Taylor, S.S. \u0026 Ladkin, D. 2009. Understanding arts-based methods in managerial development,...

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Understanding Arts-BasedMethods in Managerial

DevelopmentSTEVEN S. TAYLOR

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

DONNA LADKINCranfield University

With the rising use of arts-based methods in organizational development and change,scholars have started to inquire into how and why these methods work. We identify fourprocesses that are particular to the way in which arts-based methods contribute to thedevelopment of individual organization managers and leaders: through the transferenceof artistic skills, through projective techniques, through the evocation of “essence,” andthrough creating artifacts such as masks, collages, or sculpture, a process we call“making.” We illustrate these processes in detail with two case examples and thendiscuss the implications for designing the use of arts-based methods for managerial andleadership development.

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At Virginia Commonwealth University, medicalresidents are taught theater skills to increase theirclinical empathy (Dow, Leong, Anderson, & Wen-zel, 2007). At the LEGO company in Denmark, man-agers build 3-dimensional representations of theirorganizational strategy using LEGO bricks (Roos,Victor, & Statler, 2004). U.S. Army leaders look to thefilm Twelve O’Clock High to illustrate key lessonsabout leadership (Bognar, 1998). MBA students atBabson College take art classes to enhance theircreativity (Pinard & Allio, 2005). These are four ex-amples of the many ways that the arts are used inmanagerial development. Although all four can becategorized as arts-based methods, we theorizethat they are driven by fundamentally differentprocesses; that is to say, they are informed bydifferent assumptions about art and how it contrib-utes to human development.

With the rise of the use of arts-based methodsto assist individual, as well as organizationaldevelopment and change, scholars have startedto inquire into how and why these methods work(e.g., Darso, 2004; Nissley, 2004; Taylor, 2008).These explicit theorizations of art-based meth-ods in organizations, as well as the implicit the-orizations in other descriptions of arts-basedmethods (e.g., Beckwith, 2003; Gibb, 2004; Monks,Barker, & Mhanachain, 2001) come from a wide

variety of perspectives and address different lev-els of individual and organizational change.Currently, it is very difficult to talk about “arts-based methods” in any coherent way because awide range of approaches that can result in avariety of different goals and outcomes are used.At worst, arts-based methods can act as the “fla-vor of the month,” adding something new andengaging to managerial development activitieswith little idea of what that something is. At best,skilled practitioners use arts-based methods tohelp achieve well-defined objectives, but theyprovide little articulation of how and why thesemethods work differently than conventional ap-proaches. We intend to honor the diversity ofperspectives and methods that exist, while offer-ing a framework that describes and categorizesthe specific ways different arts-based methodscontribute to individuals’ development as man-agers and leaders.

To do this, we propose that arts-based methodsare underpinned by four distinctive processes thatdo not operate within conventional organizationaldevelopment approaches. These processes havebeen identified through a systematic review of theliterature and supplemented through reflection onour own practices within the manager and leader-ship development fields:

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• Skills transfer. Arts-based methods can facili-tate the development of artistic skills that canbe usefully applied in organizational settings(e.g., medical residents being taught theaterskills to increase their clinical empathy).

• Projective technique. The output of artistic en-deavors allows participants to reveal innerthoughts and feelings that may not be accessi-ble through more conventional developmentalmodes (e.g., managers building 3-dimensionalrepresentations of their organizational strat-egy using LEGO bricks).

• Illustration of essence. Arts-based methods canenable participants to apprehend the “es-sence” of a concept, situation, or tacit knowl-edge in a particular way, revealing depths andconnections that more propositional and lineardevelopmental orientations cannot (e.g., thefilm Twelve O’Clock High being used to illus-trate key lessons about leadership).

• Making. The very making of art can foster adeeper experience of personal presence andconnection, which can serve as a healing pro-cess for managers and leaders who may sooften experience their lives as fragmented anddisconnected (e.g., MBA students taking artclasses to enhance their creativity).

We hope the ideas we present here will assistthose designing interventions that incorporatearts-based methods to think more clearly about theparticular contribution such processes can make,and thus to use them in a more informed anddiscerning manner. We discuss each process indetail, but first we step back to explore the fun-damental epistemological characteristics ofarts-based methods.

Arts-Based Methods

Adler (2006) documents the recent increase in theuse of arts-based methods as part of a broadercross-fertilization between business and the arts.She suggests that business has turned to the artsbecause of five trends: (1) increasing global con-nectedness, (2) increasing domination of marketforces, (3) an increasingly complex and chaotic en-vironment, (4) decrease in the cost of experimenta-tion, and (5) yearning for significance. She seesbusiness leadership potentially learning couragefrom the arts—the courage to see reality, the cour-age to envision possibility, and the courage tobring reality to possibility. Weick (2007) also sees acomplex and chaotic environment and suggeststhat the traditional business tools of logic and ra-tionality are ill suited to this environment:

Consider the tools of traditional logic andrationality. Those tools presume that theworld is stable, knowable, and predictable.To set aside those tools is not to give up on

finding a workable way to keep moving. It isonly to give up one means of direction findingthat is ill-suited to the unstable, the unknow-able, and the unpredictable. To drop the toolsof rationality is to gain access to lightness inthe form of intuitions, feelings, stories, impro-visation, experience, imagination, active lis-tening, awareness in the moment, novelwords, and empathy. All of these nonlogicalactivities enable people to solve problemsand enact their potential (p. 15).

Underneath both Adler’s and Weick’s arguments isa realization that there is a fundamentally differ-ent way of approaching the world than is embod-ied in the traditional tools of logic and rationalitythat have dominated management research andbusiness school education. We argue that arts-based methods can provide a means of accessingand developing this way of approaching the world,which in turn could contribute to a more holisticway of engaging with managerial contexts. Thefield of organizational aesthetics (see Taylor &Hansen, 2005 for a review) articulates an episte-mology consistent with this approach. In responseto Descartes’ focus on knowing as logic and ratio-nal thought, Baumgarten (1750/1936) and Vico (1744/1948) argued that there was also a different form ofknowing that came directly from our five senses.Aesthetics is the study of this sensuous knowing(Strati, 1999, 2007), and the arts work from and withthis sort of knowing rather than with knowingbased in logic and rational thinking. It is in thissensuous knowing that Weick’s lightness, intu-ition, and imagination resides. Working with thissensuous knowing is the source of Adler’s courage.

