Building relational fabric
What if ... a team or an organization behaved more like an improvisational company? Like a well-tuned swarm full of hyper-attentive and agile members? Then concepts like self-direction, shared leadership and agile working would suddenly sound less hollow. In Swarm / Without Prescription, we present ourselves as a team and expose our workings.
After a fully improvised improvisational theater piece, you get the chance to ask all kinds of questions to the players. They take a seat in the so-called HOT SEAT and let you peek inside the improviser's head and heart. Improvisers know well that you have to keep exploring blockages to keep moving and developing together in the not-knowing, which organizations face a lot today.
Swarm / Without prescription is a theatrical performance as well as a research lab! That ongoing dialogue about the relational fabric, about "how we do it together" is indispensable for any organization that wants to remain healthy and sustainable.
A sampling of specific topics:
- Responsibility: collaborative leadership and collaborative leadership
- Feeling: attention to what is happening in yourself, in others and around you
- Trust: assuming the good intentions of the other person
- Imagination: possibility thinking instead of obstacle thinking
- Slowing down: to dive deeper into what is going on, to give space to emotions and sensations as effective compasses in collaboration
- Connection: surrender and engagement, with each other and with the story you are building together
- Freedom: awareness of blocking, stereotyping, limiting thoughts and letting them go. Dare to jump first and then see how you will land.
- Difference tolerance: inclusive thinking and action
These qualities, general or a delineated set, are discussed and also lived out through some experiential exercises with the audience. It is also these qualities that are central to the book "Improvising: communicating without prescription" by Nathalie Van Renterghem. She has been active as an improviser for thirty years and extremely fascinated by so-called applied improvisation: using specific improvisation skills as an attitude and mindset off stage. She disseminates this work from TIM Theater / Inspinazie. As a conflict mediator (recognized mediator in organizations) and with a past as an education professional, she likes to move where people are learning and working together, especially when it is exciting.
