Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 1 hour 51 minute evening workshop at the Buddhist Society, psychologist and meditation teacher Liana Taylor explores how cultivating an adventurous attitude transforms both personal and professional leadership. She opens by mapping the series so far—wisdom and the Eightfold Path, taming self-doubt and mental fiction, mindfulness in Buddhist psychology—before introducing the core metaphor: tango as a physical embodiment of leadership and followship. Through a sequence of grounded body awareness exercises, participants explore how impulse, intention, weight shift, and balance underlie movement, then apply these lessons to partnered tango steps. Taylor weaves in practical examples of how attitudes like courage, persistence, teamwork, curiosity, and endurance serve leadership, discusses their shadow sides, and uses the dance’s demand for complete attention and mutual responsibility to reveal what it means to lead wisely and follow gracefully. The evening is pitched at working professionals and business leaders, though the Buddhist framework of seed consciousness and the practical mindfulness instruction will resonate with any serious practitioner.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2008 11 21 Buddha in the Boardroom 21-11-08.mp3
UUID: 2f7885dc-b3d5-4fd9-b8e0-171a49a5d029
Teacher: Liana Taylor
Collection: Liana Taylor Buddha in the Boardroom (Liana Taylor)
Date: 2008-11-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~12,876
I’m Liana Taylor. Are there other people here that haven’t been here in the last few weeks? So there are, it’s not just my memory. I was thinking I don’t recognise those faces and that’s good because I don’t. I’m Liana Taylor, I’m a psychologist and a meditation teacher and the two areas of my focus in my working life at the moment are teaching mindfulness-based cognitive therapy programs to other practitioners and professionals and also working with mindful leadership.
So they’re the two areas of my main work at the moment. This is one evening called Adventures in Attitude, the Leadership Tango. It’s called that because, well actually, it’ll become obvious why it’s called that. You’ll be doing some tango as the evening goes on as a part of understanding how we work with leadership and followship. I see some of the scrunched faces around the room.
It wasn’t just a metaphor for the word tango. What I’d like to do is just briefly cover, for those of you here tonight, each night does stand alone. And what I’ll do tonight is just cover a little bit of where we’ve been so far for those people that have been coming along to this series. Week one, we were looking at a topic called The Getting of Wisdom.
And as part of that we looked at what wisdom was, what leadership wisdom was. We looked at the seven disciplines that we cultivate that support our wisdom in leadership and we explored which of those disciplines we’re naturally more inclined toward and those we’re naturally disinclined toward. And we looked very briefly, we just started looking at the Noble Eightfold Path, which comes from Buddhism. And the Noble Eightfold Path is the manual in Buddhism that supports us to do these other things that we want to do.
That was week one. Week two, our topic was Taming Self-Doubt and Other Fictions of the Mind. And as part of what we were looking at that week was that leadership is about vision, about seeing the vision out there in front of us and holding the vision out in front of us to shine the light on our path forward so we know where we’re going. So it’s partly that kind of vision and also having the awareness of the things that get in our way toward moving toward that vision. And often, some of the things that get in our way are our self-doubt and other fictions of the mind.
And we talked about that night that thoughts are just thoughts. They’re mental events. They of themselves are not facts. How do we look at that and how do we deal with that? And we looked at the fact that our minds often run on automatic pilot.
One thought comes, the next thought comes, and all of a sudden we’re free-falling down into some place that’s not always useful for us or reacting to situations instead of responding wisely. We looked at the fact that we tend to do that because in experience we have one of three responses we tend to have. One of liking something and therefore wanting it and feeling the loss when it’s not there, one of not liking something and consequently often wanting to get rid of it, push it away, be angry, blame other people around it, and one of what we might call delusion which is often about confusion or kind of numbing out or not noticing what is going on, just not being aware and therefore not being able to act wisely on our path toward what matters to us. The third session last time I was here, we looked at mindfulness approaches in psychology. So we had a big session looking at where mindfulness fits in the Buddhist structure of things.
And that mindfulness is one of the Eightfold Path, so it’s one aspect of a whole path. And all eight aspects of the path fit together to form how we lead a wise life. Mindfulness is one aspect of that. And it’s an aspect of that that is about developing discipline, and it sits in concert with concentration, concentrative meditation, and the two work together. We learn to train our minds, train our minds to focus, train our minds to hopefully do as much as we want them to do as we can make a dog do.
And I would have said at the time that we often can train a dog to sit better than we can train our own minds to sit. So a part of what we’re doing in concentrated meditation is training our minds to be as we want them to, to come into some stillness with ourselves, to connect with ourselves, to find the spaciousness of that stillness and find some sense of grounding and of meaning in our lives. And also then to cultivate mindfulness, the capacity to see what arises in that, both in the outer world and in the inner world. And as we start to see those patterns of what arises, we have a much more subtle and acute knowledge of, awareness of what’s going on, and we can make wiser choices about how to act. Part of mindfulness is remembering the patterns of things that come, so we start to notice the tendencies of our own mind, our own emotions, and especially those things that get in the way of us acting wisely and importantly in our leadership.
So that’s a little bit about where we’ve been. I’m not used to the, is this clicking on the microphone? It sounds like it from here, but maybe it’s not out there. It’s just here. Okay.
So one of the other concepts in Buddhist tradition is the concept of a seed consciousness. I don’t know if that’s one ‘s’ or two there. I think it’s one. I might have made a mistake. And the concept of seed consciousness, we become very aware of the aspects in our seed consciousness with mindfulness.
We start to become aware of all the parts of us, even those parts we don’t like. The thoughts that we have that are torturing ourselves, the thoughts that we have that make us wanna torture somebody else at any given time, the feelings that we have that are really nice and yummy, and the feelings that we have that kinda drive us to despair, the bodily sensations that we have that are really enjoyable, and the bodily sensations that we have that we’d really rather not have, and in fact, we just wanna get rid of them. So all of those things exist as a part of us. Hands up those in the room who haven’t had all of those sorts of things. Has anybody in the room not had, you know, nice feelings and yucky feelings and nice thoughts and yucky thoughts and nice emotions and yucky thoughts?
Anybody here not had both ends of those spectrums? Okay. So oftentimes, there are parts of that that we don’t wanna pay attention to, but they’re all there, and they’re all a part of us. And in a way, one of the ways we think about this in the Buddhist tradition is about the seed consciousness. And just imagine this is our consciousness, and there are all these seeds.
You know, we all have seeds of despair. We all have seeds of delight. We all have seeds of hunger and of satisfaction, of yearning, and of appreciation, of hatred, of love, of compassion, of wisdom, of frustration, of irritation, of despair. All of those things are in our minds. So we’ve all got those seeds in our consciousness.
