The Cost of Dancing Lessons

Every leadership team I’ve ever sat with has a dance they’ve perfected.

It usually shows up in a meeting that runs long but resolves nothing. Someone dominates the conversation with obvious points. Everyone gets bored. Zoom cameras click off. Someone goes to the bathroom and doesn’t come back.

Or maybe it’s the most expensive, unneeded service that gets protected because no one wants to lay off staff.

Everyone in the room already knows what the problem is. They knew before they sat down.

And so the dance begins.

The leader summarizes the history. Someone else pretends to not fully understand and asks a clarifying question that isn’t really a question. A third person pivots to what’s working. Heads nod. The problem goes back in the drawer.

I spent years in board and leadership team meetings watching this happen in real time. As a CFO, I didn’t have the luxury of dancing. Money, risk, and reputation have a way of making the obvious thing urgent. So I learned to name the elephant in the room. I really didn’t want to be the difficult one, the contrarian, or the bad guy. But the clock was running and the cost of dancing lessons was adding up.

Dancing around a problem isn’t dishonesty. Most of the people in the meeting are smart, well-intentioned, and fully capable of solving the problem in front of them. The dance is the unspoken agreement that whoever names the thing first owns it. The underlying cost is that saying the hard thing out loud makes you the hard person.

It’s a reasonable calculation. But very expensive.

The problem doesn’t really go back in the drawer. It acts like a bad investment. It compounds, shows up in the next quarter’s numbers, the next re-org, maybe the next resignation you didn’t see coming. The team learns that this is how decisions get made here, and soon it’s woven into your culture.

The good news is that the dance stops the moment someone names the tune.

It doesn’t require seniority or an agenda. It requires someone willing to say, clearly and without theater:

I think the thing we’re not talking about is X. Can we talk about that?

That’s leadership, folks.

So the question worth asking before your next meeting:

What’s the thing we already know that we haven’t said out loud yet?

Otherwise, add “Dancing Lessons” to your financial statements.

You don’t have to navigate challenges like these alone. I’d love to be your thinking partner: www.kathygledhill.com