In 2005 Shirley Collier was contentedly ensconced in her job as the deputy director of collections at the Imperial War Museum. She had worked in nationals for 15 years, always finding the career stimulating.
When she took up the Clore Leadership Programme she expected it to change her job prospects. She didn't expect it to transform her life.
The Clore fellowship offers participants insight into leadership across the cultural sector. As well as studying marketing, personnel and other areas of management, Collier had secondments to Arts Council England (ACE) and DanceEast Ipswich, attended leadership development courses at Stanford and Oxford universities, was mentored by a senior leader in the arts and took a couple of intensive two-week leadership courses alongside the other fellows.
Two years on and she has moved 250 miles north and to a different world in terms of working culture to be the chief executive of the Scarborough Museums Trust.
"Clore was hugely successful for me," Collier says. "It helped me to work out what it was I wanted next, but also to identify the skills I needed to do that. You can get stuck in a rut in our sector. We don't move around enough within it, never mind moving between art forms. The Clore programme is very good at throwing things up in the air and helping you work out where you want to go next."
The programme encourages people to examine their professional strengths, but also to narrow down what matters to them personally and then to pinpoint where the two conflict. The process brought Collier to a turning point.
"I'd had all the benefits of working for 15 years in national museums, but I had never examined whether it was really what I wanted to be doing," she says.
"I realised that I felt constrained in my role because it was inward looking - I was looking at change management internally - and in a big organisation that means you are a long way from the punters.
"I had a whole range of skills related to advocacy that I had never been able to use as part of my job. I wanted to be in an organisation where you can lead from the front and have more of an idea about what the public wants from museums."
The Clore programme, funded by the grant-giving Clore Duffield Foundation, was launched in 2003 to address problems that arts organisations had in developing and retaining leadership talent. About 25 fellows are selected each year.
The programme has recently been evaluated by Clore to assess its impact on individuals. A report will be published shortly, but early findings suggest that, fairly predictably, it is having a positive impact on participants.
"Fellows say they have increased confidence and better networks, not only in their own specialist areas but beyond," says Sue Hoyle, the Clore programme's deputy director.
"Networking in particular is something that all the fellows feel really strongly about. They feel that they build up a true fellowship with others on the programme and that it will stand them in good stead."
Other leadership programmes that offer participants the chance to do research, work in other branches of the arts or generally enrich their professional skills, draw the same conclusions.
Nicola Jennings, the director of the Cultural Leadership project at City University in London, says feedback indicates that "people go back to their jobs more confident and with new networks. Being able to do it also makes them feel that their organisation values them".
Nichola Johnson, the director of the Museum Leadership Programme and head of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, agrees. "The best programmes instil confidence in people. In a way it almost doesn't matter what you teach people."
Raised confidence is a particularly welcome in the light of research published earlier this year by the Work Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for better working practices.
It concluded that public-sector managers generally lack confidence in their own leadership skills and consistently underestimate what they achieve.
Collier benefited from Clore's intensity, but one criticism of the programme and others like it is that they focus too closely on the individual, producing people who fit the traditional heroic leadership model of a charismatic individual who drives an organisation from the top.
One Clore insider says: "There is some concern among people who have done the programme that getting a whizzy job is the only criterion for success. And that's dangerously near to the heroic leadership thing. It can mean that people have 'failed' if they don't get that job."
The focus on the individual in the arts is in contrast to other areas of the public sector, as well as business, which are moving towards more distributed leadership, where key decisions do not rest solely with the director at the head of a hierarchy.
The question for museums and galleries is if and how courses that focus on individuals benefit the institutions that employ them.
Jennings at City University believes leadership programmes have got to go beyond only training individuals if they are to make a genuine difference: "What evidence there is seems to show that training has a positive impact on individuals and they feel more confident and they have better networks - but we don't actually know what impact training [them] has on organisations. Even big business has done little research on it.
