Team engagement. Maximizing team performance. Building leadership capacity within your team. Learning how to respond and adapt effectively to change and uncertainty.

Organizations, large and small, know how important it is to build the capacity and leadership skills of your team. It is essential to staying competitive, to building lasting and loyal customers, and to retaining and attracting top talent.

Without strong, dynamic teams and employees, your business can head down a slippery slope fast. Poor customer experience is hard and costly to recoup. Gallup estimated that the economic cost of low engagement is a staggering $370 billion a year! When relationships are fractured and politicized, it’s hard to stay agile and innovate as needed to address a quickly changing marketplace.

Having performed in a community musical theatre production with 24 other regular folks with a hankering to be on stage, there is a wealth of powerful lessons learned that contributed to a successful and sold-out run. While it’s probably not practical to simulate being in rehearsals for an amateur musical production for your organization, you can apply these lessons learned to your business, regardless of whether you’re a solopreneur or part of a multinational company.

Lesson 1: Align on Vision

As part of a local troupe called The Riverdale Players, we met once a week for 12 weeks before delivering a 3-night production in a downtown Toronto theatre. None of us are professional singers, dancers, or actors – yet we were all responsible to do all three simultaneously in our show. Pre-show jitters, anxiety and wondering if we could really pull this off in front of a packed house were definitely part of our landscape, especially in the weeks leading up to the show.

Our director always reminded us of our vision and common purpose – which in our case was to raise money for a worthy children’s charity that supports kids in remote Canada and Africa. Remembering our “WHY” helped calm individual fears and egos, and put into perspective that the main reason we were doing this was to help children in need.

When was the last time you had a dialogue with your team about your business? Why do you do what you do? Who is served by your organization and why does that even matter? When I design and facilitate senior leadership retreats or work with an executive coaching client, having clarity about the vision of the work and why its important and meaningful is always my starting point.

Take time to keep the purpose and vision of your business alive. Your culture and daily interactions should be an expression and reminder of that vision. Aligning on vision ensures that your team makes powerful choices and can more readily move past the day-to-day brushfires to achieve success.

Lesson 2: Everyone Matters

In my first year in the troupe, I was part of the ensemble, had perhaps 2 spoken lines and 2 spotlight moments of singing. Another year, I had a significant role with a lot more lines and one showstopper song that I led, plus comedic moments and songs throughout the show.

What I learned is that in creating a successful show, the size of the role really is not what matters. Our show worked because everyone brought their best to their role. If even one person hadn’t brought their heart and soul to their performance, the audience would have felt that disconnect and not been as engaged in the show.

Everyone in your organization matters.  From the CEO on down to the front desk receptionist, each team member has a role to play and something important to contribute. Businesses that foster collaboration and value strong relationships can adapt to change more quickly than organizations that get stuck on hierarchy, procedures manuals, and past history. Everyone brings a unique piece of the puzzle to your business. If even one piece is absent, your picture isn’t complete.

Lesson 3: Bring Your Energy and Commitment

What makes for a memorable experience for your audience, or clients, isn’t just your technical proficiency, but how much energy and commitment you put into it. In our show, we didn’t have the precision of the Rockettes or the vocal chops of Adele!

Yes, we had missteps, missed lines, and missed entrances – but it didn’t matter. As we gathered for pre-show before the curtains went up, we decided to go for it 1000% and “leave it on the stage floor.” We put our hearts right out there, committed to our characters, and showed our joy in each and every performance. The result was $18,000 raised for charity, a standing ovation each night, and an audience that went home smiling and singing the tunes from the show.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” If your clients and partners feel your energy and commitment to them, that is the most powerful marketing campaign you could ever run. If you’re willing to go the extra mile for your vision and for your fellow co-workers, your clients can confidently know you’d do the same for them.

Photo by Hamish Kale on Unsplash