Leadership

Accountability Leadership

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Back in June there was an article on the Harvard Business Review site about 3 Ways to Compassionately Hold Your Team accountable.  The authors of the piece approach the topic from the cognitive processes associated with accountability. What appealed to me about the piece was the contrasting of punitive approaches with those that views an assignment as an opportunity for growth and acknowledges that mistakes are a part of that process.

Since the creative process involves generating, refining, and building upon multiple iterations, this seems an appropriate approach to apply to management and leadership practices in arts and cultural organizations.

The authors categorize these perceptions of accountability as “threatening” vs. “worthy challenge.”

Leaders should strive for the second type of accountability, as there is now significant research suggesting that encouraging a growth mindset accelerates individual performance, learning and adaptability, and overall well-being. And because growth-oriented accountability rewards employees for taking risks and encourages a growth mindset, it has knock-on benefits for team culture. In particular, it compels people to find solutions to the mistakes others have made rather than blaming or shaming them.

The three accountability methods they identify are: Think Ahead, Own Your Commitments, and Anchor on Solutions.

Think Ahead involves envisioning and communicating what success looks like to staff, including any difficulties staff may encounter. The example given in the article is a client that often interrupts to ask questions, but similar situations occur in arts and cultural environments in terms of details known about attendees, groups, board members, etc. The challenge to Thinking Ahead is being able to empathize with the person(s) being assigned the task. Not only in terms of what questions they may have on details you take for granted, but anticipating that they may be intimidated by a situation that wouldn’t ruffle you.

Own Your Commitments is essentially holding yourself to the same standard as employees and modeling the behavior for them rather than taking a “do as I say, not as I do approach.” The authors point out that if employees are held accountable for meeting certain benchmarks but their leaders are allowed slack, the dichotomy can cause all sorts of issues.

An arts organization related example that immediately comes to mind are policies like ticket changes, rental refunds, etc. Often it does fall to a leader to bend policies to accommodate certain people and situations. In those situations it is important to confirm that staff made the right decision with their initial refusal rather than blaming them for not knowing they were dealing with an important person and should have made an exception. The other approach is to explain why the decision to bend policy was made and either empower employees to make that decision themselves within that context or give them permission to pass the decision up the chain without repercussions.

Finally, Anchor on Solutions is essentially the practice of acknowledging errors and problems are part of becoming more skilled and productive. It is about reflecting, discussing, and seeking solutions rather than focusing on assigning blame.

Anchoring on solutions means letting go of blame and working to make things better. It means debriefing deeply on both wins and failures, and constantly seeking creative ways of solving problems instead of reasons for failure. Like owning your commitments, anchoring on solutions is a learnable skill that is heavily influenced by the actions of others around us. Therefore, leaders need to be intentional about focusing on the way forward, not on finding out whose fault it is.

Flagship Ballet Changes Course And Five Years Later Audiences Are Responding

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An Associated Press story (via Artsjournal.com) reports on the success the NYC Ballet has had in attracting younger audiences.  Not only has the average age dropped in the last five years, but the largest cohort of attendees as shifted from those in their 60s to those in their 30s.

In 2023, 53% of ticket buyers were under age 50, and people in their 30s made up the largest age segment by decade. Five years earlier, in 2018, 41% of ticket buyers were under 50, and people in their 60s made up the largest age segment.

The article says they have achieved this through a number of changes, some of which you might assume: Engagement via social media, both the organization’s accounts and those of individual dancers. Pricing – their 30 for 30 program which allowed those under 30 an opportunity to purchase any seat in the theater for $30 grew from 1,800 members pre-pandemic to 14,000 members now.

Perhaps less expected is the credit for the shift in audiences they give to the decision to shift from a single artistic leader to two. Five years ago the Ballet appointed Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan as an artistic team. This has apparently resulted in a significant change in the organizational culture:

Company insiders describe a mood different from the days when one outsized, all-powerful personality ruled from above. For one thing, the pair says they’ve instituted annual taking-stock conversations with each dancer.

[…]

She and Stafford say they’re also paying more attention to wellness, be it physical training to avoid injury, healthy diets, or a more frank discussion of mental health.

They have also changed the programming mix both in terms of commissioning collaborations between young choreographers and visual and musical artists with youthful followings and diversifying the ethnic and racial representation of dancers and choreographers.

And there have been collaborations with visual or musical artists with youthful followings — like the musician Solange, who in 2022 was commissioned to score a ballet by 23-year old choreographer Gianna Reisen.

