Asking for help

I quite enjoy helping others. I’m not so good at asking for help. From an improv perspective it’s like making offers – asking for help is making an offer to the world. And boy, does it pay back big time.

Those of you reading this blog recently will know I’m in foreign parts designing a biggish two-day event. Those of you who know me well will know that I’m never satisfied, always looking for new (and rediscovering forgotten) ideas. And those of you who know me even better will know I’d give my right arm to have a facilitation buddy or two to hang out with, toss about ideas, egg each other on. Sigh.

So I’ve turned to the next best thing, all you good folk in internet land. Some of you I know, some I’ve never met. I’ve no idea how many of you read my blog (I know, I know – there’s something I could do with google analytics to find out and, well, I really don’t care that much and I’ve never been that big into numbers. Are you out there Stephen?). If I’m only talking to myself, that’s quite okay – it gets my thoughts out of my head and on to the screen where at least I don’t forget them.

I try stuff. I like blogging. I like twitter. Facebook’s okay. Don’t mention google+ (makes me feel guilty), I’ve tried amplify, and instgram, I’ve lost count of my email addresses (they all go via gmail anyway), I quite like rapportive, I’ve just joined pin-somethingorother, I have a neglected flickr account, I think I have a YouTube channel, I subscribe to my favourite bloggers and thinkers, I just LOVE Skype – I could go on, obviously. What’s that? What about LinkedIn? Well, of course I’m on LinkedIn – I just don’t know how to use it that well. Then, in a little burst of activity towards the end of last year I created a LinkedIn Group. Wow! Just wow! I had no idea. It’s not a big group, less than 200 people – but what a generous and creative bunch.

And what I’ve learned from having a LinkedIn group is that it’s not about leading with answers – it’s about leading with questions. Real questions. Making big, bold offers by asking for help. Who knew?

It’s all about movement

“People learn a new language more easily when words are accompanied by movement.”

New Scientist, Issue 2844/2845 Dec 2011.

I’ve written before about the importance of physical movement, and how this is integral to how I facilitate.

I love this card because it reminds me to move my body, and to provide opportunities for people to move when they meet rather than sit in a passive state for long stretches. It’s ambiguous too – because it also reminds me to move and be moved – emotionally. Physical and emotional movement is equally important, and often equally ignored.

So in designing an event build in physical movement, and think about the emotional journey of participants. What will move them? What will touch them emotionally? What will create a shift or a disruption?

Break down to break through

This song, Minnie the Moocher, by The Blues Brothers, came up on shuffle while I was at the gym. I was focusing on the song as I tried to take my mind off running and how heavy my legs felt. The song uses call and response, one of my favourite musical devices. At about 2 mins 24 the audience breaks down into laughter when the scat lyrics (or the vocal improvisations) become so long and non-sensical as to be nearly impossible to repeat.

I’ve seen the same sort of breakdown in improv games. The group will be playing a game when someone figuratively ‘drops the ball’. They make a mistake and everyone laughs. This is intriguing. This ‘breakdown’ seems to be a type of release. Afterwards, everyone seems more relaxed and the game or activity continues at a different level, with more commitment and vigour. It’s as if the breakdown, and the release in the form of laughter is a metaphorical doorway to another way of being, or a different relationship with the activity – and with each other.

Yet many of our conventional group activities, especially in meetings, are designed to avoid breakdown, presumably as this is seen as some sort of failure of the process or of the facilitator/leader. Certainly laughter is rarely present in these situations. In his book, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, Bill Isaacs, talks about the importance of instability or breakdown in group discussions as a condition for moving from polite discussion to dialogue where new thinking might emerge. Too often, when the breakdown happens – an argument, discomfort – the tendency is to return to the comfort and security of politeness. This might maintain something akin to civility yet rarely leads to a breakthrough in thinking or ideas. Our challenge as facilitators and leaders of these group discussions is to hold the group in their discomfort and move towards dialogue. Easy to write or talk about – much harder to do.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to turn such conversations into a game, where breakdown can be laughed at, shaken off and the conversation resumed at a different level?