"The danger of focusing on individuals is that they move on and so organisations are nervous about training people if they know they are going to lose them."
There are a number of examples of Clore fellows who have moved to new jobs shortly after completing the programme. But one way to convince organisations that supporting leadership development is in their interest is to link it to the participant's job, as happens elsewhere, says Jennings.
In the National Health Service, for example, 'work-based' learning is closely linked to employers who specify what a course needs to cover.
"But it's tricky because individuals say that part of the benefit [of a professional development programme] is the chance to stand back from their organisation," Jennings adds.
As part of the City programme, Jennings gives some museums a rundown, highlighting areas that the course had covered that related directly to the participant's role and pinpointed areas for further development. "I suggest that those topics may be the start of a new conversation between them and their employee. I would like to develop that approach. But it does need to be done sensitively."
Hilary Carty is the director of the Cultural Leadership Programme, which brings together different programmes and initiatives backed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; Creative and Cultural Skills (the Sector Skills Council with responsibility for the training of staff in museums and galleries); the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; and ACE.
She agrees that leadership needs to be thought about in broader terms as part of workforce development as a whole, so that new routes are opened up and a wider pool of individuals is encouraged to come forward.
"We want to get leadership debated more widely across the sector," Carty says. "It's a case of making the processes more transparent because there's still a risk that good people are not coming forward."
Leadership programmes can be a boon to the individual. They instil self-belief and give participants a different perspective on their own skills and abilities; they bring potential leaders into contact with experts in other fields as well as a new peer group who can provide valuable support in a way that work colleagues cannot.
But what is not clear - because no research has been done on it - is whether such a personal growth opportunity for individuals is
actually benefiting the museums and galleries that they work in.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist
Nichola Johnson, director, Museum Leadership Programme, University of East Anglia, Norwich
The principle challenge is to be much more highly politicised. Even on a small scale you need to be very alert politically.
For example, does a director of a local authority museum concentrate on making sure that the elected members think museums are a wonderful thing? Do they focus on their real understanding of what their audiences want? Or do they pay attention to the staff and the health of the organisation?
There's a difficult choice for leaders to be made about where to put their energies.
Dealing with the media is another challenge - local papers can make your life hell as a museum director. And, as a director, nobody ever tells you that you are doing a good job.
Shirley Collier, chief executive, Scarborough Museums Trust
I think the leadership challenge in our sector is about balancing the outward and the inward needs. We need to concentrate more on balancing these different needs - external stakeholders and your staff. As a leader you have to concentrate on what's going on outside your organisation, not just on managing it.
You also have to be able to change your leadership style.
For example, when an organisation is going through change, it may be that you have to go through a stage where it is not consensual. The role of the leader then is to build a consensus.
Tim Desmond, chief executive, Galleries of Justice, Nottingham
The biggest problem is generally the people above you - and there's always someone above you. You learn how to manage your managers.
The biggest challenge for me in leadership is that it's a very lonely role being chief executive. You are out on your own; there are certain things you can't talk to your team about because you have to shelter them. There needs to be a degree of distance - you could be making them redundant or disciplining them or promoting them.
I still find the museum sector painfully slow and conservative. The challenge here has been to run as a business and keep momentum going and some people find that very difficult.
Nick Merriman, director, Manchester Museum
My museum has had a culture of individual experts and specialists. The challenge for me is to create a vision and values that promote collaborative working. It's about leadership based on values rather than on an abstract mission.
Is it lonely? One of the things that the Clore programme did was to prepare me for the loneliness of leadership through access to a work coach. But unless you take steps, it can be a lonely role.
Diane Lees, director, Museum of Childhood, London
Managing the relationship with trustees will continue to be a big issue. One of the most significant threats to a director comes when the relationship between the chief executive and the chairman has disintegrated. The definition of the executive and the non-exec role in an organisation is a fundamental issue.
There's also a long-term issue for women. If you look at the majority of the profession, there are more women than men. If that gets through to leadership level it is possible that the status of the profession could be further eroded if it's only a 'profession for women'. There are issues for the future there.