Part of what we do in mindfulness is notice those seeds really well. We notice the seeds. I think your scarf might be, is that what’s causing, against the microphone. It’s rubbing against you. I’ll touch you.
Yes. It’s so smooth. Sorry to embarrass you there. I just realized the mic was on too. I was calling you sweet quietly.
Calling you sweet. Is it, is that the right place? Is it better on my shirt? Is that better, folks? Yeah.
That’s better. Oh, it’s much, see, it was rustling, wasn’t it? Let’s see what it was. So we notice we’ve all got these seeds in front of us. Have you ever noticed when one of those seeds of your consciousness, one of those less than positive seeds, say aggravation at somebody else who’s done something that you just find totally irritating?
They’re really being moronic and you just wish they’d stop or drop off the face of the earth or go away or be in somebody else’s space or just not have existed. Have any of you ever had a feeling like that? I’m glad some of you are nodding. Okay. So we start to notice that this is a seed in our consciousness.
If we water that seed, if we repeat it to ourselves, they really are stupid. How is it they’ve got to be let in this course? I don’t know what they’re doing here. They could never have passed. See the way we water that seed?
We pour water on it. Then if we choose, we can go and talk to a friend who thinks like us and wants to, you know, be friendly with us, and they can go, yeah, they are. They’re a real idiot. You know, don’t even worry about them. They’re just such an idiot.
I don’t even know how they got here. They’re just a waste of space. So now we’re pouring fertilizer on this seed. Yeah? And what is happening?
It’s growing. What’s more, we can go home and write about it if we like. We can write poems about it, sing songs about it. I’m sure none of us have ever done that. Sing songs about it, write poems about it, write stories about it, write to other people about it, write books about it.
Go read research about people who are idiots. Go write in the paper about people that are idiots in our view. And all of that time, we’re watering the seeds of this. Now if watering those seeds serves us, serves the people and the organizations around us, and serves the planet well, then it’s probably a good idea to water those seeds. But for most of us, most of the time, watering those seeds, nourishing them, putting sunshine on them, fertilizing them doesn’t really help us.
It doesn’t really serve us very well. Have you noticed that in your life when you water those seeds? Same with despair. You know? I’m really sad.
This bad thing is happening. I’m more sad. I think I’ll put on Leonard Cohen. I love Leonard Cohen. I’m now more sad.
Actually, I think I’ll pick up my guitar and play some Leonard Cohen. Guitarist of long time ago. And now I’m really deeply in the sadness. I feel deeply in touch with myself. I feel really connected to myself.
Deeply, deeply in touch with this seed, pouring water, sunshine, nourishment to this. And now I think I’ll write an email to somebody about how sad I am. And now I think I’ll write some poetry about how sad I am and write a poem about how sad I am. Okay? So I’m watering the seed again of my sadness.
Now I’m not saying when I’m talking about this that we don’t want to recognize these seeds as they’re sprouting in us. If something is present within us, it’s present, and the only loving thing that we can do is to meet that presence. However, if something is present and if we water that seed, and as we water it, as it grows, it doesn’t serve us, serve the people around us, or serve the planet, we might want to make some different choices about how much we want to water that seed. How do you balance that with then doing the sorts of things that you were talking about, that being a cathartic thing for you to get you through it? Can you explain to me what I was talking about?
When you were talking about the concept of actually watering something by dwelling on it and maybe playing the music and the guitar, but surely those things could be cathartic as well, that’s what I’m saying. The best question to ask is, is this serving me, and we can’t always know that the first time. So the first time something sad happens and we sit there and cry about it, and then write about it, and play music about it, and tell everybody about it, if through that process we feel lighter ourselves, more engaged in the people that we love and the activities we love, then that’s probably serving us. If by doing that process we become more isolated, more miserable, more negative about ourselves and the world, more angry with other people, then that’s probably not serving us. And so sometimes it’s about having enough experience of yourself, having enough experience with yourself to know actually on this occasion I probably just need to sit and have a good cry.
Meeting myself in a really loving, tender, honouring way. On this particular occasion, you know, I’m at work, this person’s just said this outrageous thing, there’s all this drama going on in the finance department, what do I need to do about it? I probably need to go to the toilet where I can have some privacy, notice the anger that’s rising in me and the frustration that’s rising in me, come into a place of centeredness, go out and deal with it wisely. So we just need to calibrate what’s going to work for us.
And do each of you have a sense of the times in your life where you’ve kind of watered the seeds where it hasn’t been useful? Yeah. Have you noticed times in your life where you haven’t watered the seeds, but you’ve chosen to divert your attention somewhere else and that’s actually been the most nourishing thing to do? Some of you have, not all of you.
There are other times when other people wanna put water on my seeds. Yes, that’s another challenge isn’t it? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, it is a challenge to defer that. So we can make choices about what seeds in us we want to water.
And I think if we have watered a particular variety of seeds for a whole pile of our life, often because of circumstances and who we’ve modelled ourselves on, who we’ve been around and who’s watered our seeds for us, if we keep watering those seeds, then we often form a sense of identity around, that’s who I am. Yeah? So if we’re a person who’s working twelve hours a day and that’s the way we have a view of ourselves as a worker and how we deal with our work situation and we’re watering the seeds of workaholism for example or getting things done or focusing on all of that above other things, if we’re invited then to water some of these other seeds, sometimes we can’t identify who that person is, and sometimes that feels like quite a fragile area because the seeds have not grown strongly there. Okay?
So it’s not that the seeds aren’t there to grow. We simply may not have watered that garden yet. So sometimes we might choose to water a different garden inside of ourselves and see what happens when that grows, what happens when the flowers come there and allow the butterflies to come to us instead of being a workaholic and getting to holidays and running out and chasing butterflies by going to Bali for a week and then coming back and watering these seeds. So we make some choices about which seeds we water. The talk tonight is about, what was it? The talk tonight is about Adventures in Attitude.
And adventure and attitude are things that we can also water. We can water the kinds of attitude that we want to have. Just link that with your comment about three approaches. We can see something we like and move towards it or we don’t like and we won’t. So watering seeds that serve us, is that moving towards things we like?
Could be. So again, thanks for bringing that up. There’s not actually a problem with moving toward things we like as such. There’s a problem of being attached to it. So if moving towards being generous to Jumper tonight and wanting to kind of shower him, I don’t know what I’d do, but, you know, have a conversation with him, be generous, give him a gift.
If that’s something that’s rising in me and I want to water that seed and I go over to do that, but what I see is, oh, I don’t want this or this isn’t gonna serve him very well, it’s at that point if I stay attached to that wanting and keep doing it, not noticing if it’s serving him or therefore me or therefore the planet, it’s at that point that it’s problematic. As the Dalai Lama said, when he wakes up in the morning he has to want to meditate otherwise he wouldn’t bother. We have to want to feed ourselves, have to want to nourish ourselves or we wouldn’t bother.
