Leading creative organisations

Over the course of this series on creative leadership we have focussed the discussion largely on individual leaders, while acknowledging that you can’t have a leader without a follower. For this last post, it’s worth taking a look at leadership within creative organisations, the traits that make them distinct and the best strategies to effectively lead them to success.

Most research into leadership and management in organisations is conducted in large corporate workplaces. This happens for a variety of reasons: big profit-driven organisations have the money to do research and the motivation to determine how leaders impact performance measures like shareholder value, and are large enough to undertake research of significant size and anonymity.

A significant portion of creative workers, however, do not conduct their business in large-scale companies. Research into the Australian creative industries from the census and other industry sources show that around 13 percent of those in the cultural sector are sole traders, compared to 6 percent in the broader economy. There are approximately 123,000 creative businesses in Australia; 98 percent of these employ less than twenty staff and have a turnover of less than $200,000 annually.

If creative businesses are largely small-scale and tight on resources, how does this impact the role of creative organisational leaders?

We typically associate leadership with positions of authority, what is known as headship. Those who are managers, owners, founders and directors are generally recognised as leaders by those around them. Research has shown, however, that leadership does not necessarily equate to managerial position and, importantly, those who do not have a role function that includes leading people can still display the characteristics, and exert the influence, of leaders. Creative leadership, despite our preconceptions of it as a hierarchical construct, is often more distributed in nature.

In the reality of creative occupations, leadership is more likely to be associated with influence than organisational power. To get things done as a small business operator or sole trader, a leader needs to clearly articulate her creative vision, build relationships, communicate needs and outcomes, and effectively and encourage others to support her goals.

This distributed—or relational—idea of leadership actually aligns with the current understanding of creativity. Whereas historically, creativity was associated with individual talent, something only a lucky few were born with, it is now recognised as existing in the spaces between people. It is a process that is fostered and enhanced in the sharing of collaborative ideas. Thinking about leadership has travelled along a similar path. We no longer ascribe to the “Great Man” theories of the past, in which leaders are born with inherent traits that lead to their positions in society. Leadership is rather a collective process enacted by many.

Research shows that creative leaders are comfortable with the visionary aspects of leadership. Perhaps unsurprisingly, creative leaders are good at crafting narratives and communicating their stories to others. What they are less comfortable with, however, is the ‘people side’ of leadership, the area where it overlaps with management. Many creative leaders struggle with the idea of working through others, delegating instead of being a one-man band. This reluctance or inability to share responsibility means that creative organisations may fail to grow, and those who work with such leaders may fail to develop their own skills.

What can be done to develop operational management in creative organisations?

I hate to put my ex-HR hat on here, but a bit of structure wouldn’t go astray. One creative leader told me that in her job description (she had one!), point number 16 was “Manage team and HR.” This shows how far down building and developing a successful team lay in her company’s list of priorities.

The solution to these problems doesn’t have to be overly burdensome. If you are a leader of staff (or volunteers), you need to give their management and development some thought. To start with, ensure all staff understand the strategic aims of the business and, crucially, what roles they play in the achievement of those aims. Second, all staff need accurate, up-to-date job descriptions that include not only their required tasks and priorities, but the skills required to do them. Third, using job descriptions as a basis, have a discussion about staff performance and development. Does your team have all the skills necessary to do the job? If not, what can you do together to develop those skills (projects, research, on-the-job experience in addition to learning options)? If they are performing well in the job, what’s next? How can you provide stretch in their roles?

The common theme in the above activities is conversation. Take the time, regularly, to talk to your team about their role and development, not just the work of the day. Step away from the activity at hand to discuss their performance, find out how they are doing and ask if they need support. Staff perform best with a clear understanding of what is required of them and how it fits into the bigger organisational picture, regular feedback, and leadership that recognises their input and development.

By focussing more on staff, or followers, your organisation will not only flourish, but you will become a better leader. A true win/win situation.

Kim Goodwin is an academic researcher and arts manager with a background in leadership, human resources, and career development. Since leaving her corporate career, Kim has focused on building understanding in how creative leaders are developed while working in a variety of arts organisations and academic environments. She can be found on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter (@KimAroundTown).

Learning leadership

In the first two posts within this leadership series, we considered how leadership is a flexible concept that has changed over time, and explored reasons why creative practitioners may be reluctant leaders. This third post discusses how we can learn to be leaders when working in or running creative organisations.

When many of us consider “learning,” we immediately think of courses and programs facilitated by experts in the field. In recent years, there has been an explosion of leadership courses and books, both academic and professional, many of them aimed at those working in the creative sector.

