The Business
From Canvas to Campus
Business schools are increasingly integrating the arts to cultivate more adaptable, empathetic, and humanistic leaders ready for an unpredictable world.
By Chloë Lane
In brief
- Business schools are using literature, film, acting and comedy to train adaptable and authentic leaders.
- This approach prioritises vital human skills like empathy and communication.
- Diverse artistic methods offer deeper insights for modern leadership.Effective adoption requires embedding AI literacy, redesigning assessments and fostering a culture of experimentation.
Ralf Wetzel is a Professor of Organisation and Applied Arts at Vlerick Business School in Belgium. He’s also an improv comedian.
The two professions don’t often go hand in hand, but according to Dr Wetzel, the pressures in the corporate world, such as performance demands, hidden anxieties and fear of failure, have a lot of similarities to the pressures performers face.
There’s a wealth of wisdom in artistic practices that can help leaders embrace discomfort and lead with authenticity in times of change, Dr Wetzel explains. “Because once something becomes clear or routine, it loses its creative energy.”.
After all, leaders and managers today must overcome similar challenges to artists: continuous disruption, uncertainty and the need to innovate under pressure.
All the World’s a Stage
Improv training, then, directly addresses those dynamics by fostering psychological safety, emotional connection and trust. “That’s where real collaboration and creativity can thrive,” he says, “and where leadership becomes truthful and transformational.”
Wetzel’s teaching is based around learning through play and safe failure – where mistakes aren’t punished but understood as opportunities to discover something new.
Some candidates can be hesitant with this approach due to a fear of judgement. To overcome this, Wetzel designed exercises that gently ease participants into the work. “Once this fear is held at bay, participants can move into deeper or more vulnerable territory. And this is where the treasure of self-discovery and truthfulness awaits,” he says.
Dr Wetzel believes the role of the arts in business is vastly underestimated. They’re often reduced to tools for brainstorming or creativity workshops, which shows just a fraction of their potential.
Executive MBA students at Imperial Business School are also encouraged to embrace their vulnerability in the ‘Presenting With Impact’ module, created in partnership with the Royal College of Music.
Students write and practice a speech with the goal to connect, inspire and influence others. This could focus on a business challenge they are leading, a personal leadership story or their career pitch.
They then present this in the Royal College of Music’s ‘Performance Laboratories’, which simulate the visual, acoustic, and social conditions of on-stage performance.
“We take the same techniques and tools used to help our musicians prepare to perform and apply those to training business students,” says the Royal College of Music’s Dr George Waddell, a Performance Research and Innovation Fellow at their Centre for Performance Science.
This, he says, helps hone their communication skills, adapt to changing environments, manage performance anxiety, and deliver impactful and persuasive messages.
“I remember being much more nervous in the virtual theatre than when I'm presenting in conference rooms,” says Dan Jones, an EMBA student on the course. “Having an opportunity to systematically practice the 'soft skills' showed me that I can improve on things that I had previously thought were inherent.’
After their performance, each candidate has their presentation reviewed in a supportive ‘on screen’ feedback process, facilitated by an experienced faculty member, with the aim of developing participants’ speaking skills, gravitas and impact, including their body language.
Each participant then works with their Imperial Executive Coach, in a 1-1 conversation, to ensure personal insights are reflected on and put into practice back at work.
“I'm now much more conscious about my preparation before key meetings and engagements - not just in terms of the material, but also awareness of my cognitive and emotional states before the event,” says Jones. “I'm learning to intentionally use my presence and voice to convey confidence.”
Words have power
Whether onstage, or in the boardroom, words have the power to open many doors to opportunities.
That’s why the Indian Institute of Management Indore (IIM Indore) conducts free workshops in Sanskrit, Tamil, Bengali, and Oriya for both students and community members.
Learning these classical Indian languages goes far beyond preserving cultural heritage – it enhances students’ cognitive, ethical, and emotional skills, Himanshu Rai, Director of IIM Indore explains.
It also gives students access to classic ancient texts. Understanding Sanskrit, for example, allows students access to Vedas, the foundational texts of Indian thought, which connects learners to centuries of poetry, drama, and epics that reflect the human condition and social values.
Tamil is one of the world's oldest living languages, and those who can understand can read the Thirukkural or Silappatikaram, which introduce students to nuanced discussions on justice, governance, compassion, and resilience.
“These stories and poetic teachings cultivate empathy, emotional awareness, and ethical reasoning: the cornerstones of transformational leadership,” says Professor Rai.
IIM Indore integrates these teachings into the broader curriculum. Participants focus on mindfulness and positive psychology, while exploring the linguistic intricacies of these languages. They also engage with embedded leadership philosophies, through classical texts such as the Bhagavad Gita.