But if the wanting or staying away from something is not serving us, that’s where it becomes problematic. We know that our attitude is key to success. When you’re looking at a work environment for example, a lot of the current research is showing and the surveys are showing that attitude is the number one performance-related issue for all companies that we’re dealing with. That applies both to employees and employers, people at the top and people at the bottom. The attitude, our attitude toward what is going on is really key to what’s going on, to our performance and our functionality.
As our attitudes deteriorate, as we move from attitudes of cultivating wisdom, of cultivating compassion, of cultivating clarity of mind, freshness of heart, joy, love, productivity, connectedness, belonging, whatever those qualities are, as we water those qualities and we increase those attitudes of hope and value in the world, our productivity increases. As our attitudes deteriorate to some of the more negative attitudes, and they’re negative because they don’t serve us, that’s the only reason that we might see them as negative, or unhelpful attitudes, then our performance deteriorates as does the performance of our company and our organization and our boards, if that’s happening in a boardroom. So tonight, what we’re going to be doing is moving between a little bit of theory around adventure as an attitude, a little bit of mindfulness practice using tango, little tiny elements of tango, as an opportunity for you to notice your adventurous spirits, also of being mindful, to notice the adventurous spirits, but also notice the things that get in the way of your adventurous spirit.
And some exercises. So we’ll be doing all of those things tonight. As we start the evening, what I’d like you to do is find a partner, preferably one that you haven’t worked with in here before, but some of you may not have anybody like that. So find someone you haven’t worked with before. You’ve got five or six minutes, and I’d like you to share two or three experiences that you’ve had anywhere in your life that have been adventurous.
Now, that may be in a sporting arena, that may be in a love context, it may be in the boardroom, it may be setting up a new business, it may be in a new job, it may be taking a yoga exercise. Whatever in your life you’ve experienced as adventurous, I’d like you to share two or three experiences that you’ve experienced as adventure, you being adventurous in your life. Off you go. Find someone to talk to that you don’t know. And as you’re ready, refocus at the front of the room.
The first question I have for you is what did you notice? What was happening emotionally and energetically for you when you started talking about your adventures? Uplifting. Uplifting. Anything else?
Sort of energizing. Energizing, uplifting. Delight. Delight. Yeah.
That kind of, you have this beautiful smile on your face, Jenny. I was going to call it a beatific smile. Yeah, yeah. Delight. And what did you, I was saying it’s funny that thinking back now, it’s something lovely we have forgotten that that was once in us and we’ve swept it under the rug and to pluck them back up, in my case is a long way back, it’s lovely, it’s uplifting again to revisit positive stuff like that.
So even reconnecting with that memory is a way of watering the seeds of those experiences, of those emotions, of that attitude, that feeling, what you can say. Every day can be an adventure, it’s a question of your attitude. Absolutely, absolutely. The most mundane in itself, you know, driving down Greenhill Road, who knows what’s going to happen? That really can be scary.
I’d rather climb a mountain. Always go out with a Boy Scout attitude, be prepared. Yes. Absolutely. And my life has been an adventure.
Yes. Absolutely. I had real adventures. Yes. Fantastic.
And so were there any other emotions or energies coming up when you started talking about adventure? Your adventures? You want more of it, kind of inspiring and that sense that you could move more into that. Yep. Yep.
So these may well be some of the seeds that you want to water in your life. And certainly in our personal lives and also in the boardroom and in the workplace, we may want to water these seeds of adventure, this attitude of adventure. Let me read you, there’s a man called John, I haven’t got used to this middle-aged stuff. I really haven’t got used to it. It’s an adventure.
Yeah. It’s an adventure. It’s an adventure. It’s more of an adventure when you’re out in the bush leading a bunch of people and all of a sudden discovering for the first time, holy heck, I’m the only person here who can read a map, and I can’t read it. That’s a real adventure.
Out with backpacks and good days on them. John Amatt, who’s a climber and an expedition manager and expeditioner, climbed Everest in nineteen eighty-two. And he climbed that day, on a day where four people had already died on Everest. I don’t know if many of you know about the Everest stories. And he writes this about adventure.
Adventure isn’t hanging from a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles in life, facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown, and in the process, discovering our own unique potential. It is not surprisingly about extraordinary physical prowess nor about gifted athletes. It is about ordinary people. We do it in our own way, in our own situations in our working lives that intimidate us.
I don’t know about any of you. Do any of you have situations in your working life that feel like a challenge or are intimidating? Yes. Some of you don’t. Many of you do.
Do any of you work with people, have experiences that are intimidating or challenging? Many of you do, not all of you. Okay. A boardroom full of prospective clients can have as foreboding an aspect as a slab of rock or a stretch of lonely ocean. A mountain is just a mountain until someone sees it as a challenge.
Similarly, a boardroom is just a boardroom until it’s approached as a site of risk-taking and adventure. And so we start to see that our perspective, attitude about those things really changes. So what I’d like to hear from you, what is it about those activities that you talked about? What changes, certainly attitude, but what specifically is different about those experiences that you plucked out of your memories as adventurous that differentiates them from experiences that are just life activities and experiences? Being in different situations, out of control.
Yep. Yep. For unexpected, out of the known. In the moment. Yep.
And why do they do that? What is it about them that makes you do that? Because you need to focus on it. You need to concentrate. We need to concentrate on lots of things.
What is it about those things that makes us concentrate on them? Sometimes fear. Yeah. That’s a big one. Oftentimes.
Anything else? Confidence in yourself to tackle something you’re not quite sure you can get. Absolutely. I wondered about it being unnecessary. Often.
It’s about risking failure. Yep. Risking failure. And failure might be risking failure in terms of losing face in front of other people, not achieving something. Well, losing face is a really big one.
That’s the one that causes a lot of our fear. So it’s risk-taking our sense of our self. There’s also risk-taking in terms of our actual life, making a risk in terms of our actual life. Some of us are risk-takers. Is it spontaneous behaviour very often?
Often it’s spontaneous. Yep. Excitement. Yeah. Leap of faith that you’re gonna actually live through the experience.
Absolutely. Have a quick word for my angels and away we go. Yep. Leap of faith. Now these are all the kinds of elements that come into something that feels like an adventure, the attitude of adventure.
If we had that attitude with us all the time, what I’d like you to do is turn back to that same partner and talk to them about, just at the moment, your work life, but also if you prefer to go into your personal life, then do that. Share with them how would you guess your working life would be different and or your personal life if that’s better for you to be talking about if you had these attitudes with you a lot of the time. It’s not a safe place to be necessarily. It’s not living in comfort zone, but this attitude with you in your working place.
