The question of who will lead our cultural institutions in the future is being widely discussed in our field. The increasing complexity of these organizations will require confident, highly trained leaders who can respond to a changing environment and who can access ongoing professional development services to continually strengthen their abilities. In considering how National Arts Strategies might be of service to this cadre of future leaders, we elected to take a direct approach to determining their needs: We engaged them in a discussion with us and with established leaders in order to determine what they want and need to prepare for the leadership roles they hope to fill.
NAS defines future leaders as people who see themselves three to five years away from senior positions in nonprofit cultural institutions. Following extended on-line and in-person conversations about the needs of future leaders from January through August 2008, NAS conducted a survey with participants that captured the key themes of that discussion. This survey was the next step in working with leaders to consider programmatic design, as we wanted to discover how future leaders would like to learn, what they would like to learn, and what barriers they see that make both learning and advancement challenging. By engaging both existing leaders and the next generation of leadership in the design of the programs that will serve them, we hope to assist them in advancing within the field.
The survey produced a small but informative sample of 122 leaders, with 117 leaders answering all the questions. We are sharing the results of this survey as a series of blog posts, rather than as a traditional article, to encourage comment and further discussion. Each section of the report has been published as an individual post so you can comment on the overall report here in the executive summary, or discuss the ideas in a “chapter” specifically. We will continue to engage with future leaders to design an ongoing program of events and services specifically for them, and will launch with our first event in the first quarter of 2009. The full timetable for the Future Leadership program and this first event will be discussed further through this Program Design blog.
A detailed summary of our findings is shared in additional posts on this blog, including participant responses to individual questions. Our objective in posting the survey results is to encourage further discussion and full participation in the design of the first NAS service specifically for our next wave of arts and culture executives. We hope you will add your thoughts and challenges on this blog, or in the Future Leadership community discussion. If you would like to download the full report as a PDF document, it is attached here: PDF Version: Future Leadership Survey Results 0ctober 2008.
Key Findings
While the small sample does not offer a comprehensive view of the needs of all future leaders nationally, it does yield some valuable information about where future leaders would like to go and what gaps in knowledge and experience they feel they need to fill to achieve these aspirations.
Several overarching themes emerged from this research. Respondents want to add to their skills and knowledge not only to broaden their competence and prepare them for leadership, but also to deepen their ability to perform well in the jobs they currently hold. They seek far greater responsibility in their current posts, and would like more guidance and structure to determine what they need to learn in future and which experiences they will need for leadership posts.
Connection to community emerged as being both personally motivating and important for the future of institutions. Most younger leaders expect that they will need to move to jobs in new organizations to gain training, experience, advancement, and greater financial rewards. Many believe they will need to move to new cities in order to find these growth opportunities, and this is an obstacle to their personal and professional growth. Ongoing educational programs that provide structure and a mix of theory and practice were seen as desirable. Balancing life and work emerged as a factor in determining how educational programs might be delivered, and many saw the need for a professional development plan that is flexible but intellectually challenging.
The biggest barriers to pursuing consistent professional development plans were time and money, with the demands of work being a pressure on time that many found hard to overcome. Despite this, the preferred method for learning was the highest quality of face to face interaction and teaching, supported by distance learning. Further, respondents felt that face to face interaction over a sustained period of time would be the most effective way to build or strengthen peer networks – a highly valued result. Many people recognized the need for career-long learning, and see gaps in their current skill-set around the “hard skills” of marketing, fundraising, technology, and board management, and also in the “soft skills” of team leadership. Finally, mentorships were cited repeatedly as being invaluable and extremely desirable, in large part because they were seen to provide timely and candid feedback and help with setting career goals and priorities.
1 Response to “Survey Results Part 1: Executive Summary”