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Research has consistently shown that people who are intrinsically motivated are more satisfied in their work, have greater commitment to tasks and have lower levels of absenteeism. They concentrate longer, are more adaptable, have more empathy and come up with more creative ideas.

These are qualities that organisations want in today’s climate of constant change and uncertainty. Yet it is not easy to get these in employees because many aspects of an organisation’s culture and processes get in the way. Time constraints, micromanaging, and fear of being honest can be major obstacles to a happy, productive workplace.

One effective way is to increase motivation is use activities and games derived from theatre and the arts to explore, examine and safely express what is really happening in the workplace.  A number of companies such as the Perth Airport, the Department of Child Protection and the Department of Treasury have used these theatre games and exercises to help staff experience, identify and discuss what motivates or causes dissatisfaction at work.

In one recent workshop staff enacted many moments throughout the day in which they were interrupted by managers giving them little things to do which took them away from their main task and drained their ability to put their creative energy into their high priority work.  While having lot of fun and laughter during the improvisation, they realized that these situations resulted in them being busy but were dissatisfied because they had not accomplished anything effectively.

While the culture and leadership were positive, staff felt they had no control or autonomy in the work.  Because this was shown in a playful activity and their managers were present, the managers also laughed when they saw the undermining effect that these interruptions had on the team.

There was a feeling of relief as the employees expressed their frustrations while at the same time the managers identified their role in the breakdowns. The session then rehearsed the ways section managers could give team leaders more autonomy but still be confident that the production schedule would be achieved.

These theatre based workshops and training explore the three basic needs of intrinsic motivated: self-determination; use of an individual’s skills; and the need to feel positive about what we do.

Self-determination is experienced when an individual has sufficient autonomy and support to determine for themselves how to do their job.  Employees want to use their skills and to be challenged and grow. They also need to feel they have the skills necessary to do their job well. And finally, people want to have positive feelings about their work environment and other people.

Workshops using theatre and acting skills allow people to have fun while being fully open and honest. Rather that talk about difficulties they get to see, feel and experience them in a fun and playful way.  Many profound insights are revealed during moments of people acting out situations they experience at work.  These insights and demonstrations are then used to solve problems in ways that involve people’s hearts as well as their minds.

Everyone would like to work in a workplace where they are trusted to make decisions and where they are capable, happy and valued. Once leaders realize this is also the best way to increase productivity and creativity, they will build our workplaces with a lot more laughter and play.

Written in collaboration with Ron Cacioppe – Integral Development

www.integral.org.au

Here are four wonderful resources about play, engagement, creativity and arts-based approaches to problem solving:

1. From Work Place to Work Space by Pamela Meyer – create dynamic engagement in organisations by shifting the existing mindset that places play and work in opposition.

2. Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko – a comprehensive collection of creative thinking processes to activate creativity and generate ideas.

3. Creative Problem Solving for Managers – move from using the ‘tried and tested’ solutions to challenges to trying out creative possibilities by accessing the creative potential existing within your organsation.

4. Engaging Performance by Jan Cohen Cruz – a wide ranging anaysis of how performance is used to socially engage communities to problem solve and address existing issues and challenges.

Seriously Playful, Playfully Serious

“Work and play are words used for the same thing under differing conditions”

                                                                        Mark Twain

For decades we have been aware of the importance of play in the development of children; play teaches us how to share, to self-direct, to empathise; through play we learn to socialise, to explore; to use our imagination.  Increasingly, evidence is also pointing to the benefits that play has on adults especially in fostering creativity and enhancing relationships and performance in the workplace.

Most of us have grown up believing that there is a distinction between work and play. Work is serious and important and play is frivolous and childish. And yet research is pointing to play being an effective, even necessary, space from within to create and problem solve.

In their article ‘Ain’t Misbehaving, Taking Play Seriously in Organisations’, Statler, Roos and Victor explain that play has an important, even crucial role in the success of organisations; in particular those that are striving for change.

Firstly, play enhances our cognitive and emotional capacity. Processes that help us interact with our surroundings and one another are developed through play. For instance, taking in new information and assimilating it to our existing concepts, or accommodating what we already know as we learn more about particular subjects; in short, play helps us become complex adult thinkers.