Can you add one thing there for me? That’s confidence. Yes. In my head, it’s the difference between, I guess, having an adventure and unmitigated terror. Yes.
With some level of confidence that you’ll be able to achieve. So it’s a little bit like, but it’s a bit different. I think you see this so I can concentrate on this question. Yes. Absolutely.
It has a different meaning for you. So there is some level of confidence that you’re going to be able to do this even though you may not know how. Yes. Or where or whatever else. Okay.
Go back to the same partner. You’ve got about four minutes altogether, just talking about if you had this attitude and brought this into your life, this attitude. And you have just one minute to go. And as you’re ready, coming back into the large group. So I invite you to keep those ideas with you as we go through the rest of the evening and certainly as you go home this evening, to keep alive that spirit of adventure in your life and to see how that might flavour through the rest of your life.
If we come back to where we started tonight, leadership. Leadership is many things. Leadership is also about vision, about insight and about relationships. Leadership in the world is about leadership and followship. So if we’re leading in the world, it’s usually because someone is following us.
In order to lead well in the world, we need first to lead well in our own lives and lead ourselves well. And a part of leading ourselves well is leading with the spirit of adventure. A part of leading and following is also to lead with the spirit of adventure. So with the spirit of adventure, I’d like you to water the seeds of the spirit of adventure in yourselves, and I’d like you all to put your gear down and just stand up.
Where you are at the moment, we’ll move about a bit more later. Where you are, standing up, those of you who are comfortable standing up. If for any of you this isn’t okay for your body, then sit down, of course. What I’d like you to do is just have your feet comfortably apart. For most of you that’ll be about shoulder width.
Some of you it’ll be more. Very few of you it’ll be less, and you might be toppling over. Okay. So what I’d like you to do is just take your awareness down to your feet and notice where do you notice the pressure going through your feet into the floor? Where is the weight of your body shining through your feet?
Heels, the sides of your feet, the balls, the toes. Simply noticing where the weight is going through the floor. And then in a moment, not just yet, but in a moment, I want you to ever so slightly shift your weight from your left foot to your right foot about ten to twenty percent of your weight. So, you know, there’s a slight shift of weight. And when you do that, I want you to notice where do you feel that shift of weight.
What muscles, what bodily organs, bones, tendons? What else gets engaged as you shift that weight? Where do you feel it in your body? How far up your body do you feel that shift? And where do you feel the pressure now through your feet into the floor?
And then come back to center, noticing what moves to bring you back to center. So we’re cultivating mindfulness of the body at the moment in order to understand mindfulness in a broader context. This time, move to the other side, to the right, noticing what changes. Did I get that wrong?
To the other side. I’m not sure which one I started with. The other right. The other right. Sorry about that, folks.
And then as you’re ready, come back to the center. The next time you move to one side, to the left, I’d like to invite you to notice just before you move, where do you notice the impulse in your body? Now I know that some of you will have a whole conversation in your minds about what do I mean by impulse, and do I mean in your mind or in your body or in this or in that? It doesn’t really matter. Whatever you first notice as impulse, that’s what I’m talking about.
Yeah? I want you to notice where the impulse starts in your body, and then I want you to move your body and notice the movement of weight and also of the structural changes. Off you go. And then back into the center. Each time noticing, first of all, the impulse and then the shift and what happens to all your bodily parts when you move, and then the weight.
And then back into the center. And then I want you to continue that from one side back to the center, to the other side back to the center, using lighter and lighter weights, you know, shifting like most of your weight or just a tiny bit of your weight. Just adjusting that weight shift so you get a sense of noticing where the impulse starts and what you notice as you move back and forth. So I just want you to play with that for a minute or two.
Starting with the impulse, looking at the effect on the body, and then where you notice the weight going through your feet to the floor. In case it’s not already there, remember to evoke that spirit of adventure while you’re doing this. And just stop. For those of you comfortable standing, just stay standing. Those of you who need to sit, certainly sit.
So tell me, what did you notice when you were doing that process? It required cooperation between both of my legs. Yep. Funny about that. Yeah, I noticed that to make myself move to the right for example, I would need to not only push off the left leg but somehow soften my right leg.
Right, to be receiving. To receive that. Yep, to send and then to receive. I knew that because when I tried to push with one leg and not give with the other, I just stood still. Have you ever seen leaders do that?
Push, push, push and everyone’s standing still, nobody’s receptive. Thank you. What else did you notice? You could do it different ways. I started off by thinking I actually have to lean, but I don’t have to lean at all.
I can do it without my body appearing to move. I was using different limbs in different ways. Yes. So I was experimenting. Experimenting different ways.
You can do the same thing. And also more and more subtle ways by the sound of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Just experimenting, playing with the ideas. Yep. What else did you notice? Felt like the impulse came from the opposite leg. Uh-huh.
So if I was moving right, it came from the left or vice versa. Right. Down sort of near my foot, I guess. Yes. Yes.
And so it came from there and moved the whole of you over. Yeah. Where else did people notice the impulse come from? It came from, I thought it came from the mind. Yep.
For you, you noticed it coming from the mind. Vision. Yep. Absolutely. Yes.
Where else did people notice the impulse coming from? I often notice the impulse at the point that’s at, you know, Tai Chi training, at my belly. Again, that’s in part because of my Tai Chi training. So every movement, we move from here. And so that’s where I notice it.
Now, of course, the mind is making that decision. Of course, the belly is engaging to tighten the muscles and to move the body. Of course, the foot is also moving it. So we notice that impulse starting in different places. And yet for most of us, many of those things are happening simultaneously.
Anything else you notice about the shift of weight, the impulse, the slowing down, the speeding up? The role my hips played. Role of your hips? The hip muscles. Yeah.
Noticing the engagement of all the hip muscles. Were there any surprises in that experience? Like, was there anything that was new for you to notice about moving your weight from foot to foot? I’ve never looked at my body in that amount of detail before about how I could move. Yes.
And the process it took to move and what would happen if I decided not to move or didn’t decide to move. Would I move anyway? And then where did I feel in different legs as I stood there? It was an adventure. Yeah, it was.
A lot of information there too. A lot of us don’t know that whole impulse. And the same thing applies. Those of you who are standing up, just give yourselves a bit of a shake, just to kind of keep your bodies moving. We’re going to start moving again in a moment.
Those of us who are not accustomed to looking at our bodies in this way, as we start to become mindful of our bodies, we start to become aware of how much information there is there about all of those things, where the impulse starts, how it starts in different places for different people. All of those things exist but some of us notice it in some place and some of us notice it in others. We notice different bodily parts, we notice the problems that are there, so if we have any injuries or stiffnesses or stuff like that. We notice how much information there is.
