 Hello everyone and welcome to this AIN big topic webinar very pleased this week to introduce Rebecca Stockley and Rebecca is going to lead a session for us on the topic of presence we're recording the session so we're available for people afterwards Rebecca over to you. Thank you very very much Paul and good morning everybody good afternoon depending on where you are in the in the world when I was in acting school one of the things that we agreed upon in the theater department was that presence was one thing that could not be taught it just seemed that some actors had stage presence and some didn't and I don't believe that anymore I I've matured I think there are components of behavior that we can identify and then learn to control that give us presence and a lot of that has been outlined in the description that cat put into the to the chat for us thank you cat and this is not an official AIN document yet this is a what will we call it cat a working a working description of presence something like that yeah yeah one of the things that AIN is beginning to do is identify the skills of an AIN facilitator the competent and the competencies that make for a good facilitator and presence is one of those competencies and so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for us to explore some of what we perceive at those of us who have joined this call some of what we perceive as the as the the behaviors that I think it is behaviors that make get that give people presence and and I'll I'll just I'll just kick it off by talking about that illusion thing that it seems that we couldn't that couldn't be taught when I was in theater school the elusive thing being the ability or person to hi Matt there's there's this ability that some people have to be in the moment and in the moment being aware of their surroundings being in their bodies breathing being grounded rather than being activated hyper full of adrenaline and zipping around the room you know in a manner that makes it maybe challenging to attend to them or even uncomfortable to attend to them so the idea that that a competent facilitator is grounded present and can take the room is one of the that's one of my theories so I wanted to kick that out there and see what kind of responses people might have to that yeah grounded seems a really good word that begins to give a behavioral basis for presence of facilitator or any presenter who seems to be stable control of their energy would be beginning of presence for me do you want to indicate Rebecca who else you you're calling in let's see oh is my the only one who can see everyone is here no others can see everyone but you're in charge oh okay great if you have something you want to add just speak up and I will thank you for muting when you're not speaking guys and yeah anybody have somebody this is Kat I love the idea of presence being connected to being present that's elegant and but not always intuitive and by thinking a lot of presentation skills courses it's taught or focused on sort of the opposite way can you can you help me understand what what you're talking about the opposite way well I think a lot of bad presentation skills result in people being less present that it results in people being taught to focus on the wrong things like how where am I putting my hands or what am I supposed to memorize ahead of time or what do I look like and getting very much more self-conscious and out of the moment as opposed to really being present and relaxed and grounded yeah the idea of present being being present and having presence is very elegant and also very aligned with the applied approach to creating more presence yeah I I go along with there's a be on the West Coast of the United States we have a lot of influence of of airy fairy touchy feely mindfulness and I I'm sorry to diminish mindfulness in that way but it but being present is being from my perspective is being grounded and and breathing and and being mindful so that you're attentive to the people in the room then anxious about what comes next or worried about what you said a moment ago you're here and you're now and you're attending to what is now and yeah just as as Paul mentioned being grounded being staying being present does anyone else have any anything to add about that aspect of of presence well I guess I don't know for is a kind of yes and then yes but at the same time because definitely I can experience the grounded quality of when we use the expression your presence your present in a group but I've absolutely buy into the kind of airy fairy version mindfulness but it's absolutely possible to be present in the world and to really tune into every corner of possibility and maybe to build a just a tiny bit of continuity from the webinar I was involved with a few months back where we talked about this it's just an alternative view is that being present in the present is only one aspect and quite difficult usually sometimes present in the moment it's called a present in the now but another kind of view coming out of quantum physics is around the idea of being present in the field of possibility and to be present in that place of potential it's possible to be present in history to be present in the past and finding as a living thing still playing into it's possible to be present in the future and it's possible to be present in the now and not just present in the moment which is a quite traditional in pro view and so I would just expand it wider present isn't only about being grounded in the now it's about being grounded in the field of possibility that includes the past in the future thank you Paul that's elegant yeah and that really fits in with with improvisation from my perspective when we're working with a group of people being present in the field of possibility is about what