Yesterday I co-led a workshop at the East Side Institute entitled Laughing Matters where we explored the role of humor in our lives.  The participants created humor together -- it was a joyous and delightful exploration of this vital human activity.

I recently came across an interesting article in Forbes - Are Funny People More Successful in Business? http://onforb.es/K7CVQ4 which got me thinking about what we learned in our workshop, as well as my own experiences as a funny person in the workplace.

The article quotes Steven Sultanoff, Ph.D., the former president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor:

Sultanoff says that people who are funny likely will be perceived as more enjoyable and as better employees because they are in fact more successful. “If someone is using humor then they are connecting with people and building relationships, which creates opportunities that other people may not have.”

One of the discoveries that we made at our workshop is the social nature of humor.  I was pleased to see this quote because I wholeheartedly agree that humor is one of the very best ways to connect with people.  I would take it a step further to say that we are not simply "using humor", we are creating with another person or people.  Not only are we a relational species, we have a wonderful and often underutilized capacity to endlessly create!  (Think back to how we played as children.)

There is a difference -- another thing we discovered at our workshop -- between creating humor together and "being funny" or "making people laugh".  This is an important distinction because, as is noted in the Forbes article, one can be mean-spirited and "get a laugh", whereas the social activity of creating humor together is profoundly positive.  

The workplace can be a most a stressful environment so finding (and even seeking out) opportunities to create humor together is an important way that we can let go of that stress and play. Being a proponent of play, the results of this study make good sense to me:

Research shows that successful humor boosts both personal productivity and group effectiveness. According to Michelle Gielan, an expert in positive psychology and cofounder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research, when something makes us smile or laugh, the feel-good chemical dopamine is dropped into our systems, which turns on all the learning centers in the brain and heightens creativity, productivity and engagement.

Being an improvisational comedienne is one of the best tools I have to navigate a stressful day at work.  I find that I use humor all day long!  One reason I've been able to build a strong relationship with my manager at one of my ongoing client engagements is his appreciation that being playful in the midst of a high pressured environment makes it possible to work hard and be productive.  

Play is under-appreciated and under-utilized in the workplace, which is a shame, given how much more creative, productive and innovative we are when we are playing.  I was heartened to read the final paragraph of the article:

Despite the avenues for failure, some companies are betting on humor’s benefits. “Humor and play are in the corporate mission statements of Southwest Airlines, Google and Ben & Jerry’s,” Sultanoff says. “At most places, you won’t read it in the manual, but I think companies should be thinking about it.” He notes that only 15% of people are fired for incompetence—the other 85% are fired for not getting along with others. Used effectively, humor helps people get along, decreases turnover and increases productivity. 

Yes... laughing matters!

Today I am submitting a proposal for a workshop entitled "The Performance of Executive Presence" for evening and execuive MBA students and alumni for a leading business school in New York. In doing a bit of research on the topic it is interesting to note what people say about this sometimes elusive business term.  Paul Aldo, in an article, "What is executive presence?" http://bit.ly/Jjm1A0 defines executive presence using these descriptive terms:

Candor: The appearance of honesty, through the willingness and skill to constructively tell it like it is.
Clarity: The ability to tell your story in an intuitively clear and compelling way.
Openness: The appearance of not prejudging, of being willing to consider another's point of view.
Passion: The expression of commitment, motivation, and drive that shows people you really believe in what you do.
Poise: The look of sophistication, conveying a background of education and experience.
Self-confidence: The air of assurance, such that others know you have the required strength and resolve.
Sincerity: The conviction of believing in and meaning what you say.
Thoughtfulness: The projection of thinking or of having thought through something before responding.
Warmth: The appearance of being accessible to others and of being interested in them.

So, how does one cultivate these traits?  The cultivation of executive presence cries out for performance! Especially for younger executives who are early in their careers having the self-confidence to command a meeting or give a memorable and compelling presentation can be a stretch.  We have to pretend and perform. In the theatre we often hear directors tell us to "stretch" and go further in our performances.  That is exactly the type of performance work that can help develop our presence as executives.  How are we walking, talking, moving, and relating to others?  Are we even aware of these things about ourselves.

One of the many values that improvisation and performance brings to the workplace is a lens through which we can look at ourselves and our colleagues and make self-concious decisions about ways that we want to go beyond our "natural" way of being.  We have the wonderful capability of creating how we want to perform in our lives -- the play that we are creating everyday.  Even the most shy among us can cultivate a performance of self-confidence and boldness.  By taking serious the wonderful capacity to be "other than who we are", we can grow in new ways. As my mentors, Drs. Lenora Fulani and the late Fred Newman wrote in their paper "Let's Pretend" http://bit.ly/qcjTJ4 

The act of pretending to be something other than you are, used self-consciously and collectively, is a tool for growth. 

