Sphinx LEAD Reflection
Wow. How to adequately capture my Sphinx LEAD experience in words? I don’t think I can. But here are some reflections anyway!
I started writing this in an Uber, driving away from Cohort 6’s final retreat of the Sphinx LEAD program. We spent our last couple of hours sharing anecdotes that came to mind from the two years together. One that I shared at our final lunch was from our very first retreat. After our brief official group meeting at the start of that retreat, at SphinxConnect in Detroit, our group took the Detroit People Mover to dinner. I don’t even remember why, but we laughed so hard on that ride across town. And then we had a wonderful dinner together. Our first conversations were perhaps a tad stilted and “networking happy hour” esque but not that much. We all quickly became comfortable with each other. And then we laughed just as hard on the ride back to our hotel.
About midway through the two-year program, I started reflecting a bit more on what it really means to be a leader. Specifically an arts administrative leader, but also just generally. I had opted in to the optioned mentorship component of Sphinx LEAD. I had been paired with the always insightful Heather Noonan from the League of American Orchestras, and she had been helping me think through these big ideas for several months at the time as well. Interestingly, everyone in my cohort works for large and/or long-established institutions, so we were frequently talking about what it means to be a change maker in that context.
What I realized is that leadership is not solely, and perhaps not even mainly, about titles and institutional or public responsibilities. It’s about how one shows up into a particular time and space. It’s about how one honors the trust granted by an invitation to join an organization, or even just to join a conversation. It certainly shaped my thinking last year over Christmas break when I had accepted but not yet started the job I now hold as the National Symphony Orchestra’s finance director. It also shapes how I think about my role as co-president of the advocacy organization Embracing Arlington Arts. And it shapes how I respond to the occasional messages I get from college students or early career professionals who find me through social media or a mutual acquaintance and seek my advice.
And what I realized about changemaking is that it’s not just CEOs who make change. The changes a CEO makes get more attention, but everyone in an organization can influence the institutional evolution in lasting ways. Over half the people in my cohort changed jobs during the two-year period of the program. The congratulatory messages we exchanged in our group chat upon announcing the signing of an offer letter carried special weight for us. We all knew the attitude with which we were each assuming our new responsibility – not as just a job, but as a unique, humbling opportunity to influence an organization.
Without a doubt the best part of the Sphinx LEAD program has been my cohort itself, the nine other brilliant, passionate, thoughtful, kind human beings that have been my sounding boards, my moral support, and my comic relief during this program – and I know for a fact that group chat will stay quite active! On retreats, we each bring different questions and insights to each seminar and roundtable. And the conversations we have after unpacking the session’s content are just as insightful and thought-provoking to me as the conversation in the session itself.
Thank you to Jake Lane and the Sphinx team for curating such a formative program. Thank you to our retreat hosts around the country (Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard School, New World Symphony, Ravinia Festival, San Francisco Conservatory). Thank you to Eugene Rogers for suggesting the program and encouraging me to apply.
And thank you Adrian, Alexa, Audrey, Hannah, Hassan, Imelda, Lia, Lyanne, and Raynel, for letting me share this journey with you. Thank you for always been on call in the group chat to hear about whatever challenge I was facing, and for letting me offer the listening ear as well. Thank you for making me laugh. And thank you for the mutual promise that we will always be a cohort, and that we will always cheer for each other.
Sphinx LEAD Cohort 6 at SphinxConnect 2024 at the Detroit Renaissance Center. From left to right: me, Lyanne, Hassan, Imelda, Adrian, Lia, Alexa, Audrey, Hannah, Raynel. Photo credit: Linton Robinson.
