Have you ever experienced disengagement or disorder in your teams?
Who hasn’t, right?
Well this week, I had the privilege to witness two dear friends and consultant clients, Edy Greenblatt and Mark Federman teach a group of MBA students all about leadership and functional team dynamics, through dance (at the University of Toronto -Rotman School of Management, my old stomping grounds!).
As participants stumbled their way through their first attempts as tango and salsa dancers, they were asked to own their roles as leader or follower and sometimes to quickly switch between the two… something Edy and Mark managed to make look both easy and graceful!
Debriefing comments after each dance were deeply insightful about the value of this process.
Clearly, when the body learns something… the mind isn’t too far behind.
The event was a truly creative way to launch the newly assigned MBA teams. As a result, these individuals have the benefit of beginning their work together with a bond already formed and an understanding about future roles with each other.
There is much to learn from this approach.
The evening also marked a milestone for Edy, who was just recently named one of Marshall Goldsmith’s top 100 coaches. As such, I would like to take this time to formally congratulate her for winning this prestigious award and to wish her well with the opportunity ahead!
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Thank you so very much for writing about our event, Sandra. The World Class Teams through World Dance program is one of a suite of of blended interventions teaching Leadership. Team Effectiveness and Coaching that use dance performance, dance event analysis (via video) and live participant dancing from all over the world. On this occasion we customized a program which allowed us to introduce concepts, exercises (dance and ethnographic analysis) and tools which fit he goal of the event — facilitate the successful and effective launching of second year MBA work teams. I was very grateful to be able to include as our Leaping Leaders (co-facilitators) the talented of Mark Federman (Leadership, Coaching, Salsa, Rueda), Michelle Souilliere (Leadership, Human Resource Management, Argentine Tango) and Miguel Cioppini (Argentine Tango master). This program, unlike any other in the world, uses facilitators who are both experts in Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and/or HR AND professional dance instructors and performers.
Through the course of the program and it’s debriefings, participants learned, for themselves, about leading, following, collaborating, working with limited information, confronting gender and ethnic assumptions, accountability, communications and each other through physically engaging in 9 separate dance events and applied discussions. And, they laughed through most of it.
This was the first offering of this program in Canada and we’re delighted with it’s success.
Thanks to the team at the Rotman Morning and Evening MBA program for the opportunity to work with such amazing co-facilitators, staff and students at Rotman! And thank you, Sandra, for joining us!
The students definitely benefited from this experience of embodied knowledge! They were very lucky to have had the opportunity to experience this with you and your team, Edy!