At the next session, I heard a woman I had been coaching use almost the same words I had used with her. Another person was struggling with a dance she had begun to feel more confident doing, and she stepped into that moment with encouragement. “Listen to your body. Listen to your mind. You got this. You know how to do it.”
She had heard those words, used them, and made them part of her own vocabulary. Now someone else was receiving the reassurance she had needed.
I love witnessing that when I teach. Getting the steps matters, but what stayed with me was how she had begun relating to the person beside her. To me, her belief had changed her language, her language had changed her outlook, and her outlook had changed her relationship with community. She recognized someone else’s struggle and offered support from a place she now understood differently.
There is a leadership lesson in that exchange, and it sits at the heart of Trust the Step™, our facilitated leadership and team-building experience at Concrete Steppas™. Learning a dance together gives people a chance to practice how they respond when someone loses their place. Do they offer a useful cue? Give the person room to try again? Ask what would help? Those choices matter to the person learning and to the group around them.
The things people say before they try
When I approach people about learning a dance, I hear familiar responses. “I have two left feet.” “I can’t catch on.” “I don’t have any rhythm.” And the one that tells me how much comparison is already happening: “I won’t do it like you.”
I hear limiting beliefs in those statements. People are ruling themselves out before they have had a chance to discover what they can do. I want to give them something they can work with. When I say, “Two steps to the left,” I want them to hear the instruction without carrying the whole routine, everybody else’s movements, and a judgment about themselves along with it.
With someone who has just walked over to join us, I might bring it back to that familiar action. You trusted yourself to walk here. Can we start with two steps? For someone participating seated or adapting a movement, we start with what works for their body. Listening to your body includes recognizing what it needs. There is also room to pause, observe, and rejoin.
I tell people that I am expressing the step through my own body. I am not asking their body to look exactly like mine. I want them to think about the task, try it in a way that works for them, and notice what happens. Sometimes I ask them to repeat the instruction aloud or in their head: “Two steps to the left. Two steps to the left.” They have something specific to return to when the doubt gets loud.
I also love watching people who are fully committed while they are still learning. They are out there communicating through their own bodies. They participate even before they have the exact steps. There is room to learn without waiting to become somebody else’s version of a dancer.
What self-efficacy helps explain
Psychology gives us a useful term for the belief that we can carry out a particular task: self-efficacy. Rice University’s Doerr Institute emphasizes that this belief is specific to the capability involved. Someone may feel capable in one part of leadership and uncertain in another. [1] On the floor, we begin with a step the person can practice and recognize as their own. In the language I use when I teach, “I can’t” begins to become “I am. I did.”
Encouragement has a place in that process, and so does acknowledging your own progress. You have something to point to: you listened to an instruction, tried it, and found a way to do it. When you lose your place, you can return to a cue that helped before. The person beside you can help without taking over your learning.
Albert Bandura’s account of human agency connects our capacity to act with the social conditions and relationships in which we live. People influence their surroundings and are influenced by them; they can also act together toward shared outcomes. [2] That gives me a way to think about the whole room. The learner’s choices matter, and so does the response they receive when they ask for help or try again.
When encouragement becomes something you give
The woman I had coached took encouragement she had received and offered it to another learner. Each one, teach one. She did not have to wait until she could teach the whole routine to contribute something useful. She recognized a moment when someone needed support and spoke up.
For leaders, that is worth practicing. When a colleague misses an instruction, we have a choice about how we respond. We can explain the next action clearly and leave room for a question. We can offer encouragement without turning someone’s difficulty into a performance for everybody else. We can recognize progress while the person is still learning.
Trust the Step™ makes room to try those choices through movement and then talk about what happened. What helped you begin? What did you need when you lost your place? What did someone beside you do that made it easier to continue? Those are specific experiences a team can discuss. Carrying them into work takes another choice: deciding how to offer that kind of support to a colleague and following through when the moment comes.
I want us to pay attention to that part. We spend so much time looking for someone else to motivate us, and there is nothing wrong with receiving inspiration. We should encourage each other. I also want people to recognize when they have begun giving themselves permission to act, acknowledging their own progress, and becoming a source of encouragement for somebody else.
Imagine that becoming something we deliberately practice in our corporations, our neighborhoods, and our families. Imagine hearing someone struggle and remembering what helped us, then offering that person the same patience and reassurance. That is the possibility I see when I teach: moving away from what limits and shrinks people, toward encouragement, empowerment, and humanity.
She learned the dance. What I remember most is what she began saying to the person beside her.
For teams and conferences that want to practice this together, Trust the Step™ offers a shared experience of movement, learning, and reflection.
Sources
[1] Aaron Pomerantz, Doerr Institute for New Leaders, Rice University. From “I Am” to “I Can”: The Science of Leader Self-Efficacy. February 24, 2026.
[2] Albert Bandura. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1–26. 2001.