Principle: Balcony and Dancefloor — Lizard Brain

we often ask someone to act as a “balcony person” in a meeting or workshop. This person’s role is to sit in the back of the room and take notes on what happens, recapitulating participants’ various comments and behaviors. It

Observing is a highly subjective activity. But in exercising adaptive leadership, the goal is to make observing as objective as possible. Getting off the dance floor and onto the balcony is a powerful way to do this. It enables you to gain some distance, to watch yourself as well as others while you are in the action, and to see patterns in what is

typically ask the balcony person to tell the group initially what he or she observed, just the facts, without any interpretation, as if the group were watching a videotape of a soccer game without any commentary.

Why don’t you ever see tightrope walkers without long poles? It’s because they’re stabilizers, as critical to the reaching of destinations as the steps taken toward them. And yet, the poles work by feel, not thought: focusing on them risks falling. Temperament functions similarly, I think, in strategy. It’s not a compass—that’s intellect. But it is

How do you get on the balcony to diagnose your organization’s culture? Begin by looking for four cultural flags: folklore, rituals, norms, and meeting protocols.

1. Figure out the group’s default interpretations. If it is not obvious, get on the balcony and track the group’s responses to several different problems, looking for patterns.

Send the Right Signals to Your People