On Balance
Paying attention to how wobbliness makes us feel allows us to foster more equitable workplaces
We were at the ballet recently, seeing a rendition of Gisele. It was the first time we have ever sat so close to the performers at a professional ballet. In the second row of the orchestra, we could see every detail of the dancers’ faces, the twitches of their muscles. We could hear every footfall on the stage. We noted the difference in sound between the flat of the foot, the ball of the foot, and the toe box of the dancers’ pointe shoes.
As consultants, what struck us most was the arabesque, in which the dancer stands on one leg with the other extended in midair behind them. It’s the picture of grace. If you’ve ever tried to stand on one leg for any reason—say, in gym class—you know that it’s not as easy as it looks. In fact, to do so while appearing perfectly poised and still is just not possible for most of us.
But from the second row, it’s clear that the dancer only appears still. There’s a whole lot more going on than usually meets the eye.
A functional diverse and equitable community similarly only appears perfectly poised and stable. The experience was a good metaphor for how we create more inclusive cultures for our clients. We notice where imbalances cause burnout, inefficiencies, and resentment, but we also notice where rigidity causes people to ignore emotion in order to force cohesion. Neither imbalance nor rigidity is beneficial for an organizational culture in the long-term.
Our methods are what we call trauma-informed. While this term has become somewhat of a buzz word in recent years, it quite effectively helps people understand that organizational imbalances often do not have their sources in conscious thought and intention. They are instead rooted in members’ perceptions and reactions, and these are often born of prior challenges. For example, people who have experienced discrimination often find that they are being asked to do too much, to account for or fix someone else’s problem, or to simply deny their own interests and needs. These experiences are so common that a person often doesn’t see the inherent imbalance of a request until they’re already burnt out or overcommitted. Those who have been socialized to ignore emotions, including many cis-men, are often not consciously aware that others are engaging with emotions for them. It’s a dynamic they don’t readily see and recognize. We use somatic exercises and visualizations to help clients identify imbalances of emotion and their impacts. Once these have been recognized and acknowledged, group members collaborate more easily.
Once these dynamics are opened to view, assigning judgement and blame to a source might feel like the right thing to do. But that will not set things right. As facilitators, we act as guides and compassionate witnesses. We help clients to visualize scenes of flexibility and balance, like the one we saw at the ballet. Doing so lets people notice where their attention goes. What are they not seeing? What do others notice that they don’t? What anxieties does imbalance cause? These exercises are revelatory for our clients and help them see where they do too much or too little in relation.
There’s no overnight fix to building an inclusive culture, but there is a powerful way to change people’s experience of work, and that’s to invite them to see themselves as active participants in larger patterns of behavior. It’s true for all of us. When we understand ourselves as having an active role within a system, like the dancer’s foot within their body, we start to recognize that we are the drivers of our own experiences. This realization is empowering.
It’s empowering, though it may sometimes feel scary. From our second row vantage, we could see the ballet dancer’s planted foot wobble. The rest of their body was suspended, perfectly still, statuesque. But for all that to happen, one foot had to make constant adjustments. The arch would rise and replant, in an instant. The big toe would adjust up, just for a second, then come back down. If you’re the dancer and you focus on the wobble, you might fear that you’ll fall.
But if you recognize that the wobble is a useful part of the system, that it can be part of your balance and your organization’s, you start to see its benefits and you gain a clearer view of your organization on the whole. It becomes more apparent how your group functions and how you want it to function, how individuals function within the group and how they want to function in it. Identifying and acknowledging the imbalances—who’s carrying too much, who’s emoting and who’s not, who’s denying their own needs—helps us find balance as organizations and the individuals within them.
The wobbly foot supports the beautifully stable dancer. Imbalances are necessary. What matters is what you do with them. Recognizing them and accepting them is an important step in learning to use them, balancing atop them, and performing some really graceful moves.
Photo by Hudson Hintze.