This approach enables leaders to confront challenges from multiple perspectives, question assumptions, and lead with authenticity and vision, explains Professor Rai.
“Incorporating the humanities is about designing leadership education around the richness of human experience,” says Professor Rai. “When done thoughtfully, it builds leaders who are not just intelligent, but wise; not just competent, but compassionate.”
A Reader Lives a Thousand Lives…
NEOMA Business School, too, understands the power of literature and storytelling. The French-based school recently launched a ‘Lessons from Great Literary Texts: Management, Business, and Leadership’ module. Available to all first-year students,
the module explores how portrayals of leadership in foundational works of literature can shape an effective approach to business management.
“I often find in literature both questions and answers to my own personal and professional challenges, offering a level of nuance and complexity that a textbook or case study cannot provide,” says NEOMA professor, Agathe Mezzadri-Guedj, who runs the course.
In her lessons, Professor Mezzadri-Guedj doesn’t draw from authors explicitly connected to the business world but rather from powerful excerpts.
“What I avoid are superficial parallels, such as ‘How to be passionate in business with Phèdre by Racine,’” jokes Professor Mezzadri-Guedj, referring to the Greek myth of Phèdre who develops an incestuous love for her stepson, Hippolyte, despite being married to his father, Theseus. (There’s certainly passion in the story, but not the kind that would be useful for the corporate world.)
Besides, she remarks, “There is no character more isolated or less in tune with the spirit of enterprise than Phèdre!”
Instead, Professor Mezzadri-Guedj might choose a character because of their complexity, because they allow us to problematise facts, and their ambiguity and multiple facets.
She gives the example of Ulysses, who she describes as a charismatic leader, clever and brave, but also, at times, blind or deaf to others.
“The literary approach, by its very nature, offers multiple perspectives on a single situation or discourse through shifts in narrative focus. It functions through layering and analogy,” she says.
“In that sense, literature immerses us in complexity, blending experience and reflection, and resonating in different ways with different readers.”
The Show Must Go On!
Beyond traditional texts, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School has also created the first cinematised educational case study in finance, aimed at MBA students, EMBA students and practitioners.
Ludovic Phalippou, a Professor of Financial Economics at the school, created the film as a response to the growing expectations of his Gen-Z and Millennial business students. Professor Phalippou wanted to create academic materials which are accessible, visual and delivered in a tailored manner.
“Education is always evolving, and we must keep meeting the changing needs of our students,” he says. “New generations consume much of their information through social media, which is both accessible and visual.”
The film, Redeveloping Hope recalls the story of Eric Clement, the son of US immigrants who came to Oxford in his mid-thirties following a career as a professional baseball player, to study an EMBA. He then took a job at the New York’s Economic Development Corporation, the official economic development organisation for New York City.
Co-written with professional screenwriters and performed by professional actors, the movie focuses on the transformation of how an infamous juvenile prison, the Spofford Detention Centre in the Bronx, was developed into a modern industrial building, with a set of affordable apartments to be built alongside it.
“Eric’s story is a great one to tell, and full of rich learnings for my students, so it was a pleasure to work with him on turning his experience in the Bronx, into a big screen production for Oxford,’ said Professor Phalippou.
The case study covers key concepts and tools of capital structure, different types of debt claims, the notion of claim priority, financial modelling, valuation, and the use of comparable analysis.
However, the key takeaway is that to have a positive social impact and to maximise that impact, you need to be able to master fundamental finance techniques and terminology.
Professor Phalippou adds: “I hope that more movies of this type will be developed in the future, so we can better equip our students with fundamental finance knowledge.”
I Think, Therefore I Am
POLIMI Graduate School of Management in Italy offers a variety of ‘Humanities for Business’ courses which highlights humanistic skills to train managers.
One such offering is their philosophy and management course: an executive education programme that teaches candidates how philosophy can become a tool to guide organisational and managerial action.
“Philosophy sharpens leadership by fostering self-awareness, ethical clarity and the ability to question assumptions – skills essential for guiding people and organizations with vision and integrity,” says Antonella Moretto, Associate Dean for Open Programs at POLIMI GSoM.
The programme uses the tools of philosophical thought: critical, creative, emotional-relational and ethical, to refine the way candidates approach management roles.
Are the Arts Too Different To Be a Useful Tool?
In theory, the arts and business are two entirely separate entities. If they were placed on a Venn diagram, there would likely be very little overlap. One is practical and profit-focused; the other driven by creativity and emotion.
But, by allowing the two to overlap, the benefits are apparent. By giving business leaders permission to be vulnerable and embrace their creativity, we will start to see a generation of more empathetic, and humanistic leaders.
In a world where AI is rapidly replacing hard skills, it’s these human skills that will stand the test of time.