One of the other barriers to this sort of generative thinking in groups is the expectation that an expert will provide the answers or tell people what to do. Relying on experts enables us to absolve ourselves of the responsibility for decision making. Experts have their place. Yet experts tend to spread existing knowledge – that’s what enables them to be called an expert. And if it’s existing knowledge you’re after, an expert is the best and quickest way to get it. If it’s new knowledge you’re after, this must be done by everybody as a community/group activity. And it takes time, energy, commitment, and good will.

Confidence and the Goldilocks dilemma

Confidence is a strange thing – it comes and goes, almost with a mind of its own, and then there’s the issue of how much? Too little, and we feel intimidated, too much and we appear arrogant. Getting confidence ‘just right’ is tricky.

When Anne Pattillo and I founded Facilitating With Confidence it was based on the premise that confidence is the secret ingredient of great facilitation. Most of us can learn good, sound techniques and processes. We can practice and hone our skills of questioning, and giving instructions. We can be competent. But is that enough? Confidence is what enables us to shine, and to take risks, and to be true to who we are.

Sometimes I feel confident. Sometimes I have to fake it. Johnnie Moore likes to quip about Facilitating Without Confidence, and how this is often more of a challenge. I agree. Facilitating With Confidence is about finding that sweet spot, where our confidence is just right for the circumstances we find ourselves in. Athletes and performers sometimes call it a ‘flow’ state. Unearthing what conditions enable me to operate in that ‘flow’ state is an ongoing search. Just when I think I’ve figured it out, some situation will come along and remind me that I haven’t, not really.

The end of a calendar year seems to demand some reflection. As I look back over the last 12 months I’ve experienced the absolute joys of my work, serious questioning of my capability, discovering and rediscovering some things and people I love, letting go of some things and people that are toxic, and reinventing my approach to work. It’s been scary and challenging and exciting. I’ve felt validated at times, and at other times, vulnerable. I’m not alone. I know many others who are questioning what they do, and why, and looking for something more rewarding or challenging or lucrative or fun or serious or that simply makes them feel good about themselves.

Thanks for being part of the journey.

To celebrate surviving and thriving yet another year, I’ve created a networking group on LinkedIn – I want to stay connected, especially to my facilitation colleagues and those of you who have helped shape Facilitating With Confidence. I hope you’ll join me there. It will be good to talk to you.

What’s at the heart of applied improv?

This morning I tweeted an article that was shared on Facebook (no, this isn’t a post about social media). This one: Improvisation May Be the Key to Successfully Managing Change, says MIT It seemed to generate a lot of interest.

Applied improv gets me excited like nothing else. I think it’s important to take notice of such feelings and see where it leads. In this case, it’s led to me trying to work out why applied improv has this effect.

My work as a facilitator with groups falls into three broad categories:

• planning, designing, clarifying what we do, and how we do it; what helps, and what hinders
• something’s wrong and we’re not sure what – this often turns up as a request for team building
• capacity building: we need to be better at creativity, innovation, responding, change, presentations,customer service etc

I’ll use a range of processes and tools, and they’ll differ in every workshops. I have a ‘kit bag’ full of activities, questions, processes, games, ideas etc, yet none of them are worth anything much without empathy for the people I’m working with. And while every workshop is different, what’s consistent is that the people in every workshop are living, breathing humans. Their circumstances may vary, their backgrounds, their languages and their culture. They still live and breathe and love, hurt and cry, the same as you and me.

Improvisation and spontaneity touch us all  - we are improvisational by nature, tapping into our emotions and feelings, our experiences, our stories, our relationships with ourselves and others, they way we behave. This is what I think is fundamentally at the heart of working with groups.

Yet we often block that part of ourselves, talking ourselves into being rational, focused, planned and in control. I’d love that as much as the next person. Trouble is, it’s a fantasy. Something always comes up. And we keep on going, we do what has to be done in whatever circumstances we find ourselves and with whatever resources we have. We improvise.

