and Music

46
Leadership Skills: Soft Skills for an Arts Graduate in a Leading Role
I have come to the realisation that there is no right and
wrong with leadership. The right style of leadership varies
by industry, by person, by the people you are leading. It
is unrealistic to think that one leader’s way is necessarily
the only way.
(Wetlaufer, 2001 in Chong, 2002)
These words belong to Michael Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Company from 1984 till
2005, and, admittedly, one of the most charismatic business leaders in the field of entertainment.
Under his directions, the Disney Company succeeded in regaining the reputation it had lost in
previous years, but also progressed and developed into one of the largest entertainment
companies in the world.
Eisner is not just an expert with strong leadership qualities, but also a contemporary “thinker”,
one might say, on the art of effective team leading. His own words, drawn from his vast
experience in directing Disney Company, describe the roles and attributes of a successful leader
much simpler and clearer than most current business books, which focus on the same subject.
Leadership in the course of history
Leadership, however, as a notion and a power skill, is as old as history, and goes far beyond
Eisner and Eisner’s predecessors in the business world. The literature on the role and traits of a
good leader is very rich and spans over a wide period of more than 2500 years, coming from
both the East and the West. Famous examples include the ancient Chinese treatise of the 6th
century BCE, The Art of War by Sun Tzu; the ancient Indian handbook Arthashastra attributed
to Kautilya, dated to the 4th century BCE, and of course Machiavelli’s notorious political
treatise – or satire, according to some theorists – The Prince, published in Italy in 1532. If one
compares the content of those texts to the current literature on leadership skills, one will not
detect any major differences in the descriptions of the nature and characteristics of a good
leader. On the contrary, the similarities on the subject between old and new texts are striking.
In Sun Tzu’s treatise, for example, there are several passages like the following, which sketch
out in vivid metaphors the profile of a good army commander:
“Because the commander cares for his soldiers as if they were infants, they will follow him
through the greatest dangers. Because he loves his soldiers as if they were his own sons, they
will stand by him even unto death. However, if he indulges his troops to the point he cannot use
them, if he dotes on them to the point he cannot enforce his orders, if his troops are disorderly
and he is unable to control them, they will be like spoiled children and useless. […] Hence, he
must win them over by treating them humanely and keep them in line with strict military
discipline. […] When the authority of command is highly respected, then there is bound to be
a harmonious relationship between the commander and his soldiers.” (Tzu, 2003)
More than two millennia later, similar skills and qualities are described, much less poetically
yet equally convincingly, in Eisner’s identification of four leadership roles in Disney:
“First, leading by example, ‘also means showing a combination of enthusiasm and loyalty to
the institution, and […] demanding excellence in the organisation.’ Second, being there, means