Articles – Playing Mantis

December 15, 2019

Riding the change train from platform 9 and three-quarters

I am letting go of Playing Mantis

From 2009, Playing Mantis was the frame within which I was doing my work in the world. The work is not changing, but the frame must. This muse-letter explains to you how the work will continue and where you can continue to get everything that Playing Mantis and I have offered.

Where am I going?

I have been offered the position of Head of Department at Drama for Life, Wits University. This is a full-time engagement, and I cannot do it justice of I have a fling with Playing Mantis on the side. Drama for Life is based at the Wits University School of Arts, and we work with the applied arts and arts therapies in a postgraduate academic programme, as well as research and community engagement projects for the purpose of social transformation and healing.

Why Platform 9 and Three-Quarters?

This is a reference to the platform from which the train to Hogwarts departs in the Harry Potter universe. To get to this platform, you must run into a brick pillar with conviction, trusting that it will open up for you and let you through. Rushing through the brick wall in this way, you come to a magical in-between place: the platform from which the train departs, which will take you to a school where you will learn to do magic, to access your individual genius and test your commitment to seeing the world in a way ordinary people (muggles) don’t. It is the train to a new world where nothing is the way it was before. To get there you must overcome your fear and have the conviction to run through a brick wall. That is what this change of roles feels like for me.

How will the work of Playing Mantis continue?

Organisation development through applied improvisation, performance and narrative strategy

If you have been an associate or client that has experienced our organisational work and loved it, you can now get the same kind of work from Les Nkosi and Lurinda Maree. Lurinda will be working with Les in his business (LNH – Les Nkosi Holdings) to offer you the same quality work with the same values, alongside all the other wonderful work they already do around organisational communication, culture change, diversity work and unconscious bias. Les is an applied performance practitioner like me and has worked with me in my business for the past three years. I have great respect for his work ethic and commitment to change for good. Lurinda is an industrial psychologist who has freelanced with me in the past and has extensive experience in change navigation work in various industries. She will be working with Les now as a supporting act to make the applied performance work happen.To get Les and Lurinda’s information and be on the mailing list for what they do, click here.
SNE (Strategic Narrative Embodiment) and applied improvisation training and coaching

Perhaps you have done the SNE training or wanted to do it after getting a taste of it at a conference or somewhere else. The course is still a WIP (work in progress) to ultimately become a certified Wits short course that can be attended / completed online. The work to perfect this training is still continuing under Tshego Khutsoane and Alison Gitelson. Both of them have been working with me for a long time and know the work intimately. They will shape the SNE training into the product that we know it can be and make it available to you all. Sometime in 2020 we will run a free trial with some of you, so keep your eyes open for the invitation.They will also continue with the practise sessions where you can ‘catch flying pigs’ i.e. experience and practise the processes.To stay on the SNE mailing list, click here.
My thinking and writing work around using story, embodiment and performance frames for moving us towards each other

I will continue to write a muse-letter every three months, where I will share stories, philosophies, frameworks and models related to using applied performance work in leadership, organisations and engagements with the purpose of bringing change for good. I may place an advert or invitation to SNE or LNH’s work from time to time, but the letter will focus mostly on my thinking and feeling around the redemptive work we have to do in the world and how story and performance can help that process. The muse-letters will be my letters home from my own “Hog Wits”.
To stay connected to these ideas and to my musings, click here.
Performance coaching (speaker coaching, leadership coaching and business coaching all wrapped into one)

I have a little bit of time available for individual performance coaching work. If you want this individual coaching, or just want to get more information, you can connect with me directly with the understanding that my capacity in this regard is limited.
My email: petro@petrojansevanvuuren.com

Thank you for the role each of you has played in my journey to this point. – I would love to continue the relationship with you in one of the ways mentioned above and look forward to seeing your familiar faces when we connect again.

If we don’t, I wish you well on your own platforms and running through your own brick walls.

