Why there is no leader in tango
Tango is a dance of leaders and followers. Yet if leadership has anything to do with bossiness, there is no place for it in tango. It is foremost a dance of subtlety and invitation.
This way – as in many ways – tango also has a lot to say about life in general, about leadership in all kinds of organizations. Let’s talk about men and women as leaders and followers in tango, as this is the ‘usual case.’ At first sight, the man leads the woman. What actually happens however – at least when the dancing is nice – is that the man invites the woman to a certain movement or step. He does this as subtly as possible, yet also as clearly as possible. The woman accepts the invitation… or not. It’s her choice. Generally, she accepts because she likes to. Doing so, she lets the dance unfold itself. It is then the woman who starts the execution of the step. The man… follows her into the step.
So who leads whom?
Both man and woman follow the music, to a certain degree. The music too is no more nor less than an invitation. They also follow the ‘milonga’ or dancing hall, mainly the other dancers. It is the man’s responsibility to create a nice and safe environment for the couple. His attention is oriented more externally and towards the sequences of steps. The woman’s responsibility is more exclusively oriented internally, towards where the dancing actually happens: the embrace, the responsiveness in the epicenter of the dance. So who has the most responsibility? No one. Or you may say: it completely depends upon your viewpoint.
In the end, there is no leader in tango, even while there is very clearly a leader in tango. This is also what tango can teach us about leadership in general: there is no leader. There is subtlety and clear invitation. At least when life is danced nicely.
A good leader is humble, though not self-effacing at all. A good follower is supportive, though not self-effacing at all. Both need to be very deeply attentive to the other, not at the first place to oneself. In organizational leadership thinking, this is well developed in the concept of servant leadership. Indeed the leader should serve the follower. And vice versa, not primarily because of an old-fashioned hierarchy, but simply because dancing this way is nice. The dance of life. Tango.
Related Posts
There is Still a Dire Need for More Empathy in Leadership
Good leadership is mostly defined as empathic, yet we frequently end up with a non-empathic, ‘coercive’ one. May this be related to ignoring the unconscious? Although a lot of science proves the importance of the unconscious, to many it is ‘the alien inside’, which provokes anxiety when there is even a possibility to have to Read the full article…
Is Competition Out?
‘Caring competition’ is a competition between people’s actions and competences, not between their dignities. Competition is natural. That doesn’t mean that an aggressive struggle is intrinsically good. I dare say it’s not. Even if it were all-pervasive in nature – which it is not – within human society we better transcend it. We humans have Read the full article…
An open leader gives people an environment in which to meaningful.
People want to ‘perform.’ What this really means is: they want to make a difference. They want to mean something. They want their life to have deep meaning, some deeper sense. Also in little things, people are looking for meaning. They want to be valuable. They want to exist. People are in a continuous search Read the full article…