Shakespeare was right when he said that "All the world's a stage"!

I was pleased to read a recent article on the HBR website - Why Older Entrepreneurs Have an Edge - http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/why_older_entrepreneurs_have_a.html by Marc Freedman.

As someone who recreated herself and her career at the age of 55, I greatly admire all of my peers who are similarly going out on their own during this part of our lives, especially to "give back":  

Later entrepreneurship often crosses paths with yet a third later-life trend — the urge to give back. Research shows that half of those who want to become midlife entrepreneurs — more than 12 million people ages 44 to 70 — also want to meet community needs or solve a critical social problem at the same time.

Giving back has been a central theme of my adult life.  I was fortunate to have met a community of people who set out to create all kinds of institutions to meet community needs and thereby solve (perhaps transform is more accurate) social problems when I was in my mid-twenties.  So when I was ready to make a midlife career change, I was focused on how I was going to support myself so that I can continue to give back through volunteerism.  

It is worth noting more of Freedman's findings on midlife career changing:

...the path many are taking in midlife, when jobs are harder to find and gray-haired applicants don't feel entirely welcome.Recent research shows that one in four Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 — about 25 million people — are interested in starting their own businesses or nonprofit organizations in the next five to 10 years.

In my coaching and career counseling work with fellow baby boomers, I passionately advocate entrepreneurship, given the realities of finding a job in this economy.  My coaching work is dedicated to helping people develop their creative capacities through improvisation and performance.  The activity/performance of creating a business has been a wonderful challenge for me and for others.  

To take everything we have done thus far in our careers, our sensibilities and concerns, and synthesize it into a new entity/career activity is a highly creative act.  In my consulting/coaching work I continue to open new doors and create new opportunities for development.

With so many social problems we, as people who grew up in the 1960's, have an important role to play in change and transformation.  I am heartened to think of the transformative power that resides in our generation.

I've been taking a class -- Talking to People in Public: A Storytelling Approach with Cathy Rose Salit, President & CEO of Performance of a Lifetime and Chris Helm, a talented teacher of all things philosophical -- in order to learn more about coaching whilst I improve my own presentation abilities.

At this week's class we began making presentations that Cathy then redirected to help us develop our capacity to not only talk about ourselves but to show our audience who we are.  This was a very instructive and creative exercise.  

I chose to make the presentation "Why Improvisation?" that I've recently made in a corporate setting.  I gave my presentation to the class.  Then Cathy shared with the class that she and I know each other quite well.  In fact we currently perform together in an improv troupe at the Castillo Theatre - The Proverbial Loons; we have been performing together for 20 years.  She made the following suggestion:  She asked me to ask the audience for a list of characters and to write them on a whiteboard; then I was to give my presentation again, only this time as the characters on the list, the class could tell me when to switch to a new character.

I did my presentation again, this time I started out as a Russian man, then I was a dog, then I was a college student barista at Starbucks and I ended the presentation as a nagging mother -- it was very funny and entertaining.

Cathy was teaching me and us how to show who we are; rather than lecturing about improvisation, I improvised! We then discussed how this would impact the audience for this presentation within a corporate setting.  It was a very rich and valuable dialogue.  In my letting people see who I am as a 20 year veteran improviser (and giving them this fun experience) it might create more of an environment for them to trust me in taking them through a workshop to teach these skills, which they can then apply to their own work (cold calling and developing better communication capabilities).  

This approach to storytelling and sharing who we are by demonstrating who we are rather than talking about who we are is much more intimate and vastly more creative.  

I'd love to hear how you can use this approach in your own presentation work.

For more information about classes at the East Side Institute and Cathy Rose Salit please see these links:

http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/about.html

http://www.performanceofalifetime.com/principals.html

The first week of the new year is a time for recommiting ourselves to our goals and/or creating new goals as we make the perennial resolutions -- both professionally and personally.  Keeping to our resolutions is all about will power.  Or is it?

I've been working with a couple of people who are re-entering the job market after a hiatus or after a long tenured position that has come to an end.  Looking for a job is similar to the new year's resolution; people start out gung ho and then get demoralized (especially in today's economy).  In coaching sessions I hear the way people beat themselves up: "I'm not working hard enough", "I'm not disciplined", "I don't have the will power needed to stay the course".

Instead of strengthening their resolve and will power, we've been strengthening their performance muscle.  We role play with the emphasis on play.  Our sessions have helped these job seekers to see that they don't have to will themselves into any situation.  They are creating a "performance resolution" to work on the self-conscious, creative activity of looking for a job. 

This improvisational approach has allowed them to have less of a focus on success or failure and more of an appreciation for their creative capacity and ability to play at job hunting.  

Please leave comments about your performance resolutions!

