After reading this article, I realized it was very interesting and a little complicated.

found it to be interesting because I’ve never seen anyone compare leadership to something like

art. One section Sharon Daloz talks about is how adaptive leadership is similar to art. She talks

about how artists are good at switching things up when something uncontrollable happens. One

of the examples she is kind of saying is that clay isn’t always going to be perfect. One day, a

potter might go to work and their clay will be soft while other days they can come in and have

the clay be rock solid. One example of this that I’ve seen at the Pediatric Developmental Center

was in group. Often times in group, we have to adapt to each kid in order to meet their needs. We

always go into group with a specific activity and project planned, but kids with autism are

unpredictable. Sometimes they come into group happy and ready to work while other days they

hate it and want to leave. Although it’s not always easy coming up with things to do on the spot,

we do it anyways because we want the kids to have a good and productful time.

One part of Daloz’s article talks about how today’s society sees leaders as people that are

higher up like CEO’s, bosses, managers, etc. I think this is a bad way of looking at leadership

because I believe anyone is capable of being a leader. Also, just because someone has a higher

status, doesn’t mean that automatically makes them a leader. Being a leader requires someone to

be adaptive, organized, respectful, responsible, and communicative. Therefore, I don’t like that

society sees the higher ups as leaders. As for Daloz, she sees leadership as an adaptable artform.

I agree with her view here because being adaptive is a huge part of being a leader. Things happen

all of the time that aren’t controllable. If someone shuts down and does nothing, then they aren’t

showing good leadership skills. In contrast to that, someone that adapts to their changes quickly

and later reassess how to fix the problems for next time makes them a good leader. I do find her

comparison to leadership being similar to art a little strange. I feel like this only focuses in on
some professions. It also was hard to understand. If I understood the article more, then maybe it

would’ve been considered a good myth, but for now, I just was confused.

The 5 ways Daloz describes the art of leadership through imagination are conscious

conflict, pause, image or insight, re-patterning, and interpretation. I like the part where Daloz

talks about conscious conflict. Basically, she describes this as someone realizing there’s a

problem and ways to fix that. I think this is an important part of leadership because not

everything is going to go smoothly. For the pause section, I think this just comes naturally with

conscious conflict. When there’s a problem that someone is trying to solve, the only way to do

this is to step back and see what can help. As she moves along the 5 arts of leadership, I noticed

that 1, 2, and 3 can easily be done. Once you get to 4 though, it becomes more complicated. I

think re-patterning is where people stop being leaders because they give up. The fourth tier

requires someone to take action and physically put their thoughts into reality. It becomes

challenging to make a change because it’s a lot of work, time and effort. As for the fifth tier, I

don’t think interpretation from others is super important. Positive changes have to be made and

felt by the actual worker. The outside public’s opinion isn’t as important because the worker

ultimately has to deal with everything. I do think that it’s important to try different things and see

what works best. For some people and some jobs, interpretation and comments from others is

important but not for others.

After reading this article, I didn’t find it that good. I think it was actually a little

confusing. In my opinion, this article and Sharon Daloz’s theory on leadership was very

complicated and complex when it could’ve been much simpler. As for my future, I liked the part

where she talked about 5 things within the imagination framework. I realized that it’s important

to acknowledge what’s not going well in order to make things better. With that being said, a
good leader wouldn’t stop here. Instead, they would go further and test out ways that would

make things better.