Local Artist Helps Leadership Coaching Series Participants with Creativity and Collaboration

During our Leadership Coaching Series, experienced business leaders are learning about their strengths and working to improve on their weaknesses at the same time as they work in teams to develop innovative, strategic business solutions and recommendations for the Capital Area CASA Association. That final element is part of Success Labs’s philosophy: To help grow leaders while building community.The Success Labs team is passionate about connecting the Baton Rouge business community with area nonprofits. We also want to connect business leaders with the local arts community, so part of the Leadership Coaching Series learning process involves participants working with a local artist. The experiential learning participants get this way is more effective than traditional models of training because it involves less lecture and more action.

Building Teams While Creating Art

Kathleen Lemoine is a Baton Rouge-based artist who contributes to the leadership development work that happens during the Leadership Coaching Series. She has been painting and exhibiting her work for many years on the local, regional and national levels, and is an artist member of The Baton Rouge Gallery Center for Contemporary Art, where she serves on the board as an artist representative.Through the years, she has also taught privately and facilitated workshops focused on the encaustic monotype process, a kind of printmaking. Several years ago, Kathleen realized the encaustic monotype process lends itself well to creative team building, and the Success Labs team decided she should come help with some leadership development here at Success Labs. “I bring a playful approach to developing the serious skills needed in leadership development,” Kathleen says.

Collaboration Helps Achieve Better Results

This team-building exercise shows participants how much richer their work can be when they collaborate with a project team instead of relying on individual efforts. In addition, there is a real connectedness and commitment to the team when all members have placed their unique mark on the final product. Participating in the encaustic monotype process as teams allows participants to develop their problem solving abilities, creatively, in a business setting.Kathleen says creativity and business mix well and should be combined more often. In a perfect world, she says, painters, poets, dancers, writers, sculptors and other artists would be part of the business world and businesspeople would be part of the arts community, each bringing their skills to bear on problem solving. “I believe the benefits of the creativity exercises are long-term because of the nature of the exercise,” she says. “It's hands-on and when all of the senses are used in problem solving, the lessons are profound.”Not only does Kathleen help with leadership development during the Leadership Coaching Series, but Success Labs coaches have also partnered with her to offer team building to companies work groups or departments. In these experiences, the team ends up with a collaborative print that they can frame and hang in a place where they often gather to meet or collaborate – as a way to remember and celebrate the team-building event.Participants in past team projects with Kathleen have reported that her lessons are engaging and fun. “I’ve learned that the creative process takes commitment and time,” one reported, adding that it fueled productive meetings for the rest of the day.Contact us if you’d like to learn more about our Leadership Development Series or how you can use art to spur creativity and teamwork at your company.Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.