Small Museums, Big Steps toward Values-Centered Work
Ann Bennett, Executive Director, Howard County Historical Society
There is not one definition of empathetic leadership; there is not one way to be an empathetic leader. Being an empathetic leader is a way of thinking, an attitude, a commitment to bringing your best to the situation and bringing out the best in the people and places around you. Above all, empathetic leaders demonstrate curiosity and a growth mindset and communicate clearly and openly with all involved.
Empathetic leaders practice active listening and engage others to make sure they know the why of what they are doing and how it fits in with the overall goals and mission of the organization. Empathetic leaders make sure that people feel like they are part of what comes next.
But leading others also takes a personal toll on the leader, so an empathetic leader also seeks balance in work, life, and play. They know when to take time off and how to recharge themselves and give themselves permission to do nothing. Empathetic leaders need to know how to manage themselves first before managing others.
And if that sounds daunting and intimidating to you, it doesn’t have to be! If you already do some (or all) of these things, that’s great! If you want to get started practicing some of these traits, that’s awesome, too. And if this is your first time encountering some of these ideas, phrases, and beliefs, then I am excited for you!
I have been thinking about leadership a lot lately, and I realize that being an empathetic leader is always about progress over perfection, about continually learning and wanting to be and do better. I am proud to have been part of the 2024 cohort for the History Leadership Institute through AASLH, and have further explored the ideas of empathy, curiosity, and values through other sources including MuseumExpert.org, my friend Alli Schell at Your Museum Career Coach, and Rebecca Shulman at Museum Questions.
But I realized that I have been empowered to be a leader throughout my whole career, even before I transitioned from archaeology and education to museums. Good leaders leave their mark, and I am blessed to have known and been inspired by several great supervisors over the years – all of whom led staff and crew in vastly different situations. And on the flip side, I have worked in toxic environments with evil managers who also inspired me to NOT be like them. Sometimes you have to eat the meat and leave the bones and maintain as much of a balance as possible and what works for you and your situation.
To honor the people that empowered me in my career, I want to briefly tell you about two of them and share some of the lessons that have stuck with me. As a young shovelbum early in my archaeology career, I found myself on a crew supervised by Matt, who always had supreme confidence in his crew to carry out the tasks for the day and who always made sure the crew’s needs were taken care of. It wasn’t just the fact that Matt let us out early every Friday, it was his belief in us to manage our day and complete the given tasks so that we gave him 100% effort and finished 40 hours of work in 35 hours.
And Brenda was the angel who guided my transition from archaeology to museums, and some of my best lessons have been from working with her, including the paradoxical advice to “never be afraid to touch in museums.” She was the one who taught me the power of genuinely engaging with people and everyone who interacted with her left feeling important and heard. She was patient, a big thinker, and always moving toward what was best for her staff, museum membership, and the community.
These lessons are part of what I bring with me as an executive director in small museums, but I admit that some days I completely miss the mark and especially in the early years at a previous organization, I was not much of a leader at all to the one other staff person, let alone an empathetic one! I can see where I clearly failed in the past and I am including this in the case statement because it’s important to know that the path isn’t always smooth, and we don’t always have the right (or any) answers sometimes.
So, here’s what I did wrong. I took Matt’s lesson on not micro-managing too far and essentially siloed the work – we didn’t even have staff meetings! But at the same time, I forgot Brenda’s lessons on making people feel important and that their work mattered. So, when it came time to hire an additional staff member and rearrange the job descriptions, I didn’t communicate clearly what I saw as their role going forward. They didn’t see a future for themselves with me or the museum and ended up leaving. Although that move ultimately led to my creating a museum team where I doubled the size of our original staff, I always regret how I neglected their values and input in creating that future.
