MANAGEMENT MATTERS
By Russell M. Linden, PhD
Getting Off the Dance Floor, and On the
Balcony
The author is the principal in the firm
Russ Linden and Associates, a management consultancy based in
Charlottesville, VA. He is an accomplished author and teacher
with experience in the public and private sectors, including
the Federal Executive Institute, Virginia Innovation Group and
the International City-County Management Association.
and leaders often find it very difficult
to step back from daily operations to gain some perspective on
what’s really going on.
In the first instance, the manager assumes
that a large number of supervisors are suffering from low
morale, assumes that morale is an issue that needs to be
directly addressed, and assumes that team building sessions are
an appropriate response.
In the second story, the board chair is so
focused on getting the board members to work well together,
he’s oblivious to the fact that many of his constituents
could care less about these internal relationships when they
have trouble getting potholes filled.
ONE WAY TO GAIN PERSPECTIVE:
GET UP ON THE BALCONY
GET UP ON THE BALCONY
In their fine book, Leadership on the Line
(Harvard Business School Press), authors Ron Heifetz and Marty
Linsky cite this lack of perspective as a common management problem.
Their solution? Get off the dance floor where everyday
operations take place, and up on the balcony. Managers and
leaders have
to take themselves out of the fray, even if only momentarily, to understand what’s really going on. They can’t affect action up on the balcony; to have an impact, they must return to the dance floor. But the view is clearest on the balcony; that’s where an assessment and plan can best be done. Thus, the authors suggest that managers and leaders continually move back and forth between the dance floor to balcony.
to take themselves out of the fray, even if only momentarily, to understand what’s really going on. They can’t affect action up on the balcony; to have an impact, they must return to the dance floor. But the view is clearest on the balcony; that’s where an assessment and plan can best be done. Thus, the authors suggest that managers and leaders continually move back and forth between the dance floor to balcony.
Wise leaders know this, of course, but it
takes discipline to remove oneself from the action of the
dance. For many managers, it’s highly seductive to work
on technical problems. Doing so taps some of their skills, it
shows the staff that the manager is still competent, and it
helps managers see that they are accomplishing something
tangible. And for some managers, the demands for accountability
are so daunting that they don’t feel they can ever remove
themselves from the dance floor.
Imagine the following two situations:
1. A middle manager in a state agency is
approached by two employees who tell her that “morale is
really low, especially among the supervisors; you need to do
something about it.” The manager asks why they believe
morale is low, gets some examples, and becomes very concerned.
She soon calls a consultant to request a team building activity
for the agency’s supervisors.
2. The chairman of a county board of
supervisors is invited to meet with a neighborhood association
group to discuss the state of the county and some issues in
their area. The chairman agrees, and during his talk he
describes how much improvement there has been since he was
elected. “Before I ran, members of the county board were
interrupting each other at meetings, they couldn’t come
to consensus on important issues, there was no sense of
teamwork or a common goal. We’re really changed
that.” He went on to talk about how well the elected
officials were now working together. When he finished, he was
stunned to learn that the group members hadn’t noticed
these changes, and didn’t seem to care at all about them;
they were upset that county services had worsened in the past
year and nobody seemed to be doing anything about that.
What these two very different vignettes
(both true, though disguised) have in common is this: managers
