Turnout Dancing

Pull up a patch of log as we sit around the fire and spin a tale of yester-year...

The CEO would later swear that it hadn't been a set-up. He really, truly intended to join us (his senior leadership team) at Esalen for the "seminar" entitled "Managing with Heart." But somehow, conveniently, he was called away. So there we were, ensconced in a log cabin motel 25 miles or better away from the place because our HR leader who had volunteered for the site visit refused to go for the roommate requirement of on-site housing. This isn't just 25 ordinary miles, by the way. It's 25 miles on Highway 1 on the Big Sur coastline. And the "seminar" had some rather odd hours. 10 - 12, 4 - 6, 8 - 10, with the rather long afternoon break dedicated to massages, relaxation, gardening, etc. and the evening break dedicated to dinner and kitchen cleaning. So the drive was white-knuckle time, especially for me.

This one week could yield a hundred stories. Like when our CFO fell asleep during meditation and demonstrated to us why his Boy Scout Troop Leader nickname was Evinrude. Or when one of the SVPs who simply couldn't give up his voice mail routine and so perched inside the facility's only phone booth next to the only laundromat and choked on the message he was leaving when a nice young lady filled the washer with her clothes and then added the ones she was wearing.

But, no. This particular angle on the events of the week is devoted to the drive back and forth from the run-down motel to Esalen and back that we made every morning and every late night.

We were a strange species at Esalen. We supposed out loud that the rest of them had never seen business people and were quite intrigued with us. There were psychologists and wild animal park caretakers and devotees of Esalen massage and drifters and random "entrepreneurs" but no other corporate types that we ever saw. And this made for a truly "binding" team-building experience. Common enemy and the like. Every morning the tension built as we drove to the campus, and every night, the tension broke like a dam on the way back.

The nightly routine was to stop and buy wine on the way back to the motel, and once there we sat outside and drank and laughed like the giddy survivors that we were. "Could you believe that woman who said she had been a passenger on the Titanic in a previous life?" "What about that guy who has four-handed 2 hour massages EVERY SINGLE AFTERNOON?" It was like we were aliens examining a new world under a microscope, in wonder at everything.

One night, driving back to our motel, blowing off steam and laughing non-stop, we had Motown oldies playing on the radio. In a fit of spontaneity, our driver whipped the car off the road into a "turnout" as they are called along this stretch of two lane highway, and we all spilled out of the car and danced under the moonlight. Singing, howling, fist pumping, we just danced under the moon and stars until the energy dissipated enough and then we just got back in the car and continued on our way.

Turnout dancing happened again during the trip, including in the parking lot of a very ritzy restaurant where we had gone without reservations, and which did not win us very many friends among the staff. It became our shared experience, our magic, our memory. One we called upon once we returned to work, as we glanced at each other sheepishly, and the CFO tried to figure out what to do with the massage charges on our bills.

Those of you reading this, you know who you are.