Work For Your Performers

Whether in performance, or in the office, you give to your people, and you work hard to make them look good. It’s always made sense to me when putting together something with artistic vision: if you strive to cast your dancers in the roles that will show them off, they generally try to work hard for you, which in turn makes a piece that shines more. However, I hadn’t always made that connection to the corporate world.

Whatever I’m running is a show, whether there are costumes and lights or not. I can’t do it all myself: I’m the visionary, the organizer. My people are the performers. They do the meat of the work – they take center stage in the performance. I am behind the scenes.

I have to learn to give more to my team. Admittedly it can be hard: I have an idea to do something a certain way, or I feel compelled to just do it myself. It can be hard not to want to dance the piece myself, or to let someone else carry out the task at hand. It’s true that the planning and creating is indeed my work, but the entire piece is bigger than that.

Once I began to realize this, it has become easier to let go, and happily it saves me time and energy as well. I have to let people do things; I have to trust and verify. The satisfaction of seeing people learn and grow surprised me at first, but it is a wonderful thing and I am only beginning to understand how to be more generous.

In being more generous, your people will look better and hopefully try to do you proud. My goal is to be alert and conscious to when I can involve people in my work. If people are glad to work with me, and maybe even feel lucky to be around me, I will have done something right.

As Twyla Tharp sagely writes in The Creative Habit: “Without that generosity, you’ll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it.”

She couldn’t have said it better. So let go, trust your people, and see what blossoms!