Petro Janse van Vuuren

August 26, 2019

How to create an environment for collective leadership to thrive

Global trends in leadership development identify collective leadership as the most prominent trend in leadership development. The reasoning is that, instead of developing people, organisations should develop an environment where leadership can thrive. Leadership is no longer individual but rather spread through a network. It exists across levels and between units in a culture of knowledge sharing. Leaders can leave organisations, but their leadership stays behind.
What does this environment look like?
One could identify five aspects of collective leadership (see Cassandra O’Neill and Monica Brinkerhoff):

It sees organisations not as machines, but as interconnected systems;
It is not served by a hierarchical structure, but by a flatter, interconnected network of relationships;
The decision-making function in a collective leadership is not top-down but shared and/or rotated between people;
In a collective leadership people do not need to be told what to do because they are inherently capable and trustworthy to do what is right and needed;
Success is not the outcome of the talent and skill of one, but rather of the diverse perspectives and skills of many (for more aspects of collective leadership also see https://growingorganisations.com/collective-leadership-what-why-how/ and https://www.hrmonline.com.au/section/strategic-hr/collective-leadership-way-forward/).

To create such an environment is not the job of a hero but of a host. Leadership is enabled through the facilitation of atmosphere, environment and structure, not of the lone ranger or diva at the top telling others what to do. To me, this sounds a lot like the difference between show biz, which is based on the rising of a star, and the performances possible through improvisation and collaboration.
Improvisation principles, then, become intrinsically necessary for the cultivation of collective leadership, principles like how to listen and respond, how to give and take control, how to say yes to an idea and build on it with your own creativity, how to make each other look good, how to respond fresh to each new context and how to make in-action decisions based on a shared vision. In improvising, too, people learn to leverage diverse ideas and collaborate across difference.
Yet, improvisational interaction also requires the creation of an environment that is conducive to such interaction. One cannot just improvise without context, trust and a sense of safety that one can take calculated risks.
Therefore, improvisation and collective leadership also have in common the need to understand how to create an environment for collaboration and the taking of creative initiative. We therefore provide here the five kinds of safety needed, not only for improvisers to interact with each other in a way that builds story and creativity, but also by organisations that want to enable collective leadership. Collective leadership can, we argue, only thrive in an environment where people feel safe to take the initiative required for them to creatively solve problems, engage with each other and move an organisation forward towards fulfilling its purpose.

Physical safety: People need to feel safe in physical spaces that are cared for, where there are no broken lights, inadequate airflow, electrical faults or lack of access to resources. This may seem obvious, but lack of infrastructure and resources, or just a perceived lack, can greatly influence the willingness of people to share leadership.
Metaphorical safety: This is the kind of safety derived from a sense that a space is tolerant and free of prejudice. My ideas and contributions are valued and I will not be singled out for failure to meet some unspoken standard. Fairness and trust play a big role in this kind of safety.
Safety derived from the familiar. One feels safe in a space that is well-known. In a world that changes drastically and where organisations must in turn respond, there is a great need for people to create safety in the familiar. This could be familiar people, surroundings, values or processes. An organisation must therefore take care to introduce and make known as much of its new ideas as early as possible and let people take part in changes from early on so that they may feel safe with the organisation as it becomes familiar.
Safety to risk. When people feel safe, they feel able to take creative risks and venture into the unknown. Finding a way to balance the known and the unknown becomes an important aspect of creating an environment for collective leadership to thrive.
Safety in repetition. There is a safety in the knowledge that tomorrow I can come back and take another risk, try again to solve something that has not yet been successful. In this sense there is a way in which organisations must look at failure not as a problem, but as an offer of opportunity to learn and improve – an offer to try again.
Finally, there is the need for safety from consequences. In this sense the idea is that there should be plenty of opportunity for people to take small risks in controlled environments. This relates to on the job training and iterative projects where change may be constant but small and incremental.

The above principles are derived not from organisational development theory and practice, but from play theory and practice related to how to create what is called a ‘temenos’ – a play space or sacred space where people are ‘set apart together’ (set apart from the everyday, but together as a team) for the purpose of achieving a shared goal in the context of a game or ritual. This definition of a play space sounds a lot like an organisational space where people create an organisation for the accomplishment of a particular purpose, following certain values and policies in a building or place set apart for their collective endeavour.
We acknowledge that not all aspects of an organisation can always be managed according to the above principles. Yet, it might be possible in any organisation to create pockets of possibility where such opportunities for improvisational, collective and innovative interaction can be achieved. In such pockets of possibility, skills for collective leadership can be practised and honed for application in the larger organisational system.
Anyone interested to understand more about collective leadership and its relationship to improvisation can contact us at petro@playingmantis.net. You may also choose to join our Applied Improvisation Network Africa jam, details are below.