might be brought into the space this this space being a virtual space but what might be brought into the space that I didn't anticipate it that's a yeah that's very lovely anything else Paul does anybody else have anything about just that being present aspect you've got David can you see Rebecca everybody but I couldn't tell that David had anything it wasn't yeah he was waving so when you were talking cat what came to mind is thinking about my ability to be present to myself and to others is based on whether I can accept that things won't go right right all the time and if I can't accept that oh I'm feeling agitation that I'm trying to fix that agitation or fix that person in the room and so to be present is to say yes to yep that just happened or yes I'm feeling this anxiety and to have this in a sense spaciousness I think of allowing that yeah I see your hand John I was gonna say that one thing that it it connects to for me is it's actually before I did improv I was doing work as a professional facilitator and training folks in a graduate program for it and one thing that I started learning an improv that then really connected for me like oh yes this is what we're trying to teach people we're teaching that we facilitators is this notion and improv of the difference between pushing scenes versus being open to discovery this idea instead of thinking about thinking try to think ahead in the scene to instead be not that it's never wrong to make those sort of proactive forward-looking choices but to really lean into as much as possible discovery being open to be surprised don't be distracted by what's supposed to happen and I think for me a lot of where that connects with the sort of mindfulness and openness and holding space that facilitators asked to do is being willing to hold the space to not only be the contradictory roles of being the steward of the agenda but also being open to what's actually happening and to not try to sort of push the scene of what you're facilitating Rebecca you're muted you're muted thank you the you could tell I was talking the open to discovery connected with that is that there is no supposed Hylia there is no supposed to happen in in an improv scene from my perspective it's only the potential of what will happen and if I go into a course that I'm training without a bias about what is supposed to happen I'm much more likely to witness what is happening in the room and have an experience with the participants and I find that when I've created my own content that's much more doable when I'm applying someone else's content or perhaps providing a training to a really large group of people where I'm only doing one component and it's been decided in advance what must be covered I find that sometimes I'm bounded by that content and it takes me away from what's really going on in the room and and it makes me feel much less present so I wondered if that yeah John look you look inspired I'll turn it over to you take it away I think I think Paul had his hands up I didn't want to after you John I meant I meant Paul but go ahead John it's you Paul I guess that the great track that I found myself falling into and I call it a trap for me not for anyone else is that when we say there is no supposed to happen we create a supposed to happen and and so the thing I love about the field of possibility metaphor that comes out of kind of the philosophy of quantum physics and parallel universes and all that stuff is and it also goes back to kind of the theory around humble inquiry of Edgar Schein and Pete Burden's leading consciously work which is that it's beautiful but there are always supposed to happen because we are loaded with functions and context and hidden agendas of organizations but the beautiful possibility of improvisation is simply to notice without judgment usually that's what we do in a place of play with the sand is no you keep seeing the supposed to happen and what you do is you just notice them and then some of them fall apart of your improvisation because you invent them and you other times you just notice they kind of float away and something else enters the space but the danger of the improv rule of there is no supposed to happen is it simply becomes the biggest supposed to happen of all. I got it there's so this is one of the things that's happening right now is another aspect of presence it's the ability to be able to give and take focus which is awkward in this form it's much easier for me on the stage or in a room with participants in a workshop but from my perspective I want to shift from talking about presence into talking about the give and take of focus or in some cases the give and take of control and when I'm working with a facilitator who's completely in control all the time and they sort of hold control over the room I tend to just relinquish my a lot of my energy and and just follow along and in some cases that's that may be what we want if we just want to give people rules and regulations but in many cases the learning experience is is much more enriched by the active participation of the people in the room so I wonder about I'd love to just kick this around a little bit the idea that giving control to your participants and giving and taking focus with and from you do as facilitators and whether that's in asking questions or just giving them the floor to make decisions how can we use that as facilitators anybody want weigh in on that some people I can't see okay it doesn't look like it so okay so my my my relationship to give and take of oh cat yeah no no John has his hand up oh and at the top of your screen there might be a place where you can change your view so you can see us all sort of Hollywood square style and yep what I think one thing that that connects to me on the control there's some really