exclusively for the cultural sector you might find yourself in a room with a colleague, a friend or a prospective employer, which hinders honesty on sensitive issues.
The workplace
Cultural leaders do not generally think of themselves as ?running a business?. Rather, they seem to think in terms of doing something for the greater social good or enriching the experiences of their community or audience. To many, ?business? is almost a dirty word. In fact, although business is not a saviour, whatever the frameworks of the cultural initiative, business models and business nous can be useful. That is not to say that commercial businesses cannot learn from cultural businesses. The task of cultural leadership is often the harder one, requiring the leader to run a break-even venture whilst keeping focus, sustaining a motivated workforce and working with multiple investors. Furthermore, cultural leaders can find themselves in the frightening position of operating in a blame culture and being unable to share difficult issues in a meaningful way. They are encouraged to trust their staff, when they themselves do not feel trusted, only accountable. The dynamic of constantly having to justify, whilst fire-fighting, limits the scope for constructive self-critique and inhibits the confidence to ?flex?. Therefore individuals become unable to use their experiences as an opportunity to further develop. They resort to less useful and less optimistic styles of leadership that in turn perpetuate a back-covering culture.
The way ahead
It strikes me that in the UK we have a fantastic resource from which to develop our future leaders, but with limited training and little opportunity to develop in situ we sometimes struggle to go on to lead significant, high-profile initiatives successfully. Recently we seem to be importing more leaders from abroad. I?m sure we can all cite several high-profile jobs that have been filled in this way. Yet we don?t export at the same rate, once again closing off avenues for development. Britain has a reputation of creating good planners and good bean-counters, but it would be interesting to ask other nations how they perceive us when it comes to developing visionaries who can also deliver.
The Clore Duffield Foundation is offering a new leadership training option but what else can be introduced by way of complement? I believe we should offer international experiential learning. In a society where we are all encouraged to engage with a diversity of people and product, we need to appreciate different ways of thinking and experiment with models generated by a different cultural perspective. We need to acknowledge the need to nourish our creativity, build our contacts and networks, develop our appreciation of a range of cultural offerings, increase our capacity to co-operate, broaden our horizons and simultaneously push back the geographic boundaries of our own labour market.
An international perspective
We have seen the value of national programmes such as Common Purpose, so imagine it on an international scale, looking at international issues such as debt relief and globalisation. How might debate with international thinkers and diverse peoples affect our own cultural products and modus operandi? An international programme would be exciting and enticing to emerging cultural leaders. At NESTA we are exploring, with partners, the possibility of creating this and will continue to build a picture that will define what may become a distinctive and useful intervention. When our contemplation on this comes to a conclusion we look forward to offering you at least one way forward.
Venu Dhupa is Fellowship Director at NESTA w: http://www.nesta.org.uk