May 25, 2019May 27, 2019

Improvisational mindfulness in action

Session design – Global Improvisation Initiative Symposium on Wed 14 May.

This session was designed with the action learning cycle in mind: starting with an experience followed by a theoretical framing.

Note: All sessions are designed according to the SNE STORI-model (What is STORI?)

SNE = Strategic Narrative Embodiment ^TM (What is SNE?)

Join us this Friday 31 May for an online experience of the same process

S – Strategic intent

The strategic intent is set at the start and ‘parked’ outside the space to define it, but not drive it.

Group intention:

We are here to discover what improvisational mindfulness is like and to understand how it relates to contemporary forms of mindfulness

Individual intent:

Each person set an individual intention for the session – what they want out of it. This intention is written down or tucked into a corner of the mind where it can be retrieved.

T – Transition

Exercise’s help transition from the mind only to include the body and heart, from individual thoughts to collective energy, from the past and future into the present.

Walking and shaking

As we walk and spread ourselves randomly in the space, shake out the imaginary grains of sand from your joints starting from the toe joints and moving gradually up the body to the jaw joint. Participants can imagine the sand making room for warm comfortable lubrication of the joints.

Nudge hello

Participants are invited to become aware of each other and make contact using small nudges. Use any part of the body to exert a small amount of pressure as you gently nudge each other, leaning into the nudge for as long or short as you please and always making sure both partners are only going as far as is comfortable for both. (Contact improv style)

Pair breathing

Find a partner, stand back to back and become aware of your breath. Breathe into your back so that your partner can pick up the rhythm of your breathing. At the same time concentrate on picking up your partner’s rhythm. Gradually find a collective rhythm so you breathe together.

Group breathing

Two pairs now come together. Again, stand so that you can become aware of one another’s’ breathing. Find a collective rhythm. You may begin to move in pulse with the rhythm with movements as big or small as you want to. Find a collective movement and rhythm.

O – Open experimentation

In this section we use longer form structures to deepen the experience. Here we use a structure from the SNE suite of techniques called ‘Moving story structure’

Moving story structure – Shortened version (complete instructions plus reflective worksheet available from petro@playingmantis.net)

Step 1:

One by one participants find a position that symbolises what they want (based on the intention set at the start of the session) . Add to the image one body at a time until everyone is part of the image. Breathe three times as a collective to set the position. AS you breathe imagine that your body is filled with soft cement as you breathe in and imagine how it sets as you breathe out. When you are finished, step out of the ‘statue’ you have created and turn back to look at it in your imagination.

Notes:

Urge participants to stay in each moment breathing deeply three times. Make sure they allow themselves to fully experience the position. When they leave the position, they must look back on it in their imagination. This helps with objectification and distancing. It means they gain insight into their inside.
About the breathing: I like to facilitate each of the three breaths slightly differently:

Breath 1: Just breathe and imagine your body is filling with cement and it sets on the out breath.

Breathe 2: Imagine that the cement flows to the extremities of the body – toes, finger tips, crown…

Breathe 3: imagine that it flows to the centre of your heart, your bones your soul.

Step 2:

Find a position that symbolises the obstacles you face when you try to achieve your objective. Again, do it one body at a time. Breathe three times to set the position. Again imagine it as cement setting and once again step out of the ‘statue’ and look back on it.
Move through A and B a few times with complete awareness.

Note: Encourage participants to move with awareness and care. Let them move between the first two positions a few times aware of the other bodies and their influence on your story.

Step 3:

Find a third position – one that embodies how you usually react when you come face to face with your obstacles. When in position C, breathe three times as before.
While in this position notice what kinds of things you usually say to yourself here.
Think about what this reaction costs you and how it might benefit you.
Step out of the ‘statue’ and look back on it.

Note: Once they have decided on position C (Step 3), let them stay in the position and listen to what they may be saying to themselves about being here.

Step 4:

Take up position B. Feel the discomfort and notice where your body feels stretched or uncomfortable. Move from B through C to A. Repeat the sequence B – C – A. Repeat with awareness and experiment.
Note: This is the “Yes and…” moment: accepting our default responses as part of our story. You will now change the order of the positions. It no longer goes A – B – C, or even C – B – A. The “Yes and…” sequence is B – C – A. Let each participant find the impetus and the solution for the next step within the flow between B and C. Let them move and experiment a few times e.g. play with speed and weight, move like a clown, a child a length of silk – get suggestions from the participants.