great research and often in outside of applied impromptu just in sort of facilitation training in general there's this notion of holding space and the idea behind it is there was a lot of research by Tava stock and the national training labs about around 1946 was after the US dropped the bomb and so we get very interested because small groups had the ability to make decisions that could be irreversible in their consequences and one of the dynamics that came up over and over were that groups pushed to have a leader which was surprising the thought was that leaders impose themselves on groups but that often individual that groups would really get anxious without a leader would push someone to the leadership role and then promptly as they were sort of pushing them up to the head of the room metaphorically then they would behead them sort of the idea is that they would get to say no you were in charge and now it's not my problem and so the people who most had the ability to affect change relinquish that control so it was sort of intentional dependency that was going on and so then one of the roles of professional facilitators is to take that role the groups may want to put you in as the role of an authority figure or parent because my conflict resolution background it was be a judge instead of being a mediator and then so one of the jobs of the facilitator is to be in that role but then not take that authority and control and power and sometimes it would be loose like you were just going to structure here are the containers in which we occur so you're sort of like setting up the scene but not controlling the scene in improv setting and then there's other designs like open space as one of the models where it's very little where it's sort of intentional that the facilitator's role is to be the leader label that people want but really your job is just to pick up coffee cups and to help support the room and be able to do that and so that being one of the important roles goes on so that's what comes to mind when you said about this idea about control and giving that over to the group yes and and one of the things that that is in the description for those who came in a little later in the chat area there is a description a working description for the the facilitator competence competencies being able to say competencies is one of them by the way facilitator competencies for AI and facilitators and one of the the working description refers to status as and so I'm talking about giving and taking control giving and taking focus and status it's that we use for doing that certainly someone who's just supporting the room so that the conversation can be held may behave like they have lower status and sometimes the status is taking the stage with a louder voice and more commanding presence so it's status it's focus it's control but the ability to engage people in the room activating the people in the room is how I see it so I want to activate the people in this virtual room is there anybody else who has methods for giving or taking control cat I don't I don't know if this is an answer to that question exactly it's not an answer to that question but the thought that was in my head as we're having both of these conversations is what always comes up for me is that intent feels important it is what is sort of the uber competency or the core competency underneath all of these things so sometimes when we're having conversations about is there a do we do we enter a training with a specific result in mind for the training like is there a right outcome for the training or not or how much control do I have in the room versus how much how much am I leading as the facilitator versus how much space am I leaving for the participants to lead in any given moment how much control for all of that it feels to me like there isn't a right answer to those questions but that's the right question and that any given moment as a facilitator what great facilitators do is have that question in mind at any given moment and make choices where the choices they're making are aligned with their intention moment to moment and that what they're doing is actually aligned with the with with the outcome that they want or the effect they're meaning to have and they know what that is so I guess I'm curious about about the how that lands if people feel like we should be clear about the intention that we're having or that we want to be having versus whether whether we need to know the impact we're gonna have when we try something I mean I guess there you can even do that like I'm just gonna try something and see how it lands but it feels like even that intention should be intentional to go like I don't know what if impact this is gonna have I'm just gonna try it but I feel like I'm intentional even if I'm doing that Kat would you identify the question that you hold in mind once again I guess the question that I'm always asking is it is probably just simply like what what's my intention like what am I trying to achieve or what you know what do I want to offer what impact do I want to have how am I trying to help some version of that and and that is participant focused right like what am I trying to give how am I trying to what am I trying to do for my partner and cat can I just ask a question on that just in terms of stepping away from the facilitator context just to say if it's possible a pure improvisational state what why does an improviser need an intention I don't know if an improv well if I'm a I don't know what pure improv means at Paul and I had a conversation at one point where we said you know all improv is applied improv really if I'm on stage I'm applying it to a performance art where the goal is to entertain an audience who is paying to be entertained right so in that sense I might