Work’s Happiest of Happy Dances

Have you ever been to Salzburg, Austria?

There’s a world-famous Salzburg Marionette Theater there where master puppeteers manipulate their marionettes using only nine strings to display a full range of human emotions.  My wife and I caught their performance of The Magic Flute a few years ago while on vacation, and we were blown away!  At the end of the show curtains were opened high above the stage to show the master puppeteers working frantically.

It was an enchanting evening where we watched little puppets fully display human comradery, fear, bewilderment, conflict, and ultimately success or what I like to call The Happy Dance.  More on that in a bit.

With a career in Sales and Marketing I have been studying body language of my customers, coworkers, and potential clients since those very impressionable college days and monitoring my own body movements to greatly help enhance my performances.  I bring all this up now because I’ve been thinking about our body language on business trips, and I have been wondering how master puppeteers would show us at work.

Companies send their people on business trips all the time for:

Conferences – People attending conferences are there for the mavericks or soon-to-be mavericks. Those nimble thinking pioneers who have rearranged what we thought we knew into something more potent.  Most of the head movements here are a bit tilted back and forth as attendees try to fully understand what the mavericks are sharing.

Team Meetings – Theoretically, things happened very, very fast and with great force moments after the Big Bang at the birth of our universe.  If we were actually there it would have been the biggest rush ever!  People attending national or regional team meetings are there for a growing comradery with coworkers and their company’s next Big Bang business opportunity.  Head movements are rather subtle throughout the meetings, but eyebrows are jumping up, down, and sideways depending on the information shared.

Business Reward Trips –  When companies send their current all-star employees on business reward trips like Presidents Club Winners, Motivators. or Quality Circle Winners they are sending the most charming and competitive company navigators. 

Business stats at the end of the year will show that these champion navigators truly circumvented family issues, new product launches, supply side issues, intermittent staffing support, meandering deadlines, and weather. Many of them also found themselves volunteered for impromptu extra performances.  Most of the head movements with this group on these trips are simply looking around to enjoy the view while beaming a little bit.  For a few sunny moments their careers have taken them to the top of another mountain where the view is absolutely magnificent.

When you think about which type of business trip generates the happiest happy dance and the best body language it just might be Business Reward Trips. 

Later this month my wife and I will catch a plane ride to join another Business Reward Trip for three nights at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego with other 2022/2023 Motorola Motivators Winners.  In the past I have won similar awards for Business Reward Trips to Park City, Utah, Las Vegas, NV, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Most business trips such as the Accusation Trips, Trade Show Trips, Conference Trips, Team Meetings are very hard work.  If your company sends you to those destinations your job is to be the most attentive, positive person in the room.  Your body language shouldn’t show fatigue, discomfort, annoyance, or any boredom. Your eye contact skills are constantly on full display — these skills help you instigate and maintain multiple conversations all at the same time.

However, attending a Business Reward Trip as a winner indicates that you have momentarily arrived somewhere different. 

On all those other business trips you were working hard and taking care of business.  It was a workout to get out of town. It was a workout while out of town and it was a workout catching up when you got back in town again.  This time though you have been invited to put down your daily assignments and walk through a different doorway to hear fresh applause for all your hard work and this time you are able to share this exquisite experience with your soulmate too.

It’s not every year you can be identified as a true company all-star to join the latest Business Reward Trip but when you do measure up, it’s forever documented that you are an official winner. Somehow, just that formal acknowledgment is very liberating.  Other than joining some dinners together with your fellow winners there are no real deadlines, no business targets to be achieved, no vendors, or budgets to monitor. 

At times, this whole experience can be better than a vacation that you might have organized for yourself.  There is a relaxed ambience in the air.  Everyone photographs very well, and behind their sunglasses everyone starts displaying body language like movie stars with subtle chin movements of occasional acknowledgements.

Every worker out there should experience this happiest of happy dances at least once!  “♫ Everybody dance now… ♪”

As happy as it is though it does not last forever.  On the plane ride to the Business Reward Trip, it’s easy to tell the pilot to save some fuel and just crank up some Led Zeppelin or Carlos Santana music but on the way home there’s a major music shift back to dinner jazz.  On the ride back home, people start sitting up straighter again.  Upcoming deadlines will reappear out of nowhere in their thoughts again, and some might even peek at all those accumulating emails. The race is on to return to the next Business Reward trip next year! 

For me it would certainly be enchanting again to see how master puppeteers would show us on all our business trips including being winners on a Business Reward Trips, and later those puppeteers would undoubtedly have fun capturing all our changing body language on our airplane rides back home!