Step 5:

Finally, take up position B one last time. This time move through B, C and A, but do not stop at A, Move through A, allowing the body find the next logical place for it to settle into a final position D. What would you find beyond the fulfillment of your original intention? Find the answer in your body, not your mind.

R – Reflect

Allow people to make sense of the experience verbally in writing or conversation. Also help them distil moments of significance.

Reflect in pairs/groups (depending on time)

Share your experience with a friend. What did you learn about how you might get what you want? What did your body teach you about the journey to the fulfillment of your intention?

Slides

Using the slides in the presentation make sense of the experience by comparing improvisational mindfulness to contemporary mindfulness.

Slides: Improvisational Mindfulness.ppt

I – Integration

Participants imagine how they might use what they have discovered in their outside lives.

Picture cards

Give each participant a picture card from the Playing Mantis Picture card set. Participants are asked to explain to each other in pairs and then to the group how this card describes exactly the action steps they need to take to experiment with improvisational mindfulness in their own practice.

Close.

Join us this Friday 31 May for an online experience of the same process

Free online course

To learn more about Strategic Narrative Embodiment ^TM, why not send me an email and I will sign you up for the free online component of the training course: Strategic Narrative Embodiment – Transformative facilitation for organisations. It is a university accredited short course.

Read all the details here.

February 16, 2019February 17, 2019

Whose bed can you hide under?

I was travelling home from a dinner with some friends. Zola*, my taxi driver, strikes up a conversation. Like many drivers he goes for politics. He chooses the classic opening line: “Eish, the country is going down the drain…”
“Really?” I say. This driver looks unusually concerned.
“Yes, there is racism everywhere. And they say the foreigners are taking our jobs.”
“That is not how it works,” I counter. “It is not like there are only so many jobs and only a few people can have them. In a healthy country there are enough jobs for everyone. If the country grows, the amount of jobs will grow and there will be enough for us all.”
He thinks for a while and says: “I did not think I would meet someone like you tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you not afraid to be here with the black government and the politics?”
His question reminds me of another taxi driver on another day – one who looked and talked more like me. His name was Arno. Like other drivers, he also talked politics and it was me who asked him the question: “What do you say about some politicians wanting to drive us into the ocean?”
He answered with a defiant smile: “Hulle moet maar probeer [Let them try].”
This is not my response to Zola. Instead I answer truthfully: “Yes, I am, sometimes, but…” We have stopped in front of my house by now and I wish to end the conversation on a lighter note, “… don’t worry. My friend Bheki* said I can hide under his bed when they come for me.”
Zola does not yet unlock the car doors and I see the conversation is not over. I wait patiently to hear what is on his mind.
As he unlocks the door he says: “You can come hide under my bed too.”

*All names changed

Thus and other stories at the Stellenbosch Woordfees

Seriously, though,

· how are the tensions among races, genders and generations in your organisation?

· will your people hide each other under their beds in a pinch?

· want support to work through difficult conversations?

· need help understanding one another?

We are here to support you.

1. Book us to perform our interactive theatre piece “Trash, Boer and Brat” at your event.

2. Book a workshop and let us help you work through sticky matters so you can get on with your job.

3. Come train in the tools and techniques to do it yourself.

June 4, 2018June 2, 2018

Trends in leadership development and implications for their implementation

Everyone wants to know what the global trends are for this thing or the next so that they can know if they measure up. Am I on par? As innovator in the space of leadership development, I am usually more interested in whether I am ahead or have an edge that makes me different from all the rest, but, I acknowledge the value of looking at the patterns evident in large scale social behaviour, if only to see what not to do. Was I pleasantly surprised! What the trends indicate we ought to do, is not what we see prominent leaders doing worldwide.

By following the trends, we may be doing something truly radical.

So, here you will find an analysis of six different sources dealing with the global trends in leadership development. I did this analysis to understand how a leadership coach and consultant should think about her own work in response to these trends. I also thought it would be valuable for organisations to see if their own leadership development strategies are on par with world trends and how they should judge the value of various leadership development options. In the top row I identify the source from which the information was drawn. They have been organised from the most predominant trend to the least prevalent trend. Once you have taken the time to go through the analysis, you may read my interpretation for implementation afterwards.