say it I might answer the question that way but I don't know I think so on some level my my intention is to provide entertainment to a paying audience and or delight my partner that I'm playing with because we're doing this for fun with each other or to feel fulfilled and go home happy if I'm just doing it for myself so that's one level of it on another level maybe the answer is nothing but in the context of facilitation and applied improv I think I have a responsibility to the participants in the room not to waste their time and to provide what they think they're coming for because I'm serving them I think I have an example of where that comes up in at least for me in in performative in performance improv if you're doing a particular format let's say in Armando or deconstructed narrative where you have a story and you notice oh I've got I see a fun idea of a comedic premise in this and I might initiate a scene with that really is the focus of that and so we have a clear idea of this is the core fun thing of the scene we're gonna heighten this and explore this and we're sort of it's not that they're wrong answers in the scene but there's sort of the natural currents but then at some point something occurs in the scene that's outside that that's sort of we might consider tangential now they're tangents because we have a focus to the scene and it can be tempting when we're just focused on oh how can we just develop this one thing to not notice this funny quirk that just happened maybe someone gave a misspoke when they said a line to me but something came out funny and to know that's the interesting thing right now at least in the US there's often sort of two sides of improv it's really on one there's this game approach where it's oh no we always have a clear game or clear comedic premise and things are off focus from that or off game and in other perspective we're a train we were on the tracks right there's sort of a path to go and then the other view is that it's all about mindfulness that it's improvised like a crow that whenever you follow whatever the shiny thing is in front of you and I often joke that I like to improvise like a crow on a train that that often we find a core funny thing of the scene it really and it gets momentum it's easier that way it's nice that we're sort of have some like oh I see the next beats coming along with this but then to still and it's hard because they're contradictory things to then not not not notice when something off that happens and to be able to follow and explore that I feel that same kind of tension exist and duality exist in doing good work that if I went into every training with a completely blank slate of I'm just going to be present in the moment I don't know that that would go that well and likewise if I know what every minute it's going to happen then I'm going to miss a lot of great opportunities and it's just going to be trying to drag my group along and so finding that balance is part of the art and some of the fun challenge of it for me I think it is that both and and to pick up on what Paul was saying earlier there's some paradoxical elements and cats ideas about intention it struck me paradoxically I've just done a facilitation of a conference and the it was a lot easier to be present when the sessions have been properly designed either by me or by the session leaders there was a series of sessions because then things run more smoothly typically there's a focus and a clear intent piece by piece and you can give your attention to the various movements and signals in the room where people have something to add that's useful so the paradox is the more the session is designed or prepared the easier it is to be present in that moment rather than having to juggle infinite amounts of things that distracting from or taking ourselves away from the purpose of that session I think you had your hand up cat no okay good just jazz jazz hands to what John was saying gotcha okay good Paul did you start to say something yeah just what Paul said and also inspired by John with the performative stuff but hit the a new insight for me or maybe a yeah just a surprise was up in Edinburgh where I go every year talking I did lots of interviews for a book I'm writing with with improv troops and groups and I asked the question so you know when you're on stage is their intention and some of that I mean these people are professional improvisers doing at the full-time job and what they said was yeah we always realized the intentions afterwards looking back which is kind of what's come up in the conversation and if intentions come up during the performance like what am I doing next if that's before in someone's head they said it means we haven't rehearsed enough and you know a lot of people hear that as paradoxical but what they do is they spend hours and hours before the show or the tour rehearsing the intention and so if the intention is to improvise a long-form serious drama then they rehearse and do loads and loads of activities and exercises around that skill and if it's about comedy and the intentions to get big laughs and people booking tickets and you know but you know telling their friends to come they do days and days of warm-up the only thing they don't rehearse is the show and so then when they're in the zone they go on stage and do something amazing and lots of people told me they come off saying how was it what happened and so yeah I guess that's the issue for me is that you get so good the skill is that you notice the intention and then make it make it disappear. You're muted Rebecca. Sorry there's a conversation in the chat about meta-intention David asks is there intention and meta-intention and then Kat asks what meta-intention see what it means so meta-intention David could you would you burst that