Sharing is caring
I was so excited when I got my first leadership job - I’d been searching for the right next move for at least a year, had applied for several positions unsuccessfully and felt totally and utterly ready to take the plunge. I liked the job that I was doing but had got everything out of it that I was able to and couldn’t wait for a new challenge. As I wrote in my first blog post, the reality was a lot harder and more complicated than I had thought.
The thing I remember most was loneliness. My previous job had been as a producer, so whilst I frequently supported teams of freelancers on each production, I didn’t have to formally line manage anyone else. I had lots of colleagues at the same level as me - we each had quite a lot of responsibility, but because none of us managed each other, a wonderful camaraderie existed that provided a safe place to let off steam. I’d taken all of this for granted and didn’t fully appreciate it until it wasn’t there any more and I suddenly found myself navigating a very different set up, where the people that I spent the most time with were my direct reports, with whom I necessarily couldn’t be as open.
The things that helped, once I discovered them, were the networks of other leaders doing similar jobs to mine. I’m amazed and delighted by how many of these there are: I’ve come across groups for executive level leaders, groups for trusts and foundations fundraisers, groups for anyone dealing with HR, groups for venue operations managers, groups for people who lead mid-scale regional venues, groups of people who all produce participatory work - the list goes on. Most of these groups exist as an email list with no formal leader, meet up in person or on Zoom now and again, and answer questions that people in the group raise, sharing hard won knowledge so that others can benefit. One of the many things I love about the arts sector is its generosity. I’ve dipped my toe into other sectors and spoken to friends who work in different fields, and I think what we do in the arts is relatively unique - born perhaps from the necessity of collaboration that leads to an understanding that we are interdependent and, usually, what hurts one, hurts all.
For this to work, we have to be ready to be vulnerable - to admit that we don’t know the answer to everything, to ask for help when we need it. So often, what has caused me pain is the feeling that I, individually, am failing - that I’m not handling a situation well enough, that a project or initiative wasn’t successful because I was misguided in its leadership, that the grant application that I wrote that got turned down must have been terrible. On occasion, some or all of these things might be true (as I wrote about in this post on rejection) but a lot of the time, there are a myriad of factors at work that contribute to the situation you find yourself in. The relief, the comfort, the solidarity that can be felt by simply being in a space where someone else says ‘that happened to me too’ is extraordinary.
And right now, this has never been more essential. This depressing Arts Professional article showed that arts finances are in the worst state they’ve been in for 5 years. The article outlines that the figures in the filed accounts of 2,800 arts organisations showed a combined deficit of £117.8m in 2023, compared with a combined profit of £152.4m in 2022 and £232.6m in 2021. This tallies with the experience of so many leaders that I speak to - we are all fighting what feels like an unwinnable battle against rising costs and declining funding, each trying to manage business models that are creaking in their own way. I have seen some comments that suggest that this state of affairs is down to organisations not being innovative enough - that if we were bolder in our programming or our output, or thought outside the box in regard to our business models, then our finances would be in a better state. Whilst we should always be looking to be innovative and bold and creative in our thinking, this road leads to the idea that this is an individual problem, not a collective one. The numbers quoted above, stark as they are, show a different picture - I suspect quite a lot of the 2,800 organisations are being innovative, bold and creative, and yet are still posting a huge combined deficit. If we all slog on, beating ourselves up, thinking that somewhere out there is a silver bullet but we’re just not smart enough or hardworking enough to find it, that way madness lies - or, a sector that has very few people who want to lead within it.
I set up this blog in part to support this sense of solidarity, that by writing about some of my experiences, and working through some of the many things that I want to figure out and be better at in leadership, it may help others who are thinking about the same kinds of things to know they are not the only one. Given the complexity of the environment that we are trying to navigate at the moment, I’m always surprised at how little sector-specific writing and thinking there is about how best to lead - it means that, once again, we tackle these challenges individually rather than through collective understanding and solutions-building.
So, in the spirit of being a collective, I am asking for your help. I would love to grow the readership for this blog, to reach more people and, hopefully, be a small part of advancing how we think about and enact leading within our organisations. If there’s a post you’ve particularly enjoyed, or a friend or colleague that you think might benefit, I’d really appreciate it if you could post about it or forward on. As my daughter reminds me (usually when I’m telling her that she can’t try on one of my dresses) sharing is caring, and I hope that spaces in which we can read about and think about other peoples’ experiences will help us feel just a little bit less alone.