Change is a recurring theme for the CLP Champions interviewed for the Cultural Leadership Programmes’ third anniversary. Change inspires and motivates them, how managing change influences their own leadership styles and how foreseeable changes in the socio-economic landscape will create new leadership challenges for those in the cultural and creative industries
Baroness Lola Young, Cultural Leadership Programme Champion
Awarded an OBE in 2001 and appointed as an Independent Crossbench life peer in 2004, Baroness Lola Young has written and broadcast extensively on culture, identity, film, arts and media and advised national organisations on culture and diversity issues. Formerly Head of Culture at the Greater London Authority and before that Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University, Baroness Lola Young is currently visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University London, Honorary Associate Fellow at Warwick University and a Member of the Court of Governors of the London School of Economics.
As a Cultural Leadership Programme Champion, Baroness Lola Young has been involved in various strands of the programme’s work including, Dialogues on Leadership and Powerbrokers. Here, Baroness Lola Young shares her views on what leadership means, on-going leadership challenges for senior leaders, Governance in the cultural and creative industries and the work of the Cultural Leadership Programme.
What inspires or motivates you in your work?
The prospect of change and the prospect of being involved in effecting change motivates me. Also, I want to achieve some pretty basic goals around equality and social justice within and outside of the creative and cultural sector. I’m inspired by the best of the work that comes out of the sector be it wonderful pieces of art work, performance and so on. That is what makes me want to work in the sector.
Do you have a philosophy about how you lead?
Leadership is a much broader area than some people would have it. I don’t see leadership exclusively about leading an organisation. In fact, there are some people who run organisations who are brilliant managers but not necessarily great leaders. I think it is perfectly possible to be an individual artist and be a leader or demonstrate leadership qualities.
I wouldn’t say that I have anything as coherent as a leadership philosophy, but certainly I have an ethos of leadership, which works for me. It is about trying to be open, being honest, about encouraging other people with the capability to take leadership positions and to take responsibility; to try and get the best out of people, even in difficult circumstances; to be willing to understand where people are coming from and how their perceptions shape the ways people think and act.
What do you feel are key qualities required for leadership?
It depends to some extent on the context, but clarity of purpose, understanding very clearly what it is you want to do and what you want others to do is very important. A lot of miscommunication comes out of not having that clarity and not understanding what it really means to convey your vision or the vision of an organisation to others.
Obviously you’ve got to be prepared to work really hard and be quite driven. And definitely a completer. You can’t start things and then not finish them. It goes without saying leaders need to be excellent communicators at all levels, not just with one section of society but across the board. You have to be prepared to be lonely, take decisions on your own and deal with the consequences of that.
What personal experience have you had with any leadership development?
In a small sense by attending the odd course here and there. This isn’t because I don’t think it’s important, however, you have to understand its only relatively recently that within the cultural sector anything like the notion of having a career, especially as a leader was discussed and thought about.
There is an issue about what happens when you get to a very senior position: for such people, having access to mentoring/leadership development opportunities and what those opportunities might be is still a big issue within the cultural sector, I think.
This is one of the issues with leadership development, so much can be about personal development and it isn’t always easy to quantify the outcomes
Leadership is different from management. It’s not always possible to tell what benefits you derive from a course. It’s not the same as doing say a PhD or a degree or something when you know you’ve got something tangible from it and you can chart your intellectual growth and development from it.
Have you learnt something new, something unexpected from your work with the Cultural Leadership Programme?
The major piece of work that I’ve co-created and developed with Nima Poovaya Smith for the CLP, has been the Hothouse Programme, which supports black and ethnic minority leaders in mid career. I’ve learnt a tremendous amount from that programme in terms of how individuals are addressing similar, but by the same token, different concerns to the ones that I’ve had to deal with during my career. They are experiencing them in a different context, a different moment in time. Also I have learnt about myself, working with and engaging with those individuals in a particular way.
The Dialogues in Leadership debates were fascinating because there was a real opportunity to get to talk to people in different contexts. There were a range of events, including large conferences, seminars and small scale dinners. The latter were very interesting - we just got people talking under Chatham House rules about their particular predicaments, the joys, pleasures and pain of leaderships in their sectors that were, again, really illuminating.
There were some events that were specific to particular groups, women, black and ethnic minority, and disability cultural workers and activists - their leadership experiences were both distinctive as well as having common themes. It was obvious that there were plenty of shared issues whether you were a leader in the sector in Liverpool or London or Birmingham, identified with a specific community or otherwise.
Are there other areas of leaderships in the cultural and creative sector that need to be addressed?
I do think there is an issue of people who are senior in the sector who have missed out on this wave of concern and debate about leadership and who are fairly well settled towards the top of their profession. What kind of development work can you do with them?
The more senior you get the more problematic [leadership] development becomes, mainly because there’s a level where you may begin to feel that there’s nothing you haven’t seen or done. Of course, there is always something new to learn, but quite how you address that in a course or programme seems quite elusive to me. As soon as you say the word “training” it becomes something that doesn’t sound quite appropriate in relationship to certain thinking about leadership. From my point of view, part of what this senior level of leadership development is about intellectualising what it means to be a leader, debating and interrogating what that means.
Also, I think governance still needs to be addressed. I feel the debate about boards needs to move on from a consideration of the extent to which they are diverse, how effectively they operate in the financial recession etc. These areas remain important, but I’m more interested in what is the future of boards? What are the different models for ensuring appropriate governance? Do boards really constitute the best option we have? We’re not talking just about in the current economic recession, but its on-going impact. Regardless if there is a recovery or not in the next few months, its impact will be felt for the next 10, 15 or maybe 20 years and we’ll never be in this context again. Do we still want this same model of governance? What do we mean by governance as people understand different things? I think that more exploration of this area is really important.
Over the past three years the Cultural Leadership Programme has undertaken a range of activities, what do you think have been the programmes key achievements?
I think its ubiquity. It’s inserted itself into our debates in a way that has not happened before. There’s lots of innovative work going on and one of its achievements is pitching things at a variety of levels so that you get something for emerging leaders, for mid career leaders and to leaders approaching the peak of their profession. On a general level, the fact that it has become commonplace for people to be talking about ‘what is leadership’ is a substantial improvement, a major achievement.
Perhaps predictably, given my interests, the work that’s being done on diversity and all of its different aspects have been tremendously important. Without the intervention of the Cultural Leadership Programme it would have been quite difficult to see how other agencies would have effectively taken on issues of gender and disability in the context of leadership. I think that’s a real achievement.
It has produced really interesting publications and events and I’ve had very positive feedback regarding the Dialogues in Leadership as people welcomed that kind of freshness of approach. There was a cumulative effect from not just having a one off event, but a series of linked events, culminating in a high profile conference bringing a wide-range of cultural practitioners together. Also, the international emphasis is very important as I think Britain can be very insular, even in the arts sector, where we like to think of ourselves as being hip and cosmopolitan.
Finally, getting it [leadership development for the cultural and creative industries] recognised at government level has been a really important achievement as political endorsement is essential for it to stand a chance of becoming really embedded.
What one piece of advice would you share with a cultural leader facing a new challenge?
Check out the history because there’s nothing new under the sun. Somebody has been through it or something similar before. It’s actually very tiresome to hear people say, “nobody’s ever done this before” or “Oh my gosh, I’ve been to this organisation and nobody did anything before me: there is nothing”. There is never nothing, it’s just not true. Check out history sensitively and gather intelligence from supporters and detractors as that will give you some context and enable you to make better judgements about how to address the situation you’ve got before you.
