What can leaders learn from the Tango?

by | Inspirations

What can leaders learn from the Tango?

How might Tango techniques shift understanding leadership’s future potential?

What if leaders at all levels viewed /considered / engaged with the story of the Tango?

Using the story of the Tango to explain their approach to being a leadertelling their version of that story?

Why might that be important to future proof leadership?

How and what might be the difference that makes the difference?

Dancing the Tango

  • takes practice, passion and potential
  • necessitates the perfect pair of shoes
  • demands taking being prepared to take risks
  • sets up tension, timing excellence, travelling patterns through time and space
  • creates inspirational intuitive instinctual insights
  • develops deep understanding of the other

What leader at any level in an organisation of whatever size wouldn’t say yes to having all of this and more?

Taking emotional risks, really knowing the ‘landscape’, seeing the team, seeing the individual and most importantly oneself are all critical components of a leader’s ‘tool kit’.

It’s all about creating a whole rather than a fragment.

Tensile, Appreciative in the Now, essentially  Gracious and  Outward-focused is a great recipe for leadership.

The movements back and forwards, the giving and taking, the sharing of who directs the story, the collaboration and co-operation, the clarity of what is the purpose of the Tango all interweave to interrupt and disrupt the given, the taken for granted, the assumption.

The Tango is all about total commitment. Leadership falls flat on its face when commitment is less than 100%. The Tango simply looks silly and tawdry when commitment is less than total. Most likely would end up with participants in a heap on the floor of tangled limbs and dented pride.

If a participant, you need to implicitly trust that you will be followed.

If a participant, you need to trust implicitly that you will be led.

At times different people are leading. Movements change the character of the dance.

How prepared are leaders to explore being vulnerable, using different approaches to shake up the ‘taken-for-granteds’, the assumptions, the ‘we-have-always-done-it-this-way’?

How to get out of our heads? Into the richness of our emotional intelligence is a great question and ambition?

Check out the following in Inspirations & YouTube `for more reflections on TANGO as a strategy for leadership: