The values of Cultural Leadership

Tokyo, November 2014

My talk is about the importance of leadership to the cultural sector, how leaders can be developed, and about an approach to leadership which places values at the heart of an organization – values which are exemplified in the behaviour, decisions and actions of the leader, and which determine the culture of that organization.

I shall start by explaining what I mean by culture and leadership, move on to reflect on the difference between leadership and management, then outline the qualities and skills that cultural leaders need today. I’ll describe some leadership development programmes in which I’ve been involved, in both the UK and Hong Kong, and give examples of leaders whose personal qualities and values are reflected in the organisations they lead.

In talking about cultural leadership, I am referring to a broad range of activity, including performing and visual arts, film and digital media, museums, libraries, archives, heritage buildings, cultural policy, design and architecture. Cultural leaders, in my definition, could include artistic directors of dance companies and theatre, heads of culture for local government, grants managers for philanthropic foundations, directors of museums, curators of art galleries, board members of arts organisations, digital entrepreneurs, artists and designers – people in the centre of organizations as well as at the top, people who are outside organisations as well as those within. The key thing is that they should be change-makers.

Cultural leaders inspire, they connect, they navigate. As inspirers, they are passionate about what they do, and they have ideas that resonate with others. As connectors, they know themselves, they are true to themselves and they are able to build and nurture relationships. As navigators, they have a clear sense of purpose, they plan strategically and they show others the way. They have their eye on the horizon, and have a vision of how things could be five or even ten years from now. They are always looking forwards, they are not concerned with maintaining the status quo, they bring about change.

In the words of Sir John Tusa (until recently Chair of the Clore Leadership Programme), leaders differ from managers: good management is essential to the success of an organization, but it is not enough. Management is about what you do to run an organization or project efficiently: leadership is about what you know and how you behave in order to make an organization or project work effectively.

Effective leaders are vitally important in today’s fast-changing fluid world, in which we are experiencing rapid economic, social, political and environmental change. And culture itself doesn’t stand still. Digital technology has disrupted the way in which art is created and people engage with it – audiences have become makers and producers, not simply consumers, and arts buildings are no longer venues where people passively receive performances or observe

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exhibitions - they are social spaces where creativity, dialogue and exchange take place.

All this requires leaders who are committed to ways of making and engaging with culture that we can’t yet imagine, leaders who thrive on uncertainty and complexity, who trust their own judgment and who face up to risk rather than run away from it, who aren’t fearful of the unknown. This new model of a leader seeks opportunities: leaders who are entrepreneurial, open to new ways of working and new business models, and willing to fail and try again. They are focused and purposeful, and at the same time collaborative. Leadership is all about people: effective cultural leaders strive to extend their networks, build alliances and work in partnership with others, across the cultural sector and beyond it.

Today’s ever-changing and unpredictable environment requires a new culture of leadership. Leaders need to be resilient, alert and collaborative, and in addition have:

Determination and an appetite to lead, with a creative backbone Curiosity which stretches across and beyond the cultural sector, and

beyond geographical and cultural boundaries Self-knowledge and an understanding of how to play to their strengths Openness to change and generosity in sharing their experience with

others, and to coaching and developing their colleagues

In addition, they must have

A passion for culture which drives them and enthuses others A willingness to share responsibility but at the same time be ultimately

accountable for the success (or otherwise) of their organization, project or cause

And they must be:

Resourceful and optimistic, combining steely resolve with humility – they should be ambitious for an organization or cause, not just for themselves

Courageous, with good judgment enabling them to take difficult decisions in complex environments – they know how to keep the three interlocking circles of artistic mission, social purpose and financial viability in balance

The demands on culture leaders are similar to those of leaders in other walks of life, in many ways, but in other ways they differ. As I’ve already said, art is by its very nature unpredictable, and the way in which we engage with culture is rapidly changing. Furthermore, the context in which cultural leaders work differs from those working in other fields. Unlike a business leader, for instance, who is accountable to their shareholders, a cultural leader is accountable to many different constituencies – accountable to artists, staff,

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audiences, funders of many different kinds, politicians, local communities, the media, the public at large - it’s an ever growing list. We now recognize that culture can make a significant contribution to the economy, to social cohesion and well-being, to health and to education, and we are starting to gather together the evidence to prove it, and make the case for culture. This means that cultural leaders are civic leaders too – they have responsibilities and influence that extend well beyond their job descriptions and traditional remits.

