Igniting Passion and Possibilities Through the Arts: Conflict, Collaboration and Leadership Through Live Stage Performances

Abstract

Leaders today require critical thinking skills and full awareness of the complexities of social and cultural interaction. These may be best taught through the liberal arts. This article examines the use of live dramatic stage performances for teaching and learning contemporary management and leadership lessons, highlighting the value of collaborating across traditional university boundaries through the use of the arts within the management curriculum. We describe the successful working relationships and our effective implementation model with cross‐campus colleagues and students in the theater department to integrate live stage plays into our core management and leadership coursework. Students and faculty from both domains have found the activity to be engaging, provocative, relevant, and valuable. A key finding from this work has been how malleable, smooth, and straightforward the process has been to successfully—and powerfully—integrate the arts and humanities directly into management education and leadership development.

An Old Man and The “Sea of Leadership”

“…Several writers on leadership and organization have been inspired by fictional characters (e.g., Greenleaf, ), while others have been inspired by the thematic reading of novels and fictional anecdotes (e.g., Sliwa, Spoelstra, Sörensen, & Land, ) as well as in designing leadership education programs (e.g., McCarthy & Carr, ; Shushok & Moore, ; Van Buskirk, London, & Plump, ). Hemingway's book The Old Man and the Sea has inspired this work.…”