[MUSIC]
[APPLAUSE] >> We make eye
contact and the music starts.
he approaches me and invites me with his left hand.
I accept and step into his frame.
We begin to sway gently to the beat, getting used to our own movements,
before we take some steps.
He steps back, making room for me to step forward,
but then he stops, redirecting my energy to come back around into a turn.
That was fun, and we're warming up.
So, he tries again, but this time he leaves his hand on my head as I keep
spinning, until he decides that he wants me to stop, and he brings it down.
As those of you who know me know, I love to partner dance.
>From salsa and bachata, to ballroom and even swing.
I've spent the past ten years learning, practicing and
dancing around the world.
One of my favorite parts about partner dancing is the ability to connect with
people from all walks of life, using only base level human language.
Eye contact and touch, and yet coming together in a flow,
but it can only describe as both meditative and energizing.
When I dance,
I understand what they mean when they say the the sum is greater that its parts.
You see, I can move on my own, my partner can move on his own, but
then together we can do moves that neither of us could fully do on our own.
I want to share with you a different dance.
This time the dance floor is a conference room, and
the leader whose moves I'm following is a VP at the company that I work for.
This dance takes place over a series of emails and meetings.
And one day everything is going great and we're on the same beat and then, the next
day it feels as if I were bending in the middle of the turn left wobbling and
trying to regain my balance.
Sounds familiar?
>> [LAUGH] >> You see,
through dance I have learned more than just dance moves.
In learning how to partner dance, I have learned more about leadership and
team dynamics than in any other class or book.
So, today my goal is to share with you the two best practices that I have learned
that can have the biggest impact on your partners and your dancing,
with the hope that even if you don't dance,
you can use these insights to be a better leader at work.
The first big takeaway is that you should use energy wisely.
Dance, like most things in life, is an act of focus energy and
like our friendly physicist explain, energy cannot be created nor
destroyed, only transferred or transformed.
The same applies in leading and following, whether they're on the dance floor or
in the conference room, we're always managing, directing, absorbing and
sharing energy.
Even when we're not aware that this is happening.
Perhaps, this is why often unaware and
maybe more distant connected leaders accidentally step on your toes.
They're not aware of where their energy's going, let alone where it is
in relations to your's and before you know it [NOISE], there goes your big toe.
>> [LAUGH] >> So,
I think that leaders should manage not just numbers and targets, but also energy.
Let me illustrate this with an example.
I used to work at Google and
at Google unlike most companies engineers nominate themselves for a promotion.
The reason for
this is that progress in engineering can sometimes be hard to spot externally.
So, the onus is on the individual to nominate him or herself when he or
she feels ready.
Seems super fair.
While the issue was that women were not nominating themselves for
a promotion at the same rates that their male colleagues were.
So, imagine you're a leader at Google, what do you do about this?
Allen Ustice was a leader in the engineer organization when he got this information.
And he was really wise, what he did was he used his position to strategically
redirect the energy in the organization.
He drafted an email, where he cited academic studies
that show that girls don't raise their hands as often in the classroom.
That women don't speak up as often in meetings and
he said that the same thing was happening with promotions.
He sent this to every engineer at Google and he told the women to advocate for
themselves.
You see, in realizing where the energy was stuck in the organization,
Alan was able to use his own leadership to pivot them, to change their behavior.
There are many ways to do this.
You can do a more mobile approach like Allen did.
You can use even more subtle things, for example,
if you find that your company is being very siloed you can organize for random
desk Fridays where everyone switches seats and therefore talks to each other.
Or If you notice that everyone is really burned out,
you can give everyone a paid day off.
The key thing now I want to encourage you to do, is to use your position as a leader
to direct the energy in the organization, much like you would in a dance.
The second take away, is that the best leaders know and adapt to their people.
Not the other way around.
We have this narrative in the world that leadership is all about command, and
control, and strength, and rigidity.
And that is exactly the worst thing in a dance partner.
>> [LAUGH] >> You see, the people who are commanding
and controlling, they're the ones that just pull you off of your foot and
then, you fall or run into someone else.
The best leaders are the ones who adapt themselves to you.
If you're really short, they go down.
If you're really tall, they go up.
They adapt.
It's not just about mechanically being able to do the step perfectly.
It's about how you do it, with others.
To put it in techie terms, good leaders
are like a website that looks one way on desktop and different on mobile.
>> [LAUGH] >> Responsive leadership,
responsive design.
[LAUGH] So, how does it actually work in practice?
So, the best designers can tell you, good design comes from good insights,
good people insights.
And we do this in business, in marketing, in strategy, in sales, we look for
people insights before we make decisions.
But why not in leadership?
Here's another example, this time from Project Loon, which was Google access
ambitious project to send Internet up into the air via balloons.
To share, how a leader might do this?
Astro Teller was leading the project at the time of launch.
And he had a big group of engineers, and scientists, everyone's working really
hard, really excited to finally launch this project, it's taken so long.
But there are many potential complications with this launch and
he finds himself in a difficult position.
Fear Astro, like, how could you mitigate that risk?
You could delay launch and run a bunch of tests, but
at the time it's no longer possible, you're launching in three months.
So, what do you do?
Astro realized that he had a team full of engineers and
scientists who had become successful by succeeding in academia.
They had taken lots of tests, not only were they expert test takers, but
they were proud of the fact that they were good at taking tests.
So, he used this insight to create an activity for them.
He brought them on to room, gave them each a piece of paper and pen, set a timer for
30 minutes and told everyone you're taking a test.
Whoever get's the best answer get's the best grade, you have 30 minutes,
you only have to answer one question.
Imagine it's launch day and everything goes wrong.
Why?
Engineers furiously scribble down on the paper all the reasons why everything was
going to go wrong.
And before you knew it, in 30 minutes they had a huge list of everything that they
needed to fix to ensure a smooth launch, but they still had three months to go.
So, they did it and they launched flawlessly.
The big takeaway here is to be responsive to the people that you're trying to lead,
adapt yourself to them and then, you're able to make the best out of them.
To the untrained eye it seems like the most technical dancer would be the best
dance partner.
But, that's simply not true.
The best dance partners, and research shows this too, are the people
who are able to manage energy effectively, their own and the energy of others.
The people who are responsive to the behavior of other people.
The best leaders have the highest emotional intelligence, or EQ.
So, the next time, that you find yourself in a leadership position,
I encourage you to hear more than the music, learn more than steps.
Hear, see, be, dance with the people that you're trying to lead.
Not only will you spare their toes, but
you will also bring the most out of the energy that each individual has.
And that my friends is how you get a guaranteed second dance.
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]