Replacements Ltd.

Anthony Johnson

I went to business school to learn how high-performing organizations work. What I did not expect was to spend so much time thinking about the theatre.

As professors discussed psychological safety, employee engagement, organizational culture, and the conditions that allow people to do their best work, I found myself having the same reaction again and again:

I’ve seen this before.

Long before I studied organizational psychology, I had experienced these ideas firsthand. I learned them in the theatre.

Before beginning my career in HR and Learning & Development, I spent years working as a professional actor. Like many theatre kids, I never felt entirely at home in other spaces growing up. But when I found theatre, I found belonging.

Something remarkable happens when a cast is announced: a group of strangers becomes an ensemble. Whether you are the lead, a member of the chorus, or part of the team working backstage, you now belong to the company. You share responsibility for bringing the story to life.

Looking back, rehearsal halls were my first leadership classrooms.

Long before I learned the phrase psychological safety, I understood what it felt like. Rehearsals were places where people could take risks, test ideas, make mistakes, and fail in pursuit of something better. It was not uncommon for someone to ask, “I have an idea. Can I try it?” Contributions were welcomed because the people living the story often had valuable insights into how best to tell it.

“Belonging is not the reward for great performance. It is often where great performance begins.”

In those rooms, mistakes were not evidence of incompetence. They were evidence of progress. Nobody expected perfection during rehearsal. The expectation was discovery.

Belonging gave us permission to contribute. Trust gave us the confidence to experiment. Together, they made growth possible.

That experience stands in contrast to workplaces where people feel pressure to have the right answer before speaking, where mistakes are treated as liabilities, and where belonging seems contingent on performance. Theatre taught me something many organizations are still trying to understand: people do their best work when they feel they belong.

The more organizations I have worked with and studied, the more convinced I have become that many of the outcomes leaders seek are downstream of belonging. Engagement, collaboration, innovation, trust, and performance are often built on a foundation of feeling accepted, valued, and connected to something larger than oneself.

The best leaders understand this. They know that belonging is not simply a cultural aspiration or an employee benefit. It is a condition that enables people to contribute. When people know they matter to the group, they are more willing to offer ideas, take thoughtful risks, learn from mistakes, and invest themselves in a common purpose.

Talent mattered in theatre, of course. Every cast had it. Yet some productions achieved a kind of magic that others did not. The difference was rarely individual capability alone. It was the strength of the ensemble: how deeply people trusted one another, how strongly they believed in the shared purpose, and how fully they felt they belonged.

The environment shaped the performance.

Leaders spend considerable time asking whether their people are engaged, committed, innovative, and performing at a high level. Perhaps we should begin with a different question:

Have we created an environment in which those qualities can emerge?

The best productions I was part of did not begin with extraordinary performances. They began with trust, belonging, and a shared purpose.

The performance followed.

Years after leaving the stage, I still draw on lessons learned in rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, and under stage lights. Business school gave names to concepts that theatre had already taught me. But the most important lesson was not about psychological safety, engagement, or culture.

It was this:

Belonging is not the reward for great performance. It is often where great performance begins.