When she took up the Clore Leadership Programme she expected it to change her job prospects. She didn't expect it to transform her life.
The Clore fellowship offers participants insight into leadership across the cultural sector. As well as studying marketing, personnel and other areas of management, Collier had secondments to Arts Council England (ACE) and DanceEast Ipswich, attended leadership development courses at Stanford and Oxford universities, was mentored by a senior leader in the arts and took a couple of intensive two-week leadership courses alongside the other fellows.
Two years on and she has moved 250 miles north and to a different world in terms of working culture to be the chief executive of the Scarborough Museums Trust.
"Clore was hugely successful for me," Collier says. "It helped me to work out what it was I wanted next, but also to identify the skills I needed to do that. You can get stuck in a rut in our sector. We don't move around enough within it, never mind moving between art forms. The Clore programme is very good at throwing things up in the air and helping you work out where you want to go next."
The programme encourages people to examine their professional strengths, but also to narrow down what matters to them personally and then to pinpoint where the two conflict. The process brought Collier to a turning point.
"I'd had all the benefits of working for 15 years in national museums, but I had never examined whether it was really what I wanted to be doing," she says.
"I realised that I felt constrained in my role because it was inward looking - I was looking at change management internally - and in a big organisation that means you are a long way from the punters.
"I had a whole range of skills related to advocacy that I had never been able to use as part of my job. I wanted to be in an organisation where you can lead from the front and have more of an idea about what the public wants from museums."
The Clore programme, funded by the grant-giving Clore Duffield Foundation, was launched in 2003 to address problems that arts organisations had in developing and retaining leadership talent. About 25 fellows are selected each year.
The programme has recently been evaluated by Clore to assess its impact on individuals. A report will be published shortly, but early findings suggest that, fairly predictably, it is having a positive impact on participants.
"Fellows say they have increased confidence and better networks, not only in their own specialist areas but beyond," says Sue Hoyle, the Clore programme's deputy director.
"Networking in particular is something that all the fellows feel really strongly about. They feel that they build up a true fellowship with others on the programme and that it will stand them in good stead."
Other leadership programmes that offer participants the chance to do research, work in other branches of the arts or generally enrich their professional skills, draw the same conclusions.
Nicola Jennings, the director of the Cultural Leadership project at City University in London, says feedback indicates that "people go back to their jobs more confident and with new networks. Being able to do it also makes them feel that their organisation values them".
Nichola Johnson, the director of the Museum Leadership Programme and head of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, agrees. "The best programmes instil confidence in people. In a way it almost doesn't matter what you teach people."
Raised confidence is a particularly welcome in the light of research published earlier this year by the Work Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for better working practices.
It concluded that public-sector managers generally lack confidence in their own leadership skills and consistently underestimate what they achieve.
Collier benefited from Clore's intensity, but one criticism of the programme and others like it is that they focus too closely on the individual, producing people who fit the traditional heroic leadership model of a charismatic individual who drives an organisation from the top.
One Clore insider says: "There is some concern among people who have done the programme that getting a whizzy job is the only criterion for success. And that's dangerously near to the heroic leadership thing. It can mean that people have 'failed' if they don't get that job."
The focus on the individual in the arts is in contrast to other areas of the public sector, as well as business, which are moving towards more distributed leadership, where key decisions do not rest solely with the director at the head of a hierarchy.
The question for museums and galleries is if and how courses that focus on individuals benefit the institutions that employ them.
Jennings at City University believes leadership programmes have got to go beyond only training individuals if they are to make a genuine difference: "What evidence there is seems to show that training has a positive impact on individuals and they feel more confident and they have better networks - but we don't actually know what impact training [them] has on organisations. Even big business has done little research on it.
"The danger of focusing on individuals is that they move on and so organisations are nervous about training people if they know they are going to lose them."