Rediscovering this natural approach to how we are is at the heart of why I’m excited about applied improv. Bringing improv back to schools and education, in government and policy making, in businesses that are thriving and those who are struggling, in the health sector, in humanitarian aid and on-line – in any industry or situation, we can do in life what improvisors do on the stage.

And what better stage is there than life?

Just-In-Time Facilitation Support

You’ve been asked to facilitate a meeting – tomorrow, next week, soon! And you’re not ready. You should have done that facilitation training you’ve been meaning to do. You need help. And now!

This is what Just-In-Time Facilitation Support is all about.

How long? One hour, up to one day (it’s for emergencies, after all)

How? Skype, telephone, on-line, e-mail, face-to-face (if that’s possible)

How much? You decide. You don’t have time to get permission, to fill in requests, to do funding proposals. Let’s get the job done and then you decide how much you want to pay.

But, I don’t know what I need to know. No worries. That’s where I can help.

Have this basic information available:

• Who is the group you’re facilitating?
• How many people?
• For how long?
• Where are they meeting?
• Why are they meeting?
• What do they want to achieve?
• What else are they doing during the meeting?

Here’s some things we might plan together:

• Openings: How do get people ready to do the type of work they need to do?
• Connecting activities: They don’t know each other yet
• Room set up
• Intentional ice-breakers – what activities can you use?
• How to get a large group (more than 40 people) to actively participate
• What if the group is polarised?
• How do I share lots of information quickly and effectively?
• I don’t even know where to start!
• How to capture the information they generate
• What to do if I get stuck?
• I just need to go through the steps of a particular process
• What questions do I ask?
• How can I evaluate the meeting?
• You’d like to try something different or new

Contact me

The tyranny of the explicit

We probably all know someone who constantly plays the excuse card. There’s an intention, followed by an excuse…

You can pick an intention – commitment gap by the language: “I meant to go to the gym, but…”, “I wanted to support your proposal, but…”

When we’re working with businesses in workshops, one of our commonest suggestions is for people to commit. The difference between a workshop and other forms of meeting is that workshops require active participation. In other meeting formats it might be okay to be passive.

For some, committing is difficult. They appear to prefer to sit on the fence, hedging their bets until they see in which direction others might be heading, before making a decision.

What are the implications of this – in work and in life?

Keith Johnstone summarises what this often means with one of my favourite quotes from his book Impro (1989) pp 92.

“There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”

We see this when playing improv games. Those seemingly innocuous games can reveal so much, because how you play the game is how you play. And that translates to how you behave at work too.

Building your commitment muscle takes a leap of faith, often into the unknown. If you need to know what it will be like before you commit (which on the face of it seems reasonable) you will be forever stuck in what Johnnie and I refer to as the Tyranny of the Explicit – needing to know yet more information before acting.

Trailblazers, leaders, innovators all share a willingness to commit without knowing the outcome, without knowing if it will be worth it, without having done a risk analysis. They bust free of the Tyranny of the Explicit.

This is one of the tyrannies we’ve picked as coatpegs on which to hang conversations about improvisation and work. And we decided to get them illustrated as you can see here. (It’s by a lovely guy called Milan Colovic – here’s his page on elance, where Johnnie found him).

Johnnie has written about the Tyranny of Effort here.

How to be more playful

I’m always banging on about bringing playfulness – which can be an attitude, a point-of-view, an approach – to work, to problem solving, to meetings, to life. “But how?” I hear you asking. Here’s a few ideas:

Have a play space – a space at work or in a conference for people to play: shooting hoops, hopscotch, just tossing a ball around… It doesn’t have to be fancy, just somewhere to get the body moving.

Have materials available (see the pic) They don’t have to be used, although they might be. Just having these available might encourage people to explore visual thinking, or ideas might emerge from looking at a problem from the perspective of a fish (yes, really).

Can’t quite figure out what to focus on? Try haiku. The limitation of a haiku (3 lines, 7, 5 and 7 syllables) encourages creative thinking. Make lots. Here’s one – it’s not very good (and that’s the point) Like chocolates, it’s hard to stop at one.

