When you have just come out of the studio, or the community centre or even your board meeting, do you feel like a leader or do you feel led? Do you have a driving sense of where you are going or are you just keen to get home? Do you know why are you doing what you are doing when you could be doing so many other things? Where is dance going? Where are you going? Why so many questions?
We have had Americans running the Royal Opera House and London Underground, Australians the South Bank Centre and the Royal Ballet and Scandinavians English National Ballet and the England football team. So this leads me to wonder just what is it about us and leadership. Is it that we are not producing leaders anymore or is it that good people will not touch those jobs which attract such a high profile and ongoing obsession from the media which categorises them as either saints or sinners? Is there a leadership vacuum in the private, public and voluntary sectors too or is it just the arts? And what of dance?
Do we know what we actually want from our leaders. Indeed what do you need to be a leader in the arts in the twenty-first century? Are the qualities, skills, behaviours and passions any different to those needed to lead a bank, a charity, a dot.com or even a church? There certainly seems to be a crisis of leadership in the arts. An unspoken worry lurks that new leaders are not forthcoming and there seems to be a general acknowledgement that we have not actually done much to support either current or potential leaders anyway. The Clore Foundation recently commissioned a report into this whole area and its excellent recommendations will be published soon. The National Museums and Galleries Commission has also had an action focussed group looking at developing future leaders for that sector.
But I do wonder whether anyone is actually asking the big questions about the future of leadership in dance.
In an oft quoted survey the top four things we say we want our leaders to be are: honest; forward looking; inspiring and competent (1). Not so difficult you might imagine. Yet, in the arts we seem to prefer to celebrate the quiet, politically adroit manager, whose sole task seems to be to maintain the status quo. Outstanding leadership is often about challenging the status quo developing a vision and enthusing and working with others to deliver it.
Do we look forward in the arts? As John Tusa's book, Art Matters perfectly illustrates there are still those who hark back to a bygone age when the art of the few was considered ennobling for the rest of us. Pick up any book on leadership at the railway station however and it will tell you that leadership is about the future - sure it is about learning from the past but really successful leadership is about inspiring and encouraging and uniting around an idealised common purpose. Do we have that in dance? Do we have innovation? Do we want dance to be a cultural definer? Do we simply want more people to go to shows/workshops? Do we stand united in our aim?
There are of course many factors influencing the world in which the twenty-first century leader operates. Increasing globalisation, new debates about social, ethical and moral issues, the ever decreasing interest in formal politics coupled with increasing political action on issues ranging from debt relief to GM crops; the knowledge economy, information technology and the growing partnership culture and exchange between the public, private and voluntary sectors.
How do these affect the arts? Are there different factors influencing the leader in the arts world? Well we will certainly have greater cultural choices than we have ever had before, technical revolutions will continue to change the way we practise and consume the arts and changing leisure patterns will considerably increase competition. But how difficult is it really to find leaders with a vision that charts the exciting journey through all of this?
Leadership theory has come a long way over the last forty years. It began by believing that there were key cognitive or social attributes leaders must have. These included some apparently obvious: intelligence, initiative, self-assurance, enthusiasm, sociability, integrity, courage, imagination, decisiveness, determination, energy, faith, and some less so: virility and in one study even height! The management gurus then started to look at the situation the leader found themselves in and the differing styles of leadership they might use for different situations.
There has been a tendency to think of leaders as those heading up large institutions. But excellent leadership has produced the rich plethora of local provision in all areas of public life in this country, often mocked as amateur. Yet much of our local infrastructure would not exist in the first place without those, whose clear view of the future energised them, often against the odds, to create wonderful and much needed initiatives.
Create is the right word. Creative leadership is what has been lacking. Think back to the mad early 80s, when those brazen pioneers in community dance, rough-edged and often ill-equipped as they were, created a whole movement. But where are those mad new lone voices now? Are there any? Do we stifle them - or do they simply see the total lack of career progression in the sector and choose to use their talents and vision elsewhere?
I recently met up with an old university friend, an accomplished intelligent musician, who in her first year after University had a scholarship to get to know the publishing profession. Twenty years later she has one of the top international publishing jobs - has discovered major new talents and achieved considerable artistic and commercial success. So why can't that happen in dance? Does it not attract those passionate about ideas in the first place? Why does it take ten years to get noticed? Who can stand around in poverty waiting and why would you when the top jobs in dance pay so pitifully?
In the last ten years there has been a growing interest in the leader as a person with her or his own history, culture and frame of reference, with emotional, creative and spiritual needs. Coaching and mentoring using a variety of therapeutic and development techniques have begun to address some of these, but until now not much in the arts. Two years ago I met with a senior manager from a national funding body to discuss this crisis who thought it more important to concentrate on core skills for management teams than to invest in current and future leaders. Depressed by this I went to my next meeting with an inspiring chief executive of a major national health charity whose commitment to developing his people was taken as a given. So how can the voluntary sector whose every penny comes from it being put in the box, be so much more forward looking than the publicly funded arts? I have actually had said to me from a senior figure in the arts, 'if they want us to train and develop they - the funding bodies - should pay for it.' Now can you imagine what would happen if Lloyds TSB or the Guide Dogs for the Blind took that attitude?
I believe that there is an urgent need to look at creative ways to encourage, develop and support leaders, new and old, to understand their own personal histories, motivations, values, hopes as well as their skills and style and to encourage exchange and learning across the private, public and voluntary sectors. We need to create a stimulating, safe and creative environment where individuals can develop by gaining a greater understanding both of themselves and of the ways they can develop their vision in a rapidly changing environment. But we desperately need to encourage those with vision in the first place or we will be run by managers and not leaders.
So why so many questions? Because outstanding leaders ask them - and enable others to find appropriate and authentic answers to them. So when you're driving home tap in to the passion that put you on this journey in the first place.
Duncan Fraser is managing director of The Way Ahead Group which aims to provide coaching and personal development services to leaders at all levels in the not for profit sector here and in the Netherlands. It works with cultural, health, housing, faith and education workers to help them to become fully functioning leaders of themselves, their teams and groups.
For more info see www.thewayaheadgroup.com or contact duncan@thewayaheadgroup.com
References
1. Kouzes, Posner, The Leadership Challenge, Jossey-Bass, 1995, p21