Episode 134

Applying Museum Education Skills to Organisational Culture with Rebecca Shulman

In today's episode host Claire Bown talks with museum consultant Rebecca Shulman.

Rebecca has a wealth of experience in museum education and leadership, and is passionate about how we can make museums better places to work through improving organisational culture.

Listen in to discover why museum educators are naturally suited for leadership roles through our skills in fostering inquiry, trust, and psychological safety. Rebecca also discusses the current challenges museums face, such as generational divides and the need for clear goals. This conversation is packed with practical advice and fresh ideas. Enjoy!

**My book 'The Art Engager: Reimagining Guided Experiences in Museums 'is out now as an e-book and a print edition too. https://www.theartengager.com/

The Art Engager is written and presented by Claire Bown. Music by Richard Bown.

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Transcript
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Hi, Rebecca, and welcome to The Art Engager podcast.

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Hi, thank you for having me on your podcast, Claire.

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You're very welcome.

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So can you tell our listeners who you are and what you do?

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Yeah, I am Rebecca Shulman, and I am a consultant.

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My consulting firm is called Museum Questions Consulting and I have actually

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thought a lot about what is it I do?

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It's a difficult question.

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I spent the first part of 2023, the first year of consulting essentially throwing

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spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

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But now I have a mission statement for myself, which I think of as I motivate

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leaders at all levels to think deeply and carefully about goals and systems

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so that they can plan and be effective.

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So it's a clear mission, but a pretty open consulting practice.

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I do lots of different things.

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I particularly do strategic planning, evaluation, program

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design, educator training.

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And what I'm really passionate about right now is organizational

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culture and the question of how can we make museums really wonderful.

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So we'll get into all of these subjects.

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But I'd like to ask you a question.

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I ask quite a few of our guests about values and values are incredibly important

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to the work that we do in museums.

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So what values inform and guide your work?

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Yeah it's a great question.

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Curiosity, I think, is a key value for me and genuine curiosity.

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I ask a lot of questions and I really want to know the answers

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and the answers inform my practice.

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also, one of my values is the strong belief that everybody in

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the room has something to offer.

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I know that a lot of what you think about is gallery education, tours and

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museums and I think this is the perfect place in which to see that, this idea

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that you open up a conversation and as the facilitator, you're the learner,

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because everybody has something to share.

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And then a third value, it's the belief that everybody has agency and

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responsibility to make the world in which they live, whether you think

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about that as your family or your workplace or your world more generally.

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A little bit better than it was when I started.

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And tell us a little bit about the projects that you're working on now.

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So I know you said that you spent a lot of time this year trying

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things out, doing a lot of research, speaking to a lot of people.

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Yeah.

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So what are you working on now that you're really excited about?

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Yeah, so I'm just launching a number of initiatives related to

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organizational culture, and there's two cohort based offerings that I

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am really excited about coming up.

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One of them which registration is open now, and it starts in mid

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October, is called Cultureshift.

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Cultureship is a program for museum directors or members of

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the leadership team who want to think about organizational

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culture and how to make it better.

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And I will not only be introducing sort of information about organizational

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culture and information and ideas from a lot of different disciplines,

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but also taking people through the process of, Auditing and identifying

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an issue in their own museum culture, and actually making change, thinking

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about a programmatic approach to making change in the museum's culture.

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So I'm really excited about that.

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And then I'm also really excited about Seed Management.

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Seed is a group, a trio, myself, Rachel Ropik, and David Bowles, and

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we offered a version of Seed, aimed at gallery educators in Baltimore prior

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to AAM 2024 and that's been fantastic.

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And now we want to broaden our scope because SEED is really about

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helping people be better managers.

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So this is a workshop that will be in New York City on January 13th.

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It's open to anyone who is a manager whether they're a new

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manager or an experienced manager who wants to grow their abilities.

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At any level in a museum or cultural institution to think about their people.

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Fantastic.

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So two really exciting offerings there.