Read the rest here…

May 19, 2018May 19, 2018

What is applied performance?

What is applied performance?

Applied performance is a cross disciplinary field that uses performance process and practice, be it acting, music, dance or other forms of art, backed up by socio-political theory to address social and political issues. The purpose is to make a change and bring about sustainable transformation.

At Playing Mantis we have developed applied performance processes specifically suited to organisational change and development. Its rootedness in the arts ensures a holistic learning process that is experiential and that can bring about systemic change.

Delegates telling stories

Its use of narrative strategy and story telling also allows organisations to reframe their own narratives and reimagine their strategic objectives and ultimately their future. Applied performance is particularly valuable for culture change processes and is essential for organisations that are serious about transformation towards gender and racial equality.

Our applied performance model is called strategic narrative embodiment. The art forms that it most depends on is theatre, story-telling and improvisation sometimes inviting elements of visual art, dance and music. It functions on the levels of design and technique to help change makers create processes that really works. Read more.

April 16, 2018July 14, 2018

Strategic Narrative Embodiment (SNE) in a nutshell

SNE is inspired by the three elements of a story

Every story, fictional or real, consists of three elements:

Someone who wants something
Obstacles in their way
An attempt to get what they want in spite of the obstacles.

Everybody wants something. It is what motivates them. Tapping into this motivation is important for every coach-facilitator. It is the key to engaging people in the work of sustainable change that is for the better (change for good). Every time you, as a coach or facilitator, enter into a relationship with a client, you start by clarifying what the client wants: their strategic intent. This is often informed by existing documents like value statements or strategic objectives. Once your mandate is clear, and you begin to work with the designated group or individual, you once again have to create a picture of the intent with the people in the room – including you as enabler of that intent. It sets the context for the work. Of paramount importance here is that this intent must be owned and influenced, or made sense of, by all stakeholders not only by the paying client. Everyone needs to be invested in the process.

From this point on, you embark on a journey together, led by the narrative design. You are attempting to get what you want together. You are living through a story, artfully shaped, but not controlled by you, the coach-facilitator. Along the way you and the delegates are going to encounter obstacles. However, because you are using embodied participation as your mode of enquiry, you are allowing an interaction between the narrative design and the embodied participation that mirrors reality. As delegates overcome the obstacles, they are practising for the times they will overcome them when they are back in the real world after the process is over.

Because you are working with a narrative design through embodied participation, you are also inviting into the space the stories about all the other times delegates have tried and failed to get what they want. In this way they are able to identify and reflect upon dominant and habitual narratives that may no longer be useful or practical. These are things that people believe or do in relation to the strategic intent that are not producing desired results but that they continue doing out of habit or conviction. The process is non-threatening and playful and allows delegates to experiment with alternative possibilities and solutions.

The diagram above shows the relationship between the narrative design of the workshop (represented by the horizontal process line) and a participant’s interaction with it through embodiment techniques (the vertical process line). The entire dynamic is contained by the original strategic intent of the workshop (the circle in the diagram). The centrifugal arrows indicate the new possibilities that are released when the unofficial, dominant or habitual narratives are fractured by the interaction between narrative design and embodied participation. The dotted and curved arrow indicates an emergent new narrative that arises as the more effective one in closing the gap between what delegates want (strategic intent) and what they have (embodied reality).

The strategic intent of SNE

SNE is designed for Shift, yet it believes that Shift is only possible in a particular way and because of how people open up to new ideas. It is informed by a particular learning philosophy and a certain understanding of how the brain works. For now, let us explain it by distinguishing SNE from other kinds of theatre-based learning systems like industrial theatre and storytelling skills or presentation skills

Usually when people hear we use drama or theatre processes in organisations, they immediately assume we do industrial theatre. We emphatically do not. Industrial theatre is like presentation skills, voice training and storytelling skills. All of them help people improve top-down communication from management to teams. SNE is designed to have multilevel, multi-stakeholder conversations in complex systems where leaders feel the need to hear from and listen to team members, where teams need to work together across functions and need to break down silos, and where collaboration, innovation and new direction is sought.

