Moving Between the Balcony and the Dance Floor

[@annkoufman-frederick7995]

This analogy and these concrete ideas about moving between the dance floor and the balcony make significant leadership improvements real and ultimately more successful.

[@Accordeonaire]

The lesson of this metaphor very often gets framed as you have to get off the dance floor and go to the balcony, but I think the lesson Heifetz was getting at was we have to be able to move between them with facility. You have to be on the dance floor and in the balcony simultaneously. In fact, the main learning I get about adaptive change from Heifetz is that one has to develop an agility to shift fluidly between different perspectives, different scales, and different cultures. The less rigid we are, the better our leadership will be.

[@KansasLeadership]

Great comment, Gary Chapin! Since this is an introductory video, I think the primary purpose is to introduce the idea of shifting gears to reflection vs. staying in action mode. The facility you describe --shifting with fluency--represents the advanced skill of an "adaptive leadership Jedi." What we were aiming for in this video is to help people learn to "feel the Force" if you follow me. Before switching back and forth is second nature, you first have to learn to switch. --Sam Smith, KLC director of communications.