I was listening to some NPR program the other week about leadership in arts-based industries. The speaker opened a discussion on a quote that went something like this, “A leader’s job is to define reality and make it known to the people around them.” For some reason or another, this quote has been bouncing around in my head for the last couple days, and I’ve spent far too much time processing it.
The people who fueled the conversation applied it to the program’s art-related topic, and it seemed to make sense in terms of dealing with creative people. People who have creative vision are also wildly emotional. Emotional people are extremely indeterminate. People with passion need someone to ground their passions to reality, lest their vision leads to disaster.
I felt this conversation, however, lacked the definition of determining the qualities of an arts-based leader. Leaders managing artists need passion themselves. They need to understand reality, but not crush the wick of emotional driven futurism. Creativity needs to be cultivated and the future needs to be the reality. If a leader lives staring at the grim face of the here-and-now it will be close to impossible to create a sense of pioneering in the artists’ life. Through the careful process of channeling creativity, however, the brightness of the prospective goal can glamorize the current state.
Taking the argument one step further, in many cases an artist needs to be able to define reality for themselves. Passion is great, but like any lawn it can grow out of control. If an artist is able to take initiative and weed out romantic ideals, the ability to define a future reality should be an elementary process. Creating and defining a future for themselves is one thing that many artists fail to do, and should be the first goal completed before anything is ever created.
