Where Leadership Lies

Ten years ago, I got my first leadership job in the arts. It had come after a long and frustrating search for my next move, involving a lot of job applications and an almost equivalent amount of rejection. I’d got everything I could from the job I was in and I was (I thought) ready to step up. I was doing a producing job for a small scale venue which, over the four years I’d been in it, had incorporated not only producing the shows but also, at various points, learning to code so I could update the website, designing all the marketing materials on Photoshop, looking after all of our individual donors, having an intimate knowledge of the box office booking system, and doing a couple of front of house shifts every week for a bit of extra cash. I thought that having that breadth of knowledge of all the different bits of an organisation would mean that, when I finally got to be one of the people in the driving seat, I would know what I was doing. 

Reader, I did not. 

When I started in that leadership job ten years ago, I spent the first six months (at least) feeling slightly shell-shocked. The primary reason for this was that all the things that had, until now, made me good at my job didn’t seem to be making me good at this one. I was an incredibly fast and efficient worker - I’d had to be, given the reactive nature of producing in combination with all the other various responsibilities I’d had to find time for. I could work long hours and keep myself grounded, I could keep on top of an almost unmanageable number of emails to make sure nothing got missed, I could set up rock solid planning documents that made sure the wheels kept turning on the projects that were coming down the line. All of these skills have been helpful during my time as a leader, but none of them, I think, make someone truly good at it. 

One of the things I found hardest about this transition was that I had to give up my status as the busiest person. I didn’t receive the most emails. I wasn’t having the most meetings. My to-do list wasn’t as endless or as urgent as some of my colleagues’. I was not the person in the thick of it, making things happen, turning ideas into reality. I was one of the people who was meant to be coming up with the ideas. And that takes time - time to think, time to talk, time to listen, time to grow, time to test, time to tweak. That can’t be done if you are constantly doing. There’s got to be time and space for ideas to bloom. (This became especially clear to me in the various and not infrequent periods during my leadership career where I became, once again, the busiest person, to the detriment of myself and, I’d argue, everyone else.)

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

But in those first six months of being a leader, I wasn’t having that many ideas, and the ones I did have seemed to be making very little impact. I would come into work every day with a listless sickening feeling that I’d never felt before - that I wasn’t quite sure what I should be working on, and, perhaps, not that much would change if I wasn’t there at all. I felt lost, lonely, and confused. 

Luckily I had some wise and generous spirited people around me that kept me going and helped me to find my feet, and slowly, slowly, I tuned in to a few things. I started to sense that leadership runs on a different time frame to other jobs. If you’re seeking to make change - real, deep change - this cannot be done overnight. I found that having time to reflect on whether the work we were making (and the way in which we were making it) was really in line with what we said we wanted to do. I noticed that the way I showed up to work every day had an impact on other people - this is true for everyone, of course, but there’s an extra layer to it when you’re someone who holds power. I started to think that maybe leadership lies in the spaces in between all the noise and all the busyness, not in the grand gesture but in the everyday act of showing up and trying to live by the values that you’ve said that you have; not something static but a practice that evolves over time. An art, you might say.  

In our sector, most leaders have to learn on the job. There are a small number of leadership development schemes but I’d say that the majority of people haven’t done any kind of training when they take on their first role - I certainly hadn’t. I dived into books, podcasts and articles in search of wisdom and whilst I found some incredible resources which I continue to draw on, not all of it felt applicable for our weird and wonderful sector. Arts organisations work in such particular ways, constantly partnering up with each other in different combinations, constituted of a glorious mix of salaried staff and a huge array of freelancers of different kinds, and with a whole range of different leadership structures at the top. All of these things are exciting and challenging and nuanced; they are (and should be) frequently discussed and debated to make sure that we, as a sector and as leaders of that sector, continue to evolve and move forwards. 

After ten years in leadership jobs, I feel like I’ve learned some things and know that I have a lot more to learn. Right now, as our sector, like many others, is feeling the stark effects of an economy in crisis, leading well is both imperative and the hardest it’s ever been. I wanted to create a little pocket of space to reflect on what it means to lead an arts organisation in the hope that it will help me, and hopefully others, do it a little bit better. I hope you’ll join me. 

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