I didn’t intend to have a number of entries this week wherein I talked about other blogs but I was visiting the Americans for the Arts website checking on something related to their recent Arts. Ask for More campaign when I caught sight of their blog and decided to take a gander.

They had a number of people attending blogging about their experience at the Americans for the Arts national conference in Las Vegas this past week. There were a couple entries on the blog about leadership training that caught my attention.

The first was from John Arroyo:

“I began to think of this idea and wondered if whether or not we are overdoing it in the leadership field. There are so many institutes and workshops at all levels, but if we truly believe that leaders are self-identified and not tied to a title, when is it over stimulation?”

He goes on to talk about how leadership can be exhibited on all levels and for many an Executive Director position is no longer an ultimate career goal. This partially echoes some of what was being said in the Emerging Leadership program I attended at the Arts Presenters conference. I begin to wonder if there is an interesting shift in thinking and attitude transpiring nationally.

The other entry that caught my eye came from a time prior to the convention from Chad Baumann, Director of Marketing and Communications for AFTA and writer of Arts Marketing blog. In his entry on Artsblog, he cites a recent story noting that the MFA will become the new MBA as the economy increasingly orients toward creativity and expresses some concern about the emphasis the training programs might take.

“As more people compare the pros and cons of the MFA vs. MBA, I only have one major fear: that the MFA will become too business oriented. Arts organizations in the past have been criticized for having managers who didn’t come from business backgrounds. Many have made the argument that arts organizations suffer because they are lead by artists, not business professionals. I have the opposite fear.

“…I hope that most MFA programs in arts administration provide the necessary business training, but keep at the forefront what makes their students valuable-their artistic and creative abilities. Creativity is the commodity that is in high demand”

Given rising concerns in the arts industry about the lack of succession planning and dearth of qualified people to assume organizational reins when the current leadership retires, I thought a recent piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education on recruitment had some relevance.

The article is mainly aimed at academic departments looking for faculty but there are some basic ideas that are good places to start when analyzing one’s search and hiring practices in any profession. Books on the topic may ultimately be more helpful, but reading the article may also make you realize you need to consult those books.

The core focus is on recruitment for positions rather than just advertising them and waiting for people to apply. The author, Gary A. Olson, who is dean of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University, suggests disseminating information in discipline specific journals and online forums.

The most labor and resource intensive option he suggests is letters soliciting nominations and applications for the position, the more personal, sincere and un-form letter like, the better. Before you dismiss this out of hand as something only big businesess might do, I received two such letters for arts management jobs in the last six months. One was for an executive level position, the other middle management. If it weren’t for the fact that I had no desire to be involved in either field, I might have considered applying. More to the point, active recruiting efforts in the performing arts are out there and the practice is likely to become more prevalent.

Something that I would not have really considered which Olson says is mandatory if you really want to sell the position is the creation of a website exclusively devoted to the search.

“Effective sites will contain more than a position statement and a list of committee members. The objective here is to make the site useful for the candidate, not the committee. The search site should contain links to sites that will best promote the institution and the community, so the key question to ask in constructing a site is, “‘If I were a first-time visitor to the institution, what information would help me understand what I might be getting into were I to accept a position here?'”

Olson also cautions against various self-destructive practices like succumbing to the desire to grill, rather than woo, a candidate; airing organizational dirty laundry; extending poor hospitality and failing to search for solutions in final negotiations for the position.

What I hope not to see, however, is the emergence of recruiting practices similar to those connected with musical directors in the orchestra world where a very small group of big name people are wooed by multiple organizations to the exclusion of all others. That will only serve to exacerbate the panic over succession. (Unless I happen to emerge as a member of that small group, in which case it sounds like a grand idea.)