This difference in ways of knowing is at theheart of Heron’s extended epistemology (1992). Heuses the terms presentational knowing and prop-ositional knowing, saying, “Presentational know-ing . . . provides the first form of expressingmeaning and significance through drawing onexpressive forms of imagery through movement,dance, sound, music, drawing, painting, sculpture,poetry, poetry, story, drama, and so on. Proposi-tional knowing ‘about’ something, is knowingthrough ideas and theories, expressed in informa-tive statements” (Heron & Reason, 2001: 183). Ac-cessing our embodied, sensuous knowing throughpresentational methods and forms rather thanthrough propositional methods and forms is thedistinctive characteristic of arts-based methods.

The great benefit of presentational forms is thatthey provide relatively direct access to our feltexperience and draw upon our emotional connec-tion to our self, others, and our experience. Propo-

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sitional methods and forms filter out the feelingand emotion in pursuit of precision, clarity, andobjectivity. The result is often that “traditional ac-counts of management and organization often ap-pear to resemble reality, yet fail to grasp the es-sence of their being” (King, 2007: 225). However, wesuggest that presentational forms are not identicalin either their underlying informing process or inthe outcomes they foster. Different approacheshave different powers. Managers engaging withShakespearean plays experience a kind of en-gagement that is distinct from those invited tomake masks representing their authentic leader-ship self. In the following section, we identify anddescribe four underpinning processes, which wesuggest are the “drivers” behind different arts-based methods, and which will shape correspond-ingly distinctive outcomes.

FOUR PROCESSES UNDERPINNINGARTS-BASED METHODS

We have reviewed the literature on arts-basedmethods, paying particular attention to empiricalaccounts of how they are used to develop individ-uals. Many of the accounts focus on the actualmethods and their results, with little exploration ofthe underlying mechanisms by which those out-comes occur. Those that do hypothesize about howthese methods make their impact are largely de-scriptive. We have analyzed these accounts anddistilled what we recognize as underpinning driv-ers for each method into the four processes ex-plored in greater detail below.

Skills Transfer

The essential concept behind skills transfer is sim-ple enough—there are particular skills learned inthe arts that can then be effectively applied to themanagement of organizations. This idea has longbeen present in the discussion of the benefit of thearts in education (e.g., Eisner, 2002; McCarthy,Ondaatje, Zakaras, & Brooks, 2004). To begin, welook at examples of the transfer of particular skills,such as when senior executives learn to conductan orchestra in the hopes that they will be able toconduct their management team with the samehigh level of collaboration.

Anecdotal examples of skills transfer are abun-dant in the literature. In some cases the skills havebeen learned in the arts, but aren’t obviously arts-based skills. For example, Daum (2005) tells of twoentrepreneurs who credit their success in businessto skills they learned as artists. One recountedhow her philosophy of “measure twice, cut once,”

which came from doing art installations on a bud-get, had helped her control costs. For the other, theskill was an ability to recognize a lack of commit-ment in band members who were thinking of leav-ing, which transferred to identifying a lack of com-mitment in brokers.

More typically, the skills are particular to the artand are then applied to business, such as Barrett’s(1998) model of leadership development based onhow jazz players improvise. Key lessons that arefundamental to jazz, such as “take advantage oferrors as a source of learning” become skills thatcan be applied to leadership in organizations. Inthe case of jazz, these skills are often thought of asprinciples or applying the metaphor of jazz (e.g.,Walzer & Salcher, 2003), perhaps because teachingmanagers actual jazz skills would require that themanagers know or learn musical instruments witha relatively high level of mastery. Skills from im-provisation in theater are more readily taught, forinstance when improv games are used to teachparticipants skills of paying close attention (e.g.,Corsun, Young, McManus, & Erdem, 2006).

There is an empirical basis for the concept ofskills transfer, both anecdotally and from a studyat Yale Medical School. The Yale study found thatgiving medical students an introductory art historyseminar improved their diagnostic skills substan-tially because the skill of seeing the details inpaintings had transferred to seeing details in theirpatients (Dolev, Friedlaender, Krohner, & Braver-man, 2001).

In moving from considering the transfer of spe-cific skills to how arts-based methods might beused in the application of broader principles, adifferent process may seem to be in operation, butwe suggest that they are fundamentally the same.For example, Austin and Devin (2003) explore howsoftware development might learn from theatricalproduction, and they suggest four qualities of art-ful making: release, collaboration, ensemble, andplay. These qualities require a certain set of skills.For example, collaboration requires the skill of notbeing driven by vanity and ego and the skill to say“yes and” to others’ contributions. At a slightlybroader level Denhardt and Denhardt (2006) haveundertaken a similar analysis, looking at whatleaders might learn from dance, such as the inter-play of space, time and energy, and the rhythms ofhuman interaction. And broader yet, Richards(1995) suggests managers should approach allwork as an art, suggesting that we seek joy in ourwork, work to nurture our spirit, claim ownership ofour work processes, and use our whole self. Thusthe process of skills transfer operates both in theapplication of specific skills, such as the oratory

2009 57Taylor and Ladkin

skills of an actor being learned by an executivewho needs to make many presentations, to moremeta-capabilities, such as an approach to manag-ing or leading as art (e.g., Grint, 2001; Vaill, 1989).