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Now, I want to take you back a little bit.

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In time, because I was trying to work out when we met, I think it was

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10 years ago, I think it was 2014.

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You asked me to write a blog for your website for museum questions.

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And I wrote a blog about fostering thinking skills on field trips.

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And then, as I knew you then, you were a museum educator, and since

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then you've had a number of diverse fields so you've moved from educator

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to director and now you're consultant.

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So, how have these Diverse roles and experiences really shaped your approach.

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Yes, the moment in 2014 when we first connected, when you wrote

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that blog post for me, I was just starting out as a consultant.

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My family had just moved from New York City to Peoria, Illinois.

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And I was a consultant very briefly before I stumbled into an amazing job as the

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director of a brand new children's museum, the Peoria Playhouse Children's Museum.

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And I did that for seven and a half years before returning to the

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East Coast of the United States.

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So, over the course of that time, I think I was able to, both grow

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my skillset as a museum leader in a very different type of capacity.

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It's a small museum, so I got to grow all sorts of skillsets.

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But also think about how my background as a museum educator had contributed

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to my abilities as a leader.

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And I had led teams at both the Guggenheim Museum and the Noguchi Museum.

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And I had discovered early on that leading a team is something that is

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a really powerful experience for me.

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I love learning together.

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I love being the person who enables other people to make

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decisions and to do their work.

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I love the power that a team of individuals brings to the table in

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crafting new ideas and new programs.

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And I learned that I'm pretty good at managing a team.

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I have gotten, a lot of good feedback from people I've supervised and I have

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seen a lot of people really struggle with managing the organizational

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culture in museums and other spaces.

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And those people are far better than me often at other aspects of management,

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but it is that organizational culture piece where I discovered that I had

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not only training as an educator and a knack for it, but some theories

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about how it could be better.

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And then the last year I've really had the opportunity to do research into

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organizational culture both through online courses and talking to people from a

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range of other fields, through reading materials and talking to museum directors.

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And you've spent some time this year writing a report.

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So you've been talking to museum directors, I think 14 museum

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directors you interviewed.

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Can you tell us a little bit about that?

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Yeah I interviewed exactly 14 museum directors and asked them a series

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of questions, including how do they assess organizational culture, what

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they struggle with in organizational culture, and some of the innovations

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that they have created in their own museums or fixes that they found in

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their own museums to make things better.

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And I'm very grateful for the 14 museum directors.

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I know that organizational culture is a really challenging thing for people

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to think about and be open about.

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And I discovered a number of things.

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I discovered that museums don't really have an effective way of

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assessing organizational culture.

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And my research with museums intersected with my conversations with people who do

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that assessment in the corporate realm.

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Often we rely on anonymous surveys, but while that might work in a company of 5,

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000, it doesn't work in a museum of 80, simply because the roles are too varied

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and the sample sizes are too small.

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So that's been a really interesting area of learning that I continue to

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pursue and experiment and learn more in.

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I learned that people feel very alone when they talk about the challenges

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that they're facing, but they're not.

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Every museum has challenges.

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Every museum is different.

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If you're struggling with organizational culture in your

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museum, you have good company.

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And I learned that a lot of museum directors are coming up with amazing ways

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to address it, and we don't share that.

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And so we're each reinventing the wheel.

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One more thing that I want to mention about the report is that I start with

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a metaphor, and I love this metaphor.

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And this metaphor came out of a conversation I had with an architect

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who works with museum directors.

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And I was saying to him that I wanted to do this work.

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I wanted to help museums make their museums better places to work.

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And he said to me that he talks to a lot of museum directors and what

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he hears from them is that they feel like they are captains of a boat.

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And that boat is being attacked by pirates and it's on fire.

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And I understand that as a metaphor for declining attendance and

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declining contributed income.

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and All sorts of other challenges that museums have right now.

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We have so many challenges.

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And so these museum directors are furiously rusting around their boat,

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trying to put out the fires and fight off the pirates, and meanwhile, below

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deck, there are people who are saying, But you're not listening to me.

