Leadership in the Creative Economy has been a very innovative and interesting module. Miguel, our lecturer, gave us an interesting assignment briefing a very creative way to produce the assignment: among other traditional ways of understanding what leadership theories are, he gave us the possibility to compose a piece of art (visual, story, paint, dance or any other art expression) that deals with creative leadership. Of course, this needed to be supported by a theoretical justification that could reinforce the meaning of the project.
This is how The Social Tree project came to life. Embracing the idea of Leadership as an Art, I wanted to maximise the concept of art as a collaborative process, while connecting leadership to the development of an art project. What I really want to highlight is that I could have never undertaken this project without considering collaboration, participation and involvement with people as focal points. This has surely helped to put myself in the shoes of a creative leader: I knew what I was doing and I put passion for what I was doing, demonstrating enthusiasm for my purpose. Leadership is for me a co-creation momentum and the challenge of the leader is to embrace an unconventional and creative behaviour.
The Social Tree represents a practical work that explains the figure of the creative leader, as meant by the new theories of transformational leadership. By basing my project on that, I decided to put in practice my idea of leadership and creative leader. What I needed was a canvas, some paintbrushes, acrylic colours, a photographer and a film-maker and most of all, a public space where I could genuinely collaborate with people.
I tied the canvas on a tree and I started paining the trunk myself: by doing that I put the roots to the project that could exist only through collaboration. When the trunk was ready, I stopped painting, left the scene and placed a big yellow sign under the canvas, inviting people to participate to The Social Tree Project by painting a leaf or anything they felt it was relevant to the completion of the tree.
Here’s the fast motion video of the project, that took place along the riverside in Kingston.
While giving people a brief I did not want to put restraints and prohibitions, thus if the initial idea was to suggest people to paint only leaves, the final idea was to give them choices since I wanted people to feel open to embrace creative responses. And they really loved the idea.
As you can see in the video, the yellow sign was ‘talking’ in behalf of me. I sat on a bench and watched people’s reactions. They started to be curious and wanted to know more about the project. As the leader of the project I was playing an important role: people asked me many times what they could paint, and of course I gave them the chance to place their contribution in the way they wanted. This was surely the best way not to reduce their creativity. In fact, the leader needs to be always present, able to support and unify collaboration and ideas. It can be tricky, I know, as transformational leadership believes in improvisation and so do I.
In my opinion, leaders, like artists, have to have faith in the evolutionary process as a journey into the unknown. This is surely related to the exciting elements of making art: The Social Tree wants to demonstrate that: in business as well as in the arts, it is not a requirement to be sure of how things will turn out at the end. This is exactly how I felt when watching people painting on the canvas and I have to admit it was impossible for me, while the creative process was taking place, to imagine how the tree would have looked like at the end of the day.
Even if I was the creative leader, the initial vision of The Social Tree was constantly being changed and modified by the creative input of all the people involved in the project. Seen as a metaphor in The Social Tree, the above concept needs to be transferred in all management situations as the leader needs to be aware and attentive of the unpredicted and the unforeseen.
The most incredible contribution on the canvas? A ten year-old boy who drew the Facebook logo on one of the branches of the tree. In that occasion, I approached the boy and asked what was the meaning of his contribution. He simply answered: “It’s the social tree, isn’t it?”
Cora 