An interactive session that had everyone up learning to tango whilst relating the experience and techniques to leadership
Tango can teach us a great deal about leadership in complexity
Sue made the point that the Tango you see on TV is heavily choreographed whereas Tango in real life is less “sparkly,” (my word not hers), more down to earth and very much based on emotional intelligence. Focusing on 3 areas tango can teach us a lot about leadership. Presence Dance is about constant movement so you need to engage your core. That is very similar to leadership during change.
During change what can you as leaders do?
You can find an anchor in time of change – you can engage your ‘core’ and to maintain creativity and innovation we need to engage our core – what can we do in organisation to do this? Power of connection: In dance, you need to forget about where you want to go and focus on where your partner is and when they are in space. By dancing through connection you don’t pull or push each other you stay together. How do we do that? 1. Feel intention and move. 2. Feel intention and respond working by move together, and therefore you don’t disconnect.
Like the dance leadership is the same we have to work together and understand where everyone else is not just you. Through collaboration: Open up space for your partner. Giving them the option to do what they want. Allowing them to be creative and they give you the chance to do the same, this allows you to bring your presence and value to the dance.
Leadership is no different – give people the space to move allow them to grow and express themselves and they will take the space. This was live-blogged during a session at the CIPD Jersey #Think Conference – I’ve tried to capture a faithful summary of the highlights for me but my own bias, views – and the odd typo – might well creep in.
