Bet you do! It's your natural habitat. Where you feel happy, confident, secure. You know all your dance partners and you excel at the moves. You shine, you sparkle, you attract attention and you never miss a beat.
But do you really want to stay on the dance floor? Dancing? Maybe your knees will start to hurt. Maybe you'll get fed up with the same old tunes, the same old beats. Maybe the new younger dancers will have better moves.
So it's time to get out of your comfort zone and start calling the tunes rather than dancing to them. Maybe you want to put yourself forward for a leadership role. Maybe you've been asked (or told) to be more strategic
In short, it's time to get off the dance floor and move up to the balcony where you can see the patterns, see the movers and shakers, see the people who are off beat and get strategic with the moves.
Are you embracing that change? Are the people who want you to make it helping you to take your place? I think this is a great analogy and it resonates with many people. Leadership is all about getting off the dance floor and getting up onto the balcony.
The most challenging things for many people are :
- Stopping doing and starting thinking
- Fighting off imposter syndrome
- Building the confidence to speak up and be heard
There are lots of good books about how to handle the challenge and reading those books helps. 'The First 90 Days' for example gives a practical road map for new leaders with checklists for what to do in various circumstances. Going on management training courses helps too.
But you also have to look closely at yourself, your own strengths and weaknesses, what you're accepting and what you're avoiding. In short, what's holding you back.
This is where coaching comes in. I'm flabbergasted that generally after businesses have invested so much in training staff on the dance floor, they expect them just to know what to do when they get to the balcony. If they're the right people with the right talents, 10 hours of coaching often makes a transformational difference to new leaders. For a fraction of the cost of failure.
