The room was rich with red velvet curtains and lipstick, and I watched red shoes moving across the wooden floor.
I was sitting in a cult tango venue in Buenos Aires called Salon Canning. It was 2019, and I was there on a birthday trip I had gifted myself. I had flown halfway across the world to dance in the capital of tango.
But I wasn’t dancing.
I was sitting in the area designated for women, waiting.
In traditional milongas, the rules are strict. Men initiate and women wait. Men lead while women follow. Men scan the room like they are reading a menu, and women sit with hopeful postures, trying to catch a glance without looking desperate.
I sat on my uncomfortable chair as a tanda, a set of four songs, began. I watched the couples move onto the floor. I wondered if my dress was the wrong color. I straightened my back. I smiled until my face hurt.
Another tanda passed. Then another.
I felt a familiar, heavy feeling settle in my chest. More than disappointment, it was a sense of powerlessness that I recognized from other parts of my life. The feeling of my happiness depending entirely on someone else’s decision to notice me.
Why did I have to wait? Why was it their privilege to decide who got to move?
I looked at the men leading. They looked confident and in control as they navigated the crowded floor with authority. I looked at the women following. They looked beautiful and responsive as they surrendered to the movement.
Everyone was playing their role perfectly, and I was suffocating.
I realized I had a choice. I could sit there and accept the tradition, hoping someone would eventually pick me. Or I could break the rule that defined the dance.
I decided to learn to lead.
It sounds like a triumphant movie moment, but the reality was messy and embarrassing.
When I returned to San Francisco, I started taking lessons in the “leader” role. It felt unnatural. My body wanted to wait for signals, not give them. I had to learn to walk with intention into empty space, trusting that my partner would move with me.
When I moved to Paris in 2022, I found another teacher and kept going. But every time I tried to use these new skills in public, the pushback was immediate.
Some milongas asked me to leave the floor. Traditional dancers stared. But the most painful rejection came from other women.
I asked a woman to dance, and she looked terrified. She wasn’t being mean; she was calculating the cost. If she was seen dancing with a female leader, she might be marked as “difficult” or “untraditional.” She worried the men wouldn’t invite her later.
I understood her fear because I felt it too. My own doubts were loud: Who are you to lead? You’re disrupting the order. You’re making people uncomfortable.
But I kept going. And as I learned to lead, I discovered something that changed how I understand power.
I used to think leading was about control. I thought the leader decided everything and the follower just obeyed.
I was wrong.
When I started leading, I realized that if I just forced my partner to move, the dance became a struggle. To lead well, I had to listen even more intently than when I was following. I had to feel where my partner’s axis was. I had to suggest a movement and then wait milliseconds to feel if they were coming with me.
I learned that leading is actually a form of service. You are responsible for the other person’s safety on a crowded floor, for interpreting the music, and for making them look and feel beautiful.
Far from being about dominance, leading required heightened sensitivity.
This experience changed how I show up in boardrooms and team meetings. I used to think leadership meant having the loudest voice or the firmest plan. Now I see it differently.
I see that the best leaders are the ones who are listening the loudest. They are the ones who propose a direction but remain sensitive to whether the team is moving with them.
I also learned that the most magical connections happen when we stop gripping our roles so tightly.
Today, I dance both roles. Sometimes I lead, and sometimes I follow. I’ve found a community of “rule questioners” who do the same. When we dance, we aren’t limited by gender or tradition. We are just two humans listening to each other and the music.
In those moments, the conflict between “who leads” and “who follows” dissolves. We are collaborating. We are creating something together that neither of us could create alone.
I often think back to that woman sitting in the red room in Buenos Aires, waiting to be chosen. I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to wait.
We don’t need permission to move. We just need the courage to step onto the floor and the humility to listen to whoever meets us there.
This story is included in my upcoming book, Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division, coming March 2026.