What Figure Skaters Know

Often times when working with businesses, groups and organizations I use the “figure skaters metaphor”.Have you ever noticed that when two figure skaters are performing, what happens when one person falls or makes a mistake?  What do you picture?Does the other skater scoff, point to the mistake so everyone knows it was the other person, look disgusted, skate off, swear at, cuss out, shame… the other skater?The best skaters try to make it look like that is what they meant to do all along. They skate in, help out, are graceful and seamless, improvise, improve, amplify and get back on program, like it never happened.Why aren’t all teams like this?  Why do we compete to be right and have others be wrong?The opportunity is to see our group like an organism, we are all just parts of one being, that we are all working together to amplify the best that we can be as a whole.  When we can see it this way, the competition, the struggle, the comparisons go out.  What comes in is a beautiful dance of excellence, a co-creation of the best we can be, whatever our values or goals are.Share this metaphor with your team, group or family and have a discussion.  Have your team start to look for opportunities to make it look like "we meant to do it all along." That is a much better game than looking for the errors.