Projective Technique

A second process we have identified is that ofusing the arts as a means of fostering reflectionthrough projection. The idea of using art as a pro-jective technique is based in Langer’s (1942) con-ception of art as a presentational form that ex-presses tacit, embodied knowing (as opposed to adiscursive form, which represents intellectual,propositional knowing). Langer tells us, “the pri-mary function of art is to objectify experience sothat we can contemplate and understand it” (1962:90). By making art about our own experience, we ineffect make that experience exist as an object inthe world. It is an object that can contain contra-dictions (logical and/or moral) as well as unreal-ized possibilities that are not constrained by logicor the limitations of our current lives. In this way,art making enables us to draw upon, and subse-quently reflect on, a deep well of “unconsciousstuff.”

The philosopher of aesthetics Paul Crowther(1993) begins to explain how this occurs by sug-gesting that in art making, sensible material isinvested with form in a way that exemplifies theinteraction between attention, apprehension, andprojection, the three key requirements for self-consciousness. The creation of artifacts, or engage-ment with such artifacts, he argues, enables us toarticulate the structures of attention, apprehen-sion, and projection in a way that draws on ourcognitive and perceptual capacities operating as aunified field—rather than our intellectual capaci-ties alone. Crowther (1993) elaborates on the powerof the interplay of attention, comprehension, andprojection when he writes:

Our present attention to and comprehensionof the artifact declares that flesh of the past,and of future possibilities which is alwaysprojected around self-consciousness’s immedi-ate moment of awareness . . . it enables “projec-tion” to be grasped in a more total way . . . itpresents the projective relation in an enduring,and objective form, thus lifting it from that zoneof transient and distracting every day pre-occupation which cloud our subjective experi-ence of it (166).

In this way, the art objects that are created are awindow on the unconscious (Malchiodi, 1998) and

can allow participants to see things they cannotwith words alone (New Zealand Management,2005). Linking these ideas to the organizationaltheory literature, Linstead (2006) suggests that aes-thetic forms have an important role to play in help-ing to make tacit knowledge of “invisible” con-cepts, such as “culture” visible. In fact, he proposesthat culture can best be explored and presentedthrough artistic forms because they make the tacitand felt experience of culture an object in theworld. Culture is a particularly good example ofwhere arts-based methods are useful; however,any organizational phenomena, such as group dy-namics, leadership, or politics that is to some de-gree tacit and felt can be the subject of arts-basedmethods to be made visible and projected into theworld.

An example of using art as a projective tech-nique is Visual Explorer (Palus & Horth, 2001), aset of 200 images. Individuals select the imagethat best captures a complex problem or issuethey are trying to address, and then they discusswhat the image says about the issue in a group.The person who selected the image may see onething, while others may see something else. Theresulting dialogue helps everyone see the issuefrom new perspectives and delve into the unspo-ken ways in which each perceives the situation.Similarly, Imagination Lab’s Serious Playmethod enables people to use LEGOs to buildorganizational strategy (Burgi & Roos, 2003;Burgi, Victor, & Lentz, 2004; Burgi, Jacobs, & Roos,2005; Roos et al., 2004).

One way of thinking about how projective tech-niques work relates to Taylor’s (2003) explication of“knowing in your gut” and “knowing in your head.”He suggests that tacit, felt knowledge is morereadily known from a bodily, rather than rationalperspective. What projective techniques enable isa nondiscursive representation of this “gut-feltknowing.” The resulting object can be reflectedupon and worked with in ways that are impossibleuntil the felt knowing becomes an “object in theworld.” Through working with the object, the know-ing it embodies can be intellectualized into “know-ing in the head,” and this knowing is now muchricher, more nuanced, and more complete than itwould otherwise be. This is the power and benefitof using projective techniques within manager andleader development.

Illustration of Essence

The third process we consider, “illustration of es-sence” is conceptually similar to projective tech-nique yet distinct in ways that merit discussing it


as a separate process. Like projective techniques,using art to illustrate essence involves art as anobject that can be reflected on in the world. How-ever, when art is used to illustrate essence, ratherthan as a way to evoke personal meaning andsense-making, it embodies universally recognizedqualities, situations, emotional responses, or waysof being.

Perhaps the most common way that this processgets enacted is when literature is used in manage-ment education to provide a complex and nuancedview of organizational life (Cohen, 1998). There hasbecome a virtual cottage industry in miningShakespeare’s work for management lessons (e.g.,Augustine & Adelman, 1999; Burnham, Augustine,& Adelman, 2001; Corrigan, 1999; Shafritz, 1999;Whitney & Packer, 2000) as well as other play-wrights (Garaventa, 1998). There is also a signifi-cant use of film within management education inthe same way (e.g., Champoux, 1999).

In addition to using great works of art, such asShakespeare, or works from popular culture, suchas current films, the illustration-of-essence processcan draw upon other arts-based methods. For ex-ample, improvisational theater games have beenused to make participants aware of the perceptualshortcuts they tend to take (Corsun et al., 2006).Rather than using improvisation as a window intoparticipants’ subconscious, (as would be the casewere the activity being used as a projective tech-nique), Corsun et al. show how improvisation canbe incorporated to illustrate the essence of an on-going tendency.

Similarly, Grisham (2006) describes how leadersin cross-cultural settings can build trust and em-pathy through storytelling and the use of poetry. Bysharing and highlighting the essence of somethingthat is important to them in their sense-making ofsuch art-forms, leaders bridge cultural gaps andfind common understanding and ways of connect-ing with one another. The purpose that illustrationof essence serves, particularly in relation to lead-ership and the use of narrative is further exploredin Taylor, Fisher, and Dufresne’s (2002) theory ofthe aesthetics of leadership storytelling. They sug-gest that the power of storytelling rests in its abil-ity to convey felt meaning directly without being“explained” by our rationalizing faculties. Further-more, because the story is enjoyable it is remem-bered and retold. When art is used as illustrationof essence, we get the idea of the essence of theconcept being communicated directly, and much ofour intellectual filtering is bypassed.

