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

scholarship is computer-mediated communication,
and I teach an online course. I have
taught this course for continuing education at
the University of Colorado, Boulder, for almost
10 years. What is intriguing about it is how often
students romanticize face-to-face interaction.
They say, “It’s the very best. People are honest
and open and you can read cues, and blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.” What I try to do is say to
them that there is also potential in alternative
ways of interacting. I am not contradicting
myself here to say, let’s optimize what we can
get through face-to-face interaction with one
another. Let’s really think about that and value
that and cherish it. So, those are some ideas as
we move forward. Is anyone inclined to share
what you hope to get from this time together?
If not, that’s OK. You can keep it a secret. I
wish you well as you move forward with that.
I want to take this time to delve a little more
deeply into a topic Shane and I introduced
last night. Tony Garcia brought up something
related to it that is provocative and germane
to what we are trying to do today. I would
like for him to share it briefly with you. Again,
if we are so inclined, we might discuss it just a
bit more before we move into our sessions.
Tony Garcia: We talked a lot last night about
improvisation. Being somebody who comes
from the theatre world, my comments to Brenda
this morning were that we use improvisation in
theatre as a means of building vocabulary, gestures,
actions. Many times we have those within
us, but actors who are beginning sometimes
forget about this. They sometimes think there is
a single appropriate response to give on stage.
Improvisation helps them expand on those
responses because a lot of the time, you can’t
watch yourself—it is almost impossible—and
doing video doesn’t work. So you need a third
eye, which is usually the director, who comes in
and says, “This is what you have built, and this
is how you are responding.” Individuals have a
variety of choices to make in any given situation,
and they can use those choices to ensure a
level of spontaneity on stage. You never know
if you are going to sneeze or if someone is going
to have an epileptic fit in the front row—which
has happened to me. But you still have that
vocabulary to deal with it. So going back to
improvisation, for us, improvisation is a tool for
learning, it is a tool for expanding how you speak
a theatrical language, and it helps to build what
we call planned spontaneity. Theatre is planned
spontaneity. Everything has been rehearsed
and rehearsed and then you just hope it
goes a certain way, but there are so many
elements of spontaneity within that because
we are human and we do human things.
Brenda Allen: Thank you so much. As
I said, I was struck by that concept and
really liked how it corresponded with what
we were talking about last night in terms of
being proactive. And I hope that, Amanda,
it also gives you additional insights into
your question, “How do we do that?”
I think one way to do it, then, is to understand
and to observe yourself and also invite others
to observe you. And, here, I see some room
for mentoring. One way that we can mentor
leaders is through giving them feedback in
terms of what we see as they are interacting
and so forth. Sometimes, I have found
myself—particularly with young women
students—inviting them to think about how
they present themselves. One woman whom I
mentored is now a very close friend of mine. We
actually co-authored a relatively controversial
piece that challenges the notion of Whiteness in
organizational communication literature—and
she is a young White woman herself. She was
a graduate student in my program, and she
had an appointment with me. I was talking
with one of my colleagues when she came
to my office for the appointment and she
said, “Oh, I am so sorry. You are meeting
with someone. Should I just come back?”
And I said, “No, this is the time
for your appointment.”
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