out a little bit explore that a little more. Yeah I'm exploring with everyone else I just came to me as a question but so if I'm in a scene I might have an intention of I'm coming in I have a sense of where the story is going but then I also have this larger intention of I want to be present I want to be supportive and then I can even have a larger intention of I want to support improv in my community or something so so I'm wondering if there's I mean how do we always hold intention with an open hand you know yeah I'm curious what people think about yeah well my excuse me my I have I have about a billion intentions in my life that are related to billion maybe I'm exaggerating a million that seem to be related to improvisation that and I often feel as though I'm putting on a different hat in a different every different situation if I'm teaching some people the basics of improv I'm wearing one hat if I'm using the basics of improv in order to help a new group in an organization become a team then I'm wearing a different hat and yeah and my my my intention I try to make my intention with any group of participants in a workshop whether they are our students or or participants that I wouldn't call students for some reason I try to make the intention about about their learning experience that's very vague but focus on on their yeah focus on their learning and my intention is to bring bring practices and ideas that might help their learning go in in whatever different direction might be useful to them like here the intention is to get you guys talking about this so meta intention it's like could that be like the larger intent intention large intestine large intention or those that we sort of put on the back burner I see that Erica was coming but I was reminded of the expression the road to hell is paved with good intentions if you you have that one and whatever intentions we have there's still these behaviors visible physical elements of presence that are more interesting to me than mentalistic concepts Erica you want to weigh in sure this conversation all over so intention I do have I was just looking at workshop I'm teaching tomorrow right and with my co-facilitator we have this practice of setting intentions so there's there are the intentions of leaving with new skills but really I think in my heart and in our heart it's like how do we want them to feel how do we want them to feel individually and as a group at the end and that's what and we sort of find that right so then we can look in the debrief you know the next day okay what was this like and we're kind of managing it's really helpful to be managing for that the whole time and when I designed like the content like I'm teaching something about communication and clarity and confidence I build in like different tracks I'm like okay I'm pretty sure these are like the main beats that this that are involved in this topic but then I may have you know four different activities or concepts that go sorry I have a little background noise we have a snow day here just like just so you guys can see like this is what it looks like here there is no school I'll build in I'll like build in these different tracks so then because I really don't know what that group is going to be about and I don't know what they may spend a lot of time in one area so I just I feel like it's this constant back and forth of like who is this group and what do they seem to be wanting and where are they curious and just and knowing that I'm prepared to kind of go down these different roads depending on the responsiveness of you know how it's going with that group that's yeah that also raises a question for me but I wonder Erica if you've got any insights on to that which is some of actually the majority of the improv groups I spoke to definitely had something I wrote in my diary is then next so I'm here as an actor called a facilitator or performer and then there's this thing called the audience the things I do are going to have an impact on them and their reaction can be different but certainly one or two of the groups said there is no then there is only us so yeah what relationship are you seeing between like what I shared and like that concept well I I think I heard love in your heart and because you want you want good to have them that there's this kind of benevolent intention in you there's nothing that you said that was when I work with this group tomorrow we're going to harm them we're going in with a kind of benevolence around it and when the people said there's only us when there's only us we have to create a shared intention it could end up bad because we don't know where it's going to go it's the facilitator is a collaborator in a process that's unknown that they call improvisation and what comes out we don't know and and some of the scenarios anyone that's a consultant will know in that space that you can get thrown out you know it goes somewhere where it doesn't maximize your chances of getting booked together and so you know that it's not an answer it was just I noticed that you were framing tomorrow in a very benevolent way that needed you to have an intention going in that had goodness in your heart I guess that comes down to maybe a core belief that I have is people are naturally naturally want to connect naturally want to grow naturally want to be creative naturally want to support each other like that that's underneath whatever and so that's there with me that's there with them and my job as a facilitator is to create the environment so that that can come through like to lower the stakes to set people up for success so they can experience that little edge of where are we operating at our best where our insights emerging where are we able to share a little bit more and it there's no you're right I have no fear