Further, our capacity to imagine is developed through play. When we play dress up or play cops and robbers, we not only mimic adult behaviours that we see around us; we also imagine what it might be like to be in certain situations, what it feels like to be somebody else, from this space we develop empathy and ‘ethical judgment’. 

According to psychologist and play specialist Dr Peter Gray from Boston College, play can put the mind into a state that ‘…is uniquely suited for high-level reasoning, insightful problem solving, and all sorts of creative endeavours’

He talks about the general feeling of freedom, of feeling ‘this is exactly what I want to be doing right now’; a state that may or may not involve laughing and fun but that is always conducive to a ‘mutually voluntary’ participation; a relationship of high level of dynamic engagement and willingness between participants that are there because they want to be.

While it is mostly children that can stay in this 100% play state, even the degrees of playfulness that adults can bring to their intended work purposes can add a level of freedom that can positively affect engagement and productivity.

The ultimate freedom, as Gray points out, is being able to stop playing. And research suggests that having this level of self-direction and freedom when tackling difficult work tasks can often create a feeling of play, leading to greater focus and productivity.

‘…the relationship between work and play cannot be considered mutually exclusive, and that any coherent theory of organisational life must account both for work and play,’ state Statler et al.

“To stimulate creativity one must develop a childlike inclination to play and the childlike desire for recognition”                                                                                    Albert Einstein

When it comes to the positive effect of play on creativity IDEO’s Tim Brown is a strong advocate. He explains that from his experience there are three major ways in which play and creativity or generating ideas are linked.

First, he reminds us that children spend 50% of their play time in construction, or play building and developmentally this is a form of learning. This’ learning with our hands’ is one of the important contributions that play makes to creativity.

The second characteristic is that play is all about exploration, trying out new ideas and experimenting which includes being free to make mistakes without being concerned about being wrong.

Sir Ken Robinson, in his famous TED talk ‘Schools Kill Creativity’ tells a story about a young girl in a classroom who had not been very interested in school work but she was very engaged when they did some drawing. The teacher saw the girl’s increased interest and asked her:

‘What are you drawing?’

‘I’m drawing a picture of God,’ the little girl said.

‘Nobody knows what God looks like,’ she teacher told her.

‘They will in a minute!’ responded the child.

The young child has not concept of being wrong. Form within this kind of freedom to try anything new ideas and innovate can sprout more readily.

Thirdly, acting out different roles during play is a great spark for the imagination, it’s how children learn to empathise and learn

This has certain implications for organisations that are prioritising engendering creativity and innovation among their workers and who want to increase productivity and satisfaction.  Likewise, organisations that are managing change can make use of the usefulness of play activities in the development and adaptation of cultural identities.

At Act Out we work on the premise that a key ingredient in organisational development and successfully adapting to the volatility that organisations face lies in blurring the boundaries that have been constructed between work and play.

 ‘Building resistance to misconduct is part of core business.’

Tony Warwick,

Senior Investigator

WA Corruption & Crime Prevention Commission

29 June 2011

What happens when at work you are asked to do something which goes against your core values or ethics? What do you do or say when you are expected to go with the flow but against your own grain?

Standing up to misconduct or unethical ways of behaving at work, was the theme of a recent forum organised by the Corruption & Crime Prevention Commission in Perth. With representatives from local government, academia, and large state institutions like the Police and the Education Department, the forum explored the issue in a candid and practical way with four main points standing out:

1. Resistance to misconduct is core business – employers need to standardise responses and set up incentives for employees to be able to express themselves
2. Mechanisms should be build into the change management policy that allow this to be possible
3. Leaders play a key role in aligning personal values through behaviours and reemphasising the personal at work – what really matters to employees?
4. Preparation is key – through creating new or using existing programs that tackle this issue in a comprehensive and experiential way

This last point is of particular interest to me – the easy part is to establish policy and standardise responses but the real crunch comes when the individual is face to face with the decision – what will I do about this right now?

