Leadership and Imagination

My co-teacher Susan called to bring the class together. Our class comprised of 20 folks over the age of 50 finished up the last of their bear crawls along the edge of the play structure where we met each week. Everyone started walking back except for Rod. Rod continued to lumber about, stooping his head low, piking his hips high and ROARING. He was lost in pretend, he was not yet ready to end being a bear.

I later debriefed with him and asked him what he was thinking about. I had learned that Rod always had something poetic, strong and worthwhile to share. Sure enough- he looked off wistfully as he told me he was thinking about how as an 81 year old man, he knew what it was like to ‘play bear’. But he remembered as child, the first times he played at becoming an animal. He remembered how his daughters, when they were eager to play pretend would say ‘let’s ‘tend like’. He mused at the little time portal he had just found into the past. All the while- he had noticed a little toddler at the park also pretending to be a bear. They were there- at different ends of their lives, pretending to be a bear.

This kind of imaginative play is not only wonderful for the mind, but for the body. I have found that as a coach, if I instruct people to ‘walk briskly, putting the heel down first followed by the ball of the foot’ I cannot get the same movement pattern as if I say ‘squish bubbles down with your heel! Pop them!’ People move differently when they are embodying a story, a visual, a picture.

So in the words of Rod, why don’t we more often ‘Let’s ‘tend like….’

Let’s be bears.