89: Teaching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders How to Leave Well
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have choreography for the kick line—but not for the goodbye. In this episode, Naomi unpacks the Netflix docuseries and explores what it reveals about leadership transitions, legacy traps, and the danger of having no plan for "what’s next." Whether you're leading a nonprofit or sitting on a board, you need to hear this breakdown.
Learn about:
Why “churn” is not the same as “transition”
How legacy leaders without a succession plan risk collapse
What it means to evaluate performance without care
And how Leaving Well can help your organization do it differently
Because glitter doesn’t cover grief, and turnover without care is just change in sequins. If you’re a nonprofit leader or board member, this is your call to rethink succession before it becomes a crisis.
Quotes:
“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders don't reckon with the human cost of shaping the team through extraction. Culture is constantly shifting and shaping the team dynamics every time someone leaves, even if it was the right decision.”
“The Leaving Well framework, the work that I do with nonprofits, asks, ‘What does it look like if we offboard with grace, transparency, and care?’ That question doesn't exist in the cheerleading and sports model, but it could.”
“Legacy without a succession plan is honestly nothing at all. It's not a true legacy.”
“My sweet spot is helping organizations name the unnameable and the scary stuff about departures before it explodes into narrative chaos.”
To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/
To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.
This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders don’t reckon with the human cost of shaping the team through extraction. Culture is constantly shifting and shaping the team dynamics every time someone leaves, even if it was the right decision.”
Transcript:
Welcome back to another conversation about leaving. Well, this time we're gonna keep it going with the sports kind of vibe, and we're gonna talk about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. So. There's pompoms, there's power, and then I wanna talk about how the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders have choreography for the kick line, but not for the goodbye.
See what I did there? I've been watching the Netflix series on the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, and I can't stop thinking about how it mirrors the exact dynamics that I see in nonprofit and leadership transitions. So in today's conversation, we're going to be talking about five things. Number one is the churn without ritual.
So when I think about this, I think about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. We're just gonna say D, C, C from here on out. Their training camp is one long offboarding process. Honestly, it's high stakes, it's high polished, but there's zero collective grieving. The second thing we're gonna talk about is cultural bottlenecks.
Kelly and Judy will talk about them a little later. They hold 40 plus years of culture. 40 plus years, but there's no visible handoff. Plan number three, we're gonna talk about perfection over care. Um, this is a little, I don't know, a little dicey because cuts to from the DCC team after training camp are based on vibes and polish and not necessarily long-term culture fit or sustainable growth.
Now, part of the reason for the DCC is because it's a physical thing that the, the women are asked to do. They can't be a DC, C member forever. We'll get into that a little bit longer or a little bit later. Number four, legacy as a trap and as a pedestal. So former cheerleaders often become directors, which creates loyalties and limits change.
And then, uh, fifth, no choreography for exits. They've rehearsed every kick line. This is a little bit, um, sassy again, but they don't rehearse a single goodbye. And you'll see this if you watch this show. Um, there's two seasons now, and through the show they have different ways that they have goodbyes, uh, when they cut people or when people decide to retire.
But it doesn't, there's no structure around it. So let's dive in. So the first topic that we're gonna kind of discuss is constant transitions that are designed. As business as usual, this happens all the nine, all the time in the workplace, in non-profits, in for-profits. It doesn't matter the sector or the industry, whatever transitions are constant, people leave.
That's a reality. And when we design, when we don't design for workplace transitions, we are designing and disguising transitions as business as usual. So the turn of people entering and leaving, if this is the case in your workplace, when it's treated as routine, it still carries massive relational, emotional, and cultural implications.
Ignoring the fact that people leave doesn't actually do anything except to just sweep it all under the rug. Just like in many organizations, likely yours. The DCC structure normalizes loss in the dccs um, standpoint, it's cuts from training camp. It's exits based on behavior. It's exits based on retirement, et cetera, but they don't ritualize it.
There is some semblance of a ritual when they invite the women to come in with their uniforms on a hanger, and there's a rack on the left and there's a rack on the right. I think I have this right. If you hang your uniform on the right, it says yes, that you want to stay, you wanna come back. If you hang your uniform on the left, it means you're not continuing.
So there's a ritual esque. But then the, the awkward thing about the, to kind of contrast that is that when they're doing cuts for training camp, um, the only thing that they do is call someone one by one and they have kind of an escort a, a woman walk. The DCC hopeful into the room. They then wait outside, and then when they're cut, then they walk, usually a, a tearful person, um, to collect their things and then, uh, go home.
So leaving, well, the work that I do with organizations brings structure and dignity to what usually is just an unspoken, quiet, disappearing act. The second thing I wanna talk about in this video is that Found is talking about founders who stay too long and hold everything. So Judy and Kelly are icons in the DCC and I feel strongly that they're also bottlenecks of memory, of culture and of power.
So they are both former DCC cheerleaders and they have now stayed on to direct and shape what the organization looks like year after year. I can't remember everyone's titles. Um, Judy is. Choreographer and Kelly is like the head of DCC of the, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Their presence both holds institutional memory and it also creates fragility.
Just think about what happens if you've watched the show. Um, you'll know what I'm saying when I get to this point. If you haven't watched the show, you can just imagine they've been there. Forever. What happens if one of them leaves? Suddenly in the last episode of season two, one of the departing cheerleaders even asks Judy, what's gonna happen when you retire?
The camera kind of pans over to Judy and she has kind, kind of has this waning smile on her face, and then she doesn't respond verbally. Their proximity to the glory days is part of their credibility, but it also limits innovation. This mirrors my client engagements with founding executive directors, legacy board members, and charismatic culture holders who don't document anything along the way, let alone on their way out.
