Leadership, management and sculpture: how arts based activities can transform learning and deepen understanding

Abstract

An important aim on the MSc Leadership and Management course is to enable students to reflect upon their role as leaders. This role encompasses an awareness of emotional reality alongside that of leadership style and the management of systems and processes. This paper reflects upon an innovative use of arts based learning to deepen understanding and to explore creative alternatives to logical, rational approaches. The paper suggests that arts based learning offers a way to explore levels of subjective experience and through a coaching dialogue, surface greater understanding leading to more effective leadership improving the quality of workplace action. Student feedback suggests that this approach can lead to insights and meanings unavailable through written or spoken language. The arts based learning approach is offered as a challenging, motivating and revealing strategy to free up ideas, model creative thinking and deepen awareness about unconscious drivers. A selection of the sculptures created by the students is illustrated along with commentaries to reflect their metaphorical richness.