Newbies: Know your games and dare to debrief!

I was the host of one of the open space sessions at the AIN Europe Conference in Amsterdam on March 10. and 11. 2006. The issue of the session was: “Games; for what and in what way are they useful in leadership- and organizational training?” Here I will share some of what we talked about and what I learned from it.

My background is that I have worked in improvisational theatre for almost 10 years and for some years, from time to time, worked with groups of people from outside the theatre. My experience is that it’s quite easy to make people from outside the theatre have fun and sometimes to explore issues connected to creativity and teambuilding by doing improgames. However, I find it difficult to know what’s in this training for them on a larger scale or a deeper level. In this open space session we started to talk more about the differences between training a group of improvisers to say for example a group of managers.

The biggest difference I learned is that when you train improvisers you focus on getting them out of their head as opposed to a session with managers where you have to open up a lot for reflection in between. An improviser knows he has to practice to be in the here and now but that isn’t so obvious to a manager. If you don’t see the point in being in the here and now why should you bother to train for it? As for training an improviser you have to know what the games are for, that is for example to train spontaneity. In addition to that, since the most important issue here is how to apply the experiences from doing the games, you have to ask questions to get to the conversation that makes it meaningful.

When it comes to the latter, since the managers challenges is not your home ground, this takes quite a bit of courage to do. I guess I have a tendency to leave this part too much out for that reason, but this open session really pointed out for me that I shouldn’t. I guess I have to go for it! The games will only be useful in a session with those managers if I can make space for them to think and talk about how to apply the experiences and knowledge they attain from doing the game. And of course that will make it meaningful for me as an applying improfacilitator as well.

As a newbie I have, thanks to the open space session at the AIN Europe conference, learned more about how to think about the games and consequently understood that I have to dare to debrief more when I work with people from outside the theatre.

Posted by Sven Veine on April 7, 2006 05:54 PM in Improv at work
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