of the people in the room because I'm like oh wow look at these people you know here are these I guess I trust my ability to to to respond to the people who are right in front of me in a way that that reaches there's a lot now that background noise I don't think of me um I think from the moment we walk in the room that's our job is to respond and if so if if the if someone there is like tense it's like okay how do I you know what's going on with them how do I how do I respond to that so that they um start coming out of that space and more into their true self oh I guess it does sound very benevolent and everything but it's very powerful you know it's um I've never had a co-created horrible experience I guess because it's a yeah I'm not sure if I'm answering or responding to exactly what you're saying so it looks like maybe Lisa wants to yeah Lisa so okay so I have a really interesting interesting couple of experiences lightly from some groups but this conversation about presence takes me back to an early training I had in facilitation had nothing to do with improv had all all experiential education um where we kept talking about energy multiplies good bad and different and how as we go back to that phrase we hold space for you know whatever's about to happen and I feel like that presence is kind of for me it's that energy too so I walk into the room if I'm nervous and apprehensive or you know things are going on I notice that that starts to populate the group whether whether I you know it just happens likewise if I walk in kind of zen like and just kind of you know like this is going to be the best day of your life and you know you're just going to be able to experience something new talking to mainly to myself but also for the group um once I know what their intention is and what they want to see what their group looks like at the end of the our session if I if that's really crystal clear then whatever happens in the room is is what needed needed to happen um and I take a little bit of the open space uh protocols into some some of my work as well as the right people are there what happened is what needed to happen um and most recently the a group a huge group I was working with they said hey we've got we've got some extra time for you and it's like what do you mean it's like we have extra 30 minutes well you can you fill that and it's like yeah I can fill that and I had to go back to what their intention was for that day and they were going through a huge reorg people were not pled pleased and but they still wanted people to work together and talk and um and so I gave that time back to the group I just expanded the debrief like my early facilitation time I would probably would have filled it with five different activities but I kept going back to what do they need and what energy needs to happen in that room and what transformation needs to happen in the room and they just need to rebuild their trust with each other and so I just expanded that debrief time and it was it it was a revelation to me but for that group it was so impactful and set that three-day conference up they they went through a lot of the the stuff that they thought was going to be really resistant kind of breeze through it and I feel like that we I know myself as a facilitator I run that the rails of like oh I've done this before I know how this works I know the outcomes usually versus what if I come about this in a fresh way in a new way in new presence in a new um like really look at this exercise what else can come from this exercise I feel like I'm much more present with the work and I don't feel like oh my god I've done this game 500 times before to go oh this is their first time and to be like oh being that shock and all I've like wow that was really a great game and have that energy multiply from you know from the facilitator on to the to the rest of the group just some thoughts I'm dealing with right now so I love that thank you very much Lisa that converse for me something that started with Rebecca which is this word grounded which is that it is part of the role to hold the space for the best of what we are and can be whatever that turns out to be I don't know where the background is noise is coming from but uh because everyone's muted it at one point there is a lot of background noise that I'm hearing is anyone else hearing it no yes no all right now I think it was not okay Matt you yeah I'm muted so I've been teaching an annual retreat for the 30 facilitators in my company record you know this this group because you came and did some sessions for us and I always put the same intention out at the beginning which is we're going to go out each of you is going to go out and teach about building community but unless you have a felt deep sense of it much deeper than what you're going to teach you're not going to be able to do that in a genuine way so this four-day gathering sorry I'm going to stand up hang on is about building a sense of community among us so you really have that to draw on and um opening that up to the facilitators I mean to the participants can be really scary sometimes I know people have encouraged that happening but I'm thinking of a time where the African-American facilitators really wanted to vent some stuff and it got to um we got to a really difficult place before it resolved and I mean that that was actually successful in the end one of the women said this is actually the only mixed race group that I feel safe speaking my truth then which was great but more recently than that we had a huge hashtag me too thing where one of the men who actually was not present in the room that year the women were just furious with this guy and for me trying to be um what we call present in the in the face of just fury um you know not directed at me personally