Ms. Mara Walker

Moving Arts Leadership Forward, Response by Mara Walker, Chief Operating Officer, Americans for the Arts

Posted by Ms. Mara Walker, Mar 15, 2016 1 comment


Ms. Mara Walker

It’s not breaking news that America is in the midst of major change due to an aging and diversifying population. And it’s not unusual to be in conversations about how those changes are impacting the leadership of our nation’s nonprofit arts organizations. As the new William and Flora Hewlett Foundation report indicates, economic pressures and shifting demographics have led to cross-generational workplaces that require new strategies for building deeper appreciation for the range of voices and experience that exist within our organizations.

All people who work at an organization want to feel valued and appreciated. That is both a hierarchical and generational truth. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, and longevity we all hope that the contributions we make at work are respected. Emerging leaders struggle to be heard and crave recognition for their creativity and innovation. More experienced leaders struggle to make sure history is understood and that a sense of entitlement doesn’t stand in their way of real listening. These are oversimplified aspirations of course. True leadership comes with giving opportunity to others and seeking out new perspectives and experiences to enable your own growth and the growth of others.

I get frustrated when people express a desire for staff who have been at an organization for a long time to move over so new blood can move into those jobs. As the report notes, there are many reasons that people are working and staying in fulfilling positions longer. Value in longevity at an organization can come from seeing the evolution and accomplishments of a mission, the permanence of strong strategic partnerships, and the knowledge of what works well. What needs to change is that often professional development and training are offered to younger employees eager to gain new skills while workers having put in 10 or more years are offered updates on practical skills but not management skills.  And whenever the training goes deeper it takes the form of sabbaticals or residencies that pull them away from the organization for a length of time instead of giving them the same opportunity to gain knowledge about new ways of working while they are working. What senior staff need are new and innovative training opportunities that help them learn how to appreciate cross-generational environments and their role in them. Learning how to establish a diffused leadership system within the organization, how to be more deeply invested in the people you work with and how to inspire and accept inventive ideas that aren’t your own will only help build better nonprofit arts organizations that in turn engage in creative partnerships in the communities we serve.

Working with outside help to facilitate intersecting-generational and -hierarchical dialogue creates greater awareness and value for the diverse perspectives that make up our workforce. It inspires a deeper understanding of the need to hire, integrate, and continually educate people at all levels of an organization. There is a great tool that accompanies the Hewlett report which is a quiz designed to help workers consider their distributed leadership quotient. It’s a sobering tool to help staff and boards better understand how they do (and don’t) look at their approach to cross-generational input and decision making. Once completed, you can’t help but think about this work anew. It should be a required assignments for leaders emerging and emerged.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s report, Moving Arts Leadership Forward, describes a changing arts leadership and workforce. Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the Hewlett Foundation, has asked a diverse group of arts leaders to respond to the report’s findings and the recommendations it makes for the field.

1 responses for Moving Arts Leadership Forward, Response by Mara Walker, Chief Operating Officer, Americans for the Arts

Comments

March 17, 2016 at 7:53 pm

Mara:
Thanks for your thoughtful post about the complexities involved in all of this and in pointing out the value of the accompanying quiz.  Looking forward to hearing the results when you, Bob and our colleagues at Americans for the Arts take the quiz. 

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