 Hi. Welcome this afternoon to our talk. We came all the way along from Switzerland and Austria to talk about a workshop that took place last autumn for leading scientists at our university. And we run through what was the background, what was at the workshop, and how was the evaluation. So the workshop took place at the University for Life Sciences in Vienna. You see the beautiful old main building, 150 years old. We have around 12,000 students and more than 1,000 of our employees are scientists. And in the framework of research careers, more than 200 of those are leading scientists. So they are responsible that their field of science is growing and is enhancing. And what my role is that I'm responsible for the training of those people, also for leadership training for scientists. And as you can imagine, for scientists, the leadership role is not something that they are trained for, because they are really, really good in science. That's the reason why they are appointed. But they have no training in the social skills factor. And when it comes to leadership for scientists, we work with one concept since years, which I think is a very useful one. It's the scientific leadership portfolio for scientists. I want to go through it very quickly. So if you are a leading researcher, you have four different rooms to lead. The one is science, where you're an expert in. The second one is education, where you act as a teacher, as a mentor. The third one is leading networks, where you cooperate internationally with other scientists and where you have, you need to have the power of convince people and to coordinate things. And the fourth one is the field of organization. And as you can imagine, this is the most unliked one, because you don't get, as a scientist, you don't get the merits out of that. It's the classical line management, the appraisal talks, everything in administration you have to do. And for scientists, it's very important to reflect on, at first, that they have a leadership role, and at second, that they have different leadership roles in different rooms. And each of those rooms has its own dynamics and has its own culture. And it's important to being flexible enough that you can step from one room to the other, how you need it. And that's the point where we asked Susanne to do a workshop for us, because Susanne wrote a book, applied improvisation for coaches and leaders, and I read it, and I thought, okay, let's try it out. It's a little bit of a risk, but let's try it out with our leading scientists, if they like to play on flexibility, and let's see whether this was helpful for them. Okay, so it's my turn now. I guess most of you know the status concept. Is anyone here who hasn't heard about it, status in his book, Keith Johnson, maybe they can raise their arms, or are they too ashamed to do so? Okay, there are two of them. Yeah, Paul, I know you have never heard about it, I'm sure. So I will just go through it very quickly. High status is really somebody who is very present, who is about talking about behavior and not about where you are in the hierarchy. So the good thing about this, you can always change it, because it's a behavior, verbal and nonverbal behavior. And so high status behavior is taking a lot of space, standing on both legs, holding your head straight, and touching others, which high status people love to do, and the higher you touch them, the higher your status gets, and the lower their status gets. So if I would touch her in her face, it would be even worse, just to let you know. So this is not as bad as this, for example. That's what politicians love to do, because they love high status behavior. So to wake you up a little bit, maybe I can see a high status audience. All of you just go into a high status position. So I'd love to see a high status audience. All of you are very important people. I can see that. Good. It's a little bit intimidating. But that's wonderful. So low status behavior is the contrary. You can sit down again. Thank you. And it's making yourself small, not taking a lot of space. It's all up there. And low status is touching himself. That's what low status people love to do, especially in the face, which women love to do a lot. So there's a lot of connection between status and also gender. So all of these, which some women like to do is low status behavior. And I would love to see a low status audience now. You really don't know why you're here and you are not good enough for us. Wonderful. Okay, but now let's get back to your normal status. So what I teach in my workshop, my concept is I try to teach people status flexibility. So I try to teach them that high status is not better than low status behavior. Most of the people in my workshops think, oh, wonderful. Now I can learn how to have as high status behavior all day long. I come even home to my family with a high status behavior. And this will change my way of being. No, that's not the point of my workshops. I want them to be flexible in their status behavior. That's what I try to teach them. And I tell them to that the first, it's almost one of the first things I try to tell them to understand the concept. So I also tell them the advantages of low status and high status. The advantage of low status is that you give space to others, which is very important. You have less status fights if you have a lower status. And you come across as having more empathy and as being more pleasant. So it's really important to take on that role of a low status behavior. Also, if you want open feedback, if you want to have an open conversation with your employee, it's not good if you go there with a 10 and say, yeah, please tell me, Andrea, what do you think about me? I really would like to get some open feedback. Do you think I will get some open feedback? Probably not. So it's really about getting on eye level. So please, Andrea, I would love to have some open