According to the Giving Voice to Values program coordinator at the University of Western Australia, Dr David Webb, there are certain common inhibiting arguments that prevent people from making a decision aligned with their values. These can pop up when faced with the dilemma:

1. ‘Everyone does it’ 
2. ‘It doesn’t hurt anyone’
3.  ‘It’s not my responsibility’
4. ‘I don’t want to hurt my team’.

Dr Webb describes the UWA Business School program, developed by former Harvard academic Dr Mary Gentile, as preparatory. It gives participants an opportunity to script and rehearse possible scenarios they may come up against.

As an organisational transformation consultant, I can vouch for the power of scripting and rehearsal to prepare employees to tackle challenging encounters or address difficult interactions. Changing the culture of an organisation requires new behaviours, amny of which will be unfamiliar and need rehearsing.

While a cognitive understanding is crucial when creating new behaviours, a physical and aesthetic experience is vital for a sustained and effective change to take place.

Other speakers at the seminar included Jonathan Throssell, CEO of Shire of Mundaring, who attributes the low 8% staff turnover at Mundaring to aligning personal values and the real needs of employees to the workplace.  People are not just clogs in a machine and a strong organisational culture supports people in what really matters to them. The leadership of the organisation is responsible for modelling this; for letting employees know that they are able to stand up for what they value.

Tony Flack, from the WA Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit was stern and realistic, ‘…it’s not easy but …managing misconduct should be part of core business…not an add on,’ he said during his presentation on the Police Department’s committed drive to change the organisational culture through incentives and supporting resilience.

Equally frank was Eamon Ryan the Acting Executive Director of the Department of Education, ‘…integrity in decision making is not practised enough’. He reiterated the need for mechanisms and described the Department’s Standards and Integrity Directory created unded the new portfolio.

‘It’s about developing a culture of candour, openness and transparency….what would an organisation look like if each individual was able to give voice to their values when they needed to?’ Dr Webb asked.

How does your organisation measure? Can you voice your values?

Below is flier for up coming workshop – it will be great fun and you will take lots of useful, immediately applicable tools with you!!

In my work with organisations it is often my goal to facilitate right brain thinking – I want clients to access kinaesthetic and emotional intelligences, their use of metaphor, improvisation and story-telling; in effect we work towards gaining access to creativity and imagination to compliment left-brain thinking and generate holistic and engaging problem solving.

Generally, the obstacle to creative problem solving is that we are conditioned to rely heavily on our left brain functions and lose our agility in imaginative, creative thinking as we get stuck in ordered, reasonable and logical thinking.

However, as was recently brought up at the Family Pathways Network Conference on Mental Health and the Family Law System, being stuck in right brain emotionally reactive thinking can be equally unproductive.

Megan Hunter, an expert in conflict resolution from the Arizona-based Conflict Resolution Institute in the US, highlighted that often there is a pattern in the behaviours of people who are repeatedly involved in conflict through the courts. She referred to High Conflict Personalities – characters that tend to take up a disproportionately higher ratio of time and attention from service providers. You probably know exactly who this refers to but Ms Hunter and Dr George Lipton from the University of Western Australia both outlined a few characteristics.

HIGH CONFLICT PERSONALITY

They may or may not fall under the label of some of the more common personality disorders such as narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial or borderline personality disorder, but they display similar fear-based behaviours as well as a lack of self awareness and lack of flexible adaptation.

These characters have no idea why they are the way they are. They don’t actually realise that they are being unreasonable and contributing to their own problem, or that they affect other people – they lack self awareness.

In addition, their thinking is inflexible and rigid, prone to extremes; it’s all or nothing, black or white. They jump to conclusions and everything is an attack on them, they project their emotions and fears onto others. They may see you as the best one moment and quickly devalue you the next. There are several reasons for this behaviour, but most interestingly for us is what is going on in their brains.

STUCK IN THE RIGHT BRAIN

The corpus callosum – a bundle of nerves that acts as a bridge between the right and the left brain – is apparently smaller and thinner in the brains of high conflict personalities.

This means that they struggle to move from one way of thinking to another; they effectively remain in a right brain, fast, defensive thinking pattern where they distort and exaggerate situations.

