TAG: Opera America

SPIRE For Leaders: One Year Later

Since 2013, I have had the privilege of teaching at OPERA America’s Leadership Intensive Program. This initiative trains mid-career opera executives to take on senior leadership positions at major opera companies. We meet for a week in New York and then I have a series of coaching calls with the leaders throughout the year. For our most recent cohort in …

SPIRE for Leaders: How to Bring Happiness to Your Organization

In my last blog post, I wrote about Tal Ben-Shahar’s SPIRE model of happiness and how to apply it to improve your life. In this blog post, I will talk about SPIRE for Leaders and how it benefits the non-profit workplace culture. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege and pleasure to lead a SPIRE workshop at the 2022 …

Energy Management During COVID: 3 Steps to Manage Your Stress

Stress and energy management during the COVID Pandemic are a challenge! We experience stress in many different ways.  It can arise from major life stressors like the COVID pandemic, the passing of a loved one or the loss of a job. Our daily encounters can also give rise to stress. These include feeling overwhelmed with too much to do, facing …

Authentic Personal Leadership for Arts Leaders: Goal-setting for Leadership Development

Once again, I had the privilege and pleasure to train the mid-career leaders selected for Opera America’s Leadership Intensive 2020. Our work together centers on authentic personal leadership to prepare the participants to step into larger leadership roles. Authentic Personal Leadership Development Curriculum My curriculum focused on how to develop the necessary qualities and skills for taking on larger leadership roles …

Leadership For Arts Entrepreneurs: 4 Key Elements of Your Leadership Style

In my last post, I dissected the lessons of leadership from Itay Talgam’s TED Talk on conducting and leadership and Marin Alsop’s interview at Yale, and highlighted 4 key elements of a leadership style: Be Yourself Find a Mentor Learn from Failure Create a Relationship of Mutual Respect These lessons  provided the backdrop for a call that I recently led with …

How Arts Leaders Manage Failure: 4 Strategies to Learn and Grow

Failure. The true “F” word. So many people are afraid of failure, particularly smart, talented ambitious people who set very high standards for themselves and worry that if they ever fail, they feel they just are not up to the job. It’s particularly difficult hard to admit failure in a world where the opportunities are perceived to be scarce and …

Using Music to Solve Problems: How Music Entrepreneurs Discover Solutions in 3 Steps

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How can the process of learning how to perform music help music entrepreneurs and arts leaders solve difficult leadership problems when the answers are not obvious? This was among the questions under discussion at last week’s Opera America’s Leadership Intensive Next Steps (LINS) program, which brought together 15 talented mid-career opera managers to provide advanced leadership training in order to retain high-quality leaders …

The Growth Mindset of Arts Entrepreneurs: An Essential Element in Creating Success

With summer behind us and everyone back in the saddle at work or at school, this is a great opportunity to start off the new year with a new mindset. Whether I am teaching conservatory music students, working with arts leaders or coaching individual clients, my project is the same: how can I help you to create authentic success and …