Some things I learned (or truly appreciated) during a transformative and growthful year:

Say yes.  In the face of change and doing new things (going beyond ourselves) it's easy to back down and say "no" to all the challenges that come along with development.  

Let people help.  It's giving to others to ask for help. And even more giving to accept and use the help others give us.  We are collaborative beings.

Don't over think it. Develop your right brain. 

Give.  Then give again.  

Take play seriously.  Rediscover your playfulness.

Wishing you a developmental and joyful new year!

I've been experiencing and learning about human development both personally and professionally as I approach six months of my new professional life as a consultant and coach.  As readers of this blog know I like to quote Dr. Fred Newman who created a methodology and practice (social therapy) that has given thousands of people around the world the opportunity to develop and create their lives.  

Fred used to have a call-in radio show called, Let's Develop!. I'd take time and carefully design questions for Fred and call into the show almost every week; Fred was always very appreciative of calls from "Marian from Manhattan". One week he responded to a question I asked by sharing that development is the interplay of who you were, who you are, and who you are becoming.  

These words have come to me several times during coaching sessions with MBA students. I'm helping them develop confidence and skills as they go through their interviews for internships and post-graduate positions. Combining my experience as an executive search consultant, actress/director, and improvisational expert I give students the support and direction they need to play and pretend, practice and develop a performance of who they are becoming.

In a HBR post this week Joshua Erlich wrote a piece Developing Executive Presence that summed up the basic work that executive coaches do to help with this issue -- http://bit.ly/vFjNve 

This quote jumped out at me:

Practice with support. Letting a colleague or mentor know you are working on presence can boost your skills and confidence.

People need support.  Maybe that sounds obvious but I think we underestimate how much support we all need to grow in our overly individualistic culture.  In order to move in and around who we were, who we are and who we are becoming we need to build relationships that support this kind of growth -- that support development. Since it's football season I've been looking at the coaches on the sidelines; so much of what they do is push their players to go beyond themselves.  Off the field and in the boardroom or other settings where we find ourselves it is not always so easy to find a coach, a mentor, or a friend who will and can give the kind of support needed to grow.  

Growing is emotional -- going beyond ourselves, becoming who we are not, is frightening.  All too often we leave out the emotional component, which requires those of us who are coaching to create an environment and relationship which allows soneone to go beyond "boosting skills and confidence" to a place where they can pretend** (see article below).  As a coach I see my role as a director and as a developmentalist -- I'm there to help people experience that interplay Fred was talking about.  

A big part of how we can give support is both teaching and engaging in the activity of appreciation. Here's an excerpt from a paper by Drs. Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani called Let's Pretend** http://bit.ly/qcjTJ4 

“Appreciation” is a sophisticated developmental skill. It is highly subjective, in that we might all have varied objects that we appreciate. Yet, appreciation itself takes a common form in the culture. And here’s what’s important. Appreciation is fundamentally performatory. 

 The value of coaching as I see it is to create a space for development and help people become less alienated about our human capacity to create our lives. Let's develop!  

Random musings about the therapeutic and developmental nature of play -- 

This TED Talk, "The shared experience of absurdity" by Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, is a wonderful example of the value of pointless play. It beautifully illustrates the joy we experience connecting with others in the activity of play.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/charlie_todd_the_shared_experience_of_absurdity.html

I'm fortunate to be part of a community that is always discovering how play can help people develop in many contexts -- here's a few examples:

We recently ended a very successful three week class at the East Side Institute on humor and it's role in development. My co-teacher Mary Fridley and I were fortunate to work with a very giving and creative group of students. In our last session we split the class into two groups and they created and performed two wonderfully humorous skits. Our students created humor out of the things they listed as "not funny" -- terminal illness, abuse, our irritations at people, and various difficult circumstances that we find ourselves in. Together we made discoveries about how we can use our wonderful human ability to create with others and in that activity we find humor and joy, even when we are sure there is none to be found.  

On December 9th I'll be joining my colleague Rafael Mendez at the Social Therapy Group's workshop: Creating the Holidays You Want to Have*.  It's part of Therapy Play: a series of therapeutic workshops of philosophical conversation and group performance work designed for emotional growth and development.  Rafael asked me to help him create an environment for participants to play with some of the things that come up for all of us during the holidays: 

Even as we look forward to celebrating with friends and family, the pressure to feel how we're "supposed" to feel, to get together with who we're "supposed" to get together and to give gifts we often can't afford - can make it difficult to be "merry, happy and gay."

In preparing to coach another MBA student who told me that he has difficulty, "letting people see my personality" I've been thinking about how adults have to reawaken and strengthen our play muscle. This muscle, which was so strong when we were children, sadly atrophies during adulthood.  The good news is that we can all workout in the gymnasium of pointless play in our families, workplaces and frankly anywhere we find ourselves.  

Improv Everywere ... indeed!

