Dancing Not Debating

My first meeting this morning started with dancing to Rush by Ayra Starr.

I do love to dance.

Yet, I know NOTHING about it as a profession. (I leave that to Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD ACC)

What I do know, is that professional dancers get judged based on a certain set of criteria, much like gymnasts, or divers do.

Tomorrow, I am hosting 2 book circles on Adam Grant's book Think Again.

One of the chapters we'll be focusing on is titled "Dances with Foes," where he invites us to think of a debate not like a fight, or a war, but as a dance.
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He outlines 4 major components to a good dance:

• We seek common ground
• We limit the number of reasons (weapons) we bring.
• We side step defend/attack spirals.
• We get curious and ask questions.

In order to move beyond a discussion and into an experience, we will be dancing together on certain controversial work-related topics.

Since I don't want to get stuck in a win-lose mentality, the debaters will be scored on how well they dance together, rather than individually.

I even created a score-card, inspired by a real dance scorecard that I found on the internet, and using the 4 major dance components discussed in the book, as well as some general "good" dancing principles.

We'll see how good at dancing they turn out to be.

Do you like to dance?

P.S. If you want a copy of the scorecard, let me know.

Originally posted on LinkedIn with comments.

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