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I'm not being heard.

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And the thing that I love about this metaphor and what makes it so complicated

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is that I think that is how museum directors feel and I think there are

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people who feel like they're below deck.

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But if your boat is being attacked by pirates, if your attendance is

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dwindling, if your budget is in trouble, if you have areas of your collection

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that you don't even know if they should be in a museum or they should

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be returned to where they came from.

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You need your whole team.

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You need everyone rowing in the same direction, everyone moving towards

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that same vision, and that is a huge part of organisational culture.

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Every museum director has a vision, It is largely a question

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of how do you articulate it?

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How do you communicate it?

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How do you build a team off of it?

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And how do you make sure that every role for every person is really moving

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towards that vision so people feel like their work is important to the

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overall vision of the director and therefore feel that they have value

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it's such a powerful metaphor.

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And you said there that Every director has a vision.

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That's quite a tall order, bringing that vision into reality, getting everyone

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on board, making the organization work together, as you say, row together.

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But quite often in the museum field managers aren't

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formally trained, are they?

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It's a case of career progression or they move from one department to another.

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So how does this gap of impact the effectiveness of museum leadership?

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Yeah, I would say this issue of promoting people outside of what they're

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good at is not just a museum issue.

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Corporate literature talks about this as well.

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The difference is that if you are a new corporate manager, there

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are trainings that are either offered by your company or that are

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available outside of your company.

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I haven't seen very many management trainings that are in the museum field.

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I've seen some leadership cohorts and seminars but not real management

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training, and that's a real lack, that's why we created seed management.

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And I think it's important for museums to think about what we

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want in leaders in our museums.

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And certainly for many years we have valued curatorial knowledge, a real

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understanding of the collections.

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And we have valued fundraising expertise.

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And as a former museum director, I was the director of a Children's Museum.

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And so, that curatorial knowledge with understanding of children and

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families, and that was critical.

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And fundraising was a huge learning curve for me, and I fully

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understand how important that is.

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But being able to share and lead and manage your team, and make sure that

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your managers are managing well is something that we often have limited

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tools to really ensure is doing well.

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And that's the area where I think I can help.

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You said as well that at the Guggenheim, you had to learn this on your own.

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You never got that training.

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So,

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Right.

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I started at the Guggenheim right out of, pretty much right out of

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graduate school as a coordinator who ran the docent program.

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And I think because docents are volunteers, it's a coordinator position,

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it's not considered a management job and nobody taught me how to manage.

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And then I was promoted from there into manager of the Learning Through

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Art program, which is a large outreach program where I managed both a team of

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part time staff, which were teaching artists, as well as full time staff.

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So nowhere along the way was there an institutional check in to see how do you

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lead meetings, and how do you inspire your team, and how do you give feedback.

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There's certainly some protocols, there's always performance review protocols, etc.

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And luckily for me as I mentioned earlier, I feel like this is the

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aspect of management that I have now.

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It would have been really amazing if the Guggenheim had offered me better

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training in reading and managing budget.

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Because while I'm good with money, I'm bad with numbers.

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Numbers are confusing to me.

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But people are really in my wheelhouse.

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And it's not for everybody.

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So then I would watch other managers struggle and they might excel again in

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place where I struggled, but the people who worked for them were unhappy often.

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you have this extensive background in museum education and I think

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quite often museum educators make wonderful museum managers.

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So what is it about museum educators that makes them ideal candidates

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for going into museum leadership?

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So I think there's been a lot of discussion in the field about this

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recently, which has been great, but one of the most wonderful tools I read recently

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was I got to get a sneak preview at your forthcoming book which is amazing and I

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can't wait to see it, out in the world, so I can share it with everybody who is

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going to be giving tours in galleries.

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But a lot of the things that you talk about as necessary for museum educators

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is really, I think, important in terms of managing groups of people.

