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Leadership is theatre

November 28, 2011 By Improv, Leadership, Learning, Practice 6 Comments

This fall I have been really lucky to study and work alongside Alissa Schwartz in New York and Wendy Morris in Minneapolis.  Both of these women are actors and performance artists, and in my working with them I have become cracked wide open to the reality of leadership and ACTION as performance, best trained through understanding the relationship of the inner body to the outer, the presence of the individual in relation to the collective and relational field.

Since connecting with the Applied Improvisational Network and working with colleagues Viv McWaters, Johnnie Moore and Geoff Brown, I have been learning more and more about the kind of play that goes on in leadership.  And I have recently been touched by the work of David Diamond at Headlines Theatre in a number of ways.  This inquiry has led me into a much more embodied practice.

So I’m now thinking about everything I know about leadership, and have concluded that the traditional distinction between leadership and management is less about doing vs. being and more about technique vs. improv.  On the technical side, management is about deploying resources and structuring relations using tools and processes.  But on the improvisational side, leadership is about making and accepting offers, responding to context resourcefully, exploring the ligature of relationship and supporting engagement.

Is there anything about leadership that cannot be taught with a little theatre training?  Actor training is not about creating a character that is not you.  It is rather about connecting with your deepest self, and your lived experience to be the authentic character that you need to be.  Improv is about relaxing everything you thought you knew about what is going on and being open to new sources of resilience and resourcefulness.

So how is that for a provocative proposition?  It is a big learning edge for me and will be for my clients as well, but I can’t think of a better way to learn about and discover our inherent leadership capacities and the edges of our own learning and development, especially in a world where certainty is at a premium, and power constrains action with pre-determined process at every turn.

Improvise, respond, concretize, perform.

A small inkling of the new peace

November 26, 2011 By Collaboration, Emergence, Invitation, Leadership

My friend Tom Atlee has been a remarkable documented of the lessons from the #Occupy movement. Since I was at Wall Street two months ago I have continued to be astonished at the creativity, leadership and communication styles emerging from the movement.

Today though, Tom has a long post on perhaps the most astonishing event yet. Following the well publicized pepper spraying of students at UC Davis, a remarkable non-violent action took place to de-escalate the situation. Take the time to read the whole post and watch the full video. It is moving, inspiring and possible ground breaking in the way police and protestors can be invited to work together to keep peace. It is the essence of real time chaotic action.

Working with Cynefin to find questions

November 24, 2011 By Design, Stories 3 Comments

 

Working with a client tonight who is beginning a process of trying to find some questions for moving forward.  The client is a group of churches who are exploring how they might collaborate to undertake their joint mission together.  There are a number of factors at play, and the environment they are working in is diverse.

Tonight, with a few short hours, we’ll do a little story gathering.  We’ll begin by exploring an uncontextualized Cynefin framework and then invite small anecdote circles to form around the question of “What are the challenges and role of our Churches in this region, in this time?”  I’ll invite groups to explore this question using stories.  The idea is to gather anecdote fragments in each circle and then explore contextualizing a framework to give us a sense of the work that might lay before us, should people choose to work more collaboratively.  I am hoping that, despite a short time together, the exercise will open some inquires, especially in the complex space, that people might be interested in pursuing.

The perfect time to do planning

November 23, 2011 By Collaboration, Leadership, Organization

I have often had calls from clients in the past that begin “we are having a lot of communication problems in our organization. We think it is a good time to do some strategic planning.”. My common response to that is to point out that those two statements do not go together.

If you engage in strategic planning, especially if that planning is looking at working with organizational structures, and you haven’t dealt with communication, interpersonal and power issues then there is a strong likelihood of those unspoken dynamics being built into your organizational structure. Silos get created for many reasons, among them the fact that people sometimes don’t want to work with each other.

I had a meeting with a client yesterday, with whom I am working on Friday. His organization is in great shape. They have a rolling five year plan which has no targets in it, but only a series of strategic objectives. He creates targets on a yearly basis or as funding comes in. The board is in good shape and the organization is providing good service to its members. In our meeting yesterday we were able to think about setting aside a third of our planning time to have a blue sky conversation about the future of the organization, the changing environment and some new philosophical frontiers for the group. It feels easy, even though this is an organization that works in financial administration. We don’t have to consume energy fighting political battles and power dynamics, and we can instead look outwards.

People often deride the relational aspects of organization life as “soft”. They aren’t. They are the underlying architecture that makes core business lines possible and that ensures quality in every offering.

Improv and action

November 22, 2011 By Collaboration, Flow, Improv

Action comes from a accepting offers. When an offer comes to you you can accept it or block it. Blocking it kills the action. Accepting it moves it forward. When we are working in complexity, waiting for the failsafe plan leads to inaction because there are more blocks than acceptances. In contast diving into a safe fail mindset means committing to action and refining it as you go.

This is the essence of improvisation: accept, commit, develop, offer. A simple four stage cycle for action planning