As I transition to a larger institution in 2025, I am proud of the work that I have done at my former institution, especially as they head into their 50th anniversary year. The board-staff relationship was difficult; there was a lot of entrenched thinking and fixed mindsets that promoted stale interpretation, devalued the hard work of its staff, and earned poor reputations within the community. It has taken a lot of work and many years to bring the museum to the next level. This was not anything that happened overnight, and it took serious work on strategic planning and working with outside consultants to even begin to make headway. It also took repeated efforts to collaborate with diverse partners in the area so that we could start to tell as complete a narrative as possible through our exhibits and programs. One of the biggest things that we did was to state “We don’t have all the answers. We don’t have all the stories. Help us to tell the most complete narrative we can at this moment.”
In the spring of 2023, my former museum revised its mission statement, and adopted its first-ever values and vision statements. But it is constant work to make sure that it’s not just values on a website, it is something we act out and people know why we do what we do. I am working to promote a human-centered museum and focus on mission-driven and values-centered work – this type of thinking and leadership style prioritizes values and making sure that the staff, interns, and volunteers are happy working there and that they know their opinions matter. It’s making sure that our programs are accessible to people – not just physically but that we have free activities and have ways to push into schools and areas that can’t afford to come to us.
To me, it’s not about the numbers – the money you make from a program, the organization with the most millions of dollars in their budget or the highest number of staff. Yes, I recognize that the more you have, the more responsibility you have. But in the end, the dollars don’t mean much if the budget doesn’t reflect the values of the organization. And whether I have a staff of 1 or 100, it all comes down to the same principles: listening, building relationships, instilling trust, and working toward a common goal. These are the lessons that I learned from people like Matt and Brenda, and these are the lessons that I will take with me.
And now I have an opportunity to start values-centered and mission-driven work right from the very beginning at my new institution. The opportunity is very exciting, and I am stoked by the challenge it presents to organize the board, advocate for equitable staffing and salaries, and expand the focus beyond the borders of the county seat. I will be in an environment to make impactful and actionable changes, to drive the mission and focus on values and a human centered workplace.
How do I plan to accomplish this vision and get started in this transition as an empathetic leader?
- I will start by listening and building relationships- that is the same at any size institution and is the foundation for a human-centered museum. I plan to sit down with anybody who has anything to say about the county and listen and learn.
- I will also support more professional development for all employees regardless of status and paying interns. This would help to make managers better equipped to lead their teams and report to the executive director.
- I will make sure that the entire staff is engaged and know that the work they do is important and valued – values mapping and alignment would be an important first step in building trust and getting to know each other better. I plan to have the existing staff teach me and listen to what is working and what they want to see change.
- I will make sure that the museum is at the forefront of history and cultural heritage. I will lead the charge to make the historical society a regional destination and model for actionable change in mission driven and values-centered work.
- I will work to educate the board on what it means to be a board member and advocate for the organization. I will help them to know that a successful museum and nonprofit starts with happy and successful employees and volunteers.
I also want to share and remember these key qualities of empathetic leadership:
- Live your values – both personal values and those of your organization
- Share power – learn when and how to lead and when to step back and trust others
- Find the fit – continually refine yourself and your team to get the best out of people
- Refocus your work through a values lens – instead of just dealing with an issue, use it as an opportunity to talk about how values guide your decisions or shape the outcome
- Be present and self-aware – center yourself in the moment
- Leave time for silence – sometimes you won’t have all the answers but you can empower others to problem solve
- Treat people with respect – remember that all people have intrinsic value as human beings (I know, it’s hard.)
- Mitigate conflict and understand others through values – being genuinely curious about other people and what motivates them will help you work through disagreements
- Make connections – with the people around you, to the past, and bridge to the future
I know that I have a long road ahead of me in my new organization, and that the museum and public history communities have a long road ahead of them to do values-centered work. I am committed to bringing resilience, creativity, patience, balance, intentionality, and transparency to my new workplace. And I will use the lessons I have learned and remember the role models who empowered me to center empathy, curiosity, and values as we build humane leadership and work cultures.