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Hi Reader, Welcome to Your Dose of Mana — a quick, weekly note with: If your biggest business challenges are actually people challenges, you’re in the right place. 1 Real Story Right before we went on stage, one of my teammates looked at me and said she was really nervous. We were standing backstage at a West Coast Swing event after ten weeks of rehearsals with our show team. Twenty-two of us. Eleven couples. Wednesday nights for an hour and a half to two hours every week leading up to Mother’s Day weekend. And now it was time. The music was loud. The crowd was packed. A dance competition had been running all day, and you could hear the audience erupting every few minutes. Cheering. My teammate looked terrified. So I told her something I know to be true: Physiologically, excitement and nervousness are basically the same. Your heart races. Your brain just decides how to label it. Then I pointed toward the ballroom. “Look at the crowd,” I said. “They’re cheering for everybody. We’re about to go out there and perform something we worked on for ten weeks, and the choreography is literally designed to make people cheer. They want us to succeed.” And her energy shifted. Not because the nerves disappeared. I started dancing years ago in New Zealand after my partner left when my daughter was about three and a half years old. At the time, I was responsible for 120 people at the YMCA. I led in every aspect of my life: work, parenting, relationships, everything. Then I started dancing, Ceroc (modern jive). And for one of the first times in my life, I had to learn how to follow. Honestly? It was not easy. Following felt unnatural to me at first. My brain wanted to anticipate, direct, manage, compensate, control. But little by little, I learned to relax and trust the lead. And once I did, something unexpected happened: Freedom. Dance became the only place in my life where my brain stopped trying to run everything. I could just listen. That freedom is part of why I fell in love with West Coast Swing years later. But joining this community here in the U.S. took time. I started dancing again about two and a half years ago, and breaking into an established dance community isn’t all that different from joining any other community. You show up. Again and Again. You learn the culture. You build trust slowly. This show team felt different, though. Supportive. And standing backstage before we performed, listening to the crowd cheer for every single person who stepped onto that floor, I realized something: Supportive environments change how risk feels. The same physical sensation can feel like terror in one environment and excitement in another. That’s true in dance. And it’s true at work too. 1 Leadership Insight Leaders often underestimate how much environment shapes performance. People do their best work when they feel supported, not scrutinized. When they believe others want them to succeed, not fail. Psychological safety isn’t softness. It’s what allows people to take risks, try new things, and perform under pressure without shutting down. Even highly capable people struggle in environments where they feel like the crowd is waiting for them to fail 1 Practical Takeaway The next time someone on your team seems nervous before a presentation, meeting, or big moment, ask yourself: Have we created an environment where this feels threatening… or exciting? Because sometimes leadership isn’t about reducing the pressure. Sometimes it’s about making sure people know the crowd is cheering for them. 1 Dose of Art A little whimsy. A little joy. A little doodle.
Doodle by Gary Schechner, 5/9/2026 Even though this is a “mass email” I mean it when I say—let me know what you are up to. Reply, book a Zoom, pick up the phone. I’d love to catch up. If people issues are slowing down your business, let’s fix that. Thanks for letting me show up in your inbox. More joy. Less friction. Always. |