Smart Leadership Is About Knowing How To Make Your Team Align With Your Goals. Sounds Like Tango? Well — It Is!
Being a leader is fulfilling, but not everyone is cut out for the role. Many want to become leaders and try to be one, but they end up unsuccessful as they lack the skills and intellect necessary for smart leadership.
Lol. This is a stock image! I just added my words above. But… - isn’t that your dream, if you are a male, and isn’t that your nightmare - if you area female?
Anyone who wants to become a smart leader can learn a lot from the Argentine Tango. The maxim that states “it takes two to Tango” when applied to leadership simply means that both parties, the leader and the follower, are responsible for the outcome of any situation. It’s challenging for aspiring leaders to succeed if they cannot create partnerships with their followers and their teams.
Argentine Tango translates into Smart-Leadership-Applied because the dance teaches many lessons that can help aspiring leaders know how to make their team align with their goals.
Building Trust
The Argentine Tango is a partner dance where one is a leader, and the other is a follower. For the couple to execute steps, the leader should initiate trust-building with their follower loooooong before the dance actually begin. A follower who feels strange or awkward as they’re dancing with another person on the dance floor can prevent them from enjoying the dance and expressing their emotions.
Building trust is vital for the couple to remain comfortable dancing with each other. The same applies to leadership in general. For someone to lead another person or team, they have to exert time and effort to build trust first. Without trust, team members won’t have the confidence to follow instructions provided by their leaders. But there is something more.
The team needs to fully understand the overarching strategy. WHERE are we going and WHAT are we trying to achieve. Then the HOW becomes the tactic, a small step that is easy to execute once understood and agreed upon the common goal.
Building trust is an important key to smart leadership. It requires effort, patience, and time. Anyone who wants to build trust as a leader should work on connecting and understanding their team’s needs and issues by asking the right questions and paying attention to verbal and non-verbal signals. And here the Argentine Tango philosophy and principles can help quite a lot!
Starting Slow
Small actions count when it comes to leadership. One should begin with small and attainable tasks while maintaining open communication and transparency. When working with new individuals or teams, the leader should be responsible for conveying intentions clearly and ensuring that every member fully understands their targets and roles.
Only when the team is comfortable working together, the leader can initiate tackling bigger challenges and issues. Plus now the team members, will be much eager to undertake the challenging tasks since they have the full overview of what is expected and what is possible.
In the Argentine Tango, the follower will have a hard time dancing if the leader starts off with difficult and complicated movements. This is especially true if the follower doesn’t have any experience in dancing the Argentine Tango yet. Instead of enjoying the dance, the follower will likely end up feeling angry, confused, and frustrated to the point where they’ll lose the motivation to continue dancing.
When dancing the Argentine Tango, the leader should start with slow and easy movements, check what are the partner’s abilities, and then gradually transition to more complex steps.
Follower side? - we have the ability to propose the course of events and movements, but… This is only possible only towards the Tango leader who is comfortable and confident in his role. If someone is afraid of losing control - they will be doing everything to protect their position leadership.
Understanding and being able to apply these common-sense rules will allow both parties to dance in harmony.
Having the Willingness To Learn
When dancing the Argentine Tango, the leaders are usually under the fake impression that the follower will get bored with their lead. The answer is … - maybe. The truth is somewhere in the grey area.
The Follower actually cares more about the QUALITY of your movement. It is better to have a smaller vocabulary and learn to improvise and thus be able to create new chains of events from what you know well rather than have a huge array of combinations impossible to execute. It’s crucial for dancers, especially leaders, to keep their partners interested - but less is usually more. Repeating the same routines and movements cannot bore a person if proposed skillfully. No worries - you cannot kill their enthusiasm.
Here is the aspect to consider. The true Tango Follower leaves in the moment - CARPE DIEM. She is willing, ready, expectant, and skilled - all you have to do is say (nonverbally a.k.a. through your lead) - how about we do this. And she will (nonverbally) tell you - yes, that’s a great idea, but how about we do exactly what you said, but this way. And then the leader can say (nonverbally of course) - ha, I haven’t thought about that, but since we are here it calls for…. this. And here we go - ongoing feedback from your team and inclusive leadership.
Tango dancers and Tango masters strive to prevent boredom from happening by consistently working on understanding how the dance is structured. What are the possibilities, what are the challenges? Trying out new steps, acquiring new skills from training, and participating in various workshops - are important, but having the leadership skills is what cements it all together. Mastering the Argentine Tango requires lifelong development, and aspiring leaders might consider the same journey to become the best in their niches or industries.
Perceptive leaders are ready and willing to learn new skills, take calculated risks, and compete with their alter egos. These types of leaders are often considered inspirational as they always think outside the box and continually put themselves in situations that confront their skills.
Anyone who wants to become a shrewd leader should have the willingness to learn throughout their lifetime. The lessons they’ll learn every single day can help them build their confidence as leaders and improve their decision-making skills!
Listening Actively
The Argentine Tango is a dance for improvisation as dancers can improvise their movements based on the size of the dance floor, the number of dancers around them, their partners’ experience, and the music’s melody. Anyone can learn tango steps and movements, but these aren’t always executed in every performance.
