#0134: Art versus craft
Braingasm
The very best leaders have an uncanny ability to work in ways that seem magical to those around them. They often seem to have superpowers that set them apart from others who merely exist in their roles.
The magic manifests itself in a few different ways. For example, by giving the leader a seemingly extra allocation of time unavailable to the rest of us, or by imbuing them with preternatural creative insights, or the ability to simplify where others can only make things more complex.
What is going on here?
Without pretending that there is some effortless secret that can give you leadership superpowers, it is worth appreciating that art and craft are involved and are not the same thing. Influential leaders know about “art versus craft moves” and when to deploy them and doing so makes them look like they have magic powers.
An “art vs craft move” is something that happens when a skilled practitioner in a field does what appears to be magic or even completely invisible to those outside the field, but are second nature to the skilled practitioner. In most professions or creative endeavours, what those who are not proficient in the nuances see when they observe someone operating at a high level is the art of that profession. What they do not see, or perhaps can’t even appreciate, is the craft that goes into making the art possible.
Consider this metaphor. If you look at a painting in a gallery, what you see directly on the canvas is the art. But the art is just the last part of the process that led to the painting coming into existence. You do not see the hours of learning and practice — how the artist understands how colour works on different materials or what the concepts of composition or figure and ground mean, how a brush can be cut and shaped to change the way paint is applied, or even something as mundane as how to stretch the canvas onto a frame so that it is ready for the artist to work.
These are all craft moves and just about every creative endeavour you can think of has a litany of these that skilled practitioners know all about, but that anyone else (generally) can’t even see, let alone appreciate.
When you are coding, it might be the way you set up your personal software process to write software productively. As a product manager, it might be some neat programmatic sync between a list of external dependencies that removes many human steps others folks on the team are not even aware are necessary. As a technical lead, it might be how you keep an eye on collaboration messages and check-in activity over the course of a day to get a sense of the team’s mood and velocity.
The lesson here is that what is true for creative endeavours like fine art or programming or product management is just as true for leadership. Leaders do not all of a sudden, become exemplary leaders by merely attaining the title.
There is an awful lot of writing about the art of leadership, but much less on the craft. One of the reasons is that much of the craft of leadership ends up being tedious and mundane. However, there is a paradox: tedium and mundanity are not usually associated with great leaders. Great leadership requires mastery of a portfolio of invisible craft moves. The trick is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to master the art of leadership without first mastering the craft.
Good leaders develop a portfolio of leadership craft moves, and they spend time building up muscle memory for them. Great leaders can master and summon these skills in such a way that they appear magical to onlookers.
Regards,
M@
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