Vulnerability and Cultural Leadership

Executive Summary This research looks at the role of vulnerability – defined as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure” in relation to resilience in cultural leadership. “Resilience” is defined as the ability to not only “bounce back” from adversity but also grow beyond our current capacity, and “cultural leadership” is defined as both the act of leading the cultural sector and influencing broader social cultures by challenging and transgressing norms, and creating meaning.

The greatest challenge identified by cultural leaders during this research was the pace of change, both in the world at large and within the sector. The combination of austerity, increasing social isolation, technological disruption, political uncertainty, the climate emergency and the migrant crisis, amongst other challenges, is creating a perfect storm of competing priorities and stretched capacity. The International Futures Forum has termed this a “Conceptual Emergency… in which the world we have created has outstripped our capacity to understand it” and, importantly, in which our individual agency to act is hampered by the psychological and emotional impacts of such farreaching and complex change.

The “conceptual emergency” is manifesting in cultural sector-specific challenges like institutionalization, a growing adversity to risk, entrenched power and privilege, a lack of diversity, a lack of investment in personal and professional development, high instances of sexual harassment, anxiety rates ten times that of the general population, and the tangible and psychological impacts of environmental damage (to name a few). So how can we move from the current status quo of unhealthy, invulnerable working environments to ones that enable individual and collective thriving, and capacity to seize the emergent opportunities that reveal themselves in the process of adapting to change?

Responding to these challenges demands courage, creativity and collaboration within and between people, organisations and different sectors. It requires a capacity for managing complexity, thinking beyond what’s possible, and shaping radically new ways of working and being together, in balance with the natural environment. In this research, the top determinant of individual and team creativity and ability to thrive was “psychological safety,” where “team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.” The behaviour of leaders has the greatest influence on enabling this vulnerability, and the biggest barrier is shame, evoked by self-protective behavior, dominating the conversation, criticism, micro-managing and resistance to emotional openness. Shame leads to silencing and denial, mistakes and a lack of innovation – all fatalities that encourage a scarcity mindset, and collective inability to adapt and respond to systemic challenges with agility and selfawareness.

This finding was mirrored in the fifteen research interviews, survey responses and desk research undertaken for this paper. Interviewees were all leaders within the cultural sector, representing a diversity of artforms, geographical location, age, ethnicity, disability and gender, and each one chosen for the work they are doing in some way to make social and environmental change in the sector. While not all interviewees and survey respondents found that the word “vulnerability” resonated for them, most identified it with a courageous capacity for honest relationships, inclusivity, creativity, innovation, collaboration and partnership, learning, adaptability to change, collective leadership and shifts in power dynamics. For some, vulnerability was also associated with 4