For example, consider the cautionary tale of theChevrolet Nova. Countless marketing students aretold that General Motors introduced the Nova into

Spanish-speaking markets only to be surprisedwhen it didn’t sell because “Nova” literally trans-lates as “doesn’t go” in Spanish. It’s a great story,but it isn’t true (Mikkelson & Mikkelson, 1999).Nonetheless, it is told and repeated again andagain. The audience gets the felt meaning of thestory and doesn’t engage in the intellectual filter-ing that might lead to discovering that it isn’t true.Additionally, the audience connects to the idea ofa powerful corporation making such an obviousmistake and enjoys the story, which leads to itsretelling.

There are similarities between the way art isused to illustrate essence within presentationalforms and the way theory is used to illustrate es-sence in more propositional forms of knowledge. Inboth cases, the aim is to distill the key aspects of asituation and provide some important insight intothose aspects. However, there are important differ-ences too, which point to the particular power arts-based methods can have within this arena. Theorystates an abstract concept that is meant to haveconvergent generalizability, or be true and thesame for all. Art offers a specific illustration that ismeant to have each observer connect to it in theirown particular way and thus has divergent gener-alizability (Taylor, 2004).

For example, two people could watch the sameproduction of Hamlet and both could resonate withthe truth of the play for themselves. However, forone that truth is about a self-questioning, existen-tial crisis and for the other it is about the problem-atic nature of taking revenge. For both there is astrong claim for generalizability in the play, butthe nature of what is generalizable is divergent. Inthis way, using art to illustrate essence overlapsinto using it as a projective technique.

Following the idea that using art to illustrateessence is similar to the role that theory plays inour understanding of events, we can then recog-nize the other side of the process. Just as withtheory, art shows us the essential aspects of some-thing and then guides our action in that situation.If Shakespeare’s Hamlet has shown us the prob-lems of indecision for a leader, then we can beguided to be more decisive in our own leadership.While most social science theory makes its claimto truth based on empirical evidence and rigoroustesting, art makes its claim to truth based on res-onance with the individual. The power then, ofusing art in this way is through the way it canconnect with a direct, felt-sense of knowing, whichincludes the totality of one’s experience and emo-tional response.


Making

Richards (1995) tells us, “as the artist creates thework, the work creates the artist” (pp. 9, 81, 119)—itis part of his credo for artful work. Richards sees allwork as something that “does us” rather thansomething “we do.” He suggests that work whichlacks “artfulness” is cut off from the individual’sdeep interior life. When we detach from that inte-rior life, a little of the self dies. In contrast, artisticmaking draws upon the richness of the inner lifeand allows it to flourish and contribute to our ex-perience of more fulsome living.

The field of art therapy recognizes the power ofart making as a method of healing independentlyof any artifact that results. Malchiodi tells us:

Art making is seen as an opportunity to ex-press oneself imaginatively, authentically,and spontaneously, an experience that, overtime, can lead to personal fulfillment, emo-tional reparation, and transformation (1998: 5).

She goes on to argue that art making can providean emotional release through the cathartic effect ofcontaining largely subconscious ideas, experi-ences, and emotions. Furthermore, the physiologi-cal process of making art tends to be calming andis associated with increases in serotonin (a neuro-transmitter linked to alleviating depression).

The evolutionary biologist, Ellen Dissanayakeargues that as humans we have an inherent driveto make things. She says:

Human brains and minds evolved to enablethe learning of manual skills from others andthe devising of practical solutions for the re-quirements of ancestral environments—tocope, “hands on,” with the demands of life.Simply by doing what we were born to doevokes a sense—subliminal or fully felt—ofcompetence, of being at home in the world.Such a sense is often undeveloped in modernhumans, because they inhabit a prefabri-cated and electronic environment and payothers to provide their food, clothing, shelter,utensils, and everything else. If makingthings for our lives was necessary, then man-ual interaction with the natural world (for thesource for all of those things from which an-cestral lives were constructed) would alsohave to be inherently satisfying. Hating one’swork, feeling demeaned by it, failing or beingunable to do it would have put individuals atsuch a selective disadvantage that theywould not have propagated these negative

predispositions or ineptitudes (Dissanayake,2000: 100).

But it is not just satisfaction that we get from mak-ing art. Dissanayake also speaks of the meditativeaspects of the seemingly repetitious, detailed workthat is part of many forms of making art such asthrowing pots, carving wood, and so forth. It canproduce a “contemplative state with access to re-mote parts of the mind seldom available to thosewho dash continually after novel experiences”(Dissanayake, 2000: 124).

Dissanayake also describes art making as elab-oration (2000) or “making special” (1995). This elab-oration is important because it enables us tochange and structure our feelings. For example,our ancestors might have changed feelings of ter-ror and anxiety about an impending hunt into feel-ings of purpose and honor through a communalceremony involving dance and chanting. For themodern individual, making art likewise offers ameans by which they can reevaluate and reflect ontheir own deep feelings about events in their life.

The use of making as an arts-based process thatis independent of the other processes seems to berare within the current business environment.Making often exists as part of a projective tech-nique process, such as the leadership mask-making exercise described below. Perhaps be-cause the results of “making” are so deeplyconnected with the individual, and thus somewhatmore difficult to relate to instrumental goals of theorganization, it has not been explicitly discussed.However, we see exploring the ways in which“making” can impact both on individuals’ practice,and more broadly on organizational life as a keyarea for further inquiry.

A TYPOLOGY OF ARTS-BASED PROCESSES

In practice, we find that many arts-based methodsused within manager and leader development in-clude more than one process. In order to increaseconceptual clarity and aid in identifying pro-cesses, we now turn to the question “in what waysare the processes the same and in what ways arethey different?” To address this question, we iden-tify two key dimensions that then form the typologyin Figure 1.

