The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

Keynote Address: Diversifying the Face of
Leadership: Scripts and Improvisations
By Brenda J. Allen and Shane Moreman
Shane Moreman: I don’t like the word
leadership. It connotes military commercials
and corporate America and power-hungry
men. I really don’t understand what leadership
is. Well, I have an idea. It means you
are the one everyone follows. They seek your
advice. They trust you to make decisions.
Me, I have never really been a leader. I
know what you are thinking—here is this guy,
standing up to talk about art and diversity and
leadership, and he begins by negating his
credibility. But it’s true. I don’t consider myself
a leader. I don’t want to be a leader. I am
not interested. In fact, my whole life, I have
been intrigued by the people surrounding
the leader. I like to look at and understand
the quiet spouse, the portly sidekick, the little
people who get thanked at awards receptions.
Before earning my doctorate and before
receiving my master’s, I earned a bachelor’s
degree in English. In my English literature
classes, we would discuss the motives of the
main characters and the themes they fulfilled.
When it came time to write the paper at the
end of the semester, I always wrote about
the little people—the people in the shadows.
Starting then, I made a career of focusing not
on the leader but on those who are led.
Even younger than my college days, as a
child watching TV, I would fantasize about
being Robin and not being Batman, about
being Poncho and not Cisco, about being
one of the dancers behind Madonna in the
Lucky Star video. [Moreman sings.] “And
when I’m lost you’ll be my guide—I just
turn around and you’re by my side.” 1
I have my reasons for rejecting the role of
leader. One reason is because I watched
my parents—blue-collar line workers—and
they were never the organizational leaders.
I’ve watched them pursue their lives without
seeking leadership roles and, although I’m
not blaming them for anything, I never
learned to be a leader by their example.
Something we are going to talk about here
tonight is that my generation has always
lived in the shadows of the Baby Boomers.
They came onto the scene and made
themselves the center, the leader. And the
Baby Boomer presence is my second reason
for not desiring the role of the leader.
Each decade or so, these babies throw their
fits and reposition themselves as the focus of
society. It inevitably happens. In the ‘50s, they
were poodle skirts, leather jackets, rock-n-roll
and segregation. In the ‘60s, they were “make
love, not war,” “if it feels good, do it” naked
dancing hippies. In the ‘70s, they were the
synthetic fabric, Roe v. Wade, penicillin-popping
disco goers. In the ‘80s, they were the “me”
generation. In the ‘90s, they gave us the deficit,
the Iraq war, high hoops to jump with fewer
resources. It has always been about them.
It’s always been about the Baby Boomers.
Of course, their attention seeking and voice
raising has brought us a lot of progress—you
can’t deny that. Like the civil rights movement—civil
rights concerning people of color,
women, and queers. All of this could not have
been possible without the leadership of the Baby
Boomers—without the Baby Boomers taking risks.
But how are the Baby Boomers different from
us? My generation, what are we called? The
Cold War generation or the thirteenth generation
or the X generation or the Y generation
or the slackers. We have been consistently
told that we are in for a different ride. Our
standard of living is less than the generation
before us. We cannot expect to work at the
same company for the duration of our working
lives. I was told in undergraduate school that
the job that I would have probably hadn’t
even been created yet. Social Security will
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