TAG: Arts Leadership

Work/Life Balance for Busy Arts Professionals

Last week, I had the privilege of appearing on a panel at the Dallas Symphony’s Women in Classical Music Symposium. The Symposium is the brainchild of Kim Noltemy, the fabulous CEO of the Dallas Symphony. Over the course of four days, the Symposium features an amazing array of speakers discussing topics relevant to women in today’s classical music world. My …

Leadership For Arts Entrepreneurs: 4 Key Elements of Your Leadership Style

In my last post, I dissected the lessons of leadership from Itay Talgam’s TED Talk on conducting and leadership and Marin Alsop’s interview at Yale, and highlighted 4 key elements of a leadership style: Be Yourself Find a Mentor Learn from Failure Create a Relationship of Mutual Respect These lessons  provided the backdrop for a call that I recently led with …

Conducting and Leadership: Lessons for Today’s Arts Entrepreneurs

What lessons can today’s arts leaders glean from conducting and leadership? Conducting is a terrific metaphor for leadership since you have a large number of highly-trained and gifted people (the musicians) who must come together to produce a great product (music) which they can only do with skilled leadership Conducting and leadership provided the backdrop for a call that I …

Turning Arts Entrepreneurs into Inspired Leaders: Know Your WHY

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My project in working with musicians and arts leaders is not only to teach arts entrepreneurship—the mindset, skillset and process of actualizing an innovative idea—but also to take entrepreneurship to the next level of cultural leadership To do so, I have my students articulate the greater purpose underlying WHY they make music, teach, perform and then communicate that purpose to the …

How Arts Leaders Manage Challenge: Change Your Perspective

Rising arts leaders face a host of challenges including too much to do with too little time, constant deadlines,  not enough money, time or staff to carry out the great work, conflicting priorities and having to respond to numerous constituencies.   In these situations, it’s easy to focus on the negatives.  Yet happily, there are some very effective strategies to …

Managing Challenge for Arts Leaders: How to Empower Your Leadership by Changing The Situation

This week, I had the honor to work with the 14 participants in Opera America’s Leadership Intensive, a program dedicated to identifying and forming the future leaders of opera by providing them with the skills and contacts that can help them advance in their careers. My role was to teach the “soft” skills of leadership:  how to empower yourself to lead …