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So a few examples, one is you talk about creating a community of inquiry,

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and I referenced this earlier, but this idea that when you are

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leading a conversation in a tour, You're not telling people things.

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You're listening to people.

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You're learning from people.

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And I think that is a really important aspect of management that clearly

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aligns with my value of curiosity.

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You talked about the different roles facilitators can play.

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You talk about facilitators as coordinator, catalyst, rapport

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builder, listener, enabler, motivator.

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And I think it's really important for leaders to understand that they each

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have different styles in that way.

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You really need to understand and embrace your style and leverage that

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to better communicate with people.

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You talked about creating a group that is working toward a common purpose.

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So similar to the vision that we were talking about before and group

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members hold each other accountable.

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So if you have a big question in a work of art, for example, that you're exploring,

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that group has a common purpose, which is the understanding of this idea

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related to this painting, for example.

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You talked about establishing trust by being credible and reliable in creating

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a space of comfort and demonstrating that you're not working out of self interest,

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all of that credibility and reliability that you really have to work hard to

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make sure is perceptible as an educator.

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I think it's really important.

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Equally important, if not more, as a manager.

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And finally, the other idea that you talked about in your book that I was

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really interested in is the idea of creating a space of psychological safety.

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And maybe that sort of is an umbrella idea that captures all of this.

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That as an educator, you need to create a space in which people can explore and

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learn and do together that feels safe.

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And a lot of what we're hearing from people when they, throw around the

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word burnout or when they post things about elitism in their organization

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on Instagram accounts like Change the Museum, We're really seeing how

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people feel psychologically unsafe.

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First of all, thank you so much for being so gracious to read my book and

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to write me a recommendation as well.

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That's absolutely fabulous.

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I'm agreeing with you here.

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Totally.

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I would.

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It's my book.

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It's my words but also I think I would add to that.

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Maybe it's something to do with that self awareness, That mindset that we have as

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educators, we are continually learning, we are reflecting on our practice, we

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are developing that self awareness, learning from missteps or failures, and

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using that to better our performance, to better our interactions, to make

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better connections with people as well.

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So I think, yeah, adding to all of those things that you mentioned, the

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inquiry, the trust, working towards something, being in it together, that

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vision idea, I would add that self awareness and perhaps reflective practice.

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It's interesting that you mentioned that.

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For Culture Shift, one of the first things that I'm going to ask the participants to

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do is to start or continue if they already have their own reflective practice.

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And a lot of what I think about and know about Reflective practice comes from the

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education realm, and maybe because of the way museum culture often works, I

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have been really looking for reflective practice in other realms, And I have found

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some references to reflective practice in internal communication journals.

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So, yes, I think educators are experts in reflection and we know that is

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critical to always getting better.

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But I also think that museum educators have a humbleness to them that works

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when you're an employee in an education department to some extent and doesn't,

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isn't valued in other departments.

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So one of the things that colleagues have been sharing with me is a concern about

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museums, that we have a culture of ego.

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That in museums individuals tend to be recognized rather than teams.

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That the people who are best at promoting themselves tend

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to be the ones that get ahead.

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I do think that especially in large museums, that is very true.

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Because I know museum educators better perhaps, than, for example, curators, I

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see a lot of people struggling with that.

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A lot of the educators that I respect struggle to brag about their work.

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And so sometimes there is a culture clash between museum culture and educator

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culture, and it is the approach of that educator culture that I think might

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be more advantageous to management.

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That's really interesting.

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One of the reasons why I started this podcast is that I kept hearing all

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these amazing stories of projects of programs that were being developed

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by museum educators and their teams.

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And, I couldn't find information about them anywhere.

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I was looking and wanting to find out more and I couldn't.

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And so I started this podcast to be able to highlight those stories, to

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share and inspire other educators, but also to shine a spotlight on

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the work that educators were doing.

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And back in 2021, when this podcast started, that was mid pandemic.

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So we were in the time when museums were for the most part

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closed, and a huge number of museum educators had been laid off.

