Artful Leadership

About the Book

"As an accomplished musician and composer, Michael Jones brings a unique sensibility to the subject of leadership. While other writers address style, process ands leadership issues, Michael illuminates the deep parallels between leadership and the creative process."

Peter M Senge
author of The 5th Discipline
Founding Chair, SoL (The Society for Organizational Learning) Senior Lecturer, and MIT Sloan School of Management.

In the future we need to envision a new leadership story - one that involves a transformation in awareness from performance to presence, from uniformity to uniqueness, from abstraction to beauty, from efficiency to improvisation and from instrumentality to the expressive power of story and voice. Together they awaken a commons of the imagination - a collective field of possibility that transforms our mechanistic view of the world to a more sustainable and transcendent vision that is creative, organic and whole.

The primary purpose of Artful Leadership is to explore these fundamental shifts in awareness in the context of cultivating a mind that is more subtle, refined, undefinable, and free flowing - a mind that can perceive underlying patterns of meaning and therefore offer a portal for creating new understandings in an interconnected world.

Michael Jones explores this journey of awakening in the form of a series of conversations with John, a successful senior leader who is searching for greater meaning and purpose in his work. As the conversation unfolds it becomes clear that this journey cannot be achieved alone. Instead leaders will need to come together to reclaim the commons - a space of wholeness and possibility in the personal and public imagination - in order to explore the less tangible dimensions of leadership as preparation for engaging a more complex and changeable world.

In this original and thought - provoking book, Michael Jones foresees a renaissance in leadership practice, one based upon mindful attention, authentic inquiry, an aliveness to the artistic creation and an abundant curiosity for exploring whatever is fresh and new.

About the Author

Over the years, Canadian Michael Jones has quietly established himself as an inspired speaker and facilitator, accomplished composer and pianist, an evocative storyteller, and a fresh and gifted voice in weaving together metaphors from the arts to introduce new perspectives in leadership, learning and change. Michael is best known as the founding artist with Narada Records where his many CD's of original piano compositions, including Pianoscapes, Touch and After the Rain have served as benchmarks for contemporary solo piano recordings for over 25 years, Since then he brought his depth of experience in artistic and leadership practices to introduce new concepts for leading artfully to extraordinarily diverse sectors, including healthcare, corporate, religious, consulting, military, voluntary, education, municipal, and more.

He was a core faculty member with the MIT Dialogue Project and Dialogos facilitating programs in leadership and the art of thinking together. He is a charter-consulting member with the Society for Organizational Learning, a Senior Fellow with the McGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland where he is also chairperson of a knowledge circle on arts leadership and community and a Leadership Fellow with the Center for Professional Excellence at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

The primary focus of his work is to envision a new leadership story that involves a transformation from performance to presence, problems to possibilities, abstraction to beauty, efficiency to improvisation and instrumentality to the expressive power of metaphor and story. Together these awaken a commons of the imagination - a space of wholeness in the personal and collective imagination that may contribute to a more sustainable and transcendent vision that is creative organic and whole.

He has written two books on leadership and creative practice; Creating an Imaginative Life (Conari Press, 1995) (Trafford, 2007) and Artful Leadership: Awakening the Commons of the Imagination (Trafford, 2007).

Through his music, writing and speaking, Michael holds a candle for those seeking to find a deeper sense of purpose and as they learn to navigate a more complex and changeable world.

He has a BA in music and psychology from Mount Allison University and an MA in Adult Learning from the University of Toronto. He lives in a lakeside community north of Toronto Canada with his partner Judy, a practitioner in the healing and fine arts.

Michael's web site is www.pianoscapes.com