SNE is good for strategic planning, relationship selling, customer service, vision and values alignment and leadership development. It is great for organisation development and innovation, team development and facilitator training, but only in forward-thinking organisations where employee engagement, collaboration and a flattening of hierarchy are important themes. SNE addresses systemic problems and works on the level of relationships. It can address embodied reality, behaviour and action and move beyond words, ideas and dreams.

SNE is designed to close the gap between what we want and what we have, what we say and what we do.

March 12, 2018

An Ethical code for Applied Performance work in Organisational settings

Aligning with associates and clients with a shared set of values.

How many times have you experienced a values clash with a client or a fellow consultant when using applied performance techniques?

What you find here is a set of 7 values that had been work shopped with applied drama and applied improvisation practitioners who do work in organizational settings. Three different groups came together at three different occasions (two of them happened at our last Flying Pig sessions). We used a combination of embodied images, role play, conversation and systemic mapping to interrogate the meaning of each of these values sharing scenarios and stories to help us find the appropriate nuances. You are most welcome to comment, question and contribute to the conversation.

Playing Mantis and Associates Ethical guidelines

It is important to us that our associates and clients understand and resonate with our ethical approach and values. These can be articulated as follows:

1. Deep collaboration: We craft our work in deep collaboration with all stakeholders involved. We do not use the powerful tools of story and embodiment to ‘download’ information top down to participants. Rather, we create work that introduces ideas and then facilitate conversations to allow audience members to interrogate and make sense of those ideas for themselves. It is important to us to value the input of all stakeholders equally.

2. Sustainability of human relationships: Sustainability to us means that no process can be a fly by night affair. It requires relationship building, negotiation and development over time. We are deeply interested in the sustainability of the organisations that we support, which includes all of the human aspects of the employees and the wider stakeholder community that will inform the organisational culture.

3. Intersectional symbiosis: We support and enable leadership styles that seek to negotiate solutions between the organisation and the community, between management levels, between departments, sections and divisions, between leaders and workers, between skilled and unskilled labour so that all impacted parties benefit. This means that all parties also have to be willing to adapt and rework solutions based on intersectional input.

4. Intrinsic value and contribution: We support the notion that every individual and every social grouping has value and can contribute positively to the workings of an organisation and its health. This means that every person working in an organisation, and also the community outside the organisation that supports the individuals, have value and can contribute something unique to the organisation that the leaders may not be aware of at the outset. We work to surface and incorporate these in all the work we do.

5. Systemic awareness: We support the notion that every issue must be considered in relation to larger systemic influences and conditions. These include social, environmental, political, historical, strategic, legal and technological factors that may or may not be visible and recognised by stakeholders at the outset. We work to surface and acknowledge the effects of these in all the work we do.

6. Rigorous self reflexivity: We hold ourselves and everyone we work with accountable to honour their responsibilities and agreements they make. We train and support everyone involved in our projects to be self reflexive and able to see and consider their own perspectives and positioning in relation to those of the other stakeholders so that prejudice, egoism, nepotism, domination and corruption are never an option.

7. Responsible sharing of intellectual contributions: We value our intellectual property and yours. It is our livelihood. At the same time we want you to be able to use what you receive through interaction with our work and integrate it into your own. We also want others to find their way to the materials and use it. We therefore ask you to reference our work wherever possible in written or oral format if you use it explicitly or if your own work was adapted from ours. In all these cases please reference us as follows:

– State the nature of our influence e.g. taken from / inspired by / adapted from

– State the author or entity e.g. Playing Mantis People development Consultants / Petro Janse van Vuuren

– State the specific model/ tool /idea e.g. the SNE model / Moving Story Structure / Pig Catching process etc.

Examples:

“Inspired by Petro Janse van Vuuren’s SNE model.”

“Taken from Playing Mantis’s Moving Story Structure”

September 26, 2017April 14, 2018

We need new moves to move our people

The fall of Babylon; Cyrus the Great defeating the Chaldean

The need for story and embodiment in leadership training and development

In a VUCA world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, where change is increasing exponentially, people feel overwhelmed, unsafe and resistant to more change. Their brains react with threat responses: wanting either to fight (I will not comply), flee (I will avoid it) or freeze (I don’t know what to do), and so we disconnect (Leave me alone).