[…]

Recently, the company heralded its first two Black dancers to dance Dewdrop, the second most important female “Nutcracker” role: India Bradley and guest artist Alexandra Hutchinson of the Dance Theater of Harlem. Yet to come is a Black Sugarplum Fairy. The company says 26% of of its dancers identify as people of color, whereas 10 years ago that figure was 13%. Stafford and Whelan have commissioned 12 ballets by choreographers of color in the last six years, it says.

Yeah It’s Hot, But Very Little Sustenance Consuming The Roiling Steam Of Culture

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Seth Godin made a post today that advocates for the value of the journey over the destination:

TL;DR is defensive. Not simply because it defends our time, but because it defends us from change and from lived experience. A joke isn’t funny because it has a punchline. It’s funny because something happens to us as the joke unfolds, and the punch line is simply a punctuation of that experience.

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana,” isn’t funny by itself.

Godin cites an article by Ted Gioia that I saw about a couple months ago in which Gioia uses the term “Dopamine Culture” to argue that people want to experience the hit rather than the journey.

In a chart from Gioia’s piece Godin includes in his post, Gioia charts the trend away from participating in an activity to spectating to essentially just consuming the short tail end of an experience.

Among Gioia’s examples which go from Slow Traditional Culture> Fast Modern Culture> Dopamine Culture:

Play A Sport> Watch A Sport> Gamble on A Sport
View in A Gallery > View On A Phone > Scroll on A Phone
Newspapers> Multimedia > Clickbait

Godin points out that what seems to be in demand is the metaphoric boiling water of all these short bits of experience we can consume, but that sort of diet doesn’t provide long term sustenance. Long time readers will know I approve of his sentiment that about not everything that can be measured matters:

Cavitation happens here. We’re at a rolling boil, and there’s a lot of pressure to turn our work and the work we consume to steam.

The steam analogy is worthwhile: a thirsty person can’t subsist on steam. And while there’s a lot of it, you’re unlikely to collect enough as a creator to produce much value.

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And now we live in a time where the previously informal is easy to measure.

But just because it’s measured doesn’t mean it matters.

The creators and consumers that have the guts to ignore the steam still have a chance to make an impact.

The Work Doesn’t Get Any Easier At The Top

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy had an article written by the co-executive directors of the Building Movement Project (BMP) which focuses on non-profit leadership issues. I have been writing about their various studies since 2008.

I haven’t yet read the full results of their recent study which asked the same questions of leaders in 2016, 2019, and 2022, but the Chronicle of Philanthropy article shares some seemingly contradictory findings.

BMP found that the number of people interested in assuming leadership roles in non-profit organizations has been dropping in each study since 2016. What really surprised them was that previously non-profit staff of color had increasingly expressed an interest in leadership positions, but that reversed and dropped significantly in the 2022 survey.

Upon further investigation, BMP found that the context in which aspiring leaders had assumed their roles wasn’t the most constructive (my emphasis):

… we found that aspiring leaders, especially those of color, weren’t being pulled into leadership through support and positive role models but were more often pushed into top positions to escape difficult work circumstances and improve the situation for themselves and others.

…We assumed that removing barriers would translate into a positive desire to move into leadership.

But the data showed the opposite. The more challenges respondents faced in nonprofit workplaces, including inadequate salaries and a lack of mentors, the more likely they were to express an interest in the top role, particularly people of color.

Basically, the assumption that things are better at the top didn’t hold true. This was especially the case for persons of color who worked for predominantly white boards. They felt less supported by leadership and boards than white leaders or staffs of color who worked for boards and leaders of color.  While that does seem to indicate that persons of color can create an environment which will be more supportive of aspiring leaders, they actually need to feel like they can stay in the role long enough to cultivate younger staff.

Along these lines, BMP found:

“…leaders of color receive far less support from both their predecessors and leaders in other organizations than white executive directors do. Specifically, 22 percent of leaders of color and 30 percent of white leaders got support from their predecessors; and 33 percent of leaders of color and 41 percent of white leaders got support from leaders in other organizations.”

Among the suggestions BMP has for reversing the diminishing interest in executive leadership of non-profits are some obvious ones like making sure the work load is reasonable and borne by sufficient staff, cultivating younger staff, providing mentoring and networking opportunities from peers and retired executives.  Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with this list is that fewer funders are willing to provide the financial support to increase staffing, education, mentoring, and networking required to empower leaders.