And so sometimes the value of just slowing something down, I don’t mean slowing it down for two hours, I mean slowing it down for two minutes to really look at what is actually happening, what is rising here, what is falling here, what is going on, what are the movements here, it gives us a lot of information about what choices we might make. Okay. Next exercise for those who are ready. What I’d like you to do this time is the same thing.
Find yourself steady on the floor in a comfortable spot, and notice where your weight is on the floor. Be aware of if your weight is placed any differently on the floor than when it first started. Is it different for anybody? I noticed my weight is so much more evenly distributed right now than it was. I like the ways nobody says, but then when I say, well, all these nods are around the room.
Okay. So for me, the weight is distributed much more evenly on my feet. Bringing some awareness to my actual body has somehow or other made a difference to how my body is standing in the space, even though I haven’t consciously chosen that. This time, I want you to do the same thing, just shifting, watching the impulse, moving to one side. You can move to the same side as me if you like.
And then when you’re getting there, lifting the other foot off the floor and just notice everything that has to happen. And then when you’re ready, putting that foot down. And then when you’re ready, coming back into the center. And then when you’re ready, shifting weight to the other side, and then lifting the foot. And then when you’re ready, placing the foot down, then shifting the weight.
And so I want you to continue doing that at your own pace for about a minute or so. Again, just noticing what is it that you’re aware of. Where does the impulse start? What goes on? For me, I noticed the leap of faith already when I pick up one foot.
So just notice what actually happens there. For those of you who are getting wobbly on your feet, just be aware of where that wobbliness is. You may choose to do some things a little bit differently. You may choose to just leave a toe on the ground to keep yourself steady. You may choose to soften your knees so they’re not tight.
Stick your bum out. Stick your bum forward. Stick your shoulders back. Stick your shoulders forward. Move your arms.
Just notice what you do and what difference that makes to that movement. And come back into a resting position on your feet. What did you notice that time? I couldn’t keep, with the first time, the first exercise we did, I had my eyes closed the whole time. I couldn’t do it with this because as soon as I closed my eyes I’d wobble.
Yes, yes. So you kept them open. Funny about that. Okay. The secret is keeping them open and fixing them on a point on the floor in front of you.
Secret for you is that, and it may be for other people, it may not be for everyone. Yeah. And also the positioning of the leg that was raised, if you had that in a central position, was more a question of balance. Yep. So that worked for you really well.
Yep. Thanks for that. And for other people, what did you notice? I noticed this time that there’s a sense of control that came over me. Like, I started wanting to control my muscles so I wouldn’t wobble so much and get the balance.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So that sort of increased awareness also gave you increased choices about how you manage the situation. Yeah. A few nods of head.
Anything else you noticed? I noticed that if my knees were a little bit bent. Yes. Yep. So you start to get that awareness of that’s what’s happening with your body.
I noticed that I bumped into people, and then I felt awkward. Yep. So that sort of interpretation in your mind, something’s not okay here, this isn’t nice somehow or other. Yeah. Anything else you noticed?
I noticed that my brain had more energy when I lifted one foot off. Suddenly felt that my brain was having to work a little bit harder. Yep. Engaged, was in a matter of balance and having to work harder to maintain balance. Yep.
Yep. Keeping yourself safe. Some of that happens when you’re in the moment, in the adventure, it’s such a demanding experience sometimes, challenges that you’re kind of forced to pay attention. And as we do this, the same thing happens. Okay.
How are you going back there Rod? Good on you. This is our last moving exercise before we go to break, then we’ll have a break, we’ll come back, we’ll do a bit more moving, and a bit more theory, and a bit more discussion. So, what I’d like you to do this time is I’m just trying to think of facing direction. I want all the people on the front row to face that way, and all the people on the next row to face that way, and all the people in the last row to face that way.
Okay? So this time, what I want you to do is this is the start of a tango walk. Yeah? Now we’re gonna be doing this by ourselves because leadership in the world means managing our leadership for ourselves. So we’re leading ourselves in our walk and being very aware of what’s going on in the process.
After the break, we’ll start doing some tango, which is leadership and followship. So it’ll be involving somebody else, and we’ll get to see how those dynamics work with leadership and followship. So I want you to stand on both feet. Find yourself in a steady place. Then decide which leg you’re going to pick up first.
Don’t do it yet, but decide which leg you’re gonna pick up first. And then notice what you need to do in order to pick that leg up, in order to put the foot down and make a step. So, of course, the impulse comes. There’s a shift of weight. You can do this with me.
Impulse, shift of weight, slowly picking up the foot that you’re picking up, just noticing it coming off the floor, and then slowly putting it out in front of you. Those of you who can put down toes first, then as you put that front foot in front of you, slowly peel down onto the floor and slowly move your weight toward that foot. And then notice the weight coming off the back foot onto the front foot. Then find your balance. When you’ve found your balance, bring your back foot, move it forward, put it out in front of you, then shift your weight onto it.
I don’t know why I’m screeching. So foot by foot. When you’re on one foot, you pick up the other foot. You reach it out in front of you. Put it down toe first, and then go all the way through your foot.
And as you’re doing that, you notice the weight move forward onto that foot. And then eventually, the back foot starts picking up, and you notice there’s a point at which most of your weight is on the front foot. And you pick up the back foot very slowly. Move it past the front foot. Put it out in front of you.
Toe down. Step down. Heel down. Moving weight. Picking up back foot.
And just continue like this, noticing all of those elements that we’ve been noticing about the walking. The point of facing in that direction is you’re very welcome to come out around the front. Sorry about that. One little step I forgot. Or around the back, wherever you want to go.
If you’re able to, be particularly conscious of where you notice the impulse starting in your body, in particular when you’re moving the weight from the back foot to the front foot. If your mind wanders, notice what happens to your walking, and you might choose to bring your awareness back to the movement of your body. You can move as slowly or as quickly as you’re able to maintain awareness in the impulse, in the sensations in your actual body, and where the weight is.
That’s three things. And at some point when you’re ready, when your weight is on the front foot predominantly, you might like to make the choice to go backwards. Again, notice the impulse. You might wanna notice if someone’s behind you. Notice what happens in your body and the weight.
And on the next step, bring your two feet side by side and steady your weight so it’s even on both. In a moment, make a choice to pick up your foot and move to one side, just one step. Just put the weight out like we were doing before without lifting the first foot, and then come back to center and do the same on the other side. So move your weight to one foot, lift up the other foot, put that foot out to the side, shift your weight, and shift your weight back to the original foot.
Lift your foot up and place it down. Find steadiness in both feet, and then you can do the same on the other side. You may notice this movement gets easier if your knees are softened. It can be quite hard if your knees are straight. Noticing the impulse, the changes in your body, and the weight on the floor.