In the UK, we realised a few years ago that there simply weren’t enough cultural leaders to go round. Not enough people were putting themselves forward for these challenging roles, and many of the leaders in the major cultural institutions seemed to have got there by accident, rather than design and in some cases not doing the best job they could. That is not to say there weren’t some great cultural leaders, but it became clear that more could be done to attract new talent, to develop a new generation of cultural leaders and to make the cultural sector as a whole more diverse, more connected and more robust, to help it weather the vagaries of the external environment.

So ten years ago, an independent philanthropic charity, the Clore Duffield Foundation, set up a task group to find out what they could do to help. They consulted widely with hundreds of people in the arts community across the UK and concluded the situation could get worse rather than better unless a new generation of leaders could be developed. They recommended that a new organisation should be set up, which could actively engage in talent-spotting and fast-tracking potential leaders across the whole cultural sector – and this is what the Clore Leadership Programme has been doing for the past ten years, identifying and developing an ever-growing peer group of emerging leaders.

The Clore Duffield Foundation decided that it wouldn’t set up a major institution, a management school or an academic course – leadership couldn’t be taught, perhaps, but there were learnable skills, knowledge and behaviours which could help people become effective leaders. The Clore Leadership Programme would be small, flexible operation with low running costs and extensive networks across the arts and creative industries, through its staff team and a high level expert advisory committee.

The first, and central, initiative was a Fellowship programme, aimed at shaping 25 or so individual creative leaders every year through bespoke in-depth learning. We choose people with between 5 and 10 years’ experience of working in culture and who demonstrate the potential to make a step-change as a leader. They show they have the kind of leadership qualities we expect of future leaders. Most of them are from the UK, and around 20 – 25% from other countries.

The structure of the Fellowship programme is bespoke for each individual. It includes workshops, residential courses, collaborative projects and study visits when the whole group of Fellows comes together. In addition for every individual, there is a menu of experiences, which they select, with our support and guidance. This includes a three-month placement in an organization well

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outside the Fellow’s usual environment – and sometimes outside culture, for example working with nuclear physicists in CERN, or in a business like Unilever. Each Fellow’s customized professional development plan includes personal profiling, training courses to fill in any skills’ gaps, mentoring and coaching. In other words, it’s a very practical programme and the Fellows learn about themselves from others’ experience (including that of their Fellow Fellows), from self-reflection, from seeing leaders at work, and from trying out things for themselves. A Fellowship can be done full-time if you choose to take a career break - or alongside employment or freelance jobs or other commitments. There are virtually no economic barriers: almost all places are fully funded and each Fellowship is tailored as far as possible to the needs, aspirations, circumstances and potential of the carefully selected participant. We’re not looking for perfectly formed leaders, but for those with the potential to become the best.

The principles underlying the Programme include a belief that leadership happens at all levels – it’s not just lodged with the Chief Executive or Chair of the Board - and that the best way of learning is from practical experience rather than theory. So the people who are mentors for our Fellows, who host their placements or speak at our residential courses, are almost all cultural leaders with years of experience, knowledge and wisdom but up until now very few structured opportunities to share their learning outside their own organization. The Fellows’ mentors have included the Director of Tate, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House and Director of the Imperial War Museum – senior cultural leaders who say they learn as much from the experience of mentoring as the mentee does – it’s a dialogue, with the Fellow learning from the senior leader’s experience (including their mistakes) and the mentor being refreshed by the questions, challenges and perspectives of the younger leader. They are opening the door for the next generation.