Arts-based methods involve both an art processand a resulting product. The horizontal axis of Fig-ure 1 indicates whether a particular method fo-cuses on the art process or the art product. Forexample, in theater there is a lengthy rehearsalprocess that results in an art product—the theatri-cal performance. We draw this distinction from art


therapy which can be thought of as being dividedinto two camps, one that focuses on the art processindependent of any art product that is producedand the other which focuses on the art product as awindow into the subconscious (Malchiodi, 1998).Using this distinction, making and skills transferare focused on the art process. Making is con-cerned with the deep work that goes on “as theartist creates the work, the work creates the artist”(Richards, 1995: 9, 81, 119). The product of that workis of little importance. An example of this is Bud-dhist monks who spend weeks carefully creating abeautiful sand mandala and then pour it into theRiver Thames soon after its completion. Similarly,skills transfers also focuses on the art processrather than the product. When senior managersconduct an orchestra as a developmental exercise,they are doing so primarily to learn how to lead ahighly collaborative group, not primarily to pro-duce a beautiful musical performance.

In contrast both projective technique and illus-tration of essence are focused on the art product.When managers craft their strategy out of LEGObricks, they are primarily focused on what the re-sulting sculpture tells them and allows them todiscuss about their strategy. They are not as inter-ested in the process of building the LEGO sculp-ture. Similarly, when managers look to Shake-speare for lessons in leadership, they are notinterested in the process that Shakespeare wentthrough to write the plays, but rather are interestedin the result of the process—the play itself—andthe lessons that it contains for them.

The vertical axis depicts the continuum betweenfocus on the particular, or universal nature of theart. Although great art manages to be both partic-ular and universal, we find that the arts-basedmethods tend to be focused on one or the other. Inour typology, making and projective technique arefocused on the particular, while skills transfer andillustration of essence are focused on the univer-sal. For instance, making is focused on the individ-

ual’s unique experience and the personal growthand enrichment that occur during the process ofmaking art. Projective technique is focused on pro-viding a window into the individual’s subcon-scious and the particular meaning making of eachindividual. At the other end of the spectrum, skillstransfer is concerned with universal skills, such aslistening, that can be transferred from the arts ex-perience to other realms. Similarly, illustration ofessence is concerned with art that captures a uni-versally recognizable understanding, such as thenature of leadership in Shakespeare’s Henry V.When we combine these two dimensions, we havethe typology of arts-based methods in Figure 1.

COMBINING PROCESSES

Up until this point we have discussed the fourprocesses as being separate. However, many, if notmost, arts-based development approaches com-bine two or more of these processes. In this sectionwe will discuss two contrasting arts-based meth-ods, which between them draw upon all four pro-cesses in order to gain clarity about how they op-erate both separately and together. We start with acase of leadership mask making at the Banff Cen-tre, which incorporates “making” and “projectivetechnique” processes, and then follow with theConcert of Ideas as conducted by Creative Leaps,which draws on three processes: skills transfer,illustration of essence, and projective technique.The two examples illustrate how different under-pinning processes work in practice and provide aflavor of each experience by including commen-tary from participants in each event.

The leadership mask-making exercise at theBanff Centre is an example of a leadership touch-stone exercise (De Ciantis, 1995). In this case it wasundertaken by one of the authors. The idea of aleadership touchstone exercise is to engage in artmaking that captures the essence of the individu-al’s sense of her own leadership. Creating thetouchstone draws on the “making” process, whilethe finished art object serves as projective tech-nique or touchstone for the individual and her ownleadership practice. Both processes are focused onthe particular experience of the individual, whilemaking focuses on the process and projective tech-nique focuses on the resulting product.

We shall attempt to show something of the pro-cess with an illustration of a leadership mask (theartifact is pictured in Figures 2 and 3) that one ofthe authors made as part of a leadership develop-ment course at the Banff Centre. Below is a partialfirst-person account of that work:

Art Process

Art Products

Particular

Universal

Making

Illustration of Essence Skills Transfer


FIGURE 1A Typology of Arts-Based Processes


We spent the better part of three days (out offive) working with masks. Most of that workdid not directly produce any artifact—noteven a record of the exercise other than whatwas etched into our memories. We startedwith neutral mask work—a completely blankpiece of plastic in the shape of a face thatshows no expression at all. The neutral maskallowed us to concentrate on being, on havingno past or future. I find that when I manage toreally be in the present with no past or futureI am able to go more deeply into myself, intothe deep recesses that are well below thelevel of thought and verbal articulation. Theneutral mask allows me to explore the shift-ing, mythological, perhaps even archetypalmorass from which I construct my manyselves. It reminds me of my more successfulattempts at meditation. Later we do a photomask exercise, letting a photo select us(rather than selecting one of the many photomasks) and then becoming the character inthe mask that picked us. I realize later that myphoto is a seeker and I learn much about theseeker within me, always restless and look-ing for more.

We see here something of the way in which artmaking can resemble meditation and give themaker access to deep places within themselvesthat otherwise might not be accessible. Here, themask maker has gained access to “the seeker” partof himself in a way that he had not had before.

The process culminated in making the mask,which then serves as a projective technology forthe individual’s sense of her own leadership. If welook at Figure 2, which represents the creator’sview of self as leader, we see there is a stack ofturtles on the right hand side. It seems unlikelythat those turtles are meaningful or particularlyresonate with most (if any) viewers of the mask.However, listen to the creator talk about the turtles.

I saw the turtles and just started stackingthem up. At first I was paying attention to thedifferences of color and how they balancedthe feathers on the other side. Then someonecommented on how cute they looked. And Istarted to tell them about the story of the littleboy who is telling his friend the story of howthe earth is balanced on the back of a giantturtle and his friend asks him what the turtlesits on and he says that it’s another turtle. The

FIGURE 2Internal Leadership Mask

FIGURE 3External Leadership Mask


friend keeps asking and he keeps telling himthat it’s another turtle until finally he getsfrustrated and says, “it’s turtles all the waydown.” And the turtles are a reference to thatstory, but only because that story is a refer-ence to a discussion of action research, inwhich someone said, “it’s questions all theway down.” And that’s what the turtlesmean—it’s questions all the way down. Andevery time I look at the mask hanging on thewall of my office, I see the turtles and I think,“it’s questions all the way down.”

