Cultural leadership now and then

 

Hilary Carty: I think some things stayed the same. We were and still are managing quite a lot of complexity, in terms of projects and resources, and we are doing this cross culturally. Cultural leadership and cultural management are a complex arrangement of stakeholders, resources, visions, people management and project management. So those things are very much the same because we're dealing with the business of culture. I think what has changed are things like the pace at which we're working. 

 

I remember back at the start of my career you could genuinely craft a five-year plan, having maybe to update it moderately after three years. In our current time it is increasingly difficult. In terms of actual planning, you must keep so much of your five or more-year vision loosely framed to be more flexible and adaptive. Actually, at the end of five years your plan could bear only a mild resemblance to what it started out as. Cultural leaders have nowadays this sense of being more adaptive, having to be responsive to external changes. You can sometimes feel that you are less in control of your environment. There's certainly less that you can predict and control. 

 

Another thing that's very different is that whole issue of leaders and visibility. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago, leaders could ostensibly hide behind their organisations. You could lead an organisation without necessarily having a significant public profile. Today there's so much more demand for visibility of the leaders so that you'd need to have a presence in the public domain. We ask more of our leaders now than we did then. We want them to reveal themselves essentially, we want to know what they think and what they appreciate. We want to be and get closer to them than we had ever expected 20 or 30 years ago.

 

 

The whole discipline of cultural leadership is something that we now talk about as a discipline, whereas 15 years ago we did not. We understood of course about leadership and about management, but we didn't focus on a specific set of competencies, skills and attributes that would equip you to lead culture. That's something that shifted radically. We now understand it as a composite of attributes that enable you to work well in the cultural sector. 

 

I think that another of the areas that has shifted is understanding the transferability of our skills across sectors. Previously we grew up and worked within certain arts disciplines almost as silos and we didn't expect that someone who had led and managed within one discipline could move across to the other. That was exceptional, whereas now we are very much seeing that as the norm - notwithstanding you always have to adapt for context. 

 

So, one of the things that we do in terms of training cultural leaders is to train the understanding of those skills as adaptive and transferable and to encourage that they gain a breadth of technical expertise so that they can understand the nuances of one art form but can actually work across the cultural area.

 

 

The Cultural Governance Alliance is a new initiative which we pulled together at Clore Leadership because we wanted to convene a collective of experience, activities and resources around the area of governance. Before the Alliance you had lots of individual organisations and agencies working strategically in this field, but not collectively, not working together. So even though there is a plethora of opportunities to learn and to train in governance development for those in the cultural sector, they expressed to us that they were unsure about quality standards, strategy, and how to assure that the very little resources they have would be best spent. Pulling together the Alliance is a way of creating a bit of a quality metric in the field of governance. The organisations - whether it's in theatre, music, museums, dance, or different areas - are working together to develop and validate these standards, creating a sense of what is actually relevant to them. This will be something which those bodies are buying into or delivering themselves.

 

 

It's very evident that the more diverse the leadership of an organisation, the better its interaction with its partners, audiences, attendees, visitors and also the society at large. It happens because governance is about the management of organisations in context. It is important to look at what is your community of interest - be that geographical or otherwise - and say "my organisation is impacting in this way”. We have to look for a consistency in our organisations, right from the leaderships through the actual work force and into and across with the audiences and visitors that we're serving. The greater that line of integrity and diversity, the greater the sense of being part of a very strong cultural provision. 

 

 

My perspective is that in this life we need to have optimism. I think that we will make changes, we will make strides. I am not foolishly optimistic, but I can see evidence of change and I think that we as cultural leaders need to see ourselves as part of that evidence. It's important that we accept the challenge of diversifying our cultural institutions and each do our part to make that a sustainable reality rather than just a one-off token exercise. But it does require cultural leaders and cultural organisations to each play their part. And I think that if we can do that well, change will happen. It must happen. 

 

 

At a simple level we need more women in key leadership roles. In the cultural sector we certainly have quite a dynamic workforce where you see majority women across a number of levels, except in those highest-level leadership positions. The characteristics of leadership won't shift until women are occupying more of that ground and that territory. I prefer to look at it as feminine characteristics and masculine characteristics and actually both males and females can move along that scale. So, it's not just a simple gender dynamic. It's about how much of the different types of leadership styles and approaches you are comfortable in adapting. But I think the key issue is to be able to secure more women in key leadership roles so that those experiences and perspectives can be brought to how we lead our culture, how we lead our institutions and what we are visually and orally saying to the next generation of leaders.

 

 

I wouldn't like to set anything up as the biggest because one encounters different challenges at different times. Sometimes when you encounter a challenge for the first time it's the biggest. But then you encounter it the second time and you know how to deal with it. 

 

But certainly, in terms of significant challenges I think the area of managing people is always dynamic because you must be prepared for emotions, idiosyncrasies and the unexpected. You can strategize for organisational or resource change, and for a number of issues. But at the core is the people and how they will develop these issues. That's the area that I love. But that is also the area that I know can provide some serious challenges, because people are dynamic, and they don't necessarily conform to structures and systems. That makes it exciting but also potentially volcanic. 

 

 

For me the issue of context is important and understanding cultural context is really key. I think culture is different, the nuances of relationships are different and the way that people connect is different as well. You have to look cautiously at approaches which might work in one context and not assume that they will be the same in a global scale. But at the heart of it is hope and connections. And making sure that activities are done collectively, en masse. If you lock arms, it's harder for people to push one person down. So being connected is really important and that connection can happen with a whole range of different allies, both in location and out of location. Understanding your context, you can look at the strategies that have been used before. You can see which ones have been successful, which ones have not and build on those successes. I think the examples of areas where there has been shifts give us good potential and make us think it is possible. And that's the good thing. That's the hope. 

 

 

It requires a cultural leader to really understand their purpose and the impact they want to have. Because with that clear understanding you can then articulate how you stand in relation to different elements of a populist agenda. You can agree or fundamentally disagree with different elements of it. But you must have an understanding of what is someone else's agenda and what is yours. The cultural sector needs to work from its own centre of gravity. And then we can see where we are in relation to what's happening outside. 

 

 

The two years since I started working at Clore Leadership have gone by very quickly and it's been a terrific time. I've had the joy of working with two cohorts of Clore fellows and four cohorts of Clore leaders who did our intensive courses. If you enjoy people development this is a great space to be because we provide excellent programs and we see the benefit as cultural leaders develop. I am very keen to hold on to the very best of what we've learned over the last 15 years, but also cast forward in terms of our current and future context. It's really critical to constantly look outside of your peripheral vision. I want to ensure that Clore Leadership is aware of what's on the horizon and is interacting with it.