Ford Managers Come Face to Face with Themselves in Mask Workshop

    BURLINGTON, Vt., June 5 Maggie Sherman, a dynamic
interactive artist based in Burlington, Vermont, is bringing her innovative
self-evaluation workshop to Ford's Experienced Leader Challenge program, for a
second year of professional development. In the workshop, Ford's managers make
masks of their own faces, decorate them to illustrate the type of leader they
would like to become, and share their insights with the other participants.
    
    "Our faces define our identity," explains Maggie Sherman. "They reflect
who we are. As participants in the workshop make and decorate their masks,
they gain the chance to come face to face with themselves, literally. They are
transforming a plaster mask into a revealing self-representation -- not so
much masking as un-masking."

    Sherman's mask workshop is an activity used in one of Ford Motor Company's
Leadership Development Center's programs, called Experienced Leader Challenge,
part of a change initiative that will eventually involve everyone in the
company, from top executives to factory workers. This year, 125 managers will
pair off to make plaster casts of each other's faces, seeing themselves in
three dimensions for the first time. The decorations added to each mask focus
on the individual's self-image and personal goals for professional development
as a leader.

    Ford's leadership programs aim to develop "total leaders," who can
successfully integrate the various domains of their lives, including work,
home, community and self. Sherman's mask project enables Ford's developing
leaders to identify what is important to them as a person, and to share who
they are, heart, mind and soul. They are building their leadership skills from
the inside.

    Kathleen Burgess, manager of Ford's Experienced Leader Challenge program,
describes the role that Sherman's workshop plays in the program: "The Ford
culture is a conservative one, brought up and nurtured over the past
100 years. At first, Mask making seems to make managers uncomfortable, but it
helps move them out of the box. Most of them look on in disbelief as when you
demonstrate what they will need to do to create a mask, especially since it
involves touching someone's face. But I have heard at least
120 people introduce themselves as a leader the morning after they have
created their mask."

    Maggie Sherman has been conducting masking workshops since 1980, working
with community groups, corporate executives, factory workers, and a range of
other people, from stars of the Grand Ole Opry to the staff of The New Yorker
magazine. The New Yorker's Theresa Gaffney explains, "For our latest sales
conference, we were looking for ways to spark creativity and inspire people to
think in totally new ways. Maggie Sherman's mask making was exactly what we
were looking for. It proved both fun and meaningful."

    In addition to Ford, Clients for Maggie Sherman's mask making workshops
have included Shell Petroleum, Ford, Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., McKinsey
and Company, the University of Michigan School of Business, First Night
Honolulu and the Smithsonian's 150th Birthday.