The artifact (in this case the mask) then serves as awindow into the well of subconscious stuff/material/knowing. It resonates in ways that can be easilyverbalized, such as the story about the turtles andways that are not so easily verbalized, such aswhat the feathers mean to the mask’s creator. Itallows for ongoing reflection as the creator contin-ues to come back to the mask and engage withwhat it means as a leader for it to be “questions allthe way down.”

Likewise, such an artifact can embody contradic-tions and tensions in a way that more discursiveforms cannot. For example, consider the tensionbetween the authoritarian aspects of leadershipand mutuality that the mask’s creator feels:

The stars and plaid area on the top of theexternal mask are sort of like a crown andthere is a part of me that feels the strong,“leader as king” role. This strong royal feel isechoed in the bits of the same plaid that areblotches on the internal leadership side.There is a tension between the king role andthe questions of the turtles—which one is mysense of my own leadership? Both are andboth exist within the mask—not in conflict,but together supporting the whole.

This example shows how in this case, the twoprocesses of “making” and “projective technique”work together to help the participant draw out as-pects of self-understanding as a leader, whichprobably would not have come to the fore using amore discursive technique. First, the making pro-cess enabled the author to “go more deeply intomyself, into the deep recesses that are well belowthe level of thought and verbal articulation” andthereby brought this unconscious knowledge intomore conscious awareness. The knowing that hadbeen unearthed found a “container” in the result-ing mask, which could then be reflected upon andmade sense of in various ways. Furthermore,through hanging the mask on the office wall, the

creator could continually refer back to both themeaning inherent within the mask and the mem-ory of the experience of connection making it af-forded. The combination of the two processes in-corporates both the art process and the art product,while staying focused on the particular individual.

While “making” is an essential ingredient of theprevious example, in The Concert of Ideas (Cimino,2003; Darso, 2004) skills transfer and illustration ofessence can be seen to be working alongside pro-jective technique. Its creators, Creative Leaps, de-scribe the concert as

music, poetry, theater, storytelling, virtuosicperformance and imaginative dialogueacross the footlights. It is Broadway classics,original compositions and American master-pieces performed live and weaving throughideas and stories from Einstein, Picasso,Shakespeare, Cervantes, Margaret Mead,James Baldwin, Richard Feynman, LangstonHughes and more—all blended and se-quenced to set the mind in motion and helpparticipants access multiple creative connec-tions, deeper personal insights and rich newsolutions to the challenges at hand (CreativeLeaps International, 2003).

As the concert starts, participants are asked whatthey see when various pieces of music are played.In this way the music works as a projective tech-nique, described by Creative Leaps President, JohnCimino as an aural version of the Center for Cre-ative Leadership’s Visual Explorer (personal com-munication, February 11, 2007). Here the focus is onthe art product, the music, and the individual’sparticular experience of it.

There is also a strong element of skills transferas the concert pushes the audience to listendeeply. This adds a focus on the universal processof listening. Cimino describes it this way:

The first and central learning is clearly aboutlistening. We approach it through playful, en-gaging activities at different levels. At thevery beginning, participants hear some curi-ously inviting words of William Blake (“To seea world in a grain of sand . . .”) and AlbertEinstein (“The most beautiful experience wecan have is . . .”) on the processes of imagina-tion and the value of mystery in our percep-tual processes. They hear these words under-scored with music by William Schumann,thereby opening a “second” channel of listen-ing. Then, we play a listening game called“snippets” in which we explore participants’


individual emotional perceptions of brief mu-sical pieces. “How [does] the music make youfeel?” We are cuing up reflective style listen-ing, inviting a look inward. In this way, par-ticipants learn to listen not just for content inthe music, but content elicited by the musicfrom within themselves. This is key. The nextdimension is the pictorial, “What do you seein your mind’s eye as you listen to the music?”Here, perception and reflection merge and be-come generative of visual imagery, even sto-rylines and inner narrative. In playing theselistening games and doing these exercises,participants add ”dimension“ to their listen-ing practices, not only when listening to mu-sic, but when listening to one another and tothemselves. They also witness the unique-ness and originality of one another’s listeningprocesses, especially the variation in emo-tional and inner visual experiences belong-ing to each person. This too is a key learning.Additionally, their listening also re-acquiressome of its ”synaesthetic‘ potency, echoingthrough our myriad other internal and exter-nal senses. (Cimino, personal communica-tion, December 12, 2006).

These enhanced listening skills are then used forillustration of essence as the concert brings in theworks of great artists such as Picasso and Shake-speare. This adds the universal aspects of the artproducts being performed. We note that althoughall three processes are present, they are not inde-pendent. The processes happen together and rein-force each other. Access to one’s own inner reachesthrough a projective technique makes it easier torelate to the essence that is illustrated in a greatwork of art. The two processes work together toconnect the particular experience of the individualwith the universal content of the great work. En-hanced listening skills increase the understandingof that essence. And that essence that has beenshown helps us to understand those deeper as-pects of our own selves that we have identifiedwith the projective technique.

Although these three processes are bound to-gether and it is the way that these are combinedthat makes The Concert of Ideas the unique arts-based method that it is, identifying these pro-cesses gives us a deeper understanding of whatis happening in the Concert of Ideas. We nowturn to a discussion of how we can take thatdeeper understanding and use it to guide the useof arts-based methods for managerial and lead-ership development.

USING ARTS-BASED METHODS FORDEVELOPMENT

As we have shown, the four processes work infundamentally different ways. Following from this,we argue that different arts-based methods willresult in different developmental outcomes, and itis useful for those employing these methods toconsider the kinds of outcomes they hope to gen-erate before employing these methods in a randomfashion. That is to say, if we want to be able toassess to what degree we succeeded, it is helpfulto have had some idea of both where we wereheaded and how we intended to get there. Further-more, as illustrated in the preceding examples,many arts-based methods involve a combinationof processes, and there may well be significantsynergy in those combinations. We will now ex-plore the individual processes in terms of theirexpected outcomes and the implications of thesefor how arts-based methods based in each processcould be used in managerial development.