Listening is key for tango dancers to improvise their routine. For them to sync well with the music, they need to listen actively to take their performance to the next level. Tango dancers also have to listen to their partners to ensure that they are on the same page.
Tango performances won’t be successful when one doesn’t know how to listen — and the same can happen when a leader doesn’t know how to listen to their team members and the environment around them. When translated to real life, active listening skills are always a must-have for smart leaders. Leaders should be able to proactively listen to their members, ask challenging questions and act accordingly.
Smart leaders know how to comprehend verbal and non-verbal cues and adapt quickly based on the things they learned from listening. They also know how to lend an ear to troubled members to help them get through challenges easily.
In her article Leadership lessons of the tango Michele Wucker writes:
Everything I learned about management and leadership I learned at…the dance studio?
Michele Wucker
Well, yes. As a beginner student of the Argentine tango two decades ago, I used to come home reflecting on how much of what I learned from the micro-interactions in class applied to everyday life. Those lessons in communication, adaptability, and teamwork stayed with me for many years, and resonate anew now that I’ve taken up the dance again.
Tango dancers, business leaders, and rising stars tend to demonstrate drive, persistence, concentration, and commitment. They also are ambitious, competitive, and impatient. These Type A personality qualities are often the ingredients for success in business and in life. But they also can lead to problems if not managed well. This is especially so for teams in which — just as in the tango — both leaders and followers share these high-performance traits.
Photograph by John Lund
Understanding Another Point of View
Generally, people who lead the Argentine Tango have years of experience performing the dance. A leader pairs up with someone who is still a novice to the Argentine Tango with the aim of teaching them the correct movements and steps while making sure that the pair executes the techniques successfully.
However, to truly become an experienced tango dancer one have to understand their follower’s point of view. Why their follower is hesitant in trying out certain steps? Does the leader know what it feels like to be led? Understanding the point of view of a follower is essential for a tango dancer to lead more clearly.
Understanding another person’s point of view is just as important when it comes to leadership. For instance, when a leader understands why a member underperforms, they can have a better sense of empathy and learn how to show kindness. These traits will allow leaders to connect to their members and establish a great team.
Understanding other points of view can also help a smart leader look at the bigger picture, make better decisions, and motivate their team to work better.
Setting Followers for Success
In Argentine Tango, a follower can’t dance with ease unless a leader guides them on the dance floor. A follower’s willingness to dance the Argentine Tango will be useless if they’re not paired with a leader who can help them to show off all their abililties.
Tango leaders are responsible for setting the foundation of the dance and ensuring that the follower knows how and when to execute common tango steps, like the boleos (kicks) or ochos (serpentine steps). The leader should set the follower up for success so the two can easily execute the Argentine Tango together.
In real life, smart leaders should also set their followers up for success by teaching them the necessary skills for their jobs and making sure that obstacles or challenges are minimized along the way. A smart leader shouldn’t sabotage their followers by using them to make a name for themselves; instead, they should mold their followers to become successful as this can reflect their credibility as a leader.
Some more from Michele Wucker:
It’s also evident in dance, as in the office, that trust between leaders and followers is a dynamic and self-reinforcing feedback loop. Members of high-performance teams expect their leaders to trust them with responsibility. They know if their boss is trying to compensate — by moving more slowly, repeating instructions, pulling away from making a difficult move — for a perceived weakness and lack of trust.
Providing Direction
When dancing the Argentine Tango, leaders provide direction to their followers. They are responsible for encouraging their partners to move in a specific direction to ensure that the two of them can perform on the dance floor flawlessly. Without this, couples won’t be able to execute the techniques as effectively and might end up hurting their partners or even bumping into other couples on the dance floor.
Providing direction is one of the most important responsibilities every clever leader should have when managing a team in the corporate world. It’s the leader’s responsibility to guide their teams forward, ensuring everyone can accomplish their short and long-term goals.
Giving Clear Instructions
Effective tango leaders understand how challenging it is for followers to take their lead, so they apologize whenever a follower stumbles. On the other hand, bad leaders will blame their followers for why they tripped and failed to perform the dance.
Smart leaders in real life should adopt the same mindset and give clear directions when setting goals and leading members of a team. Instead of blaming others when their instructions are not carried out effectively, smart leaders will ask if their instructions were clear enough in the first place. This will enable the leader to understand their own lapses and improve their communication towards their members and teams.
At work, as in the tango, teams depend on strong mutual trust and clear communication. Leaders in both contexts who have managed to recruit a fantastic partner, or group of partners, have to make sure that they thrive together. And both parties — leaders and followers — have to be clear about the signals they are giving to (and receiving from) one another. Replacing personal ambition with a collective aspiration, constantly working to build trust, and embracing empathy over impatience are crucial steps for a beautiful dance.
Consistency Is Key
Aside from being a traditional dance with a rich and colorful history, the Argentine Tango can also provide insights to equip anyone to become an empowering leader. As long as these insights are consistently applied in real life, it won’t be long before a person becomes an effective leader!