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They were the first perhaps to go along with a visitor experience staff as well.

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And I think sometimes this humility that you're describing perhaps is to

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our detriment that we are not shouting about our work from the rooftops and

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we're not singing our praises and talking about all the amazing and wonderful

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initiatives that we're able to do and that it sometimes has a knock on effect.

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I think that it is to our detriment because we are in a culture that

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operates on a different value.

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The curator who creates a very successful exhibition, has a catalog,

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and that catalog has their name on it.

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I think that's the most obvious example.

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So it's interesting to think about.

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Different departments all have their own different cultures.

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But one of the things that I am very interested in is...

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different things work for different museums, and so there may be some museums

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in which helping educators toot their own horn is one of the solutions to some

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organizational culture issues, and not just educators, but helping everybody

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be better at sharing what they're doing.

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And there may be some museums in which lowering the volume of the brag might be

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better, and recognizing people as a team.

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And so I look forward to working with lots of different museums with

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lots of different ideas, and this is where the vision of the director

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is important, right, because that is where it has to come from.

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And then, with the same goal in mind, and the goal being that everyone will

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feel heard and valued, presumably.

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And so how does that happen in each museum?

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And how different is it from museum to museum?

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So I think it goes back to the reflectiveness that you're talking about.

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I am so excited about what I'm going to learn over the next couple of years

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doing this work about how different the stances of different museums are on this

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exact issue that we're talking about, which has to do with, shining a light on

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individuals versus programs and themes.

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I'd like to talk a little bit about Some of the biggest challenges in the field.

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So, you talk to a lot of people.

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You talk to a lot of leaders.

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What are the biggest challenges in the museum field today?

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And how can we go about addressing some of these?

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I certainly think that one of the large challenges facing museums, I'm going

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to keep coming back to organizational culture, but it's people who work in

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museums who are not part of leadership feeling undervalued, underheard.

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Often they are finding that the only way to get the ear of

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leadership is by unionizing.

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That is a complicated process with a result that might not 100 percent

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match what their initial goal was.

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So that's just a small piece in the complex puzzle of, how

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do we create a space in which people feel heard and valued?

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I think it is exacerbated by, what appear right now to be generational differences,

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but might be age differences, and that's something that a group of colleagues and I

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are studying and thinking about right now.

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So there's a lot of young, really politically active, wonderful people

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who work in museums, who want their museums to echo their politics and

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the values that they hold severe, and are finding that their museums don't.

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And I think it is a problem that museums don't have strategies in

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their back pocket for talking about those issues before they blow up.

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There's been a number of walkouts in museums for reasons associated with it.

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I think we have not achieved appropriate diversity in museums in a lot of ways,

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but I also think maybe As we reflect and assess on the DEI work that's been done

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over the past decade or so, maybe we're getting a little bit more sophisticated

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and thinking about what inclusion looks like and how do you get there?

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Because having somebody who comes in and speaks for two hours once a year

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is probably not the answer to changing how people understand difference.

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And I think that continues to be a challenge in museums.

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Yeah, we certainly try to do too much with the human resources that we have

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available in most museums, and I do think we have, some declining financial numbers

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for a variety of reasons in museums right now, and I don't know how this plays out.

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I think it's similar in other countries besides the United States, I'm most

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aware of it in the United States.

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But that is being paired with a crisis about what our museums can do.

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Are they about objects?

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Are they about people?

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Are they third spaces or the object oriented spaces?

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And there's a lot of, oh, we're all these things.

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But as somebody who does a lot of strategic planning, I, Constantly remain

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aware that strategy is about making difficult decisions and our failure as

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a field to really make that decision makes our jobs harder because being

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all things to all people is a big ask.

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Thank you for speaking to some of the challenges that are in the field.

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And you were just making me think then of external influences, because obviously in

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the book, I bring together lots of ideas which are outside of the museum field and

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I'm always looking to other areas where we can get inspiration, from we can learn

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from and we can grow, inspiration from outside our little bubble, so to speak.