* For readers in the NY Metro area here's a link to info on the December 9th workshop: http://www.socialtherapygroup.com/events.html

On Saturday I co-led the second of three classes at the East Side Institute "What's So Funny?  All of Us!" with social therapist, theatre director and methodologist, Mary Fridley.  We are exploring the role that humor plays in our lives and our emotional development.

In the world in which we live people often "lose their sense of humor".  Yet human beings have an enormous capacity to create joy with each other, often in the face of great adversity.  Here's an interesting and thought provoking quote from the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

This very giving group of students shared that much of the time they feel humorless; we were able to give people an opportunity to see and experience that social activity creates joy and humor.  In our culture we are taught that there are "funny people" but our species creates humor socially.  We asked the participants to create a list of things they found funny and things that are not funny at all, where they felt no humor could be found. We then engaged in performance games in which the participants experienced that the source of humor was the activity of people creating together.

The games we played were the "multi-headed expert" game - five people stand closely together and speak one word at a time as though they share one brain in their five heads.  I interviewed our "experts" on some of the topics that people felt couldn't possible be the source of humor. They created delightfully ridiculous experts on very serious topics.  We then had people perform an improvised scene with me, directed by Mary. Once again we were able to create humor from difficult scenarios such as one character telling the other that they have just discovered they have a chronic illness.

On Monday I had the opportunity to take this work into an hour long exploration of clowning with a most talented colleague, Jeff Smithson, a former hospital clown and longtime trainer with Performance of A Lifetime.  Jeff and I are interested in discovering if we can use clowning and improv to help people develop in a variety of settings.  Jeff directed me and helped my clown come into the world.  As Jeff directed me in the basics of clowning I learned the value of the clown's connection to the "other" (the audience).I also had a chance to watch him clown, I found this quite emotional; I discovered the deep human level that we connect to the silent clown.  We connect to our humanity.  That's an experience we hope to share with many others.

Jeff had me come into a space with two chairs, one a "happy chair" and the other a "sad chair". Simply by touching the chairs I'd either be happy or sad, with growing intensity.  Sitting in the chairs would bring on great intensity of feelings -- hapy or sad -- depending on which chair I sat in. This was a marvelous exercise and experience. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can create with further exploration.

Later that day I had a coaching session with a graduate of the NYC Stern School of Business. This student is having a difficult time relaxing during interviews -- she suffers from nervousness. As a very analytical individual she tries to have all her answers ready before the question is posed to her -- part of her training in behavioral interviewing techniques.  Although I appreciate and respect being prepared, it was clear that her focus on preparation has taken away from her ability to be present and spontaneous during the formal interviewing process.  I identified a few things that some basic improvisational skills could remedy including making eye contact and remembering that the interviewer and she are creating a performed, improvisational conversation. 

It occured to me that the experience of improv is exactly what she needed to discover that she could, indeed, handle not knowing where a conversation would lead.  We played a one-word-at-a-time-story game.  It was wonderful to watch her delight at discovering the fun in creating something unknown and pointlessly silly.  She made a discovery that she could be spontaneous and creative!  

Discovery and creativity -- how joyful and developmental!

Transformation, creativity, learning, development and emotionality. All of these words come to mind in thinking about the impact of having recreated my career at the age of fifty-five. 

Yesterday I found myself sitting in a conference room on the 30th Floor looking over Central Park in a meeting at a financial services firm where I am a currently on retainer as a consultant. 

I sat at the meeting having a wonderful experience enjoying the activity of learning, and learning things that I never ever thought I'd be interested in. It was joyous and at times a bit disconcerting. The image I once had about "who I am" is fading.  I've transformed!  

I'm always grateful for the many giving and smart developmentalists that I have the good fortune to live my life with.  The late -- but always very present in so many peoples' lives -- Dr. Fred Newman once gave me some advice on his radio call-in program "Let's Develop". I couldn't help but think of Fred while I sat at the meeting yesterday.

About a dozen years ago or more I was first having to learn about the value of executive compensation packages -- options and restricted stock. Coming to a job in "corporate America" by way of community organizing, theatre and not-for-profit work I was having a tough time learning.  I called in and told Fred, "I'm not interested in learning about Wall Street!".  He responded by saying, "Get interested and then you'll be interested".  A simple-sounding philosophical and performance direction. He was right, I started to perform as though I was interested and well, the rest is history.

I thought of Fred as I experienced new emotions, emotions that we create when we learn new things and learn in a new way, and when, most importantly we let others impact us.  

There I was, so very interested in hearing about the young analysts who are so creative in what they are able to do (I'm interested in creativity!), the challenges of investing in emerging markets, and other matters that once upon a time I would have had no interest in.

Today the person I work for asked me how I'd like to develop and how he can support my development at the firm.  I don't know the answer to his question - but I'm interested to find out! 

Thank you, Fred!