Leading as craft-work: The role of studio practices in developing artful leaders

•We argue for approaching leadership as a craft.•We offer four practices central to the craft of leading.•We connect these practices to Hetland et al.’s studio practices for learning arts practices.•We offer some implications for what that might mean for leadership development.

SummaryWe start from the assumption that at its heart, leading is an embodied practice; a way of being in relation to others which facilitates the mobilization of groups toward goals. As such, leading is primarily about “doing” and being recognized to do in a particular, leaderly manner. In this way, we suggest that leading resembles a “craft” practice as an embodied application of particular skills within specific contexts. The paper introduces four embodied practices core to the craft of leading: being present, perceiving the context, engaging with others, and enacting resilience. It then speculates about how these might be developed through the kinds of orientations developed by craftspeople working in their studios. The paper concludes by considering implications for those engaged in leader-development interventions.