but in the room was insanely challenging um and the only thing that I could kind of do was to um not lead but moderate with compassion um and I mean this was two years ago and it's still um still has repercussions one of the women recently said a friend of mine at UCLA teaches social justice and I'd really like you to have a conversation with her I mean people are still trying to educate um all of us including me um I'm just trying to talk about being presence in in the face of stuff that's uncomfortable and unexpected um and let me let me just circle back to one other thing I used to always try to lead by consensus to get everybody to agree and my situation is special because it's my company but a facilitator who I had come in work with us once said to me no you don't understand your job is not to get everybody to agree your job is to make it safe for everybody to be able to state their truth and for you to make the final decision because people are waiting for you to decide so um that I mean I know that's not the usual coming in and facilitating although maybe it is sometimes but that actually has been such a relief for me to understand that um people can empower a leader as long as they feel taken care of and heard that's beautiful and it speaks to uh the evolution of our society it was a consensus was what we did in that for me it was the 60s and 70s and now we're in a place where the world is changing so rapidly and we're we are the world's getting smaller and bigger at the same time we have we have people in the room who are different ages different levels of education really different kinds of experiences you know growing up being alive even so uh making uh making the room space for a real variety of people it can be very challenging I want to so so matt thank you for that I want to um point out something that cat asked she had to go to another call another meeting but I wanted to point out something that she mentioned in the chat uh so I'll say we we have talked about presence in a lot of different ways giving and taking control or focus or status and intention among other things what else from from the wisdom in the room here I'd like to know what what else makes for presence what what when you think of of yourself as having presence or um or if you might leave a leave a presentation or an experience saying that person has really has presence what components are there in presence can can we uh take it apart a little bit more I think we've talked about a few oh we're raising hands yeah Rebecca's talking I wanted to respond to Patrick's question and to what Matt said and I think it's an answer to what Rebecca's just asked so this idea of witnessing maybe it's a fancy word for listening carefully and staying in the room even while uncomfortable or surprising things are said I think the the uncomfortable is the bit that is less familiar to improvisers we're very comfortable with the unexpected because that's the stock in trade the uncomfortable maybe is witnessed uh in the way the word is used by narrative therapists for example who will listen to somebody's story maybe without saying anything at all while the story is being told because it's important that it is heard listen to witnessed in that sense and that that could be broadened as a skill for improvisers or facilitators is to as part of the presence is noticing carefully what's going on without prejudice as to what we're going to do next if anything uh John all right two things that have come to mind on hearing it one is my formal training in conflict resolution and it's one of the things about facilitating that is that it's when there's deep conflict it's I feel like we feel most tempted to want to jump in and fix it often which is when of course that's the biggest trap because we are the ones with the least power to affect the conflict that others are in and so sort of recognizing that and getting comfortable with that and finding out of course I had to get a call then finding out sort of where our own individual triggers are that for some folks when things get very emotional we go oh no we want to down or we want to go oh no we need to stop that and I think that's things um sort of learning about yourself as an instrument uh for that and how that plays out and how that goes for it so that that becomes a big part of what we're doing for facilitation and doing the work the other thing I wanted to mention on what we bring for present that hasn't been closed emotional tone I think that that's when we know from scenes that you can have the same text of the scene but the emotional tones are really important and thinking about what the emotional energy you bring are and I'm very aware that that seems nebulous but it's really critical and finding and that there's not a right answer that at least in conflict resolution there's often one of two forms that works one is there's some facilitators who are just incredibly empathic and supportive and they want to be there and others and I've fallen this who are kind of irrelevant irrelevant irreverent and humorous and like oh yeah this is a huge fucking mess and being able to say that in in the group but whatever it is having a sense of joy and optimism being a really important thing to bring and that how that plays out can go a lot of different ways but sort of that emotional state that you're in and that you hold I found that to be one of the most important and sort of defining things that has changed and evolved for me in the facilitation work I do and what most separates individual facilitators when it when you think about what works for one facilitator may not work for another and that's sort of emotional intelligence and that emotional work that you're doing with the group both for modeling and just often being the cheerleader for the