There are a number of examples of Clore fellows who have moved to new jobs shortly after completing the programme. But one way to convince organisations that supporting leadership development is in their interest is to link it to the participant's job, as happens elsewhere, says Jennings.
In the National Health Service, for example, 'work-based' learning is closely linked to employers who specify what a course needs to cover.
"But it's tricky because individuals say that part of the benefit [of a professional development programme] is the chance to stand back from their organisation," Jennings adds.
As part of the City programme, Jennings gives some museums a rundown, highlighting areas that the course had covered that related directly to the participant's role and pinpointed areas for further development. "I suggest that those topics may be the start of a new conversation between them and their employee. I would like to develop that approach. But it does need to be done sensitively."
Hilary Carty is the director of the Cultural Leadership Programme, which brings together different programmes and initiatives backed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; Creative and Cultural Skills (the Sector Skills Council with responsibility for the training of staff in museums and galleries); the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; and ACE.
She agrees that leadership needs to be thought about in broader terms as part of workforce development as a whole, so that new routes are opened up and a wider pool of individuals is encouraged to come forward.
"We want to get leadership debated more widely across the sector," Carty says. "It's a case of making the processes more transparent because there's still a risk that good people are not coming forward."
Leadership programmes can be a boon to the individual. They instil self-belief and give participants a different perspective on their own skills and abilities; they bring potential leaders into contact with experts in other fields as well as a new peer group who can provide valuable support in a way that work colleagues cannot.
But what is not clear - because no research has been done on it - is whether such a personal growth opportunity for individuals is
actually benefiting the museums and galleries that they work in.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist
Nichola Johnson, director, Museum Leadership Programme, University of East Anglia, Norwich
The principle challenge is to be much more highly politicised. Even on a small scale you need to be very alert politically.
For example, does a director of a local authority museum concentrate on making sure that the elected members think museums are a wonderful thing? Do they focus on their real understanding of what their audiences want? Or do they pay attention to the staff and the health of the organisation?
There's a difficult choice for leaders to be made about where to put their energies.
Dealing with the media is another challenge - local papers can make your life hell as a museum director. And, as a director, nobody ever tells you that you are doing a good job.
Shirley Collier, chief executive, Scarborough Museums Trust
I think the leadership challenge in our sector is about balancing the outward and the inward needs. We need to concentrate more on balancing these different needs - external stakeholders and your staff. As a leader you have to concentrate on what's going on outside your organisation, not just on managing it.
You also have to be able to change your leadership style.
For example, when an organisation is going through change, it may be that you have to go through a stage where it is not consensual. The role of the leader then is to build a consensus.
Tim Desmond, chief executive, Galleries of Justice, Nottingham
The biggest problem is generally the people above you - and there's always someone above you. You learn how to manage your managers.
The biggest challenge for me in leadership is that it's a very lonely role being chief executive. You are out on your own; there are certain things you can't talk to your team about because you have to shelter them. There needs to be a degree of distance - you could be making them redundant or disciplining them or promoting them.
I still find the museum sector painfully slow and conservative. The challenge here has been to run as a business and keep momentum going and some people find that very difficult.
Nick Merriman, director, Manchester Museum
My museum has had a culture of individual experts and specialists. The challenge for me is to create a vision and values that promote collaborative working. It's about leadership based on values rather than on an abstract mission.
Is it lonely? One of the things that the Clore programme did was to prepare me for the loneliness of leadership through access to a work coach. But unless you take steps, it can be a lonely role.
Diane Lees, director, Museum of Childhood, London
Managing the relationship with trustees will continue to be a big issue. One of the most significant threats to a director comes when the relationship between the chief executive and the chairman has disintegrated. The definition of the executive and the non-exec role in an organisation is a fundamental issue.
There's also a long-term issue for women. If you look at the majority of the profession, there are more women than men. If that gets through to leadership level it is possible that the status of the profession could be further eroded if it's only a 'profession for women'. There are issues for the future there.