And then when you’re ready, steady yourself on both feet comfortably again. Just find yourself in a steady place. And this time, you realize you now know how to do, you know how to move forward, sideways to either side, and backwards. In order to do any one of those things, you need to know where your weight is. You need to know which direction you’re going.
You need to know where that impulse starts, how to move your weight, and then to put your foot. So as slowly or as quickly as you want to go, as long as you maintain awareness in all of those things, make a choice whether you’ll go one step sideways or the other, whether you go one forward, one back, ten forward, ten back, whichever direction you want, all the time maintaining awareness of the impulse, where the weight shift is, what’s happening in your body, and what’s happening with the weight on the floor. Off you go.
Remember to keep breathing and not stiffen your neck or your shoulders. And just now be very conscious of what part of your body that other people could see actually starts your movement in whichever direction you go. And as you’re ready, come back to both feet on the ground in an even way. Just come into a sense of your own presence.
Be aware of your breathing. Notice what feelings, emotional feelings are arising in you, what thoughts are present, and what bodily sensations are present. Expand your awareness out to your whole body, noticing a sense of your body in the room. Be aware of your facial expression. And as you’re ready, come out of the meditation, and you might like to stretch and move and head off for a cup of tea.
Be back in here at nine o’clock. There have been a lot of conversations, many of you would have read stories, some of you may have climbed mountains yourselves, but there are lots of stories about people who have climbed high mountains and been adventurous, traipsed across the South Pole, the North Pole, done all sorts of physically adventurous things, sailed around countries in little boats and things like that. And these are five of the common characteristics, of the separate characteristics that each of them had.
And some of them are very high in courage, some of them persistence, some of them teamwork, some of them curiosity and some of them endurance. Those stories are often used as metaphors for work in a leadership context, in the boardroom for that matter. Those things also are really well supported by these qualities. I’d like you to think for a moment of your own life, of the adventures you’ve had and the way that you live your life.
I’d like you to just notice which of these you have in plentiful supply. Now it’s possible that some of you have got all of them in plenty of supply. For myself, I’ve naturally had some in plenty of supply, and others I’ve had to cultivate, and others I still haven’t cultivated particularly well. And so I’d just like you to notice through those, the caliber of courage, the power of persistence, the triumph of teamwork, the capacity of curiosity, and the excellence of endurance.
Just notice which of those you feel like have been with you as a part of your character for a long time, those which you know you’ve cultivated, and those which perhaps are not some of your strengths. And just turn to someone near you and share what you notice about that. We’ll just have a couple of minutes to do that. Off you go. And as you’re ready, winding up that conversation.
The adventure attitude, these are all aspects of the adventure attitude, is an itch that compels individuals to depart again and again from the comfort and security associated with traditional standards of success, traditional standards of what’s expected of them. Such comfort and security has lulled many individuals and companies into coasting on the old and tired engines of their past successes. Yet within today’s information and technological superhighways, individuals and companies who rest on former achievements will be left behind.
Left behind in ourselves and left behind in the working world. There’s a sailor called John Hughes and he articulates the need to steer beyond outdated definitions of success. As a whole, people in our society have moved away from testing their mettle to measuring everything by accepted standards, the size of your house, the number of cars you drive, your income, how you look, what you wear. Unfortunately, we tend to be a little more concerned with how we think other people view us than how we view ourselves.
As individuals, we are both the solo navigators of our own lives and our own personal challenges, and an essential resource in team efforts for the teams and the communities that we belong to, including our whole planet. The spark that makes an ordinary venture into an adventure is the element of risk. If risk is weighed, scrutinised and acted upon with unflinching resolve, it can reward us with immeasurable self-confidence.
Confidence feeds an ever-expanding circle of accomplishment and understanding, and it’s a vital investment as good as old-fashioned capital. One of the things I want to look at just momentarily with this, for those of you who are very familiar with particular aspects of this as one of your strong strengths, I’d like to hear from you briefly what are some of the downsides of having lots of courage? Are there downsides of having courage?
Going where angels fear to tread, in you go. Courageous at the time, but never ever contemplating the consequences. Yep. So maybe not wise? Yep. Not self-caring. Would that be considered courage then? We were kind of discussing, I don’t wanna get too philosophical, but we’re kind of discussing the difference between courage and stupidity.
Uh-huh. Just wondering if courage is the act of taking that step, knowing what the risks are. Uh-huh. Rather than just stepping in something blindly not knowing. Is that just, is that ignorance as opposed to courage? Or naivety. Going in there being naive, not even thinking of the consequences and still reacting and going ahead and doing it.
Deluded, choosing not to see what the possibilities are. Some years ago in two thousand and three, I was at a conference. I used to be an outdoor recreation leader. And in two thousand and three, I was at a conference in South Australia, and there were a whole bunch of people there, we’re in this small room. And this guy from New South Wales gives this talk.
He’s doing a PhD in adventure and what do they call it? You know when they go, I can’t believe I can’t remember the name of this. They’re adventures that are really life-threatening like the guys who jump off buildings with little, what’s it called? Base jump. Extreme sports.
Extreme adventure. Okay. Thank you. So he was talking about extreme adventure and he kind of had all this theory about, you know, the emotional process and the physical process and the consequences and the advantages of people, you know, like the character that it builds for people that have been through those things. And sometimes the disturbance that leads them to do those things.
One of the interesting things for me, I was sitting in this room and mostly there were men, nearly all men in the room, I think there were only two other women, about thirty-five men in the room, as was usually the case in my adventure activities. And when I sat in that room, most of those men were considerably older than me, you know, like fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, going upwards. Many of them were educators.
And what I couldn’t get over and I felt completely awestruck by was that more than half of the men in that room had climbed Everest, and they’d climbed it, like, to the top. And they’d climbed Everest in the days, and some of them other high mountains. They’d climbed Everest in the days before, you know, all of our super lightweight, super washable, dryable, everything, you know, compact food, you know, oxygen masks, and all that sort of stuff.
And it was one of those few times in my life that I just sat in this room surrounded by these men, and I just felt completely, completely awed by their presence. One of the things one of them said, and he was kind of talking to some of the younger folk in the room and also to all of us who educate other people about outdoor activities, is that we see so much about people climbing on television these days and everybody can do it and there’s movies about it.
People can pay sixty thousand dollars to get to base camp and have people take them up despite the fact that they’re not capable of doing it. That we live in a culture where everything seems accessible and everybody should be able to have everything. People go to, of all places, you know, Everest, you know, a mountain that likes to keep its own to itself. People go to Everest unprepared because we live in a culture where everything is accessible and we think we can do everything.
