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Better Management in Ballroom

By Hannah Alyea

This summer has been a real learning curve for me in the art of management skills. I have recently become the vice president of the University of Minnesota's Ballroom Dance Club, and it comes with the responsibility of making sure everything in the Club runs smoothly and that people are happy.

My initial thought of being a good manager was that it was all about the ability to tell people what to do and have them do it without complaint. First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman and The New One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson were recommended reads on my journey to discover what a good manager really is, which I was pleased to find were very insightful and helpful learning tools.

First, Break All the Rules is full of processes good managers use to produce incredible results in sales, production, and customer service, and also to maintain top-notch performance in their employees while keeping them happy. It advocates for finding people's strengths and weaknesses and, instead of trying to fix someone's weakness, utilizing their strengths in a way that helps them achieve their full potential.

This really stuck with me as I read, because many people (including myself) have probably, at one point or another, tried to fix someone and make their weaknesses disappear. But why change someone to fit the everyday mold? Why don't we utilize more of people's strengths, acknowledging that everyone has something they are better at than others? We get so busy trying to fix people that we miss out on the chance to set people up for success, which is where The New One Minute Manager comes in.

One-minute management is all about setting people up for success. Now that strengths have been fleshed out, the objective is to put people in a place where they're going to succeed. I personally can be a huge micromanager at times because I grew up with the mentality of "if they can't do it right, do it yourself." This book really opened my eyes with the idea of giving people the right tools for them to succeed. It's really hard for a fisherman to fish without a fishing pole, and in the same manner, it's very difficult to expect people to get things done if they don't have the tools required for success.

In one-minute management, a manager's goal is to set someone on the right track but letting them solve problems on their own. First, give them the right tools for success (training, a good team, supplies, etc.)and gently nudge them in the right direction. This process is done by communicating and making goals very clear. The best part? It should really only take about a minute or two to lay out the plan for success. This is followed by recognizing when people are doing things correctly (something that doesn't happen often enough in life) and, when something goes wrong, a one-minute redirect to get back on the right path toward the common goal (much more encouraging than being punished for doing something incorrectly).

But why is this girl going on and on about management skills in a dance magazine? Reading these books, I have gained a new understanding of my responsibility to the Ballroom Dance Club. I now appreciate that things such as communicating and making a goal clear and even recognizing when someone has done something right are values that I can relate to partnerships in dance. How many times have clear goals in a partnership been discussed? Or letting your partner know that double-reverse felt really nice? In my experiences so far, it has probably been more infrequent than it should be.

If you would like to better understand how to use people skills in large groups, or even partnerships, I recommend First, Break All the Rules and The New One Minute Manager. If anything, they are a very insightful look into enriching the power of success in business or dancing.

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