As professionals, we have been trained to respond to problems by attempting to give feedback and elicit a logical and reasonable way of seeing. ‘This will not work with this type of personality,’ said Ms Hunter.

‘They cannot access their logical left brain thinking, they cannot process information back and forth cross the corpus callosum to formulate logical and reasonable thoughts.’

What is more, the amygdala, a small mass of tissue inside the brain that is triggered when we go into a crisis situation, can remain constantly turned on in these individuals further hindering their ability for logical and analytical thought processes.

There is also proof, added Ms Hunter, that the mirror neurons, cells that are understood to influence how we learn empathy by mirroring, are also deficient in high conflict personality individuals. They did not learn empathy when it was being modelled to them as children.

This all leads to a need for ways to communicate with high conflict personalities that give us access to the right brain and allow them to cross over into the left brain.

TALK TO THE RIGHT BRAIN

High conflict personalities respond well to E.A.R. statements – statements, suggests Ms Hunter, which let them know that you Empathise, that they have your Attention and that you Respect their efforts. This does not mean that you agree, but that you are listening to them.

‘When they are really unmanageable ask them to make a list,’ laughingly suggests Ms Hunter, who reminds us that these personalities need a lot of structure and making a list can be a quick way to get them into ordered, structured thinking.

Because they are not easily able to reason, to listen to logic, or to assimilate any feedback or insights that you may have for them, they need a different approach. An approach that somehow enables them to access their own problem solving skills so they can stop blaming you and get insights into their emotions and eventually their problems.

Engaging easily angered, emotional clients, dealing with a lot of problems, has been one of my areas of expertise, especially with my work with perpetrators of violence at Act Out (www.actout.com.au).

While listening to Ms Hunter and Dr Lipton, I thought about the many activities and techniques that I employ in my work that connect people directly to their right brain.

At the same time, the divergent or listing techniques in creative problem solving take people in and out of free and structured thinking.

I started to see another reason why the aesthetic and right brain activities were so successful, and how they may be used to work in the opposite direction. Instead of enabling people to move from predominantly left brain to right brain thinking, the techniques could be used to facilitate movement across in the opposite direction, towards reason, logic and the structure necessary to analyse and receive insight into difficult situations.

Alberto Perez, affectionately known as Beto, was a popular aerobics instructor in Colombia, who rocked up to his busy class one day only to find that he had forgotten his music. Thinking on the spot he went to his car and retrieved the sexy Latin music he had in his CD player and adapted the routines to the hot Salsa, Cumbia and Merenge rhythms.

The result: ZUMBA – a multi-million dollar enterprise that over the last ten years has spread across all continents and has revitalised the fitness class industry.

Innovators are not always the white-coated, single-minded scientists supported by funding bodies to create breakthroughs in their various fields.

Sometimes innovation happens through a totally unplanned, unforeseen and ‘in-the-moment’ connection of a product or idea that is waiting to manifest and a mind that is open and receptive.

Sometimes, the innovation is not even related to the field the innovator is active in and it is fuelled by dissatisfaction and accident.

Take Chester Carlson. Who gave us the Xerox machine. From a young age he was fascinated by all things printed; however he studied physics and later patent law. During his legal studies he grew impatient with hand copying the documents he needed so he turned to his earlier passion and after many experiments and trials he invented the photocopier.

Likewise, sculptor Ladislao Biro is less remembered for his sculptures than for the creation of the ball point pen; J.B. Dunlop the creator of the pneumatic tyre was a vet.

However, while there will always be the Edisons and the Zuckerbergs, innovation is largely a focused, encouraged and nurtured effort within or without an organisation.

Our inspiring friends at New & Improved, a leading innovation consultancy company in the US, write a regular newsletter on innovation.

According to them there are 10 main drivers of innovation in an organisation – I have summarised them here:

1. Individual – they are the basic building block of innovation;
2. Team – individuals do not usually have the range of skills needed to make innovation happen;
3. The enterprise – to keep innovation teams from getting stuck in ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ thinking;
4. Processes – always aim to improve these at all levels: individual, team and enterprise;
5. Offering – to view innovation as more than ‘product’. Equally important are innovative business models, alliances, processes;
6. Psychological climate – what’s going on in the mind of the individual?
7. Physical environment – everyone has different needs around this, and it has a huge impact on innovation;
8. Organisational culture – what does the leadership of the organisation uphold as success? This matters;
9. Economic climate – not too much fear and not too much confidence – this is the ideal balance for thriving innovation;
10. Geopolitical culture – what cultural strengths can I leverage and which cultural weaknesses do I need to overcome?

