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(Excerpts from a recent proposal on how "CorporateTheatre" can facilitate the EXPERIENCING of the core values of a particular organization.)
Oneness: The basic foundation of a natural team is ‘Integration’. Using the theatre metaphor, Integration can happen only at the level of the ‘actor’. ‘Characters’ cannot integrate. For instance the King and the Slave, the Assassin and the Victim, experience hierarchy and conflict. But at the level of the actor there is no hierarchy and no conflict. Each actor is doing everything possible to make their own as well as the other actor’s performance as realistic as possible. Many organizations spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to integrate characters - people confined within their 'personality cages' of seniority, designation, qualification, experience, etc.). Participants in the CT workshop experience their ability to integrate powerfully as actors within minutes, and then take on functional hierarchy and even functional conflict as per the current and changing needs of the team, without getting into human hierarchy and human conflict.
Commitment: Commitment, like ‘Integrity’ has to be total. One cannot have 90% commitment just like there is no such thing as 90% integrity. Competencies can vary from individual to individual, and in the same individual from situation to situation. But commitment must remain consistent. A critical message repeatedly reinforced by the CT process is that when the commitment is total, new competencies get discovered and resources get created. Without commitment, even existing competencies and resources remain unutilized or underutilized. Commitment comes not out of individuals surrendering to the team. That may be a noble value but not always practical. Rather, it comes out of individual egos getting aligned to a common goal and a common success. Participants will experience the power of alignment, and the resulting commitment and its immense possibilities.
Creativity: Creativity is often thought of as a ‘technique’, or ‘thinking out of the box’. Participants will experientially redefine creativity. When you want to be different for the sake of being different, when you want to think out of the box you may end up blocking creativity. What you need may be in the box. Instead, creativity will be experienced as a free, committed, energized response to the need of the moment. And when individuals are free to express themselves without fear of rejection or ridicule, individual creativity becomes team innovation.
Agility: CT explores agility as the freedom to experience oneself and the world around as a ‘process’ and not as a ‘product’. Within the ‘personality prison’ I am a product - this is the way I am, this is the way I will be. Without the personality cage we become processes. Yesterday I felt introverted. Today I see myself as an extrovert. As they say in Zen, “you never step in the same river twice”. As a product I see the same river. As a process I see the constantly flowing changing water and all the wonders that come with it. Agility is the ability to reinvent oneself in complete freedom and with total availability in the ‘here-and-now’. Participants in the workshop experience and express their ability to continuously adapt themselves to constantly changing teams, and situations, in a matter of minutes.
Adding Value: In many organizations we create role clarity before goal clarity. Worse, in some cases while there is clarity of the role, there is no idea about the goal itself. Participants will experience that when I know what the team has to achieve, when I know what I can contribute, and when I know what the other people around me are contributing, only then can I add value to any process. Another critical component of adding value is the attitude, rather than the technique of ‘quality’ – the commitment to continuously improve on what is current available.
Integrity: In life, as in theatre, we play many different roles. We could be King in one play, and Slave in the next. So also the same individual may be Boss to someone, subordinate to someone, peer to someone, mentor, mentee, spouse, parent, son or daughter. However, the actor is the same. CT experiences Integrity as being centred in the actor. Irrespective of the roles we play, how do we remain centred in the actor within us, and how do we relate to the actor in the other. We also realise that if the actor does anything that is not consistent with the character he or she has to play, the role is ineffective and even disruptive. For this consistency, my role, my behaviour, my thoughts, and my body language has to be in alignment with the role that I am playing. Then every role has integrity.