Shaping a Preferred Future
Deborah B. Reeve, Executive Director, National Art Education Association
As more museums identify education as key to their missions, museum educators must bring their voice to the table to help inform and influence institutional planning, organization, and direction.
For museum educators to step up to this role, leadership is critical. Although the ways and means differ, leadership is ultimately the process of shaping a preferred future. Therefore, museum educators must become museum leaders — integral to defining a vision and the strategies to achieve it. This important challenge was acknowledged and addressed last May in a special convening presented by Bank Street College’s Leadership in Museum Education, in collaboration with the Education Professional Network (EdCom) of the American Alliance of Museums.
Ultimately, I believe the willingness to lead is a function of one’s willingness to choose.
I am not alone. I have a dear friend and colleague who is a “futurist.” She is literally in the business of foresight — recognizing trends and where they are likely to lead, identifying alternative future outcomes based on the issues and preferred future vision, and mapping the pathways to achieving the preferred future. The future has always held great intrigue for me, perhaps because I believe that, as artists, we see possibilities in the unknown. As art educators, we must go a step farther — translating these possibilities into constructive outcomes. My futurist friend constantly reminds me that life is about choices: what will be and what can be is determined by the individual and collective choices we make.
Here’s a case in point. As Executive Director of NAEA for the past eight years, I have been thoroughly inspired by the thoughtful continuity of leadership exhibited by members elected from the NAEA Museum Education Division to serve on the National NAEA Board of Directors. I have seen how museum educators have consistently exercised their own brand of creative leadership to foster innovation and promote synergy. Through the leadership of the Museum Education Division, in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors, NAEA was recently awarded a federal grant to study the impact of art museum programs on students. This award is an important milestone for NAEA and museum educators, and we fully expect it to become a landmark study within the field of art education. A true “win-win,” the grant award underscores both the Museum Education Division’s vision and leadership, and the ability of NAEA to advance its overall strategic goals in the area of Research and Knowledge. Through this kind of vibrant leadership, our entire organization took a big step toward realizing its vision and achieving its preferred future (1).
How can museum educators make similarly impactful choices in their own lives? During my time in academia and as a professional association executive, I have done a good deal of reading and thinking about leadership models and their effectiveness (see the toolkit at the end of this article for books about leadership that I have found to be particularly helpful).
During my doctoral work, formal studies introduced me to several classic models and helped shape my own brand of leadership. These studies included Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y on individual motivation; the Situational Leadership theory of Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey, whereby leadership style adapts to fit the situation; Transformational leadership, first espoused by James MacGregor Burns and later enhanced by Bernard Bass, whereby the leader motivates people with a shared vision of the future; and Servant Leadership, first coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, a theory that suggests the leader simply meets the needs of the team (2).
While all of these theories have their merits, I have come to the conclusion that leadership is also a lifelong journey, determined by one’s personal choices and opportunities. Yet stepping up to the role of leader can be confusing, daunting, even a bit intimidating. In data gathering through needs assessments, surveys, and interviews, NAEA has found that while art educators have both an interest and a passion for leadership, few feel they are prepared to excel as leaders. Without proactive intervention, the ability of these educators to shape a preferred future is likely to be limited.
NAEA has long offered its members several ways to gain direct leadership experience — from chairing committees or working groups to leading state affiliate organizations and serving in national leadership roles. While invaluable in helping to shape leadership character and capabilities, the full returns of such member engagement can take years to develop.
To help museum and other art educators achieve the clarity, self-mastery, and continuous learning needed to exercise leadership, NAEA developed the School for Art Leaders (SAL). SAL is the product of an NAEA Task Force on Leadership Development, NAEA’s past work in leadership development, current models of leadership, and studies of other leadership programs (3). Creating the program from these multiple sources required several years of research and development and reaches across all goals identified in NAEA’s Strategic Goals Framework, including organizational vibrancy.
SAL has been designed to provide a transformative learning experience structured in three modules: pre-workshop self-study; an immersive 3½-day on-site Leadership Symposium (conducted in partnership with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art); and follow-up that features the presentation of individually designed experiments presented through virtual meetings.
In pushing participants to step up to the leadership challenge, the program features a comprehensive design drawn from a number of relevant leadership models. These include:
- NAEA Art Educator Competency Model
Developed by the Task Force on Leadership Development, the model offers learning objectives drawn directly from a series of key competencies. - Thurber-Zimmerman Empowerment/Leadership Model
Focused specifically on leadership in art education, the model identifies four domains for organizing leadership experiments. See also this extension of Thurber’s and Zimmerman’s models for developing feminist leadership in art education through collaboration, community building and creativity. - Mindful Leadership
The concept of mindfulness is used to improve leadership. - Total Leadership
Friedman’s Total Leadership model is used as the framework for participants to consider how their leadership manifests itself. - Emotional Intelligence and Focus Goleman’s model for Emotional Intelligence is used as a strategy for both “self” and “other” competencies.
In terms of learning outcomes, SAL learners are expected to demonstrate increased understanding and application of leadership skills and self-confidence and to identify actions taken as leaders. They will identify and apply strategies to strengthen their leadership capabilities and effectiveness, design leadership experiments that exercise various forms of leadership action, and develop a collective plan for contributing to and benefiting from their learning community. In a final Capstone Project, learners will create a Leadership Case Study to be shared in the NAEA Leadership Knowledge Database.
NAEA invited educators to submit SAL applications from January to March and selected 25 participants to form the class of 2015. Without question, those who completed the SAL program were both inspired and empowered to think and act in new and different ways. Yet the challenge of program scale-up remains. In response, NAEA is implementing a series of knowledge-sharing initiatives, including an archive of art education leadership case studies. In addition, a longitudinal study will document the longer term impact of these and successive SAL educated leaders over the next five years. The 2015 class participants will also share their insights and takeaways during the 2016 NAEA National Convention in Chicago.
In Composing a Life, author Catherine Bateson rightly observes, “We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn” (4).
I strongly subscribe to lifelong learning and believe that leadership can be learned.
I cannot think of a more important time for all art educators to bring leadership into their line of vision. As professionals, our stance must be proactive rather than reactive. And that requires extreme focus — looking beyond the comfortable and conventional — and making meaningful connections among life’s choices. Shaping a preferred future is within the grasp of today’s art educators; actually doing so will be for only those who choose to become art education leaders.
A Few Books that Inspire Thoughts about Leadership
Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Tim Brown
Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership, Janice Marturano
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, Margaret J. Wheatley
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, Peter Senge
The Circle of Innovation: You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Greatness, Tom Peters
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharpe
The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, Stephen Denning
The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, Sarah Lewis
The Wizard of Us: Transformational Lessons from Oz, Jean Houston
Visual Leaders: New Tools for Visioning, Management, and Organization Change, David Sibbet
Women, Annie Leibowitz
Deborah B. Reeve
Deborah B. Reeve is executive director of the NAEA (Twitter). Formerly the deputy executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) in Alexandria, Virginia, Deborah brings to NAEA a proven record of association management and creative leadership in organizational development. As NAEA executive director, she is overseeing strategic initiatives including the development of a comprehensive communications plan, an overhaul of NAEA’s information technology infrastructure and the design and implementation of a virtual community of practice.
Footnotes
(1) See NAEA 2015–2020 Strategic Vision at www.arteducators.org/StrategicVision2015.
(2) Numerous sources are available for follow up reading on leadership styles. Particularly helpful are www.mindtools.com and www. toservefirst.com, 2015, Kent M. Keith.
(3) NAEA Leadership Development Task Force Report, March 2014.
(4) Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. New York: Grove Press, 1989.
