Integrating the Arts for Leadership Education and Development

Abstract

The arts involve engaging the human imagination and sensory skills to communicate and create experiences, artifacts, and surroundings shared with others. Conventionally, education providers have compartmentalized the arts and sciences as separate and disparate disciplines. Yet, the future of work will continue to demand that organizations and their members remain agile, creative, and innovative in the face of ongoing uncertainty and change. As a result, leadership paradigms and models have been changing from top-down, command and control to relational, participative standards due to the need for collaborative expertise and organizational agility. This chapter will address the skills required for relational leaders and learning organizations, how higher education programs must model the way, and how integrating the arts within other disciplines could answer the call for deeper learning and collaborative engagement in the 21st century.