For the full article and many more GREAT tips go to http://www.newandimproved.com/newsletter/2125.php

According to Otto Scharmer the essence of leadership today is the ability to facilitate a shift from the current model of operating from past experience to operating from ‘a future space of possibility’. His social technology for leadership, Theory U, premises that in order for there to be transformation we need to access, understand and be comfortable with the quality of leadership that is unseen.

In other words, not the processes or the actions but their origin; the inner place from where these originate. This is precisely the aim of the creative techniques employed at Act Out to work with groups. They aim at stirring up what is underneath the actions – what inspires them; what are the fears and the desires that drive all our actions; or prevent desired actions?

Scharmer invites participants of his workshops to enter into a dialogue with each other about the issues they want to tackle. But to go beyond the usual polite, disconnected or inauthentic listening; past the tough-talking, debating, competitive, divisive listening; even past the more empathic inquiring listening to a generative listening. This is a listening that enables individuals to ‘operate from the highest future possibility that is emerging’. It is not an easy proposition.

Looking at our inner motivations is hard enough, but to do this collectively is even tougher. His Theory U delineates seven leadership competencies essential for transformative leadership:

1. Holding the Space: A leader invites others into a space the she or he holds and the key to ‘holding’ is listening; a deep, attentive listening. ‘Listening to what life calls you to do’, not only listening to oneself and to others, but also to what becomes apparent through listening to the collective.

2. Observing: This requires ignoring the voice of judgment which blocks access to our minds and therefore our creativity.

3. Sensing: This requires leaders to connect with the heart often by ignoring the voice of cynicism. This voice prevents us from being present to our vulnerability and authenticity and from acting from an innate knowledge rather than a cognitive knowledge.

4. Presencing: this is a capacity to connect to our deepest source or will and not listening to the voice of fear which blocks our access to being willing to step into the unknown and let go of the past ways of acting.

5. Crystallizing: This is when a leader accesses the power of intention of a small group of committed key people. This group, through its intention and actions creates an energy field that attracts the necessary elements for the project to take place. This creates momentum until it is past the tipping point.

6. Prototyping: This is leadership capacity which calls for integration of the head, heart and body; calls for action. It is a difficult step during which leaders will become accosted by the usual ways of being: reactivity, endless analysis and what he technically refers to as ‘blah blah blah’.

7. Performing: This is the last step in the layers and it involves acting and listening constantly from a space that moves in and out of the self; it is through you that the action happens but its origin is beyond the self.

This may all sound like it’s easier said than done – it is! Much easier; but in his inspiring book, Scharmer and his colleagues, describe moments that have transcended great obstacles.

From the transformation of Oxfam GB’s African HIV/AIDS program, to huge systemic changes in doctor-patient relationships by the German Health Care Ministry to the extraordinary work done by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is the kind of leadership transformation we aim to create at Act Out.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

In her fabulous book, From Workspace to Playspace, Pamela Meyer, extols the benefits of developing a play culture within an organisation. As a facilitator and consultant using applied theatre techniques, games and activities to help organisations innovate and transform, I read her book joyfully! I am often asked, how will playing help this organisation? How can it help create better leaders? And my answer is that it is not just playing as in setting up a ping pong table for use during breaks, or a few balls of colourful play dough during meetings – although these can be great fun! It’s about the mindset. A mindset that welcomes experimentation, new possibilities, spontaneity, safety to express ideas, plenty of room for failure and adaptation, humour, all part of an indispensable skill: improvisation. Improvisation is ‘…the ability to react honestly, in the moment, at the top of your intelligence,’ says Bob Kulhan, CEO of Business Improvisation (www.businessimprov.com), a US company that specialises in corporate improvisation programs. Kulhan, an adjunct professor at the Fuqua Business School at Duke University makes clear connections between improvisation and the skills needed by leaders and change agents in organisations. With many organisations struggling to adapt to the relentlessly shifting economic environment and accommodate the increasing expectations for personal fulfilment of employees, improvisation is an important skill. The ability to be ‘nimble, flexible, adaptive…to tweak focus…get the best out of people in mid-stride,’ says Kulhan, is unquestionably valuable. Meyer agrees. Referring to her research she writes that executives and managers reported being called to improvise as much as 2/3 of the time. As she rightly points out, this is an enormous amount of time on a task for which most people are inadequately trained. Playspace, or what can also be called the aesthetic space in theatre speak, offers the opportunity to develop the leadership skills offered through improvisation.

