The effects of collaborative creative arts on leadership competency self-awareness: A social science portraiture study

The purpose of this social science portraiture study is to examine how self-awareness of leadership capabilities is affected by engagement in collaborative creative art. This study included 5 co-worker participants with whom the researcher serves as Director of Organizational Development. Using a conceptual frame comprised of postphenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and objective self-awareness theory, the primary research questions that guided the inquiry was: How do the materials, creative process, and peer interactions within a collaborative arts project impact the participant's self-awareness of their leadership capabilities as compared to the program's leadership competency model? Data were collected in four stages. First, participants self-assessed against a competency model during intake interviews. Second, participants collaborated on a creative art piece during three 90-minute workshops that depicted their shared understanding of the essence of executive business management. Third, a focus group discussion occurred at the close of the final workshop. Fourth, participants reassessed themselves against the competency model during exit interviews. A review of the literature from the fields of leader identity development, self-awareness, arts-based leader development, and emotional intelligence provided the lens through which the data were analyzed. The participant's self-assessments indicated that their self-awareness of their leadership capabilities did change as a result of the creative collaborative art project. The consensus was that interacting with peers in a collaborative art project was the most impactful element. The art materials had a significant impact although the participants did not acknowledge this impact in their exit interviews. The art materials provided a means for creating a metaphor for executive business management and helped the participants discover the concepts expressed by the metaphor. This study demonstrates the ability of the arts to contribute to leader meaning making. This study also suggests that collaborative creative arts can provide learning spaces that support deepened self-awareness of developing leaders. The disconnect between the emotional content evident in the data and the participants' self-assessments suggests that self-reflective methods that better engage learners' affective domain would be beneficial. Increased awareness of learner's capabilities on the part of the organizational development practitioner was an unexpected byproduct of the study.