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So I know you're also keen on bringing external ideas into your work.

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So you share some examples of this for us?

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Yeah, this is another place where you and I are so closely aligned.

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When I started my blog late 2013 which is the Museum Questions blog, a large

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part of what I wanted to do was have a platform in which to interview people

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and learn about what they were doing because I learned best through talking

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to people and so that gave me an excuse to reach out to people outside of the

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museum field and learn what they were doing and pull it into the museum field.

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And one of the people that I've gone back to a couple of times, for

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example, is Daniel Willingham, who..

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I learned about his work because he worked for the American Federation of

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Teachers magazine, and he writes about what we know about cognitive psychology

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and how it applies to teaching.

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And I just think that's so important and a part that we often forget to look

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back on, well, how do people learn?

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What do we know about how people process information?

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So he has been a real influence on me.

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There's a professor at Columbia Teachers College, Michael Hansen, who

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studies creativity, and I've learned so much from him about creativity

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and that's been amazing, and was able to introduce that to my team at

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Learning Through Art at Guggenheim.

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When I was at the Peoria Playhouse Children's Museum, We were thinking a

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lot about play facilitation, and this is one of the challenging problems

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in children's museums is what does it mean for staff to facilitate play?

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What's the role of the parent or caregiver?

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What's the role of the staff member?

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How do you facilitate play when you don't arrive with the child or know the child?

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And so, In 2019, we set up Zoom meetings, learning from people around the country.

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So we learned from experts in Regio Emilia, in Montessori, in play therapy,

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which has remained a really big influence on me, in theatrical improvisation.

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And now I have been doing that with organizational culture.

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So I've talked to industrial psychologists who do surveying and

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studying of culture to assess it.

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I have I've talked to human resources specialists who focus on onboarding.

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I am going to fail to think of everybody I've talked to quickly

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because there have been so many.

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So just always bringing these ideas into my work has been, one of the

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most gratifying parts of the adventure

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. And and the beauty of these external influences is that it gets to enrich

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our lives in other ways as well, not just in our work, but, it's just a

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never ending source of inspiration so I'm totally with you on that.

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So I'd love to ask you if you've read anything recently that you'd

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like to recommend to our listeners.

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I'm sure you've got some inspiring books and things that you can share with us.

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Yes, thank you for asking that.

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I'm surrounded by books right now.

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So I'm gonna, I'm gonna share just a couple, but constantly

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encountering new things.

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I'm grateful to all the people who introduced me to new sources.

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So one thing that a colleague introduced me to recently is an article from

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Museum Management and Curatorship.

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I didn't even know about this journal a year ago, and there have

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been some wonderful things in it.

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But there's an article about the Museum Values Framework, which talks about

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the different roles that museums play and and the values that that reflects.

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It's an article by Sue Davies, Rob Patton, and Terry O'Sullivan.

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Another thing that I've been reading lately that I love is DEI Deconstructed

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that Rob Weisberg at Museum Human and wrote about and shared that it's amazing.

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And then I've been reading as much as possible about management.

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And so there's a Harvard Business Review press book called Power to the Middle

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about middle managers that I found really wonderful because it's all so familiar.

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Right, it's about corporate America, and it's about the position that we put middle

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managers in and how to support them.

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And it really resonated for museums.

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So those are just like as you ask that, and I look around a few

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of the things that I'm reading

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We will get links to those and we will share them in the show notes so that

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everybody can look them up as well.

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And if people have books that they think I should read or articles that I

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should see, I hope that they will share.

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Brilliant.

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So we will share links to your website.

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People will get in touch with you via your website and find out more about

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culture shift and seed management as well.

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But thank you, Rebecca.

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Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.

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It's been a real pleasure.

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Thank you so much.

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It's always wonderful to talk to you.

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The Art Engager
Master the art of meaningful engagement in museums and cultural spaces

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Claire Bown