On leading roles (or the lack of them)
Last week, I went to see a new musical called Standing at the Sky’s Edge. Described by Jools Holland as “the best musical I’ve ever seen”, it is, in its own words, a love letter to Sheffield, charting decades of turbulent change through the interwoven stories of three families. I really liked it - although, in many ways, it’s not your typical musical, in part due to the absence of a traditional ‘leading role’. There are some actors that have more prominent parts than others, but, overall, it feels like an ensemble show, where there are moments for many people to shine. This felt particularly true in the opening song of the second half, where each member of the cast (of which there were over twenty) had their own microphone on its own stand - of the kind that, often, only lead singers are seen with. They each performed with the intensity and style of a soloist whilst staying completely connected to each other as only an ensemble can.
A couple of days later, I was listening to an interview with Dame Irene Lucas-Hays, co-owner of Hays, the largest independent travel agent in the UK. I’d not come across her before, but found her thoughtful, grounded and inspiring. I was particularly struck by the way she talked about her approach to supporting the hundreds of staff employed by the company during the pandemic when income streams evaporated overnight. She talked about the video calls that she and her late husband used to do from their home so that their colleagues could hear directly what they were doing to protect the business and its staff - including reducing their own salaries to minimum wage. She also spoke about her decision to communicate honestly with the team about the company’s financial situation and - rather than pretending that she had all the answers - put the question out to them to suggest ways the company could cut costs. Suggestions flooded in, suggestions that she would probably never have thought of on her own, and, cumulatively, these ideas saved the business £1.8 million.
These two examples provoked a thought about what leadership could look like if we stop assuming that there’s only one way to do it. We assume that a musical needs to come with a lead - probably someone famous that most audience members will have heard of, performing a demanding part that requires all their skill and experience to produce an electrifying performance that carries the show. And some musicals do need that - but Standing at the Sky’s Edge didn’t. In fact, the story that the show tells couldn’t have been told in that traditional format - it wouldn’t have worked. We are often quick to assume that what all organisations need is a figurehead - a lone heroic leader that stands at the front, that holds the vision and steers the ship and has a cunning plan for every tight spot they find themselves in. But, if we look hard enough at our sector, beyond some of our flagship institutions, we see organisations thriving with completely different leadership structures, based around pairs or threes or groups of leaders who are making decisions together - often better decisions than they would make alone. Alongside them are leaders like Irene Lucas-Hays, who, whilst working within a fairly traditional leadership model, found a way to empower the people around her and draw on their collective intelligence and creativity when it was needed the most.
I find it interesting that I’d not come across Lucas-Hays before. I’ve read and listened to a decent amount of material about leadership and usually the people you hear from or about are those who have a distinctive or charismatic leadership presence - big players like Steve Jobs or Alex Ferguson - or those who have a specific angle on leadership like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In or Tony Hsieh who transformed Zappos (an American company that sells shoes) into a billion dollar organisation by investing heavily in customer service and actively encouraging staff to spend a long time on the phone with customers. We also hear a lot from founders, who often have compelling stories of how an idea that originated around their kitchen table was transformed through blood sweat and tears into a real live business or organisation. It seems to me that, when it comes to leadership, we tend to be interested in the ‘what’ (the vision, the leadership style, the idea) and less interested in the ‘how’ (what it’s like to turn up, day after day, and turn that vision or idea into a reality).
When times are tough, there can be a tendency to move towards binary thinking. In recent months, I’ve heard arguments that have posited that the traditional, let’s call it ‘figurehead’ way of leading needs to be radically rethought if our sector wants to survive, and others that have suggested that moving away from this model now would be a disaster and would leave us weaker rather than stronger. I think that there are valid and interesting points on both sides - but one size rarely fits all. For some organisations, at some moments in time, a leader who brings a clear sense of direction, an idea or vision that they have originated, is exactly the right thing. But for others, there are different structures, collaborative or collective, involving one person or multiple people, and sometimes less about bringing an individual vision or idea but having the skills and techniques to draw out wisdom and ideas that already live within the organisation. The stories we hear, the articles that are written, the speakers that are featured on panels - they tend to be about the first group. I’d really love our sector and our society to start celebrating and learning from the second group too.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that somewhere in the early days of creating Standing at the Sky’s Edge, a big musical with a large cast and therefore relatively high costs, someone would have noted its lack of traditional ‘star’ role and said ‘this all sounds great - but it’ll be impossible to sell’. Turns out, for this musical, after its two runs at the Crucible in Sheffield, its transfer to the National Theatre and its subsequent transfer to the West End, that’s not true. There are different ways of creating things that people are hungry for - let’s widen who the spotlight shines on so we can embrace them all.