feedback. I hope you want to get the point. So the advantages of high status behavior is naturally you have greater quality, you have greater credibility. Others will listen to you more and they will also take you more seriously. So it's good to be able to know both behaviors. There are four ways of how you can change your status. If you want to raise your status, you can do that by telling your own success stories or by name dropping. I was thinking maybe Donald and I would probably not be so good in this audience. But maybe like Barack and I, when I met last week, maybe talked to each other. Yeah, you see, that sounds good, doesn't it? I always do that one. So you can also raise your own status by lowering other status. So Andrea, I'm really sorry, but your shoes, they just don't match your outfit. I'm sorry. I am sure you have experienced that a couple of times in your life. And if you want to lower your status, there are also two ways how to do that. You can do that for self criticism. So I could do that telling you, I'm sorry, my English is just not really as good and I'm really nervous. So I'm really sorry. Or you can do that by raising the status of others. So by, for example, Andrea, you are so professional and you're working at a university. I admire you. It's really amazing. So these are the four ways of how you can change your status. Just as a short input that I also teach in my workshop, I think it's interesting, especially now that hierarchies are building down and people try to work without hierarchies, hierarchy paradox. It's postulated by Lena and Edge. It's a very interesting book that only exists in German. I've talked to the authors to translate it and they haven't done it so far. Anyway, the book exists only in German and their hypothesis is that when classical hierarchy is dissolving, I have to read that one, that it has the paradoxical effect of increasing the prevalence of status gains. And I think you have to be aware of that if you work with agility and all these kinds of modern ways of working together, which doesn't mean you can't work that way, but I think you should be aware of it. Because the classical hierarchy has the advantage that it doesn't have to be constantly renegotiated, which status you have. So you have this position and it's clear that you have a higher status and you don't have to fight for it on an everyday basis. Whereas if you don't have the hierarchy, you always have to fight about it to get this clarity about your status. So just for all of you who are working with agility. The next one, what we did in this workshop, in the workshop at the University of Natural Resources, we had four different goals. One of them was to know, to let the people, the participants find out what their natural status is. All of us have a range of status behavior where we feel at home. It can be lower status, it can be higher status, it can be in the middle, maybe improv players feel at home from two to eight. I always have this range from one to ten. One is very low, ten is very high. So improv players, maybe they can do a three, two, seven, one, eight, but most people, they feel at home like from three to six or from six to nine, whatever. And one exercise I love to do is I let people stand on stage or stand at some place, and then they get feedback from the audience from one to ten. I can just do it here. Which status behavior would you tell, would you see, from one to ten, one very low, ten very high? Just shout it. Just shout the number. Just, okay. And then I would ask people why. So what was the behavior I was showing makes you say seven and eight or nine. It's an exercise where I really ask people before if they are willing to do it because it can get very personal. And I never forced them to do it, but I think they have a big learning out of it. So the second exercise, I know we are just over time, I will hurry on, so they learn how to heighten their, to have more high status behavior, to be able to also have eight, nine or ten, which is important if you have scientific results and you go to conferences and you want to sell your scientific results. There you need high status behavior. And the other way is how to lower your status, which is all about status flexibility. So you can be approachable to students, you can get open feedback from your employees and you can talk to each other at eye level. And it also comes together a fourth goal of this workshop, which is status flexibility, which is a main tool for any kind of hierarchy organization. So I hand over to the last point of our presentation. We are almost finished. I asked in the beginning, was it helpful? And when we do a training, we do an evaluation on each training, of course. And the evaluation for this training was it has the highest scores on usability and on recommendation. So all participants recommend the training. And immediately after the workshop, one said to me, I thought that the scientific status that I can reach would be the most important. But now I know it's also the flexibility in using this status. And the remarks on the evaluation were in three main directions. So the one direction was seen as very helpful that it was there a possibility to break with old patterns of thinking and behavior just in trying out new roles and new masks. The second direction was the awareness of the own status behavior. So it's not very useful to mislead your subordinates with sending low status signals, but you are the boss and you do the decisions. And the third one is to being able to observe other people with their status behavior. And then you can react to that. So if there are status games, competition between like professors, you can step into if you want to, but you don't have to if you are aware of it. So that's the outcome. And I can recommend the book from Susanne, Applied Improvisation for Coaches and Leaders. And thank you for coming. Thank you, goodbye.