Organizations face constraints. Constraints provide a springboard for creativity. Improvisational arts provide particularly juicy lessons for navigating the rapidly changing constraints and dynamics of the modern work experience. Using engaging exercises that draw on participants’ creativity, we will explore a model of resilient, three-dimensional leadership: within ourselves, with one another, and within systems. Work is a dance in all three of these dimensions. It is a dance that requires we move in the appropriate constraints of our tasks, but a dance that also requires us to improvise, to move flexibly, to bring our whole selves to our aspirations. Increased self-awareness is a foundational building block for leadership. Beginning with the self, we will experiment with practices that bring us in deeper contact with our own present- moment experience. Experiences of active, playful mindfulness increase our self-awareness which helps us connect to our own well of creativity. From this place of increased self-awareness, we can mindfully come in contact with others. Using creative exercises, we will engage in dyad interactions that allow us to stay in mindful awareness of ourselves while engaging with another. Finally, we will play with the system as a whole. How does a group create together in ways that honor individuals and relationships? How does a group achieve the things that have never been created before? Together will create something, the title of which we will discover together.

Workshop Outcomes:

 

• Understand a three-dimensional model for resilient leadership

• Learn riff-able exercises to foster resilient leadership in organizations

• Create something that has never been created before