Skills Transfer

The premise underneath the skills transfer process isthat there are skills used within the arts that couldenable managers to perform their roles more effec-tively. These range from very basic skills, such aslistening and paying attention to perceptions, to themore complex improvisational theater skills like say-ing “yes and” to others’ improvised offers and utiliz-ing errors as a source of learning. Arts-based meth-ods allow managers to feel the experience of thoseskills rather than think about them, such as whentheatrical improvisation exercises are used to getmanagers to feel what it is like to listen deeply andbe listened to deeply. With short-term arts-basedmethods (single training events), there is the hopethat experiencing the feeling of the skill will provideenough of an anchor for the manager to followthrough with developing and using the skill in his orher daily work. The personal connection and feltexperience that arts-based methods offer can pro-vide a significant advantage for anchoring the skillsover more conventional cognitive techniques. How-ever, with any skill acquisition, practice is essential.By practice we mean both the sense of using it withinthe routine work of managing and practice in thesense of consciously working on improving the skillon a regular basis.

We see arts-based skills transfer methods asbeing particularly appropriate for helping man-agers to develop specific skills. For example, byproviding a “felt sense” of how the skill can beembodied, this arts-based method serves as a


powerful introduction and anchoring experiencefor acquiring the skill. However, to make the skill areliable part of the managers’ embodied reper-toire, ongoing practice is essential. This could bebased in continued work within the arts, such asongoing training in theatrical improvisation, or itcould be more directly applied to the work envi-ronment or some combination of both.

Consider a group of managers who are notcommunicating well with each other. That poorcommunication is diagnosed as being based inpoor listening skills. So Second City is con-tracted to offer one of their funny and engagingtraining sessions based in theatrical improvisa-tion and focusing on listening skills. The man-agers experience the embodied feel for what it islike to really listen to each other and to haveothers listen to them. The training session is thenfollowed up with an ongoing program featuringweekly improv work and sessions to discuss on-going situations where the managers have theopportunity to critique and be critiqued on howwell they have been listening in their work asmanagers. Without the ongoing work, old pat-terns may prove hard to shift and the “felt expe-rience” alone may not be enough to support pro-longed behavioral change in the workplace.


The premise informing the projective techniqueprocess is that there is a wealth of meaningmaking that either is not accessible through con-ventional techniques or has some violence doneto it when it is translated into the rational dis-courses that dominate most organizations. Thisembodied knowing is often tacit, not logical, self-contradictory, and heavily laden with emotional-ity. Artistic forms present this knowing in a waythat honors and values these characteristics andmakes it accessible to other members of the or-ganization. In this way, projective techniques al-low for an “analogically mediated” (Barry, 1994)discussion of the embodied knowing, whichmeans that the art object becomes a physicalanalog of the topic being discussed. Discussingthe art object rather than discussing the issuedirectly provides a certain distance and detach-ment from emotionally charged issues. For ex-ample, two managers can have a discussion inwhich they differ about what an image that hasbeen created means in a way that doesn’t makethem feel defensive but rather fosters learningabout each others’ perspective. A direct discus-sion about their differing views of the problem-atic issue the image represents might be filled

with conflict, as they hear the others’ views asattacks. The projective technique process thenprovides access to the multiplicity of meaningmakings that exist with an organization in a waythat allows the nonlogical, contradictory, andemotionality to be part of that knowing.

Projective technique is useful in a manager’sdevelopment in that it helps the manager to un-derstand and work with the multiplicity of mean-ing making that surrounds complex organiza-tional issues. There is a tendency for lessdeveloped managers to see their own sense-making of complex organizational issues as be-ing the singular objective truth of the situation(Kegan, 1994; Torbert, 1991). Projective tech-niques can be used to help managers develop amore complex and nuanced understanding of or-ganizational issues. This is generally done forspecific organizational issues, such as buildingstrategy (Roos et al., 2004) or looking at a currentproblematic challenge the organization faces. Akey aspect of using projective techniques for de-veloping managers is to consciously develop themetaskill of working with the multiplicity ofmeaning making that projective technique facil-itates in addition to addressing the instrumentalissues of the specific situation.

Illustration of Essence

The premise underneath the illustration of es-sence process is that there are essential aspectsof management and leadership that are univer-sal and that great art expresses these aspects ina way that allows people to personally connectwith and understand them. Thus the primary out-come from arts-based methods based in the il-lustration of essence process is an understand-ing of the essence of these fundamental aspectsof management and leadership. The advantageof this understanding is that it is based in a feltexperience and resonates with the manager. Theunderstanding is complex, nuanced, and per-haps even self-contradictory. For example, whenthe scene where Henry V rallies his outnumberedtroops before the battle of Agincourt in Shake-speare’s play is used to illustrate the essence ofleadership, there are a variety of ways that thelessons of leadership could be articulated. Oneperson might say that it is all about creating avision, another may say that it is about makingthe rewards of victory clear, and another maysay that it is about creating unity. Each articu-lates the essence in the way that resonates withhis or her own experience.

Illustration of essence is useful as a way for


developing managers to grapple with the complexand nuanced essence of the central tasks of theirwork in a way that is deeply connected to their ownfelt experience. Thus we see illustration of essenceas being useful for developing managers when aparticular conceptual weakness is identified—“hejust doesn’t get what leadership is” or “she doesn’tknow what listening is”—and as a method for de-veloping more complex and nuanced understand-ings of key aspects of their work. Reading andseeing Henry V performed and engaging in ex-tended discussion of leadership as Shakespearehas portrayed it can help a manager have a muchmore complex and nuanced understanding of lead-ership in a way that is based in a felt, emotional,personal connection rather than through an ab-stract, intellectual theorization.

