Dance and Leadership

Since my last post touched on dance, at least tangentially, I'll continue along those same lines again. Ballroom and other forms of partner dancing involve leading and following. A great deal about leading in the office can be gleaned from leading on the dance floor.

First a little background on lead and follow in dance. To dance with lead and follow, we must have connection. Our connection comes in various forms. There are visual connections - you see me do something. But more often it comes from a physical connection: hands, arms, shoulders, back, hips and thighs. Connections can’t be one-way. They are equal and opposite. If I pull, you have to pull back against my pull equally. If I push, you have to push back - again equally. If our connection is mushy, the language of our dance will be equally mushy. With a solid connection to transmit my intentions and suggestions to you, we can do anything.

So what happens when I lead? For example, if I want to lead a simple under-arm turn - how does that evolve from a thought in my mind to your action? It’s all in the connection. First, I push you away slightly - and you see “hey - something is happening here” - you push back and there is a nice firm pressure between our hands. Then I move back towards you, shifting the connection to a slight pulling and as you respond and start to pull back, I raise my hand up and to the side. You don’t even need to know what I’m doing. You will turn. Your balance and motion will dictate that. The only thing that is required: you maintain the connection.

So how does this related to management and leadership at work?

Let's start with the connection. If there's no connection, there's no leading and there's no following. It's pretty likely I'll fail miserably trying to get a room full of strangers to do something for me. So a connection must be cultivated over time and exercised. It's on ongoing process to be built.

Next, there's the message to communicate. You'd be amazed what can happen over a good connection. When dancing, if I have an instant of indecision, my partner will feel it. "Go left..NO! GO RIGHT!" She'll start going right and then get totally thrown off. Or you can give one signal which is open to multiple meanings. If I raise my hand and sort of move it to the side but sort of don't, my partner will be confused. "Does he mean for me to turn? Does he mean for me to move towards him?" I recall an instance when I failed to do this at work. I was proposing that we take on a certain task. I presented the pros and cons and in my effort to be balanced and explain things well, I left my audience unsure what I was advocating! You must me unmistakable. If you leave two options but only want one, you can just bet someone will take the wrong one.

But by the same token, in dancing, nobody wants to dance with someone muscles them around the floor. When leading on the dance floor, it's not my job to do my follower's job. I lead; I recommend; I suggest..and it's up to her to follow. If I strong-arm her into what I want, I will throw her off-balance, possibly injuring her or myself in the process. And if it's clear that's how I lead, I'd expect she'd find reasons not to dance with me in the future. Likewise at work, you can't just bark orders and expect people to comply. Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower said it best, "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

If you've selected good partners to begin with, good leadership looks effortless and efficient; a team (or a couple) moves as one.