Playfulness gets a bad rap
Why? Play is fun and
helps us do our work better

or

We have serious work to
do. We can’t waste time
in play! That is sad.

Or try Essence, to get to the heart of something – especially if you are trying to describe something quite complex. Essence is a Thiagi activity, and while it does create a product at the end, the real benefits come from the conversations people have. In small groups get people to write (a description, proposition, elevator pitch – anything really) in exactly 16 words. Hear them all, then ask them to rewrite using exactly 8 words. And then 4 words. You can continue to 2 words and 1 word if it’s helpful. Depends on the circumstances really.

Paired Drawing is another favourite activity to get people playing with their thinking. In pairs, draw a face, taking turns, one line at a time. Silently (except for the laughter, of course).

Improv warm-up games. These games are designed to build a bridge between the day-to-day work that actors have been doing and getting ready for the stage (and after all, most actors have day jobs). The games might be simple physical warm-ups, and they might help get people out of their heads (and whatever might be worrying them) and into their bodies, they might aid in concentration, in focus, in empathy, in noticing. There are literally hundreds of these games. Often, any will do. People will make meaning according to what’s important for them. Games can also be a circuit breaker if a group is stuck in a certain pattern of thinking or looking at a problem. Games can provide metaphors, they can illuminate behaviours, and they can simply make us laugh. Sometimes we all need a good laugh.

All very well for creative thinking and problem solving you might be thinking to yourself. What about sharing important information? Surely nothing beats a good presentation, followed by a robust Q & A? Maybe – if the presenter is actually good. I’ve never seen a satisfying Q & A session, either there’s not enough time, too few dominate, it provides opportunities for grandstanding and soapboxing. Ah, don’t start me. Let me share some alternatives.

You’ve got a Very Important Report to share and want comments. Rip the report apart (especially if it has lots of pages). Give each person a page with the page numbers obliterated (of course) and get people to organise themselves into chapters, and then identify the key messages in each part.

The Board has just met and come up with some statements about the organisation that you have been charged with sharing with the staff. Sound familiar? Print out the statements on small cards and leave lying around the office for a few days. Feign ignorance if anyone asks about them. After a few days do some follow-up activity.

Staff have to learn a new procedure that’s to be implemented in the next financial year. Plant clues on your web site and in other electronic places, and on social media sites that your staff use, and create an on-line scavenger hunt.

Some key information has to be shared, and understood, by people. Use 35 (another Thiagi activity).

Many of these activity embody the improv principles that underpin playfully exploring serious issues: letting go (of limiting beliefs, of old patterns of thinking, of pre-conceived ideas); accepting offers (working with what’s available, building on each other’s ideas, silencing the judgmental inner and outer critic); seeing mistakes as opportunities (trying something lots, throwing out what doesn’t work, doing more of what does, small tilts to see the effects – some call this fast prototyping); being average (that’s right, letting go of the need to be seen as competent, polished, professional and opening up to new ideas and creativity).

Bringing people together, for a meeting, for a conference, for a gathering of any sort requires more than booking a time and a space. It’s our responsibility as leaders to take care of the human dimension too.

And one more important point about playfulness. It’s not a pre-requisite to have any ‘talent’ (though you might be surprised) – you don’t have to be an actor, or a performer, or an artist to be playful. All that’s needed is that you’re human. You are human aren’t you?

Still learning about facilitation

Here’s what I learnt about facilitating thanks to Melbourne Playback Theatre Group‘s weekend workshop.

You have to keep doing something long enough to notice what’s going on for you
Taking an activity beyond what might be considered reasonable can have enormous payoffs. We would do a seemingly straightforward activity for a while, and just as I started thinking to myself, “Well, that’s enough – I’m getting sick of this now” we would have to keep going. And it was usually after this point that something really interesting happened.

Small moves are more interesting
We assume that large, bold moves are more interesting to those watching us. The opposite is true. It’s the small shifts that create interest and delight.