Making

The premise underneath the making process isthat the act of making art can foster a deepexperience of personal presence and connection.We suggest that this experience can be healingfor managers, who experience so much of theirwork as being fragmented and disconnected. Itcan also help to develop a sense of personalauthenticity that can be the foundation of au-thentic leadership. Darso (2004) calls this “pre-sensing” and the place where individual tran-scendence occurs. To experience presensing,Darso suggests a process, which begins with“downloading,” our normal way of thinkingwithin our established routines and patterns ofmind, and moves to “seeing,” which is when in-volvement with art pushes or allows us to seethings in new ways. From seeing, we move to“sensing,” which is being fully open to our inter-nal experience in the way that “seeing” wasbeing open to the external world. This enablesthe movement to “presensing,” the word being acombination of being present in the moment andsensing. It is in this state of being open to theexternal world, being open to internal sensation,as well as being fully present in the moment,that we make art.

Making is useful for developing the foundationor base from which managers act. It is a form ofpersonal development that is not tied directly tospecific organizational outcomes, but rather is un-dertaken with more generic long-term goals inmind. Thus we can imagine arts-based programsbeing included as part of wellness initiativesaimed at the long-term health and development ofemployees. Alongside yoga and Weight Watchers

classes, organizations could offer ongoing poetryand improvisation classes.

Issues and Concerns With Arts-Based Methods

We close our discussion of the use of arts-basedmethods by raising some of the potential issuesand concerns with incorporating arts-based meth-ods in a developmental intervention. In his studyof the use of expressive aesthetic techniqueswithin groupwork, George (2006) identified thatparticipants sometimes expressed deep-seated re-sistances to engaging in art forms in which theyconsidered themselves to have limited talent, andthis could have significant impact on an interven-tion’s outcomes. Furthermore, his work identifiedthe potential difficulties of transferring learningfrom what were often high-impact interventionsback to day-to-day organizational life. While thismay be a problem with any “one off” developmen-tal effort, it highlights the way in which arts-basedmethods tend to be farther afield from the day-to-day reality of most organizations than conven-tional methods, which suggests that the transla-tion from the arts-based method back toorganizational life may be more difficult than withconventional methods.

The task of enabling participants in an arts-based intervention to translate their experienceback into their organizational contexts in somemeaningful way suggests that the facilitator needssome expertise in both artistic and organizationalworlds. Otherwise, there is the risk that arts-basedmethods can be intellectualized and gutted of theirrich, embodied connection to felt sense by facilita-tors who do not have some sort of ongoing artspractice. Alternatively, artists without experienceof organizational realities can flounder and notmake adequate connections between the interven-tion and participants’ contexts. Thus it is not assimple as hiring in an artist or asking an organi-zational development specialist to do somethingwith clay—our experience suggests that in order torealize their developmental potential, arts-basedmethods require facilitators with sufficient experi-ence and understanding of both arenas. Exploringthe validity of this claim is a ripe area for furtherresearch, and it is to those considerations that wenow turn.

A RESEARCH AGENDA

In addition to the practical aspects discussed inthe previous sections, the four processes conceptu-alization suggests a research agenda. First on thatagenda would be gathering empirical data from


arts-based methods to both test the conceptualiza-tion presented here and to add nuance and refineit. For example, we might consider differences as-sociated with different media when using projec-tive techniques. What is the difference betweensculpting strategy out of clay rather than LEGOs?And what would guide us to design an arts-basedmethod that uses clay rather than LEGOs? Is therea difference between drawing with crayons andpainting with watercolors? Similar questions ofdetail and nuance exist for the other processes aswell.

We have theorized the four processes without aspecific connection to context, but we are awarethat art is always contextual (Dobson, 1999). Thisraises the question of context and how the fourprocesses relate to it. Are there contexts thatenhance or inhibit the processes? There is alsothe question of interaction that is raised in themask-making and Concert of Ideas examplesdiscussed earlier. Are there ways that the pro-cesses can be used synergistically? Are thereways in which the processes inhibit each otherwhen used together?

We also recognize that we have framed this con-ceptualization in terms of individual development.There may be different process needed to describearts-based methods at the group and organiza-tional and levels as well as the interactions be-tween the individual and those more macrolevels.All of which is to say, that there is a large researchagenda left to engage.

CODA: A CLOSING CAVEAT

Our aim of making arts-based methods more un-derstandable, and in that respect more like othermethods for development and change, could beinterpreted as our advocating using the arts as aninstrumental tool for organizations (and by exten-sion as an instrumental tool to further the goals oflate-stage capitalism). There are many within theart world who would argue this is a prostitution ofart, that art is an end in itself, and to subvert thepower of art to serve capitalistic goals of greaterprofit is wrong. If anything, profit should be pur-sued so that we can have more art in our lives, notthe other way around.

Although we are sympathetic to these ideas, wesee the relationship between art and business asbeing more complex and nuanced than that. Wehope that the use of arts within businesses willresult in more artful (more full of art and run moreas an art) businesses rather than more efficient ormore effective art.

We hold this aspiration because we believe art

making can facilitate a process of becoming moreholistically aligned within ourselves as we learnto reflect in an embodied way. This in turn allowsus to free more of our potential as human beings,thereby enabling us to act more artistically in theworld at large, as well as within the organizationsin which we spend so much of our creative lifeworking.

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Steven S. Taylor ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the Department of Management atthe Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts. His research focuseson the aesthetics of organizational action and reflective practice. Recently his academic workhas focused on theorizing the use of arts-based process within organizations and exploringbeautiful action within organizations. Steve is also a playwright whose work has beenperformed in England, France, Poland, New Zealand, and the United States.

Donna Ladkin ([email protected]) is a senior lecturer, Centre for Executive Learn-ing and Leadership, Cranfield School of Management, the United Kingdom. Her currentresearch interests focus on leadership as an aesthetic phenomenon, how arts-based methodscan inform leadership development practice, and exploring the role leadership plays inenabling organizations to mobilize toward ecologically sustainable ends.


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