Week 5: Solving Problems/Improving Leadership at DIAL/Rowan

As my fifth week of the Americans for the Arts (AFTA) Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) Internship Program with Rowan Community Music School comes to a close, I have gotten to observe much of the leader-follower dynamics in the organizations and made many valuable connections through professional development sessions, reflections, discussions, personal check-ins, and more. Thus, I thought it would be fitting to reflect on some of the problems I observed and improvements that I think could be made to the DIAL program and Rowan based on my experience. The first problem that I think should be addressed is how the presenters at our professional development sessions do not tend to put themselves into the shoes of us as interns. For example, there was one presentation about being within any marginalized minority group in the workplace (race, ethnicity, disability, etc.). I had high expectations that the leaders of this development session would give us specific ways of coping and finding emotional support in scenarios in which we may find ourselves being devalued or disrespected as people. However, the presenters instead talked about the ways in which we as interns could “combat” and “educate” those around us in the first place. As a Leadership Studies major who knows thoroughly about the relationship between Leaders and Followers, I believe that it is important for leaders to note the mental taxation and social jeopardy that comes along with being a follower that is attempting to educate those who are ignorant and have access to educational tools themselves (especially if you are asking those who are in lower positions to “educate” their higher-ups). Only in one of our professional development sessions did we have presenters who told us that we should be in constant assessment of the organization’s values against ours and know our worth in the organization. I think that message is very important to relay to interns who are about to start off in any field so as not to put the stress of “educating” others solely on those who are about to emerge in a field. Rather, I think there should be more of a focus on resources that we can use to help us cope, move forward, build community, and gain credibility in those instances to encourage longevity in our work. 

A second problem that I observed in terms of operational issues is that because everyone at Rowan actually works part-time, it is often difficult to organize consistent times for me to meet with anyone other than my primary supervisor, Beth. Even though my social media work is very closely related to the work of the Community Music School Manager, Rachel, we are often not able to meet because her hours are often outside of my own hours. This often causes miscommunications and post edits that need to be made much later than if we had been able to meet at an earlier time. I think that the social media could run much more smoothly and efficiently if Rachel and I are able to set a time to meet, or if I could schedule a time with her intern to run through exactly what they talk about in their meetings, so as to avoid miscommunications and the production of quality posts.