So there is often this stupidity, this lack of seeing, this lack of awareness. So would we call that adventure? Possibly we call that naivety, delusion, stupidity, something like that. Sometimes we can confuse boldness with courage. Courage is more about the triumph over fear whereas boldness isn’t. Yeah. Certainly one way of looking at those words.
Yes. Okay. What about the power of persistence? Are there any problems with the power of persistence? Anybody have any? Yes. Sometimes you just don’t know when to give up. Yep. When you should do. Yep. So not seeing clearly. Yep. Again, not seeing clearly what, what’s the outcome here.
Is this serving me? Is this not serving me? How do you differentiate persistence and endurance? I think I heard Adrian talking about that. Would you like to share that? Can you remind me what I said? Shall I say it for you? Okay. Again, they’re words, so we bring a different sense of meaning to the words.
For me, persistence is that sort of ongoing, just persisting, doing something over and over. Endurance for me has a quality of enduring some suffering along the way. So endurance is what I see. I see endurance in people that are suffering pain, suffering illness, really hard times in their lives, suffering a business that’s breaking down and sort of the endurance is just to keep going.
Persistence is more like I see someone like Dick Smith who fair enough, went bankrupt twice but there wasn’t really any risk to his life or his livelihood or his, you know, like he wasn’t really suffering in the ways that other people are suffering. That’s one of the ways I see as different. Now I don’t know if that’s the way other people see them as different.
One of my mottos is if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. Yes. So it’s persistence. That’s absolutely persistence. Occasionally the problem with persistence is you keep persisting when you’re not stopping to see, is this serving me? Is this serving the people around me? Is this serving the planet? Are there other ways? Is there something else I could be doing here?
You might, for example, persist with a relationship, but if you have to endure a relationship, then you’re perhaps in the wrong place. Quite possibly. It’s a great, great example. Fantastic. There’s a pun about if you don’t at first succeed, sky diving’s not for you. I wanna write that down. That is really cool.
That’s really good. The triumph of teamwork. Are there any problems with this aspect? The triumph of teamwork. No possible problems? We’re solitary men. Well, it’s kind of interesting. We’re at the Buddhist Society. So, you know, the chance of a lot of us here having this as one of our high talents is not great.
I mean, I would think that there’d be a number of us for whom this is not one of our strengths, but I may have that wrong. Why would you say that then? Why would I say that? Can I, rather than ask the question, can I ask those of you in the room who would name this as one of your great strengths to put up your hand?
Oh, there you go. One, two, three, four, five, six. That’s almost half of the room, so it’s a little bit different than I thought. There you go. I was wrong. Are there any problems with having teamwork as one of your great skills? Only if you can’t ever do anything by yourself. Yep. Yep. Yep. To develop that talent and may not be able to do it ourselves.
If it leads to mediocrity. Mhmm. Or compromise. Mhmm. Yep. Capacity of curiosity. Any problems with that? Ask Felix the cat. Yeah. Yep. Any other aspects of curiosity that can be a problem? Sometimes it can disperse your energy. I’m just sort of, like, curious about ever too much. Absolutely. And it can also lead to gossiping and sharing information and looking at other people’s files when you ought not to and, you know, all that sort of stuff.
Get frustrated with you and say, don’t give me any more options. Yes. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. If it’s combined with risk-taking, you can actually end up in situations you shouldn’t really. Be useful for you or your organization. Yeah. That don’t serve. Engage other people as a result of your curiosity who don’t wanna be there.
Yeah. Absolutely. I’ve always thought that’s a good quality for my cats. Yes. Curiosity. The excellence of endurance. Are there any problems with this? I think Adrian’s comment before about, you know, it’s one thing to persist with relationship difficulties. It’s another thing to endure it. Now again, sometimes endurance is simply an attitude shift, but sometimes you’re enduring something that perhaps is not a kindness to you or even the people around you.
Having a headache and being able to endure it is a good thing, but if your headache turns out to be meningitis maybe you need not to endure it. You need to go and get some help. Those of you who know me know that I’ve had meningitis so I know that story quite well. Okay, alright. So these are some of the qualities, some of the ways that we can look at that spirit of adventure, those qualities of adventure.
What I’d like to do now is to get you up out of your chairs and up out the front and what I’d like you to do is find a partner to work with. You can choose someone you know or someone you don’t know. It’s better if you work with someone roughly the same height. It doesn’t matter if you’re the same sex or a different sex. None of that matters.
What matters is that you’re roughly the same height. And head out here. And I want one of the pair of you to put your hand up. One of you put your hand up. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t matter which one. I want you to point to the other one and say you’re dancing first. Okay?
Great. So from wherever you are, what I want you to do, the person who’s dancing first, so this is leadership with the spirit of adventure and followship. Yeah? Okay? So what I want you to do, the person who’s dancing first, I simply want you to get into that position in your body where you were before, where you’re sort of comfortable on your feet.
I want you both to hold each other roughly like this. Yeah. Just loosely, lightly in a way that’s comfortable, just so long as it’s okay for the other person for you to be touching. Yeah? If your arms get tired, just drop them, especially when I’m explaining things. Okay? So I want you to be standing like that.
The person who’s dancing, I want you to get really aware of where your weight is on your feet. Find your steadiness. Notice if you’re going to move where the impulse starts. And remember what I said before when you dance. You can take one step forward, one step backward, or one step sideways, but you can never take two steps with the same foot.
So if I pick this one up, go forward, move my weight, and shift my weight, I simply cannot go forward with that same foot again. Yeah? Okay? So the one who’s dancing is leading. The other one is following. Okay? Mhmm. Yeah? So whoever’s dancing is leading. The other person is following.
The person who’s leading, I want you to just simply one step at a time. Get your balance. Decide whether you’re gonna go forward, backward, or sideways. And if sideways, which way? And which foot? And then I want you to prepare your weight. And in doing that, I want you to watch the person that is following, the person that you’re leading.
Because if I’m going sideways that way, I clearly need to prepare my weight. I notice the intention. I notice the impulse. I move my weight. If I’m following, if you’re the person following, you want to be noticing that weight shift. Yeah? What is more, if you’re leading, you need to wait till the person who’s following notices the shift.
If they don’t notice the shift, you might want to make it stronger so they get it. Yeah? If they still don’t get it, you’ve sent out the invitation to say, okay, I’m shifting my weight here, which fundamentally means I’m gonna be moving my body here. Yeah? This is just one step at a time you can do this.
If the person who’s following doesn’t take up your invitation, then you need to stop, come back to center, and start again with something else. Okay? So that’s all you need to do. You just need to decide where you’re moving, shift your weight, make the move, move over. And if you’re going sideways, you can bring the first foot up or you can move back, but wherever you want to go from there.
