A return to the head mic – why it made sense as a Human Factors specialist

This year, I dusted off my head mic (cue a true Britney moment), stepped back into the studio, and returned to dance and dance fitness instructing. For those who are perhaps newer to my journey, before there was aviation in my life, there was dance (since the day I stepped into a dance studio when I was a tiny 2-year-old), and naturally with that came teaching in all manner of forms. Ballet, tap, jazz, street dance, contemporary, musical theatre, and a little later on, there was dance fitness – specifically a Les Mills programme called Sh’Bam (in recent months this has been replaced by a new programme, LM Dance, which is what I now teach).

A lot of people through time have said that I am the definition of ‘squiggly career’, and maybe from the outside looking in, on this (nearly) 30-year-old millennial, that’s what it looks like. After all, I’ve danced, taught, instructed, operated as cabin crew and for the past 4 years have worked in the wonderful world of human factors and human performance (and that’s not all, as there was definitely a very enjoyable stint as an elf somewhere in there)…

But I disagree.

Whilst university, and undoubtedly my professional experience has refined me as a practitioner, so much of what I know has come directly from my time dancing and instructing. I’ve spent the majority of my life one way or another developing an understanding of how humans think, how community and society is truly formed, and understanding physiology, nutrition, and mental health and wellbeing as well as developing my own style of leadership.

How can it be so then? How can there be a link between the scientific discipline of human factors and dance instruction?

Part of working as a human factors specialist involves understanding the factors that influence human performance. This could be anything from individual factors such as nutrition, sleep or your commute to teamwork, job or organisational factors. All of these have an influence on how we, as humans, perform in our day to day personal and professional lives, and it’s my job to understand these factors to best optimise human performance, be that through procedures, policy, training and so on.

Ultimately, this isn’t so dissimilar to dance and fitness instructing (although admittedly I’m not about to complete a NASA – TLX on a pirouette combination). It’s my job as an instructor to safely, and effectively lead a group through an hour of movement, ideally making it enjoyable, fun and improving the health and wellbeing of all that attend. To do that, I have to understand how to achieve optimal human performance. Through my time training as a dancer and subsequently an instructor, I learned the ins and outs of how to fuel the body to achieve optimal performance, as well as modify and enhance movement dependent on individual need. I’ve learned how to build a bond between not only myself and a group of class attendees, but also develop a community that trusts each other and works together to achieve a common goal. I’ve learned how powerful communication can be and how to communicate intent solely through movement, or an expression, because fundamentally non-verbal communication can be so incredibly powerful. I know this because one action can lead a whole group of people to move in a certain way, without even having to say a thing.  

I know how to develop psychologically safe spaces and have had the privilege of being there for people in their most confused, saddest, or happiest of times – helping them to work through their concerns, queries or personal problems. I know how to foster trust between myself and people from all walks of life, so much so they’ll trust me with movement they could only dream of doing (barrel turn anyone?). These are just a few examples of the skills that I use day in, day out in my professional life and indeed train to others (perhaps not the barrel turn).

So really, when all is said and done, is it really that different? For example, is designing procedure to optimise human performance really that different to instructing a dance fitness class? I’d argue maybe it’s not as different as we first might think (even if the output to one is strutting along to some Rihanna).

Whilst I’d love to say that my return to dance fitness instructing has been as calculated and from a career perspective, as beneficial as this article might suggest, the truth of it is I’ve returned to teaching purely because of my reason why.  The reason why I teach, and why I dance is because it makes me feel alive. Helping others to find the joy of movement, and music and how they connect, and finding their own reasons why gives me so much purpose. It’s just a beautiful coincidence therefore that in my opinion, my ‘squiggly career’ isn’t in fact as squiggly as it first may seem, and many of my paths in life, have ultimately led back to understanding human performance.