There's also a component of the DCC example that brings to mind evaluation without relational context. So during training camp, the women are asked to. First of all, they're trying out based on video submission. They then do kind of a video interview, and then they're brought to do tryouts. So they have a routine, a dance routine that they have, uh, performed.
And then after that, they're invited to training camp. If they're invited to proceed during training, camp cuts are then made because they can only get to a certain number of. Uh, cheerleaders on the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad and cuts are made based on performance, perfection, and presentation, but rarely on holistic care or cultural contribution.
Now, from time to time, Kelly and Judy do talk about leadership among the girls, but usually that leadership is only talked about in relation to who's gonna be in the formation. The head of the squad or the. The head of their formations. Um, I just think about the staff or the board members in nonprofits who are let go during leadership transitions.
Uh, not because of misconduct, but because of not being a great fit. And I'm always just curious what constitutes quote unquote great fit. The DCC doesn't reckon with the human cost of shaping the team through extraction culture is constantly shifting and shaping and the team dynamics every time someone leaves, even if it was the right decision.
Sometimes even when the woman is the one that made the decision herself, it still shifts the culture and I don't see them talking about it in the show. The leaving Well framework, the work that I do with nonprofit asks, what does it look like? What can it look like if we offboard with grace, transparency, and Care?
That question doesn't just exist in the cheerleading and sports model, but it could, it's almost like it's completely left out in the whole sports world, um, to offboard, to leave, to have departures, to have trades. Um, to have injury. Injury related departures. What if we treated it with grace, transparency, and care?
And what if we did it proactively instead of reactively? The last thing I wanted to touch on in this video is that legacy without a succession plan. Is honestly nothing at all. It's not a true legacy. Judy and Kelly are the brand behind the brand. Of course, the Dells Cowboys cheerleaders are a part of the brand as well, but Judy and Kelly have had a huge part in crafting it, and yet there's no clear public plan for what happens after them.
Their eventual departure is going to trigger a mass. Massive identity crisis for the DCC and whoever follows them will either be forced to replicate their style or break from it, and then risk backlash. This is my sweet spot, helping organizations name the unnameable and the scary stuff about departures before it explodes into narrative chaos.
So let's just imagine for a sweet spot minute that I was gonna consult with the DCC if I was consulting with Ju, Judy and Kelly. Here's what I would recommend. Number one, legacy mapping. What are Judy and Kelly each carrying together and individually that no one else is? What is in their heads, what is in their hearts?
What routines haven't been shared? Who holds institutional memory outside of them, and how can we pull their institutional memory outside of, uh, into the DC, C, so that it can live forever? Another thing that I would ask them to work on, number two, is narrative preparation. How will the public be invited into the transition whenever it's time for Judy and Kelly to go, how will they weave in storytelling?
Will they have tributes? Will they have a co-designed handoff? Number three is a succession support plan. What is the next, um, choreographer and director going to need to do? What's the onboarding container for them? Who is the next generation of DCC culture carriers? If I were consulting with the DCC right now, I would strongly recommend that they start to build this into their squad so that the squad can have a little bit more, say, a little bit more ownership, a little bit more oversight, and a little bit more intentional carrying of the culture of DCC, and not just have it be on Kelly and Judy's roles.
The second piece of that succession support plan would be how do you protect their successors from comparison, fatigue and legacy back backlash? Especially when you've got something as known of a brand as the DCC. Maybe your nonprofit doesn't have that extensive of a brand, but the mission is still mission critical.
What you do and who you serve is still very, very important. And protecting successors from fatigue comparison and legacy backlash in the community is really important. The fourth piece of what I would do if I was consulting with the DCC is to start to culturally detangle from Judy and Kelly. I'm curious what parts of the DCC culture are theirs and what parts should be released, reimagined or retained?
When I work with, um, organizations where an outgoing leader is not coming back, so I'm not talking about for sabbatical or parental leave, but when someone has departed their role because of death or long-term disability or retirement resignation, et cetera, it is very important that we do a little exercise around what pieces of their leadership and the things that they may have implemented need to be kept institutionally, and what parts do we bless and release.
Um, there's another piece of this, that there's so much innovation and so much beauty that can rise when old patterns are allowed to shift. And so those are the four main topics that I would bring into the DCC if I were consulting with them. So my final reflection on all of this is to just name that the DCC, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are high visibility, high polish.
And high turnover, but it is still an organization with real humans facing real transitions, and it desperately needs rituals of leaving, of tending of storytelling. The DCC are experts in performance, but not in process. You can hear that. Signature song Thunder that they sing or that they, that is played when they walk out onto the, uh, the field, you know that they're gonna do the kick line.
There are so many things about performance that the DCC are experts in, just like you at your nonprofit, are experts in serving the community that you serve or establishing and, and working towards the mission that you're aiming to, to see in the vision of your organization. But in the case of the DCC, the glitter does not hide the grief.
And there is succession without care, which is just turnover dressed in a lot of sequence. This all is what the leaving Well framework brings to the table. And if you are interested in learning more about proactive succession planning, interim leadership, if your organization's facing a leadership gap in the future, or you want to have board development and staff development around workplace.
Transitions that are handled with care and with tending. Reach out and get in touch. You can reach us at support@eighthandhome.com. That's eight TH and home.com. Or you can visit us on our website@naomihattaway.com to learn more. Until next time, thanks for listening and watching.
If you are an organizational leader, board member, or a curious staff member, take the leaving while assessment to discover your organization's transition readiness archetype. It's quick and easy, and you can find it@naomihadaway.com. Slash assessment, it's Naomi, N-A-O-M-I, hattaway, H-A-T-T-A-W-A y.com/assessment.
To learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace. You can also see that information on my website. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation.
Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hadaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a Navigation Guide for Workplace Transitions.