Visioning Your Work

THIS WEEK, THREE COLLEAGUES AND I HAD THE CHANCE TO PRESENT a session at the NYS Museums in Conversation Conference about how we are working together to shape the next steps in our careers. We began by explaining how the four of us came together: we and one other were actually brought together by one person because 1) she knew that all of us are at career crossroads of one sort or another; 2) when she asked, none of us admitted to having a personal/career strategic plan (yet we're all rabid proponents of organizational planning!); and 3) we all knew one another to varying degrees and she thought we'd make a good group. We've dubbed our group The Gang of Five.

Since last summer, each member of "The Gang" has reflected on his/her career path and shared those thoughts with the others. We spent time doing SWOTs on each other (very productive) and we've questioned each others' motives and decisions, offered advice and solutions, commiserated and supported each other. Every one of us has had some sort of shift or refocus in thinking about our work because of our participation in The Gang.

Knowing that being able to change our perspectives on our work, even if ever so slightly, can open new ways of thinking about what we want to do or how we want to do it, we asked our audience to think about their visions for their work by creating collages of random images we had assembled. What came next was astonishing for some.

One participant had clearly delineated work from his personal life in his arrangement of the images he chose. He told us his family was just as important as his work, but these two elements of his life didn't intersect at all in his collage.

Another person exclaimed as she showed her collage, "I guess I'm an art educator!" (She confided to me later that she had recently left her management job, because it lacked the creativity she had so beautifully captured in her collage.)

Many participants chose tranquil images of nature -- the antithesis of the often chaotic, short-handed work environments of today's cultural institutions. Pictures of sharks and tigers made it into the collages of a couple of arts administrators signifying the realities of their work environments.

While not for everyone -- and clearly there were a number of people in our session for whom this exercise did not resonate -- being able to uncover a hidden desire for one's career (if even only to take a peek) -- can start a process of rethinking the relationship of work to the rest of one's life.

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for? This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.) Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin. We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week. If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014. It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog. I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs. Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management. Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into

Leading by Design

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