I Was Raised to Lead. Dancing Taught Me to Follow.

I have always loved dancing.

My uncle is a professional dancer, and we've always been close. As a girl, I admired him endlessly. I loved dancing with him, the way he could make movement look like a language he was fluent in and I was just beginning to learn.

But I never got to take dance classes.

My mother wouldn't allow it. She believed: “It is more important to be smart than to know how to move your body.” Brains over movement. Mind over everything.

So I did what I was told. I became smart.

What Smart Built

I built a life on being smart.

I led people. I ran businesses. I became the one in the room who had the answers, who held the frame, who kept everyone moving in the right direction. I was competent and capable and in control, exactly the way I'd been raised to be.

And then I burned out.

Not the dramatic kind you see coming. The quiet kind, where you're still functioning, still delivering, still holding it all together, and somewhere underneath it all you've gone numb.

When I finally stopped long enough to ask myself what actually made me happy, the answer came back embarrassingly simple.

Dancing.

Not strategy. Not scaling. Not another win. Dancing. The thing my mother had decided wasn't worth my time. The thing my body had never forgotten, even after my mind spent decades proving I didn't need it.

Going Back

So in 2019, I went back.

And in 2024, I went back again. Country. Ballroom. Latin. A little bit of everything. Not professionally, not to perform, not to master anything.

Socially. For joy. For me.

I know just enough of a lot of styles to have fun, and that turned out to be the entire point. Because dancing, for me, isn't about achievement. It's the one place I let go of control.

And that word, control, is where this stops being a story about dancing and becomes a story about leadership.

The Hardest Thing for a Leader to Do

On the dance floor, the woman who spent her whole life leading has to learn to follow.

And following is not what people think it is. It isn't passivity. It isn't weakness. It is a genuine skill, and for someone like me, it's the harder one.

To follow well, you have to let go of anticipating. You have to stop controlling the outcome. You have to trust that someone else is holding the frame, and let your own body soften into that trust instead of bracing against it.

For a lifelong leader, that's terrifying. Everything in you wants to grip. To manage. To stay three steps ahead. To make sure it goes right.

And the moment you do that on a dance floor, the dance falls apart. The harder you try to control it, the worse it gets. You can only follow when you finally stop trying to lead.

Learning that in my body taught me something my mind had never fully understood about leading other people.

What a Dancer in Portugal Named

I came across the reel of @julia.em.portugal on Instagram, who put words to something I'd been feeling on the floor but hadn't been able to articulate.

She was talking about what dancers call a "difficult follower." And her reframe stopped me.

What we call a difficult follower, she said, is sometimes just a person whose body has learned not to trust so easily. She isn't always resisting the dance. Sometimes she's reacting to pressure, to confusion, to the fear of getting it wrong. Someone who controls, who anticipates, who can't quite let go isn't automatically difficult. Sometimes she's simply in protection mode.

And that, she said, is where dance becomes psychological. Because the body reveals what words do not. Trust, softness, and surrender cannot be forced. They have to be built.

I read that and immediately thought of every "difficult" person I've ever led.

The Reframe That Changes How You Lead

Here's what I've come to believe, both as a follower on the dance floor and as a leader off of it.

When we call someone difficult, we're usually describing their protection, not their character.

The team member who anticipates, over controls, and won't delegate. The employee who braces against every piece of feedback. The person who can't seem to let go and trust the process. We label them resistant. Difficult. Not a team player.

But a body and a nervous system that have learned not to trust easily aren't being difficult. It's protecting itself, usually for reasons that have nothing to do with you and everything to do with what came before you.

And you cannot force your way through that. Trust, softness, surrender, the willingness to follow someone else's lead, none of it can be commanded. It can only be built.

I know this because I've been the difficult follower. The one gripping too hard, anticipating, afraid to get it wrong. Not because I was resistant, but because my whole life had trained me to control, and my body didn't yet feel safe enough to let go.

What I needed wasn't a better leader pulling harder. I needed to feel safe enough to stop bracing.

The Question Worth Asking

So maybe, as Julial put it, the real question is not "why is she difficult?"

Maybe the real question is: “What does she need to feel safe enough to follow and flow?”

That's not a dance question. That's a leadership question. It's the whole difference between a leader who labels people and a leader who builds the conditions for trust.

The people you lead are not being difficult on purpose. Some of them are in protection mode, braced against a history you can't see. Your job isn't to force them into trust. It's to build the safety that lets them choose it.

My mother taught me it was more important to be smart than to know how to move my body.

She was half right. Being smart built my career.

But it was learning to follow, learning to let go of control, learning to trust another person enough to move with them instead of against them, that finally taught me how to lead.

I still lead. I run businesses. I hold the frame.

But now I know the other half of it too. And I found it on a dance floor, doing the thing I was never allowed to do, letting go.

At The Academy of MotivAction®, we help leaders build the psychological safety and trust that turn "difficult" people into engaged ones. Because you cannot force trust. You build it.

With gratitude to @julia.em.portugal, whose words on the "difficult follower" gave language to something I'd been feeling on the dance floor for years. Watch her original reel here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZZ2fYmsq8b/

Photo Credit: @askme_todance @Roo_ontherhythm

Learn More: https://motivaction.academy/