After fifteen minutes, my new friend thanked me for the incredible conversation and said it was just what he needed. He walked away with renewed confidence and a plan to engage with more with his fellow conference attendees.

But here is the wild part – I didn’t say anything.

Not.

One.

Word.

My friends and I were hired to work as “mingling mimes” at the Narcotics Anonymous National Convention. Over the course of two nights, we spent more than six hours putting on small acts for the attendees and “mingling” with them in between our routines.  It was a fascinating experience full of life lessons and unbelievable stories like the one about how our mime troop was formed. 

When I was a student at Texas A&M University, I served as a roadie and an on-stage personality for my friends and their band, Haywood. They were some of the most creative guys I’ve ever met, and they were always up for an adventure. 

One evening, they decided we would all dress up as mimes before heading out to a party and some local bars. We attempted to communicate through hand signals as we stayed in character and silently mimed our way through the night. When we compared notes the next morning, our experiences and lessons were very similar. More on that later.     

Stephen, Haywood’s lead singer, posted an unlisted page on the band’s website documenting our fun night as mimes so that we could share the memories with our friends. Fast-forward more than one year, and someone reached out to us through a Google search asking if they could hire us to perform as mingling mimes at their convention in Houston.

A goofy adventure and a webpage led to this moment, but now we needed a group name for our contract. After much back-and-forth, we settled on the most ironic name: “You’d Think We Were Mimes.”  

Miming for fun at a party doesn’t carry the same pressure as miming for pay at a large convention and we needed a plan. We purchased the wristbands that a football quarterback uses when receiving play signals from the sideline and devised a clear set of non-verbal commands for our troop. We had established routines that we could use throughout the event, including the bobsled race, the marriage proposal immediately followed by the wedding, and the rounds we would play of imaginary blackjack. Our work was a hit, and the event coordinators were overwhelmed by our attentiveness and unique approach to miming. 

As we looked back at our two miming experiences, the lessons were clear.

It is a gift to make someone feel heard – During normal conversations, it seems that everyone is just waiting for their turn to talk and not truly listening. As a mime, that just isn’t possible, which allows the person speaking to go deeper into the things they want to share with you.

You can say a lot with eye contact and a smile - An engaged listener can encourage the speaker and affirm what they are saying without ever uttering a word. Engaged listening is more heavily weighted toward the nonverbal than the verbal, so imagine what happens when you master both.

Shared experiences are a bedrock of great team building – Almost every time I am with the You’d Think We Were Mimes troop, we recount the stories of our adventure with laughter and excitement.  Shared experiences like this serve as moments in time that we hold dear and continue to build upon. For more on shared experiences, read “What are Shared Experiences and Why Do They Matter.”

The best way to start doing something is to start doing it – We were hired as mimes because we mimed. I am fortunate to deliver many keynote addresses each year because long ago I started giving keynote addresses. Our company consults others on growth, strategy, and culture because we decided early in our careers to learn as much as possible about growth, strategy, and culture.

What crazy adventures have you experienced that provided leadership lessons you didn’t expect?