My six-year old nephew, Elliott, is an amazing dancer. I’m sure genetics had something to do with it. After all, both of his parents are musicians. But what really makes him great isn’t his rhythm or his moves. When he dances, there isn’t a trace of self-consciousness or thought. He simply moves and radiates joy. I often watch a video clip of him when he was three, boogeying his little heart out, and it always brings a huge smile to my face. (I have no plans to share that clip here, but if you ever see me face-to-face, ask, and I’ll gladly show it to you.)
It makes me happy to see him enjoy himself this way, because I personally have a huge mental block about dancing. I didn’t always have it, or at least it used to be much, much smaller, but it’s grown into a veritable albatross over the years. When I put my learner hat on, I know all the things I should (or shouldn’t) be doing. Don’t think. Don’t worry about “doing it right.” Just enjoy the music, and let your body move.
It’s silly. I’m fearless about so many things in life, and I generally don’t care about looking stupid. And I’ve been able to let go at times with certain people or in certain situations. But for the most part, my fear of dancing is debilitating.
It’s not about my relationship to my body. I’ve always loved sports, and I’ve always held my own on the court or on the field, even though I’m a mediocre athlete.
A big reason for that is that I’m hyper-competitive. Another reason is that I developed a basic literacy for sports at an early age. I can run, throw, and catch. I can dribble and shoot a ball with both my hands and my feet. More importantly, I have a basic feel for how to play team sports, how to move without the ball, how to use my body to create space. I can play several sports serviceably, and I can pick up new ones easily.
The bottom line is that I’m sports-literate. My body speaks sports fluently, and so I’m able to play without thinking, to express myself joyfully through sports.
I’m lucky to be literate in a lot of things, and I find joy in all of them. But I also feel lucky to be grossly illiterate in other things. Foreign languages, for example. And dancing. I’m lucky because it makes me understand and appreciate the value of literacy and the level of effort required to develop everything from basic proficiency to virtuosity.
That brings me to technology.
I have a gift with tools. It’s a huge advantage in this day and age, especially as a knowledge worker. I know that I can figure out how to use almost any tool quickly and skillfully. When I work with clients, I’m often able to adapt my processes to use the tools they’re already familiar with. I also know how to build my own tools, which means I can build things to do exactly what I want them to do, and I can speak fluently and familiarly with other tool-builders. I can do all of these things without letting my technology lens blind me.
On this basis alone, I can offer way more value to organizations than most consultants in my space. I consider the Blue Oxen philosophy and approach to be a much more significant differentiator, but even without that, I’d still be able to separate myself from the pack on the basis of my tech literacy alone.
I don’t expect my clients to have the same level of literacy. I adjust my expectations, and if tools are to play a heavy role, I focus on being a coach and supporter. I don’t let my clients create an artificial hierarchy based on what they think they don’t know.
My project teams, however, are another matter. High-performance teams always have some Shared Language that they speak fluently. When one of those languages in which your team is fluent is technology, it expands your possibilities. Frankly, it also makes the work a lot more fun. I’ve worked with a lot of teams that have had that baseline level of tech fluency, and it’s always been a magical experience.
However, it’s not always possible to have that team-wide fluency. In those cases, as with my clients, I adjust my expectations. The difference is that I still hold my teams to higher standards of performance, and that makes me less patient.
Right now, I’m working with one of the top three teams I’ve worked with in my eight years at Blue Oxen Associates, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t take the top spot by the end of our project. We also happen to have mixed levels of tech literacy.
I am more than happy to accept this, because everyone brings unique skills in other areas. More importantly, we have a shared fluency around our principles and approaches to collaboration. Frankly, that’s made us vastly more effective at using tools than many of my previous teams where we started with a higher level of tech fluency.
Needless to say, I am having an incredible amount of fun working with these folks. Still, I find myself getting frustrated every once in a while by the different levels of tech literacy. We occasionally have to slow down to get people up to speed on things that seem trivially easy to me. I know it’s an unfair response on my part, but I can’t help feeling impatient.
At times like these, I think about dancing. I think about the fear that even the thought of dancing evokes. I think about how I’ve felt when friends and loved ones, who are great dancers, have patiently danced with me when they almost certainly could have been having more fun dancing with others — a mixture of appreciation, but also guilt, misplaced or not.
I think about all of these things, and I feel my impatience drift away in favor of empathy and appreciation. I think about how everyone on my team is pushing their boundaries, setting aside their discomfort and even fear because of their hunger to learn, to improve, to perform. I think about how they encourage each other patiently and without judgement, creating a space that’s safe to try, to fail, to learn, and I feel deeply humbled.
Then I think about Elliott dancing, how he radiates joy without fear or shame, joy that’s contagious. I think about the innocent wisdom that our children share with us when we are smart enough to pay attention, and I hope beyond hope that Elliott and his little brother, Benjamin, never lose that wisdom and that unbridled joy.
I got over my fear of dancing by going to things like Dance Jam or 5 Rhythms in Berkeley.
Thanks, Brad. I'm still intrigued by the stories you used to tell me about line dancing. Definitely something I should check out sometime.
Beautiful reflections, Eugene. I appreciate the metaphor, made so compelling by the visual image of your nephew.
I feel a tad more "literate" about the important of "tech literacy" after reading this. At the same time I'm still having trouble imagining what the dynamics are like on the team that you are enjoying working with. I'd love to hear more.
Thanks, Grady. Your question is deserving of another blog post. 🙂