First, to improvise it is necessary to be able to listen and to be flexible; to be present and to recognise what is in the space and allow it to emerge.

Otto Scharmer, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an award-winning designer of leadership programs. He calls this kind of awareness ‘presencing’. A ‘letting go and letting come turning point’ in which there is a consciousness of the real obstacles and awareness of the willingness to work together and co-create a desired future.

A mindset welcoming of play offers the safety necessary for this to occur. This is a space where it is safe to take risks, step into unknown areas and experiment.

In improvisational theatre there are certain principles adhered to in performances, one of these is that ‘mistakes are invitations’. In other words, there are no mistakes, only opportunities for players to be more creative and break patterns. Similarly, in a culture that nurtures a mindset of play, looking beyond existing patterns and embracing challenges, are approaches that will lead to innovation and transformation at all levels of the organisation.

In terms of leadership this may mean giving up the power, control and status that comes with an assigned role, and allowing the ‘true force’ of transformation emerge.

Second, the more chance to improvise the more confidence arises in individuals to deal with the unexpected. Conversely, the more confident a person feels, through practice, the more willing to improvise and explore ‘alternate possibilities’. It is a win-win scenario that reinforces itself with time.

The fact is that in spite of a dominant belief that all has been analysed, planned and is ‘under control’, improvisation is an integral part of strong leadership and successful organisational development.

“Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process”

Harold S. Geneen

I was surprised to read in the Weekend Australian (29/30 Jan), that according to an Australian Institute of Management (AIM) survey, 33 % of employees are looking for a way out of their jobs, 40% feel unappreciated and 34% report they could be doing better at their current jobs.

That’s an awful lot of unhappy people in the workforce!

I was not surprised to read; however, that the cause of such discontent is generally not about salaries, ‘… it’s non-salary tools that companies can and should be using to attract and retain people,’ said Susan Heron, chief executive at AIM. Equally unsurprising was reading that feeling valued and having a work-life balance are important to employees; as they are important to everyone!

Organisational success is 100% tied in to its people; having a third of your people currently looking for ways out is directly affecting your bottom line, whether they leave or stay.

How does an organisation transform from an environment where workers feel ‘demotivated, bored, sad, angry, apathetic’ to one in which they feel dynamically engaged, appreciated, happy and creative?

One way to start, and this may sound simplistic and naive, is to make them smile! Or even better, make them laugh! We all know that serotonin is the happy chemical in our brain, what we don’t all know is that a simple smile (even a fake smile!) can trigger a squirt fest of happy juice right through the brain. This can be done by having sessions where employees are encouraged to make play part of their day.

Establish opportunities for employees to use their creativity and contribute to the innovation and wellbeing of your organisation. Shift your culture to one that embraces fun and play while remaining purposeful and focused; a culture where everyone is encouraged to engage all their intelligences and work with their WHOLE brain, not only the logical, analytical and efficient left side, but the emotional, imaginative and playful right side too.

Another important shift, is to create a culture where  individuals, regardless of their position, can express their leadership qualities and feel acknowledged for making a difference. According to Heron, this leadership equity is ‘fundamental to innovation and innovation is critical to long term success for Australia as a country’.

If there is nobody in your organisation that can get this started get experts in and let us help you get started. You won’t need to keep us for long, there may be some resistance to shifting the culture at first, but once it is experienced and embraced, it will sustain itself and your whole organisation will benefit!!

C’mon Australian employers, you can do better!