Arts-based methods in leadership development: Affording aesthetic workspaces, reflexivity and memories with momentum

Abstract

There is a growing cry for ways of approaching management and leadership development that embrace the complex, dynamic, chaotic and highly subjective, interactional environments of contemporary organisational contexts. One response has been the use of arts-based methods for management and leadership education. Although a community of research has grown around these practices, there remains a lack of empirically grounded work focusing on the underlying, situated, experiential learning processes of such methods. Working from the concept of experiential learning as knowledge creation through the transformation of experience, I develop a three-stage theoretical model that explores experiential learning processes of artsbased methodologies. This study is based on an inductive, grounded theory approach in analyzing descriptive essays written by Executive MBA students on their experiences of a choral conducting masterclass. The model describes how arts-based learning environments afford aesthetic workspaces where participants engaged in aesthetic reflexivity to create memories with momentum to inform their future leadership practice. This model builds an interdisciplinary bridge to the theory of affordances and the concepts of aesthetic workspaces and aesthetic reflexivity found within cultural sociology, a discourse with a focus on the reflexive use of the arts for self-configuration, regulation and development.

Leadership Formation: Interpreting Experience

“…It takes time to develop the capacity for reflective engagement with experience, as well as a breadth of engagement beyond narrow confines (Reichard & Johnson, 2011;Sutherland, 2013;Taylor & Ladkin, 2009). When processes of formation are extended over time and incorporate the arts and humanities, leaders are able to engage with each new experience more reflectively and thoughtfully (Cunliffe, 2009) because of their reflexive capacity for self-expression and character development (Irving & Klenke, 2004).…”

“…This points towards engagement with art as a possible aspect of formational processes in which the leader-to-be gains, over time, the ability to accept and offer influence concurrently, in reflexive experiential processes (c.f. Sutherland, 2013). This kind of engagement can be revisited again and again, which is why we need to consider it as part of the long-term experience of interpretation.…”

Leadership Development for High School Students in a Summer Performing Arts Program

“…Besides the many obvious benefits that we normally think about from a summer arts program (Catterall, 1998;Ruppert, 2006), we can also attribute the experience to growth in perceived student leadership ability. Sutherland (2012) says that arts-based methodologies for leadership education affords experiential learning that improves participants' abilities to navigate the complexities of contemporary organizational contexts. Sutherland argues that arts-based experiences allow the participants to engage in aesthetic reflexivity to form memories with momentum to inform future action.…”

Educating Qualitative Researchers in Management: Toward Performative Judgements

“…Aristotle (1999) Over the last three decades, aesthetics (and the human senses) have become a matter for many scholars producing scientific knowledge in organization studies and management education (Strati, 1992(Strati, , 2007Sutherland, 2012;Warren, 2008).…”