Erik Akkermans: 'People without empathy have it easier'

What are the pitfalls and opportunities for a director in the cultural sector? Erik Akkermans shares 48 years of experience. Listen on Substack

Listen to this podcast on leadership. Erik Akkermans has 48 years of experience on it.

"If you do manage to have an eye for the people around you and weigh up feelings while also taking decisions at the right time, then you are a good leader. This is easier for women than for men."

Erik Akkermans spent 48 of his 75 years of life at the top of cultural life in the Netherlands. He was a director, advisor, just short of being a minister, but he has lived through all the ministers. On Cultuurpers, Akkermans looks back in a series of 25 articles, entitled ''In Perspective'.

Empathy

Now that that series is finished, and waiting for a publisher, in this podcast we talk about some of the things he has learned. For example, we talk about leadership, where he sees a role for empathy, and women. Then, he acknowledges, something more needs to change than it does now: "People who get by easiest in this sector are people who are not too empathetic. I don't count myself among them, but sometimes you really need to make decisions with a certain toughness, and with not too much feeling for everyone around you. I think that is one of the interesting dilemmas of leadership."

And so we automatically come to those situations where things got out of hand, whether screaming or not. Like with Ivo van Hove, the celebrated director who had to leave 'his' ITA because of a souring corporate culture: "Van Hove has had just a bit too many chances to always rise. He has done great things. Content-wise, I actually felt for a few years that it slipped too much into extreme harshness and violent drama. It could hardly ever be soft anymore."

Akkermans regretted that, he now realises: "That may have translated into the relationships within the organisation. You have to be closer to that as a supervisory board anyway. You have to see it and then deal with it in such a way that someone doesn't have to leave through the side door."

Friends on the council

It also just depends on who will sit on the council: "Sometimes it happens that someone in the art world takes an initiative, starts something, a theatre company or something else. Then he needs board and obviously looks for people he knows and trusts. Preferably friends. That always creates a somewhat awkward relationship. As chairman of a board of an organisation, of which the director himself is the founder, you do feel a bit less free in your movements. At a certain point you are ready to say to such a director, you have to leave here, because you are not functioning well... That is very difficult."

Better not to let it get that far, argues Akkermans. You could organise that by building a much more flexible system for subsidising art. No longer a four-yearly tombola, as now: "Some institutions with a longer track record are also entitled to take a break from time to time. Everyone has their down period, right? You shouldn't immediately judge them for that downturn. You have to give them a chance to recover. And if it doesn't work out after so many years, you can still say: maybe now is the time for another leadership. But not: it's time for another company."

Podcast

Listen to the entire podcast, it is a fine 50 minutes, with a plea at the end for more long-term vision. Among policymakers, but also among artists themselves.