Leading/following is different to initiating/responding
There’s lots to explore here, and is probably a whole blog post of its own.

We can expand our comfort zone
Most of what we do is in our mid range (aka comfort zone). Being aware of your own mid range provides a way of exploring the edges. A simple activity like walking around the room can reveal patterns and habits and preferences. Noticing these and then making small shifts towards the edges can help expand our comfort zone. One way to become more present is to play at the edges of our habits.

It’s impossible not to be influenced by the people around us
We are influenced by others all the time, maybe we just don’t notice it.

Simplicity is very compelling
The tendency is to over-complicate. Keeping it simple is as important as it’s ever been. Simplicity is harder to achieve than complicated.

Body warm-up  is as important as a mental warm-up
Athletes know this. Actors know this. What about facilitators, leaders, managers, speakers – anyone who has to stand up in front of a group?

And I also learnt a bunch of new activities:

• School of Fish: a basis for exploring connection, movement, leading and following, pace, style, non-verbal communication.
• Gift Box: an indirect way of introducing “yes, and…”
• Viewpoints: Wow! Just wow! It’s about tempo, duration, spatial relationships, kinesthetic response and repetition
• Pass the Zap: three new variations (which is helping to break my own habits with this game)
• Body warm-up: using physical stretches to warm-up and find your preferred status body position
• Helsinki warm-up: Finding your still moment in front of  a group
• Focus on a point: a way to surface patterns and play with breaking them

The Casuarina Project: Community Leadership 10 years on

It’s 10 years this month since the first group of local Surf Coast Shire residents finished the inaugural Casuarina Project. The final session was on September 15th, 2001 and I remember it vividly. We’d booked out a local restaurant for us to gather to reminisce on the journey we’d shared over the previous seven months. Our conversation, of course, was not as planned (whenever is it?): we sat together and shared our shock and bewilderment at the week’s events in the US and the implications for us here on the other side of the world. And we shared some laughs, and some tears, some food and some wine. And excitedly left to develop our community projects.

The brief for the Casuarina Project was to design and facilitate a community leadership program to bring together people from across the Surf Coast Shire – those in the coastal towns, where surfing and tourism reigns, with those from the hinterland where agriculture is king. It was targeted at people already active in community groups, but not yet in leadership roles. We decided not to call it a leadership program to avoid the inevitable problem of only attracting those who already saw themselves as community leaders. It was a bold and exciting approach. We wanted it to focus on developing people, their understanding of themselves and each other, and their potential in the community. We didn’t want it to be a simple skills training, duplicating what was already available.

Year one was devoted to the face-to-face sessions. We moved around to various community halls and venues – a great way for me (as a newcomer to the area) to get to know my new home. We explored such topics as the dynamics of change, understanding group roles, designing and staging events, conflict, controversy and negotiation, and planning for a community project to be implemented in the second year. In the third year, participants would be invited to mentor and support new participants just starting out.

My intention from the very beginning was to reduce dependence on me and my involvement. On reflection, maybe I did that too well! (just kidding) When Geoff Brown (a participant from that very first intake) took over the facilitating of the program after a few years, I felt quite chuffed that I’d hand-balled it on to someone so capable and enthusiastic, not to mention local as well.

There’s so much more I could write about the Casuarina Project. How I delivered it for a few years in Gippsland as well, the celebrations – especially when we invited Melbourne Playback Theatre Company to help us reflect on the experience (with hilarious results) – the friends made, the projects started, the excellent support from the CEO and the Councillors, the freezing cold halls (with dubious heating) in winter, the dreaded smoke in summer when we all raced home to make sure our houses were safe from bush fires, the laughs, the frustrations, the tears and most importantly, everyone’s generosity. And don’t even start me on the time I returned from Vietnam with bronchitis and was quarantined because it might have been SARS, hence unable to facilitate the important opening weekend.

The Casuarina Project is alive and well, with the first ever Youth Casuarina Program scheduled for October. What a great way to celebrate 10 years!

It’s evolved, as it should.

Haven’t we all?

Happy Anniversary Casuarina Project.