Yet as organisational development practitioner, coach, change manager, leader and facilitator, you know that shift is not just inevitable, it is desirable. How do you get your people to shift with the shifting times?

In order to thrive in such a world we need to be more adaptive, innovative, engaged and integrated. To achieve this, the brain must function optimally, not in survival mode but in creative mode.

Yet audiences, trainees, participants and teams have become more and more distracted, demanding and opinionated. Some are resistant to new input and tired of change. Others want highly customised, personalised and individually relevant input.

We need new moves to move the people we serve.

Lectures where information is simply transmitted, like feel-good motivational talks, and games like paintball and potjiekos competitions (team cook-ups), all lack one or both of the essential ingredients for programmes that maximise the potential for shifting your clients or participants. These two essential ingredients are learning design and creative participation.

Learning design is the art of turning information into a carefully sequenced and well-crafted learning experience. Here the content does not dictate the design, but the facilitator decides how best to shape the content so that people accept it. Often stories, pictures, audio-visual stimuli, like props and videos and interactive techniques, are employed to unfold the material and enliven the presentation. Speakers, trainers and teachers who add this component to their material significantly increase the potential for shift to happen, since it creates more brain connections for participants and draws them into the ‘story in the room’ (the content presented).

Creative participation is the art of creating structures that invite participants to contribute their ideas, thoughts and actions to the material. This kind of experiential process allows participants to bring their own ingenuity to the conversation and discover tacit knowledge that they did not know they had. Programmes and interventions that use games, interactive processes, conversations and liberating structures also greatly enhance the potential for shift, since people are able to connect their own stories to the story in the room.

With the explosion of the internet, everyone can be an expert, everyone can personalise and customise their programmes, profiles and preferences and everyone can choose what information they want to allow in their headspace. In addition, given the shaky state of world economies and the uncertainty created by political shifts and health threats, people are increasingly weary of solutions that would waste money or cause more uncertainty.

Lectures

Old-fashioned lecturing does not work any more. On the one hand, lectures are content-driven and the content dictates the design and flow of the presentation. On the other hand, the content tries to be a one-size-fits-all solution that is not customisable and adaptable for every individual particularity. Furthermore, lectures do not leverage the power of human connection and emotion as a way to drive messages home and make them ‘stickable’.

Shows

Motivational speakers liven up presentations by turning them into more of a show. Through showmanship they artfully present their content using stories, emotion and clever presentational gimmicks like props, visual aids and performance skills. In addition, motivational speakers are high-impact but low in time investment. And while the really good speakers are expensive for the time they put in, a once-off payment is still cheaper than a process that unfolds over time and consumes both time and money.

Yet traditional motivational speakers cannot bring about shift that lasts. They get a high rating from people attending their talks, but a very low rating in terms of creating real shift. What is lacking is the ability to help people connect their own individual stories to the story in the room. A grand show still offers a one-size-fits-all solution that cannot shift the individual. Many may enjoy it, but only 5% will experience something like shift.

Games

Team-building exercises and gamification programmes step into this gap by offering game-like solutions. A game is not meaning-driven, it is structure-driven. Within the confines of the game, people have some control to manipulate the rules to their advantage. A game can be individualised. A physical game, like soccer, is also good for connecting people and building relationships, something that often enhances emotional connection by awakening competitiveness or by leveraging people’s feeling of belonging. However, unless games are structured around meaning that can bring about change, people often leave a team-building experience feeling ‘warm and fuzzy’ but without a lasting shift that will be seen in the workplace.

Shift

If lectures, shows and games do not offer lasting solutions that can bring about shift, there must be a fourth option – and that is a solution we simply term Shift. For Shift to occur the talk, workshop or intervention must both be designed for learning to happen and involve participants’ creative participation. This means there is maximum potential for understanding the material as well as for participants to apply it to their own contexts and contribute to creating meaning and significance.

When you want to increase the potential for Shift to happen, story-strategy helps you retain perspective of the big picture while improvisation skills help you navigate your actions in the moment. Between the two, you create the conditions for Shift in the lives of your team members, workshop participants, customers, employees and, of course, yourself.

