Dear Katja

 

Mythology, leaders/managers and artists. This is not directly references to literature that uses an artist metaphor to describe leadership, but I personaly find it a very interesting indirect link between artists and leaders. Maybe you can use it?

 

The mythology of the journey of the hero is sometimes used to describe both the journey of the leader/manager and the journey of the artist.

 

 

In Synchronicity – the inner path of leadership by Jaworski (p.18-119), leadership (and Joseph Jaworskis own journey) is compared to “the journey of the hero” as it’s described in Joseph Campbells The hero with a thousand faces.

 

In Dialogue – the art of thinking together by William Isaacs (p. 286-87), there are also references to Joseph Campbells journey of the hero. He writes about the difficulties of returning with new insight to the “ordinary” world.

 

In Artful Creation by Lotte Darsø there is a chapter on the work of Miha Pogacnik (p.93-98). Here the journey of the hero is mentioned as the journey of a leader. I think the part called the art of listening, describes the essential link between hero, artist and leader. Namely the ability to clear a mental space of ones own thoughts and ideas and through that empty space get the ability to receive – to listen. In Dialogue a similar idea is called suspention – a term that comes from David Bohms ideas on dialogue.

 

In On Creativity by David Bohm there is a chapter called On the relationship of art and science. Here art is linked to the ability to perceive, and in that way it becomes essential to science – the more subtle the theories of the world, the greater the need for subtle perception to keep the theories in tune with what’s actually going on.

The chapter is interesting if one think of leadership as the activity of developing theories of how best to manage a business. If the leader can learn to “listen” like the artist, then his ability to perceive the consequences of his actions is expanded – he can get more subtle feedback than before, and thus develop more in tuned theories.

 

I have also seen the journey of the hero used in books on how to develop creativity in artists. I don’t remember any titles though. Maybe The artist way by Julia Cameron could have a useful reference or two. Maybe another Aacorner can help us out here?

 

I also find it interesting to compare the journey of the hero with the process of double loop learning (Argyris (1992): On organizational learing). I haven’t seen this anywhere – but if anyone have, I’d love to get a hint.

 

Hope this is useful.

 

 

Cheers Claus Springborg

 

p.s. I have made a first draft in order to map the literature on Arts and Business into some categories. I will send it to the Aacorn net shortly in order to get feedback. That might be helpful to you as well.