The Balcony and the Dance Floor
Envision a stampede of horses. All clustered together racing in one direction. Due to the tight formation of the group, the majority of the horses have no idea which way they’re heading and can only see the horse directly in front of them. One thing they know however, is that they need to run fast to keep up with the group. If running fast is all they need to know to do, they fall in line and execute.
Does this remind us of anything? Could the horses be us and the group we lead following orders without taking a peak out over the top of the group? All too often this is the perspective of the people that are being led. All they see is the teammate in front of them with no real larger perspective. If you were in this group, could the horses you’re running with be headed for the edge of a cliff? You wouldn’t know unless you encouraged yourself, and the people you led, to stand tall and peak out every once in a while.
The Balcony and the Dance Floor
A great description of this is this idea of the “Balcony and the Dance Floor”. This is a simple concept credited to Ron Heifetz in his book Leadership without Easy Answers. The concept is simple and you’ve probably stumbled into something similar in your leadership experience.
The Dance Floor
The Balcony
Getting on the Balcony
Being on the dance floor is easy. The hard part about it at all is having the awareness that you’re there, or that it exists at all. How do we get up on the balcony? The easy way is to ask those who are already on the balcony, what things look like. The hard part (which is most recommended) is to develop a 30,000 foot perspective.
Mind Mapping
Mind Mapping has been a well known tool for note taking and over all brain storming. What we’ve noticed in a leadership sense is how well mind mapping works to provide a larger perspective of what it is we do, and where things currently stand within the group.
How
- Take out a sheet of paper and put a circle in the middle. Put your business name in there, industry, team or whatever you’re trying to get a view from the balcony of.
- Create branches off of that circle. It doesn’t matter how many, you can adjust later.
- On the ends of those branches add more circles and in them, put the various things or tasks your business consists of.
- Now add more branches off of the ends of that second ring of circles. Here you can get more granular in your thoughts.
- Step back and take a look.
What do you see? Are you able to get an idea of how things are operating from the center out? Do you see things that need more of your attention? Do you notice any “big rocks” or first principles that could use more focus?
Hazel describes this in more of a note taking sense but you can get the idea here.
What To Do As Leaders
For us leaders, the answer, you may think, is easy: get up in the balcony AND on the dance floor. Right, that takeaway is easy, although, as easy as it sounds, many may not take that approach at all. Obviously, as leaders, we need to know to bounce between those perspectives at all times. That is not the takeaway here though.
Conclusion
This isn’t only a recommendation to do for your professional life, but to also employ this method to your personal life. This time put “you” in the middle and branch off of that. We go in depth into this method in our Leadership Awareness Course Get in the weeds, yes, that is important, but we also need to zoom out and get on that balcony.
