Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Hosted by Maureen Metcalf

Conversations with global thought leaders on leadership, culture, and innovation—designed for executives navigating complexity and building resilient organizations.

Leading Beautifully

Episode Description

Dr. Nancy Adler makes a striking argument: there is not just an art to leadership, art actually improves leadership. Exposure to the arts, she contends, lets leaders shift among multiple perspectives more fluidly, which sharpens problem-solving in a complex world. Along the way she questions the declining weight of MBA credentials, favoring perspective-shifting ability over accumulated knowledge, distinguishes leadership as a verb from leadership as a title, and shares a memorable pizza-box anecdote about using creativity to break through a resistant audience.

Key Takeaways

Art does not just parallel leadership; exposure to the arts measurably improves it.
Engaging with art helps leaders shift fluidly among multiple perspectives.
Perspective-shifting ability may matter more than accumulated MBA-style knowledge.
Leadership is better understood as an active verb than as a static title.
Creative, unconventional communication can break through even resistant audiences.

Why This Episode Matters

Executives come away with a fresh appreciation for how artistic engagement builds the perspective-shifting and creativity that complex leadership increasingly demands.

Listen to the episode

SUBSCRIBE:

Subscribe to Insights

Featuring

Nancy Adler, S. Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University

Episode Topics

Culture Change • Leadership Capability & Maturity • Scaling Innovation

Podcast Air Date

March 10, 2020

Episode Duration

43min

Watch the episode

Season 6

Episode Number 7

Episode Content:

There’s not just an art to leadership; art improves leadership!

That’s the core point of Dr. Nancy Adler’s discussion in this episode. A consultant and professor at McGill University, she’s found that art enables leaders to shift perspectives more readily, thus seeing solutions more effectively. That broadness of thought is more critical than ever: in the emerging business climate, what a leader knows is becoming far less relevant than the leader’s ability to shift perspectives and continually learn new suites of knowledge and skills.

Here’s what Nancy and Maureen cover:

Why the vaunted MBA is becoming far less relevant in the C-suite;
Why leadership is an active verb – and why leadership titles are nouns losing their impact; and
How a pizza box became the most effective communication tool to break through a Congressman’s barriers.

Produced in association with the International Leadership Association: https://ilaglobalnetwork.org.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Art, Leadership…and the Art of Leadership with Ren Washington & Laura Gibson
Tales from the Top: How Leaders Use Stories with Dr. Tanvi Gautam
Love at First Slice: Pizza & Passionate Leadership with Tom Krouse

Resources:

Learn more about Nancy’s intersection of art and leadership on her Galleries website at https://www.adlerartistry.com/galleries. She’s also written or edited several books, including International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior – in paperback at https://amzn.to/4blRSm9.

Our host, Maureen Metcalf, posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. The Kindle version is available at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. You’ll find further details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)
Jilly Truit murder mysteries by Beverley McLachlin:
- Full Disclosure – https://amzn.to/46TxW6Q (paperback) https://amzn.to/46VDL3Q (audiobook)
- Denial – https://amzn.to/46YCbhs (paperback) https://amzn.to/3GJc0AA (audiobook)
Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy

Art, Leadership…and the Art of Leadership with Ren Washington and Laura Gibson
Be Human, Lead Human with Dr. Jennifer Nash
Using Storytelling to Elevate Leadership with Chris Nolan

Guest(s):

Nancy Adler, S. Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University

Guest(s) Bio:

Nancy Adler is an inspiring leader who has worked with managers from around the world to create synergy among cultures, rather than building walls to keep out “difference” or to hide behind fears of inefficiency and prejudice. Nancy pioneered the fields for cross-cultural management, women leading worldwide, and the role of the arts in inspiring the best of what individuals and organizations have to offer to their organizations, their communities, and to the world. As an artist, she works to make the world more beautiful, even now when so many people focus on ugliness and dysfunction.

Dr. Adler is the S. Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University, where she conducts research on global leadership and cross-cultural management.

Transcript