When Cirque du Soleil began to become known outside Canada in the 1990s, many people thought the company’s success lay solely in the technical difficulty of the shows.
The acrobatics seemed impossible and every performance conveyed a sense of precision hard to explain from the outside.
And yet technique alone wasn’t enough to unfold all of the artists’ talent.
Many of the people who joined the company were already elite professionals who had trained for years to reach extremely high levels of physical demand.
And even so, when they began to be part of the shows, technique didn’t guarantee the result Cirque du Soleil was looking for on stage.
Because the goal wasn’t only to execute a movement well; it was to get all that technique to turn into an experience capable of moving the audience while sustaining constant pressure, absolute coordination and total connection with the rest of the team.
The artists’ physical safety continually depended on concentration, trust and the ability to stay present in real time alongside their fellow performers.
That’s why the way Cirque du Soleil worked on talent added an extra component to theory and practice.
They incorporated a third part that ended up becoming a fundamental piece of their philosophy.
The physical, mental and emotional state the artists stepped on stage from.
Breathing, emotional regulation, concentration, stage presence and connection between performers became part of the company’s regular training.
Over time, this ended up setting Cirque du Soleil apart not only in the eyes of the audience, but also by attracting some of the best artists in the world.
Two people could have exactly the same technical preparation and have practiced the same act for months and still unfold completely different talent in front of the audience depending on the internal state they stepped on stage from.
When that balance didn’t appear, the talent stopped expressing itself entirely.
Understanding that talent doesn’t depend solely on what a person knows how to do or on how much they’ve practiced is one of the keys to this company’s success.
If you look at it calmly, this makes more and more sense inside today’s organizations.
For many years, training focused mainly on knowledge and practice.
And that was enough for many more stable and predictable work environments.
People learned a skill, trained it and could then apply it in their role with relative ease.
However, today’s organizations operate in far more complex contexts.
Constant pressure, the speed of adaptation or the need to coordinate continuously with others have changed quite a bit the way talent unfolds within teams.
That’s where something Cirque du Soleil understood a long time ago starts to matter.
The state from which people try to work that talent.
Often the problem isn’t the technical ability of the teams, but that people can’t sustain all their potential within contexts of pressure, wear or disconnection.
Our learning experiences work on theory and practice, but they also incorporate a third dimension that has more and more impact within organizations.
The state of the body, the mind and the emotion.
Because when those three dimensions come into balance, talent and wellbeing start to appear in a completely different way within teams.
And that ends up generating something HR is increasingly concerned about.
Teams that not only perform well, but can also sustain that performance in a healthy, balanced and human way within the organization’s day to day.
That’s why training also needs to evolve.
Because developing skills remains important.
But helping people unfold all their talent within complex environments has probably become one of the most relevant keys for today’s organizations.
And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about training in communication, leadership or any other skill within the organization.
This third component is the one starting to make the difference in many companies that work on talent from a more advanced and human perspective.
If you’re interested in exploring how to apply this approach within your organization, write to me and we’ll look into it.
— Berta
P.S.: Do you think talent depends only on a person’s technical ability?
