I'm never too young to change my mind...
I used to think the word ‘leadership’ was bad. It made me think of people who have power and use it badly to hurt others, people who rule countries badly and people who trick other people...
Theresa Kiyota Rahman de Swiet is a Sync member who is currently working on a placement with Whitechapel Gallery. She is also on our Sync Intensives programme.
Sync Intensives is a programme running in 2010 over 8 months from April to November, 2010.
As part of this, some of the 15 people on the programme will tell us what they think about leading.
Over to Theresa.....
About Theresa
I used to think the word ‘leadership’ was bad. It made me think of people who have power and use it badly to hurt others, people who rule countries badly and people who trick other people.
I had been to medical school and found it hard - I didn't like the way people used power and how you had to behave. I had worked on film sets and found it hard that only the director could put forwards ideas. I had seen disability arts organisations that talked about equality and then set up a way of working that was all about having a boss.
Maybe it was just how I am but I thought there must be better ways of working that meant people worked together as a team, ways of working that meant everyone could have ideas.
I thought the organisations and the way they were set up was wrong. People I tried to work for said I was just a dreamer - one place even sent me to a doctor because of the way I was about bosses!
I am now working at Whitechapel Gallery (WG) for a short time, on a placement. This has made me change my mind.
I am working in an organisation that has bosses but it doesn't feel bad - how does it do that? Is it because of the way the person in charge leads the organisation?
To write this article I spoke to lots of people about leading. I spoke to the director, five team leaders and five members of staff, an ex-colleague, two filmmakers, three musicians, a performance poet, and a media producer. I went to two Sync days, one NESTA discussion, watched TV, surfed the net and thought hard about what I felt.
Whitechapel Gallery - it's different!
The Gallery has 60 people who work for it all the time and about 60 people who work for it some times. Most are women, around 20 or 30 years old, and from well-educated, artistic families.
No-one is told how to work - each leader can lead their team in the way that they want. The main boss is Iwona Blazwick, the director. She thinks the organisation doesn't really have many 'bosses' as everyone is the boss of their own work.
People think Iwona is a great boss - people said these things about her:
- she thinks about the future
- she is intelligent
- she makes hard things easy to understand
- she inspires people
she builds great teams
Iwona does not see herself as a ‘leader’.
She says she is passionate about art and that she likes people being able to choose for themselves, take responsibility themselves and for people to be creative and have ideas.
Why is Whitechapel Gallery so good?
Different people spoke to me about what they think makes Whitechapel Gallery so good at this.
People said these things:
- because they are arty
- because they have good people working here
- because they choose the right people to work here
- because everyone is asked what they think, no matter what job they do
- because everyone is seen as being important
So what does our leader think makes a good leader?
She said someone who sees the bigger picture and someone who can be calm, especially at the moment as having enough money in the arts is difficult.
There are lots of funding cuts at the moment - what do you think our leader did? She invited us all to her house for a party and spent the time serving us all drinks all evening.
How cool is that?
How can people lead as a group?
I wanted to find out about groups that led as a group rather than having one person at the top all the time.
This organisations all work like that, but in different ways:
- Transmission Gallery http://www.transmissiongallery.org - they are a collection of artists who change their leader every couple of years. This is like geese - when they fly in a V, they change their leader too.
Follow this link to go to an easy ready Sync article on how Geese lead
Not everyone likes leading as a group.
One person I spoke to told me of a group called People and Planet, http://peopleandplanet.org
She said this group makes her cross as everything takes so long to do. They are looking at real problems for our planet and acting too slowly.
Another person told me about two groups:
- The Riveters, a university women’s rights collective, and
- The Space Hijackers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk
Both of these groups make decisions all together as a group.
For more on consensus decision making, including historical and contemporary examples...
So what do I think?
The Gallery is the best place I have worked - it makes me think and makes me feel very creative. I feel able to be myself and they are very good about meeting my access needs. I like the people I work with and admire them. I am given a lot of trust and that makes me feel able to make good decisions.
I still have lots of questions though:
Is what we think and feel more important than how organisations are set up?
How do we work out if we like people to lead us or if we like to lead people?
Do men and women like to be led in different ways?
I can't really write down what I feel about leading.
Instead I am going to make an animation film and put it on this site in September.
With many thanks to:
Sophie Hayles, Sarah Walsh, Nicola Turner, Iwona Blazwick, Caro Howell, Cookie Rameder, Chris Potts, Rachel Mapplebeck, Kirsty Ogg, Beatrice Banks, Rachel Cass, Sarah Auld, Tara Brown, Caglar Kimyoncu, Michael Achtman, Mhairi Leaver, Shlair Teimourian, Jasmine Cooray, Robin Baldock, Elliot Goldstein and Chas de Swiet.
Images are:
Detail from Londonnature
Detail from Buddha and lamp
Detail from Shamanbuddha
Detail from Instead of thinking in terms of either or
all by Theresa Kiyota Rahman de Swiet