Following the success of the Fellowship programme, we’ve introduced other initiatives, including two-week residential leadership courses (we’ve run more than 40 such courses over the last 8 years, for more than 1,000 people), a one-week course for emerging leaders, who are at an early stage in their career, and training and development programmes for the Boards of Directors of cultural institutions. Even after ten years, the demand remains. A recent survey we commissioned of nearly 600 leaders or future leaders from across the UK revealed that 91% expected to undertake training to support their further development in the next 5 years and that the skills sets they considered most important for leadership were leading people, fundraising and philanthropy, strategic planning and setting the vision, lobbying, influencing and advocacy.

We’ve also worked in association with other bodies, including the British Council, Hong Kong University and the Goethe Institute, to help strengthen leadership outside the UK. For all these activities, we’ve continued to draw on senior cultural leaders in the UK and other countries, and increasingly also on the alumni of the Clore Fellowship Programme. I suppose we’re in the process of creating a self-sustaining network in an ever-growing international family.

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In Hong Kong, the need that was identified was to develop home grown leaders to run the major new cultural institutions that were being created there. In other words, there was investment in the hardware, but not the software - in buildings, not people. Working in close association with the University, we developed a modular programme that was suited to the needs and culture of Hong Kong and the surrounding region – participants are mainly from Hong Kong, but also from mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and so on. The Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme is now in its fourth year and attracts around 20 Fellows, similar in profile to those in the UK – that is, some working in the middle of organisations, as team leaders or departmental heads, some running small organisations, some working within funding bodies or local government, some working independently. The Hong Kong University’s course includes sessions on knowing your strengths, working with teams, managing change, planning strategically, negotiations, fundraising, advocacy and influencing, cultural policy and public engagement.

The model for each leadership programme is different, according to the local context and the needs, circumstances and working pattern of people at different stages in their career. In the UK, our programmes provide a ladder of increasing intensity, starting with leadership ”taster” days run in different cities of the UK, in partnership with locally-based arts and educational organisations, and running through one and two-week courses to the full Fellowship which requires people to take six or seven months away from the workplace. In Hong Kong, the structure is a series of short intensive bursts – two 5-day residential retreats and a two-day weekend workshop, followed by leadership boosters when the Fellows are brought together. Similarly, in the UK, because we believe that leaders never stop learning and constantly need to refresh their skills, perspectives and networks, so we run one-day skills workshops on topics like having difficult conversations or partnerships and mergers which anyone who has completed one of our Fellowships or done one of our residential courses can attend.

Our approach to leadership development isn’t just about selecting individuals, it’s about making sure that the cultural sector as a whole is supportive of leadership, understands its importance and helps shape the future. It’s as much about changing the culture of leadership as the leadership of culture. We are trying to help leaders be less isolated, to learn from one another and give each other support, and to collaborate creatively and strategically across what were at one time great divides between different generations, art forms, sectors, and professional hierarchies.

What have we learned about leadership development over the last few years? Well, when we set up the Programme, we knew some things for certain – that leadership was essential for the success of creative and cultural organisations, and that there were some brilliant leaders around. What surprised us was:

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That leadership development is about learning, not about being taught – people learn in different ways and at different speeds and have different rhythms – and because of this you need to be really flexible and not impose a set pattern or order on leadership development;

That leadership development is about discovery, not theory – you can certainly learn a lot from books but the best way is from your own experience and learning from others’ experiences;

That the “Fellowship” is as important as any individual’s development - the Fellows have formed strong and enduring bonds amongst themselves, and continue to teach each other far more than anyone else could from the outside;

That the international dimension of our work is very important – we’ve come to see the importance of person-to-person exchange, awareness of other perspectives and seeing “the big (global) picture” as integral parts of the development of leaders;

That leadership is work in progress. No one has all the answers, and leaders are never the finished article. They never stop learning

The overall aims of the programmes we run are to increase the resilience of the cultural sector as a whole, to raise standards of leadership, and to restore a sense of confidence amongst individuals and institution. The impact of investment in leadership development can be transformative. Almost every Fellow – the UK and Hong Kong - has said it has changed their life, whether they’ve returned to their workplace refreshed and with new skills, networks and perspectives, have set up new creative businesses or not-for-profit organisations, or have made dramatic career leaps.

