Leadership Remix: Beyond the Corporate Snooze

As a culture, and as a community, we are only recently beginning to understand, ask ourselves, and define, or actually redefine, leadership. The word’s been around, and we hear it often. Yet the composite snooze we experience around the word is a result of its apparent emptiness. It feels like tired corporate jargon because when the so-called leaders of business, industry or culture are asked about leadership they seem to have nothing to say that is inspiring, profound, or relevant. OH, IT WAS NOTHING, REALLY Maybe they’ll point to decisions they made, or anecdotes or experiences that may have inadvertently and unconsciously shaped them. Or missions, agendas or strategies that they seem to have led or overseen, and are thus receiving and happy to take ownership in, some bit of public, corporate, or artistic success. Read More »

Leadership Definitions: The Journey Begins

(This is a work in progress. I’m still synthesizing and simplifying many of my notes and writing about leadership over the past few years. My apologies in advance for any potential redundancies.) Hope you like it, here it goes: DEFINITION/RIFF #1: Leadership is the art of facilitating collaborative creation toward a powerful goal. Leaders guide and empower a team of willing participants towards a visualized, articulated, actualized and constantly evolving end. Leaders bring forth a deeply accessed vision, nurture their teams by facilitating inspiration and collaboration and manage results through supportive accountability. Leadership can be practiced and applied by anyone at any level of a team or organization. Read More »

Hollywood Leadership: Where Star Power Meets Team Power

It’s the central leadership paradox for creative industries. How do we create and configure true collaborations among members of a group, company, crew or team while still maintaining the essentially hierarchic format of the history of creative development and production? Or to paraphrase my friend Rob Brezsny “How can we be both a charismatic star and a cooperative team player?” STAR POWER Let’s use Hollywood as an example. Hollywood has always been and probably always will be fueled by Star Power. Whether it’s an “A-List” actor, a “name before the title” director, or a “mini-mogul” producer films, studios and projects will always have a “star.” Star Power can fall anywhere on the spectrum between box office muscle to creative visionary to financial alchemist. The “star” is the driving force, the person without whom the camera does not roll and the phone calls do not fly which generate the mounds of […] Read More »