Week 4: 2nd Theory in Action at DIAL/Rowan

As my fourth week of being a Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Intern affiliated with Americans for the Arts (AFTA) and the Rowan Community Music School comes to a close, I have continued to reflect on how I have seen leadership theories demonstrated through my internship experience. A second and very crucial theory in action I have definitely seen during my time here has been transformational leadership.

As defined by James Macgregor Burns, transformational leadership is the process of leaders and followers helping one another to push toward a higher level of morale and motivation (Burns, 1978). 

Transformational leadership is the core of the DIAL program. It is a program curated for individuals of underrepresented communities to be put into positions of leadership within the arts administration field and learn about how we can contribute and advocate for arts in the community. Steph, my DIAL program supervisor at AFTA, has demonstrated a high level of transformational leadership in that she organizes engaging educational professional development sessions, as well as reflection sessions for said PD sessions, in which we can critically analyze how we can apply our knowledge to our work in the arts administration field. However, this transformational leadership is taken to a whole other level when Steph meets with us individually to ask us for our thoughts, concerns, and critiques of the program and makes time to meet with us one-on-one to help us meet our goals, and challenges us to create our own presentations of our learning experiences to make sure that we are learning from our respective internship experiences. Steph is very supportive and perceptive in that she makes the time and space to have phone conversations with us about the work we do, and will always take our side whenever we have grievances with the workplaces we have been paired off to. Steph’s support, helpful resources, attentiveness, and dedicated work ethic drive each of us DIAL interns to advocate for the arts in our communities and think critically about the kind of arts leaders each of us would like to be.

Beth, my supervisor at the Rowan Community Music School, has also demonstrated a high level of transformational leadership in that she does everything she can to learn about how to best bring arts to the community through her work and her team. Beth is very quick to participate in panels, meetings, virtual field trips, and organized conversations with prominent figures in the arts administration field, even if they are not directly affiliated with Rowan University itself, just so that she can gather insights and perspectives to fuel her role as an arts administrator. Not only does Beth fill up most of her schedule with her work, but she also presents to me many invaluable opportunities to participate and make myself known in these events that she attends, which in turn adds to my own motivation and mindmap of what I would like to do as an arts administrator.