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September 19, 2017

Online Facilitation of Applied Improvisation Exercises

Nine things I learned from Gwen Gordon and Erica Marx

After Christian and I facilitated an online session at the Applied Improvisation Network’s conference some weeks ago, Gwen Gordon contacted us to say that she also learned a few lessons doing this work – would we like to play together. On Tue this week, Erica Marx and I joined Gwen for a session of mutual learning. Here is what I took from the session:

Zoom is a great platform, especially when used on a laptop. It offers various tools to play with including white board and breakout sessions. It is essential, though, that everyone plays on a laptop, rather than a tablet because the latter’s functionality is limited. For instance: I could not change my view from speaker view to gallery view (it may just be my own ignorance or inexperience). Gallery view is essential so that all participants can see each other.
It may be fun to rename participants with playful names. Gwen likes to allow people to choose alternative names for themselves and use the zoom rename function to do so. This helps with distancing. As mentioned in our blog on online embodiment work, online processes can become very intimate and make participants feel vulnerable because the screen finds you where you are in your private home or office.
Games where you pass on something from person to person work really well. Examples of this kind of game are the sound/energy ball and the gift circle. Because people do not appear on each other’s screens in the same order, Gwen gives each person a number and adds it to their name when they rename themselves at the start of the session.
It works well to give people numbers as a way to establish an order for each exercise. Because you cannot organise people physically, establishing a response order is crucial. Christian and I usually establish an order by simply saying who goes after who (see a previous blog on online facilitation). Gwen cleverly uses numbers. The constraint of this is that, as someone who does not see well, I am better at remembering names than at following numbers that only appear visually on the screen. Still, it is worth trying, especially, as Gwen pointed out, when you have 22 people in the Zoom room.
Games that build on each other are more fun and create greater connection across virtual space. We played ‘Yes lets’ in this way. Buttons (Gwen) would suggest an action ‘let’s melt’ and as we all melt, Squirrel’ (Erica) would suggest the we begin sizzling in the pot, and then Sideways (me) suggest that we begin to pop the corn etc. For some reason, I never played the game as one that builds, but rather as one that introduces a new action every time, but the building makes much more sense.
You can use the features of online rooms to spark the invention of new games. Gwen invented a game where she asks all participants except two to strike a pose. The two remaining participants then comment on the gallery of images as though they are looking at a collection of artworks. In paired rhyme form, they then comment on the exhibition taking turns. This was hilarious
Online processes can feed back into face to face sessions. Erica enjoyed commenting on how she might use the experience in the class she was about to teach after our session. The interplay between off line and online processes is a growth area. The switching between the two enriches both as we see well known exercises from a fresh perspective.
The strategic edge offered by the SNE (strategic narrative embodiment) model. Applied Improvisation exercises are used by Gwen, and possibly many others, mostly to shift energy or to create a certain mindset for other work. I asked about the strategic use of the exercises as a way to work with content, and this seemed like a novel idea to my fellow players. Granted, we did not have a lot of time to get into it, but I know that in my own work, I use applied improv exercises to generate ideas for the very content we are working with, not only as a mood setter. We may, for instance, use the gift circle to name the gifts we received from a give session as way to reflect on our learning. Other times I have used the props game to generate ideas around solving a specific niggly issue. This strategic element stands out as being particular to my work. Want to learn more?
Applied improvisation fits into the larger story design of a session. Another particular feature of my work that interested Gwen and Erica was the narrative nature of my session designs. I asked about how exercises might build on each other twards landing particular content. Again this seemed to my fellow players to be a new perspective. I think it is my applied drama training that has influenced this way of working. I design every session, on or off line, as a story arc. Starting with participants’ current realities, through moments of transition, tests and trials and sometimes playfully coming face to face with our own nemeses to return to the now, reflecting on our learning and thinking about the elixirs we are brining home. Want to learn more?

If you are interested in the strategic narrative aspects of improvisation, you may want to take the SNE course for coaches and facilitators. Our next face to face course is now in Oct 6-7 Oct for Module 1 and 13-14 Oct for Module 2. It happens in Johannesburg.

Alternatively, join us for our next online Flying Pig Catching series starting 16 Nov in the Zoom room near you.

Many thanks to Gwen and Erica for such fruitful playing!!

Also read:

Principles for doing online facilitation and embodiment

Change how you coach and facilitate with SNE

Where does Strategic Narrative Embodiment Techniques (SNETs) come from?

The heart of Strategic Narrative Embodiment (SNE)