But developmental programs, workshops, and tertiary education can be expensive and, for many in the arts and creative industries, out of reach. While there are professional development grants available from government funders such as the Australian Council for the Arts, they are few and far between, not to mention highly competitive.

How to learn leadership (on the cheap)

What alternatives, then, are there to formal development? Management research shows that on-the-job experience—such as jobs, work-based hardships, and special projects—is the most useful for leadership development. This correlates with my research, which shows that creative workers learn leadership primarily through practice. Importantly, however, it is our collaboration with others that builds the most effective leadership capacity and understanding. When we engage professionally with peers, we participate in a process known as “social learning.” Traditionally, learning was represented as the transfer of knowledge from experienced practitioner to novice learner. Social learning, however, explores how learning relates to the social environment. This approach sees learning as a collective activity, where knowledge is not acquired or passed on from one individual to another, but developed through participation in shared activity. Through collaboration we learn what it is to be a leader within our specific community.

Learning leadership through practice

Even if the most effective way to learn leadership is through social engagement, work, and practice, you can’t just sit back and let leadership "happen." To maximise your capacity to build leadership knowledge, understanding, and skills, you need to be aware of what social learning is and how it can benefit you. Here are a few strategies that might help:

Participate in social learning through professional work or individual creative practice. 

The number one way to learn creative leadership is to collaborate with other practitioners. For some, this comes with the job, working in teams to achieve mutually defined goals. (Yes, all that group work at Uni was for a reason!) If you are a solo practitioner, you can still get involved in collaborative projects in the creative community. Think about joining a co-working space, or getting involved in local groups that provide opportunities to learn from (and share with) your peers. Forums like Creative Women’s Circle are perfect for meeting like-minded people; be proactive and put out the call. Other examples include knitting groups and writing groups that share feedback or evening art sessions. Once in these environments, test out your leadership skills by sharing ideas, exploring group dynamics, and teaching others. You might not recognise it at first, but these environments will give you confidence to lead in more formal settings.

Explore different kinds of leadership and then embrace the style that supports your practice.

A key factor in the development of creative leadership is the ability to lead in a way that aligns with your creative practice. To do this, you must learn about leadership. Observe the leaders around you: the good and the not-so-good. Read books and, if you have a chance to participate in a program, go for it! But observe with a critical eye. Beneficial development expands the idea of leadership and adjusts for personal approaches rather than projecting an idealised set of behaviours.

Create space for personal reflection.

Leadership reflection is the ability to relate theory back to personal experience. Consideration of past experiences may offer new perspectives when coupled with an expanded idea of what leadership looks like. Take the time to consider your role as leader and how it relates to your work and creative practice. Think about key experiences—both positive and negative—and what you learned from them. Consider those around you who are role models and what makes them good at what they do. But refrain from personal judgement, understanding that there is no perfect leader.

Share your leadership stories and learn from others.

Through the sharing and co-construction of stories, and exposure to role models, emerging leaders are exposed to new leadership ideas that take creative leadership from the theoretical to the personal. This means we need to hear a diversity of voices speaking about creative leadership. Moreover, it is important for emerging cultural leaders to be exposed to more than just stories of success from established leaders. Hearing about struggles and failures paints a more realistic picture of what it is like to lead in the creative world. If you can tell your story, do so with gusto.

If you’re an organisational leader, understand your role in developing others.

Lastly, a tip for those who run their own creative organisations or manage others: just because you may not have the resources to send staff on training programs doesn’t mean you cannot contribute to their leadership development. Organisations have the power to create learning through job structure and a focus on learning through experience. In addition, organisational leaders can encourage social learning by creating space for dialogue in meetings, encouraging collaborative work through projects, and through physical workplace design. Developmentally oriented organisations focus on how learning helps achieve organisational goals without having to pay consultants for expensive training programs.

There’s so much more to learning leadership than understanding a set of requisite behaviours that will turn you into the perfect leader. For creative workers, learning leadership involves the melding of creative practice and leadership opportunity in a way that provides a safe, enjoyable space for learning.

Kim Goodwin is an academic researcher and arts manager with a background in leadership, human resources, and career development. Since leaving her corporate career, Kim has focused on building understanding in how creative leaders are developed while working in a variety of arts organisations and academic environments. She can be found on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter (@KimAroundTown).

The reluctant creative leader

What would you say if someone asked you, “Are you a leader?” Would you stand a bit taller and give an authoritative “Yes!”? Or would you hesitate, not wanting to seem a bit, well, pompous?

