This year marked the 10th anniversary season of the Riverdale Players. Over the past decade, we have staged ten shows, raised funds for the children’s charity Childhood Now, welcomed new cast members, and continued to evolve as a group. When I look back over those years, I see far more than performances. I see a living system that has grown through shared effort, experimentation, loss, celebration, and trust.
Community musical theatre continues to be one of my most delightful leadership laboratories. Over ten years, I have come to see that high performance in complex systems rests on a small number of intentional conditions. This season brought three into sharper focus.
1. Create a Container for Trust
A cast functions as a dynamic system. Every role influences the whole, whether visible at center stage or happening quietly behind the scenes. The tone of rehearsals, the quality of relationships, and the clarity of expectations shape what becomes possible in performance.
Trust does not appear simply because talented people are in the room. It grows when expectations are clear, ideas are welcomed, and mistakes are met with steadiness rather than judgment. When that container is strong, people stretch further. When it is weak, energy is lost to hesitation and friction.
This season I had the gift of performing alongside two of my children. What struck me most was how influence flowed in both directions. They brought bold creative choices shaped by their generation. I brought experience shaped by mine. The work improved because we listened to one another and allowed ourselves to be influenced.
Organizations today are equally multigenerational. When trust is present, experience and fresh perspective strengthen one another. When trust is thin, those same differences can become sources of tension and collaboration can harden into hierarchy.
Leaders shape the container in which that dynamic unfolds, even when it has not been explicitly designed. In high-pressure environments, trust is not optional. It is foundational infrastructure. Without it, teams struggle under the weight of complexity. With it, they collaborate, adapt, and perform at a higher level.
2. Connect to the Bigger Why
Performing on stage is not for everyone. I loved musical theatre for decades before I found the courage to audition. This season, I played a male character, which required me to learn a different physicality and experiment with makeup to achieve a scruffy beard. Others in the cast faced their own stretches as well. Together we not only learned our lines and choreography, but found the confidence to deliver performances that resulted in standing ovations.
Discomfort was part of the process for all of us. What sustained us was our shared purpose of raising funds for a children’s charity that supports vulnerable young people through arts-based programming in Africa and in Indigenous communities across Canada. Remembering that purpose placed our transient fears in perspective. This was not about staying comfortable or looking good. It was about contributing to something meaningful.
When the why is clear and compelling, effort feels purposeful. When it is weak or abstract, discomfort feels personal and even small challenges feel heavy.
In organizations, the why behind the work cannot remain relegated to a slide deck or website. It needs to be named, revisited, and connected to real impact. When people see how their work contributes to something meaningful, they are far more willing to align, stretch, and support one another through change.
Purpose does not eliminate discomfort. It gives it meaning.
3. Create Opportunities for Joy
If you scan the headlines or your social media feed, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. The world feels complex, uncertain, and at times heavy.
In that context, laughter, singing, and shared joy can seem almost trivial. They are not.
The physicist Ilya Prigogine wrote, “When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.” On a cold February night, we created one of those islands.
It was not about flawless execution. It was about people showing up fully, supporting one another, and offering something generous to an audience. The energy in the room shifted. People laughed and some were moved to tears.
In organizations navigating constant change, joy is not a distraction from serious work. It is fuel for sustaining it. Leaders have more influence than they often realize. Leaders shape the container and amplify the why. They either dampen or cultivate moments of shared humanity.
In complex systems, small shifts in how we lead can create disproportionate impact.
This season with The Riverdale Players reminded me that coherence is not accidental. High performance is not accidental either. Both are created intentionally and collectively through the conditions leaders design and the energy they bring.
If you are exploring how to strengthen adaptability and coherence within your leadership team, you can learn more about The Adaptive Advantage™ and how it supports leaders in meeting complexity with clarity and steadiness.
