Team Building & Leadership Dance Programs
Danceintime taught Salsa to the Baltimore Ravens Cheer Squad for a team-building exercise.
“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
“No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.”
Team building exercises send the message that everyone adds value to a group and that each person contributes and has inherent worth. Activities that get members of a group working together can help achieve the required cooperation. Dance-based team building programs have successfully helped people trust each other and work together for common goals.
In Rueda de Casino, leaders dance with every follower in the group, frequently leaving one partner and moving to another. Any leader who fails to do so is holding on to someone who should become another leader's partner. It’s more fun for everyone when the circle flows as it should, so people are naturally incentivized to help each other. Rueda circles work wonderfully to draw an entire group into a web of interdependence that fosters cooperation and mutual helpfulness.
In essence, music and dance activities are used as vehicles for enhancing connection among people. Trust is naturally built when a group dances together. This translates directly into better communication, which in a corporate environment benefits a company’s bottom line. According to Margaret Wheatley in her seminal text, Leadership and the New Science, "The era of the rugged individual has been replaced by the era of the team player.”
Rueda dancing tends to appeal to team players as everyone must cooperate; no one stands out as a star. But whether the style of dance is Rueda or another dance style, group dance activities require collaboration. Participants must be able to listen and respond to each other.
Additionally, dancing with others requires that each individual either lead or follow—also skills that are relevant to the workplace. So in many dimensions, group dancing gives people training in cooperation and skills that are important for success in modern life!
Team building programs are particularly rewarding for the participants because the whole point is to get people to feel good about working together. Danceintime ran a team building program once for the Baltimore Ravens Cheer Squad in which we taught them some basic Rueda steps in a circle. (See photo above.) Another program was run for the McCormick (Spice) Company, when they had meetings in Baltimore with employees from all over the world. The goal is to leave everyone smiling and feeling connected. For inquiries about Team Building programs, contact Barb@Danceintime.com.
DanceInTime along with Meredith Kaunitz and Ashu of AM Salsa provided a team building program for an International Meeting of the McCormick Spice Company. We did line dances, with groups creating their own fancy variations as well as some Latin dancing and improv games.