For example, last week, in Hong Kong, one participant told me on the last day of the Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme: “It’s been invigorating, confidence-instilling, motivating, life-changing” whilst another recognized “The workplace was sucking up my skills, time and energy. The Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme has helped me pull of lot of my strengths together – I’ve put them in my pocket and I’ll take them out when I need them”.

For a recent independent evaluation of the impact of our one-week residential course in the UK for young, early career leaders participants were asked to assess themselves in relation to certain leadership competencies and skills at the start of the course, immediately after completing the course, and 3 months after the end of the course. Inevitably, there was a dip in some areas between the end of the course and the three month post-course assessment, but nevertheless the results are telling and indicate that the benefits of the course are sustained. In terms of confidence, 32% of participants rated themselves as good or extremely good at the start of the course and this rose to 80% three months after the course; and in terms of resilience, 36% rated themselves as good or very good at the start of the course and 87% three months after the course.

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But perhaps the best way of measuring the impact of the programme is through the stories of the Fellows themselves who have gone on to transform the organisations they lead or to create new organisations or projects. Some have moved into more senior roles in other organisations – Fellows such as Erica Whyman who moved from being the Artistic Director of the small Gate Theatre in London to being the Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Northern Stage and now Deputy Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a role specially created for her. Alex Ruger moved from being Curator at the National Gallery in London to Director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Another Fellow is Maria Balshaw, who completely turned around the Whitworth Gallery, part of the University of Manchester, making such a success of it that she was invited by the City Council to run the city’s art galleries and also take the lead in development the city’s cultural policy – as well as continuing to run the Whitworth. Some Fellows set up new organisations. Tom Andrews, as a result of the programme has created People United, which promotes kindness in communities through the arts, and he is gathering robust academic evidence to measure the impact of this work through a partnership with a university.

A Fellow from India, Pooja Sood, who runs a dynamic gallery and artists’ space in New Delhi was inspired to set up an arts management course for the whole of South Asia, now in its fifth year and attracting participants from across India and nearby countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran and Afghanistan. Investment in one individual can benefit many – not only in their organization, but far beyond, as this example demonstrates.

Others have used the Olympics as a springboard for ambitious growth. Matt Peacock, whose company Streetwise Opera brings together homeless people and professional opera singers to create high quality productions, initiated an event called “With One Voice”, hosted by the Royal Opera House in London in 2012. This was unprecedented – the first time in history that an event for homeless people was included in the Olympic celebrations. It brought together over 300 people from across the UK with experience of homelessness and helped start the first global network of arts and homeless organisations.

My final examples are Claire Hodgson and Jamie Beddard. Claire’s organization DiverseCity is based in Dorset, a rural area in the south of England. As part of the 2012 Olympics games, and looking forward to the games in Rio in 2016, Claire brought together 64 young disabled people from Dorset and Brazil to create a show which was celebrated the opening of the Olympic sailing event and was performed on a beach to an audience of 11,000 people.

Claire, together with artist and Clore Fellow Jamie Beddard has gone on to form an integrated circus company which is made up of an equal number of disabled and non-disabled performers, They are working with disadvantaged young people and those with mixed physical abilities in seven UK cities to

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create sustainable performing companies for young people. They say they couldn’t have done this without the Clore Leadership Programme. Claire and Jamie believe their level of ambition and confidence is much higher as a result of our investment in their leadership development, they have much wider networks and contacts which they didn’t have before and they have a peer group of leaders to support them as they move forward on this brave creative journey.

As these examples show, leadership isn’t simply a question of being at the top of the tree, about status, position and job title. It’s about the way you relate to other people, your behaviour and how your values are translated into action. In my view, leadership isn’t something you’re given - it’s something you choose, because you want to make a difference to - and through - culture.

Sue HoyleNovember 2014

www.cloreleadership.org

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