For those who work in large organisations, leadership is a hot topic and something staff are expected to aspire toward. The Centre for Workplace Leadership found that sixty percent of the Australian organisations they surveyed offered some form of organisational leadership training. The ability to lead and manage others is not only something employees are prepared for; in many companies, staff are told “we are all leaders” regardless of position or title. Leadership: it’s a vibe.

Is it different, however, for those in the creative sector? Leadership, as outlined in my post published in April, is a fluid concept. We talk about it a lot, but we don’t have a solid idea of what it actually is. With this in mind, do creative practitioners aspire to be leaders?

I’ve spent the past four years talking to creative practitioners about leadership across four states and nine different disciplines, from visual arts to digital design and theatre. The vast majority of those I spoke to were undertaking leadership roles: running organisations, managing staff and volunteers, influencing cultural debate, and representing their communities. However, when I asked them, “Do you consider yourself a leader?” I discovered that their relationships with leadership were complex.

Emerging leaders were often hesitant to embrace the title of “leader.” Some worried that it made them seem “up themselves” (a very Australian concern); others didn’t recognise themselves in the media portrayals of successful leaders.

My research considers how we define ourselves as leaders—not only through our internal thoughts and feelings toward leadership, but also how outside forces shape our leadership identity. Some of them may be familiar to you.

Leaders are often held up as an ideal. “Good” leaders are those who win awards, make a lot of money, inspire praise, and receive attention in the media. Think of the late Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and even Sophia Amoruso, whose book #Girlboss inspired the new Netflix series of the same name. Emerging leaders have a tendency to compare themselves to these ideals, which are often highly constructed and marketed versions of leadership. We also compare ourselves as leaders with those around us. For those who work in organisations, you may look at your managers and peers and consider your skills, knowledge, and experience in light of theirs. Many creative practioners with whom I spoke saw being a leader as something they were not yet equipped to do. They believed they needed more skills, more experience, more recognition.

But being a leader is also something bestowed upon us by others—for example, by being promoted from team member to team leader, or by having “supervisor” or “manager” added to your job title. Many creative practitioners felt the weight of organisational expectation when it comes to leadership, especially when a new role or organisational progression meant moving away from individual creative practice to the management and organisation of others to achieve creative goals. Creative practitioners often felt comfortable being recognised as a leader in their discipline, but were resistant to the idea of managing other people.

There were also personal identity factors that influenced creative workers’ relationships to leadership. Australians like to see themselves as egalitarian in nature, especially in the arts, and have a tendency to shoot down “tall poppies.” Creative leaders are concerned about remaining humble, wanting to be seen as one of their peers rather than putting their hands up to lead.

Gender is also an inescapable topic when considering leadership. Many of the women I spoke to were uncomfortable calling themselves leaders, while these feelings of inadequacy were less likely to be expressed by their male counterparts. Participants in my study—of both genders—also noted that there is an (incorrect) perception that female leaders in the arts are bitchy, catty, and not supportive of their peers. In a number of sectors, leadership was closely associated with competition. Those in positions of power did not have a sense of generosity toward the development of others; their focus was more often organisational survival and gaining access to scarce resources or opportunities.

The result of all these pressures felt by emerging leaders in the creative sector is that they are less likely to identify personally as leaders. We might ask, “So what?” As long as they keep acting as leaders, as many are, who cares if they don’t proudly wear the “leader” label?

If the next generation of cultural innovators, pioneers, and trailblazers are reticent to call themselves “leaders,” they may also be unwilling to apply for leadership opportunities, development, and positions. Leaders require confidence to reach out and grasp what the future offers.

In addition, Australia needs strong, vocal, creative, and cultural leadership. The economic challenges facing creative industries, cuts to funding and arts education, culture wars—all of these all require leaders in the community to be strong not only for their organisations and individual businesses, but for the sector as a whole.

When a leadership opportunity arises, will you be ready to step up to the challenge? Or are you a reluctant creative leader?

Kim Goodwin is an academic researcher and arts manager with a background in leadership, human resources, and career development. Since leaving her corporate career, Kim has focused on building understanding in how creative leaders are developed while working in a variety of arts organisations and academic environments. She can be found on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter (@KimAroundTown).

What is (creative) leadership?

Discussions of leadership are all around us. Business titans and sportsmen offer up the secrets of leadership in countless “how-to” books lining the walls of airport bookstores, yet we hear less about creative leadership. We’re more likely to see a leadership book written by the captain of the Australian cricket team than by the director of a blockbuster film. Personally, I don’t think we give creative leaders the respect they deserve.

