You have maybe heard before or at least you
have a picture in your minds that artists would be difficult persons and hard
to put into strict norms. I’m sure this is something they teach at art schools,
part of education that you have to be so different
and individualist. It would be a real nightmare, a suicide, to tell a real
artist that she/he is normal and
ordinary. Hey, there is nothing really exceptional with you; you are just
like the others. Hahahahah, I would
really like to do that. Because of some weird reason, artists have an
assumption of that all ordinary and organized is boring and uncreative (which
of course is not the case). So, what a nightmare it would be to lead and manage
an artistic group, say an orchestra or theatre
ensemble. Being of art director or general director of that group cannot be an
easy task. It is really weird that many of the artists do not want to have
anything to do with leadership and management. Surely because it is so organized and secular. Nothing creative with budgets, marketing and
development discussions. It almost seems
that this ordinary stuff might kill the artist inside these persons if going to
near. But fortunately there are exceptions; some prefer heroic leaderships and strong
orders before softness and dislike of authority. And yes, there are excellent
examples of strong, almost violent leadership in art organizations. Think about
Andriy Zholdak’s Anna Karenina in Turku City Theatre. Aah. The main actress
Krista Kosonen has complained that he was a terrible director. He was yelling,
spitting and insulting the actors. Some of the artists were crying and had
bruises when it was time to go home. But what was the result? An extraordinary,
really visually interactive play challenging all participants from actors to public.
And everybody loves Zholdak.
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| Andriy Zholdak (picture from flckr.com) |
Then to the other example, expert
organizations. If artists are a challenging group, experts might be an even
more challenging one. While there is a clear line between artists and managers,
this line is absent between experts and managers. Only because experts are experts, even sometimes in fields which
maybe are not their fields of expertise. Actors are satisfied and willing to
leave certain management issues to persons who are more capable and less
artistic, to take care of them. And managers let artists have their artistic
nature. But with experts the case is different. There the designer’s and
product manager’s visions might collide. Or programmer’s and product manager’s.
Here the line between expertise and leadership is thin. Supporting should come
before interfering and the expert organizations should be “powered to” or
“powered with” not “powered over” at any occasions. Listening and dialogue is
the key to success (which of course should not be forgotten in art organizations;
dialogue is always key to success).
So, as if you did not already guess, we had
a lecture about leadership in art and expert organizations today with Niina
Koivunen. Not maybe the most interesting and stimulating lecture in my whole
life, but okay, so to say. Okay, I must admit that I had woken up at 5 in
Helsinki, just to participate in the lecture so maybe I wasn’t so alert. But back
to the lecture. In the beginning Niina briefly talked about theory behind
leadership in art organizations but soon moved on to more practical issues. She
had done her doctoral studies about contradictory leadership discourses in
symphony orchestras, so this was mainly the topic. Maybe one of the most
interesting issues was the discussion about how art organizations can be lead
through negative or positive; the outcome was that both ways can lead to
artistically good outcomes. The second theme was leadership challenges in
expert organizations and the comparison of art and expert organizations. There
the outcome, dialogue, listening, co-management, was not so surprising.
Well, I think I don’t have so much more to
say about the topic. Or then there is a lack of inspiration. So I’ll be back
when the times are better.
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