One step at a time, make sure the follower is getting where you’re going and that you’re knowing that. And if they’re not, start again. Off you go. Call out any questions you have. Remember, the dancer dances. The follower only follows. No leading, especially from the women, unless you’re the dancer. And if you can, well, not only if you can, but do it.
Watch the other person in their face and in their chest. You’ll get all the information you need from there. You don’t need to watch the feet. If the person is not coming with you, give a stronger gesture from the body. Keep your eyes up folks, eyes up, face, chest. And if you’re still needing to just stay with one step at a time, then do that.
If you want to be creative, you might make two steps forward or three steps forward or four steps forward or sideways or backwards. But all the time, whoever is dancing and leading, don’t go anywhere if the person is not following. If you’re having any struggles at all, notice the weight shifts. The person who’s leading needs to know where the person they’re following is, where their weight is, because if they try to move them and their weight is in the wrong place, they’ll fall over.
Okay, now come back to standing. Just stand by yourself, drop your arms, shake your arms out, give your arms a bit of a rest. Breathe a bit, catch your breath, and now swap who’s leading. Okay? Same thing. Start very slowly. Start very slowly with one step. Remember, get the impulse, have intention.
We start with an intention and then an impulse. If you’re dancing, know where you’re going to go. Make the intention, make the impulse, shift your weight, and wait for the other person to notice. No point you going over here when they’re still there. You want them coming with you before you move. Okay? Off you go.
And remember that weight shift, it’s really pivotal. The intention, the impulse and the weight shift is really pivotal to having the person with you or not with you. Giggling happening here. Much easier. Okay, stop, find your centre, steady yourself. Just come back into your own space, and go and have a seat for a minute.
And if it’s okay, we’ll be about five minutes overtime because I’d just like to finish this. So what did you notice in that process? What was easy? What was hard? What did you notice was going on? Required teamwork. Seriously teamwork. Concentration. Serious concentration. Synchronicity? Being in sync with each other, really understanding.
I was at another event once and Jumper was there, and I asked him would he get up and tango with me. So I’m not sure how much tango dancing Jumper’s done before, but I took him for a short walk in front of the group, which was lovely. What else did you notice? A willingness to surrender. It reminded me of a two-person version of the two-legged walk where one leg is offering a suggestion and the other leg has to agree with it.
Absolutely. That is absolutely. Hence, the leadership and followship. And a sense of achievement if you manage to take a step. I like that, Debbie. Yes? It’s easier to go some ways than others. Yes. Yep. We all got our kind of more natural tendencies. Were you aware of all the things that needed to go on there simply to lead another person?
You had to steady yourself first. You had to recognize your intention. Okay. Which direction am I going? You can’t just go unless you’re gonna drag them around. So you need to know where you’re gonna go. Then you need to notice where the impulse starts in you. For some people, they lead in dancing very much from the chest, so you see the impulse there, and some people from the kind of head, and some people more from the hips.
It’s not useful to dance from the feet because when you’re dancing the last thing you need to be doing is this, and besides which entangles you cheek to cheek, so you can’t see really anything further down than about here, depending on the height of the person. What else? So we notice all of those things, the steadiness, the intention, the impulse, the shift of weight that needs to happen, the recognition of where the other person’s weight is.
Were you ever in a situation where you went to move in one direction and found out the person was on the wrong foot? Uh-huh. Yeah. So we need to know where that person is and what they’re capable of doing because there’s no point leading someone to do something if they’re not in a position to do it. Then when we do lead them, we need to actually get the feedback like, we’re going this way, my impulse is going, they’re not coming.
Okay. Do I need to give the message more loudly? I’m sending out the invitation. They’re not receiving the invitation. Am I not sending the invitation clearly? Do they not wanna receive this invitation? Are they not in a position to receive this invitation? What is going on there? Yeah. If they receive the invitation, then we go.
If they don’t receive the invitation, we try harder, we try something different, or we stop and we start again, yeah, and engage them in whatever way we want. Anything else you noticed in that process? At a personal level, I quite enjoyed being led. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Something I’ve never done in a dance before. Yeah.
How interesting. It was. Yeah. You make assumptions about how the movement’s gonna finish and it doesn’t always go okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Those aspects in, I use the Argentine tango. I used to dance a lot. I haven’t for the last couple of years for reasons that some of you know about. But I used to dance a lot of Argentine tango, and I think it’s a remarkable dance because it is not possible to dance Argentine tango without complete focus.
The moment you’re not paying attention to leading, god knows where you are, especially in a room full of people swirling about. The moment you’re not paying attention to following, you’re not going where he’s leading you. And if you’re going fast, you know, mess happens. You know? So there’s this acute attention being paid that whole time.
You’re very present in what’s going on with yourself and with the other person. In terms of leadership, the person who’s leading, the thing that surprised me most when I started learning Argentine tango was how hard it is for the guys to lead. Like, when you’re dancing tango, Argentine tango, it’s an improvised dance. So there are a whole range of steps and gestures that you can learn just like in jazz.
There are a whole lot of notes that you learn. But the way you string them together is completely made up at the time, improvised. And so the man is constantly, where is her weight now? Oh, she’s turning this way. Okay. I could do this. Oh, she’s turning this way. Oh, can I move her back? No. I can’t because momentum’s already going this way.
And so there’s this constant process of, as a leader, seeing what the possibilities are and then being really clear that the person you’re going to lead is able to go in that direction. Obviously, really relevant for leadership in the world. And I also felt when I was in that role of leadership, a sense of responsibility for the safety of that person.
Not bumping into everybody else. Bumping into other people or to the furniture around them. Absolutely. Putting that into context in the real world. Absolutely, taking care of those people that we’re leading, making sure we don’t put them into danger. I hope Prime Ministers and Presidents are aware of that. Yes. Wouldn’t we like that? Yes.
So there are all those aspects of leadership, and then there are the aspects of followship. And for some of us, followship is not so easy, that aspect of surrender that you talk about, which is one the reasons I took up Tango, you know, because I thought as an independent woman in business for herself, you know, running a clinical practice, kind of making decisions about other people’s lives all the time, you know, reports and blah blah blah blah blah.
That I really liked the idea of being in a situation where I had the energetic opportunity to surrender to instruction and to being guided and that beautiful interplay of what some will call the masculine and feminine or the leadership and the followship in that aspect, and that one needs to know both sides of it. As it turns out, you know, I tango danced for, I don’t know, about six or seven years first, and then I started learning how to do the man’s part and oh my god is it hard!
I can actually lead basic stuff but it’s just such a brain strain and for me personally I wouldn’t have learned tango if I had to go to a class at night after work because I just wouldn’t have had the brainpower to do it. Whereas the followship is a much more kind of intuitive paying attention and responding. Yeah? So there are all those aspects in the Argentine