Have you ever stopped to ask: what actually is leadership?

We are told by employers and business coaches that we all should aspire to be leaders, but there’s actually very little agreement as to what leadership is. In 1994, one researcher wrote that more than seven thousand academic articles had been written on leadership. Even with all these words, no definitive definition has been agreed upon, then or since.

Different perspectives of leadership For some, leadership relates to hierarchy: those in management and in positions of authority or seniority. In art and culture, we often look toward artistic directors, gallery heads, CEOs, and general managers of our large institutions as examples of community leaders. But leadership is not management. The operational running of an enterprise is an exercise in the coordination of resources and administration; it’s not leadership, which is removed from day-to-day operations.

Theoretically, what constitutes leadership has changed over time. At first, leadership was considered an innate set of qualities identified in a lucky few. This was known as the “great man theory,” for obvious reasons. While the “leaders are born, not made” argument seems easy to dismiss, it has recently returned to popularity, with studies linking leadership to physical characteristics, such as height. Some have even claimed to uncover a “leadership gene.”

In the 1950s, focus shifted to understanding what leaders do. Leadership became a set of behaviours that could be learned and applied. We all could be leaders if we developed the right skills—a view still prevalent in the world of leadership development today. Unfortunately, this approach often neglects the environment in which leaders operate. In response, research began to consider the context, or situation, in which leadership occurs. In all these theories, leadership is embodied within an individual, with a strong focus (particularly since the 1990s) on characteristics such as charisma.

In more recent decades, however, there has been a shift to consider leadership as a more holistic concept. A widely shared TED talk by Derek Sivers, called “How to Start a Movement,” highlights the crucial role of the first follower. Critics of traditional leadership theory tell us that what we call “leadership” neglects the incredibly important role of followers. Leadership is not embodied in one man (or woman), but is a process that occurs between people. Without followers, there is no leadership.

For most of us, particularly anyone working in the creative sector, where, according to the 2011 Australian Census, more than 90 percent of people work in businesses of less than twenty employees, leadership can be something else entirely. Leadership in the creative sector is often what is known as distributed, or relational. It is a fluid process that exists in networked groups, which come together to achieve shared goals through collaborative processes. It doesn’t relate to job titles or pay grades, but emerges within a group to guide the team as needed at a particular moment, and may change from person to person as required.

Is creative leadership different than “regular” leadership? Discussion of creative leadership has echoed the development of leadership theory in many ways. Leadership in the creative sector has been studied predominantly from the organisational perspective, examining the intersection of the artistic and the administrative in large arts companies or institutions.

In today’s knowledge-driven economy, however, where companies aspire to be the next Apple, creativity and innovation are seen as “silver bullets,” leading many in the business world to examine creative leaders with renewed focus. Orchestra conductors, for example, with their ability to bring seventy musicians together into a single, cohesive musical unit, are seen as leadership role models by many. And theatre directors, who enlist diverse talents to construct and communicate a shared vision, are identified as great un-lockers of creative potential.

Leadership and creativity are similar in that they were both originally thought to be individual qualities. As in the “great man” theory of the past, creativity—or talent—was seen as a “gift” bestowed on a lucky few. We now know that creativity and leadership both emerge as processes between individuals, and can be fostered and shared.

For many, leadership has always been linked to the achievement of defined goals. But for a creative individual or organisation, goals might be harder to quantify than for a bank or retail organisation. Creative leadership is not as simple as breaking even, or delivering a return to shareholders. Leadership in the cultural sphere is, as Sydney Festival Director Wesley Enoch writes, “…creating space for opposing voices, about imaging a future, exploring the repercussions of our values and promulgating public debate through the work we make and the relationships we create.” (Source: “Take Me to Your Leader: the dilemma of cultural leadership,” issue 40 of Platform Papers).

Creative leadership is about more than meeting performance goals. It is about imagining a future for our communities, and bringing people together to communicate those visions. This is what makes creative leadership such an exciting concept.

What does this mean for you as a creative practitioner? When someone asks if you are a leader, do not measure yourself against an idealised, organisational version of leadership. Consider instead your vision and the ways you are achieving it in partnership with others. This is what makes you a leader.

Kim Goodwin is an academic researcher and arts manager with a background in leadership, human resources, and career development. Since leaving her corporate career, Kim has focussed on building understanding in how creative leaders are developed while working in a variety of arts organisations and academic environments. She can be found on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter (@KimAroundTown).