group I find to be a really important and effective thing well put I the the emotional state of being open and trusting and reading the room empathetic is is sort of it's that tends to be my style and that wouldn't work for everybody it just doesn't and it's not I mean we can't ask paul's at jackson to change his personality in order to facilitate he's terribly successful as he is so it's an interesting conversation there's also there's some lovely conversation in the in the chat on the sidebar about about witnessing and just being available to your audience and I want to harken back to that moment of when there's deep conflict the urge to repair it and as a very kind of hyper vigilant empathetic facilitator when I was a young when I was young my urge would be to fix it if there was a conflict in the room I see people nodding and when I had the experience of working with a very a brilliant facilitator his name was mark milliman he was one of the authors of surfing the edge of chaos and one of his methodologies whenever the you know an outlier emerged with you know being able to identify the conflict or speak their truth and and it was not popular and indeed it felt dangerous to the room he would give like all this positive energy to that person and and amplify that message with with this positive energy with something like this is great I'm so glad you said that and he pulled that energy up into the room to to to identify the crisis and I saw him take intractable groups with intractable problems but while they may not be solved when they're intractable they're often not solved in a weekend while it may not be solved having something identified as the problem that emergence can transform an organization yeah I'm David I'm gonna turn it yeah that triggered a thought Rebecca of so what's happening why does that why is that so transformative and what I'm wondering is if often in organizations things are suppressed right that that isn't happening we're pretending as if it's not and so being present to it and so maybe one part of presence at times could be to amplify it to bring some put a spotlight on it bring some attention to it and and not just attention to it because it's there could be different kinds of attention like shaming like no no you shouldn't have that but what I'm hearing is this is good this is really juicy let's look at this together and and hopefully we've created a supportive container so that we can look at that and maybe people don't feel that supportive container normally and so it's been pushed down yeah my experience is when when I get pushed back now I give it I I give it space and sometimes some of the participants will argue for me or for the idea that I've you know I'm training and I'm not asking for that you know they'll say no no that's not that's not the problem or whatever but the experience of every participant feels vital and yeah not letting them bully the group but but yeah to to elevate ideas yeah alisa yeah so that goes to another thing um another training I had was this is more I guess a transformative work and interpersonal interpersonal work but is that as a facilitator we are mirrors for our group and how we you know again go back to hold that space or deal with those situations that come up good bad or indifferent allows people to go oh oh that's one way of oh okay that's that's a cool way of dealing with that or I've never thought of it that way and that we get to kind of train on site like that group I was talking about earlier I was able to help them choose into you know offer opportunities for them to choose into healthy communication and I was there for oversight so it's like we have that ability to really mirror that behavior that's going to be much more productive in that community even though we're technically not in that community perhaps but um we're just gonna we get to model that behavior and say hey this is this is another option thank you uh so there's a there's a few ideas that are popping up presence is being a mirror to the group holding the space spaciousness the idea of witnessing and one of the things that Paul Levi said or is it Levy one of the things that he said is uh is the idea that it's not it's not the facilitator and the participants but rather it's it's us so it's a group of people in an experience together um yeah is there anything else that I that for you when when we say presence is there anything else that pops up and and you can share that in the sidebar or bring it up I would like to resolve end this conversation pretty soon because I thought it was a one hour conversation my bad and I've got I've got someone coming over to repair our our wi-fi you guys have been freezing well while you talk on on my end so that's very fast service I called it in yesterday but um but yeah I saw David I saw your hand and and let's go for a few more minutes this this is a great conversation by the way I'm having a great time David I would just raise in my hand for Paul's head because he was yeah I'm over here oh Paul's in the dark because he has jet lag Paul yeah I wanted to put a word in for some of the more obvious and superficial elements of presence like having a strong clear voice I think that uh body language is very important that someone who has presence is able to be still uh and and hold the room that sort of take take up space and command the room I think one thing that for me that comes up is when I think of a stage presence I have to think of like confidence you're interested in a show like confidence this is going to be great the audience doesn't worry about your show and yet there are times when I think that I've had good critical moments particularly in facilitating conflicts where the most effective thing I've done is to say well I'm stumped and what's going to go from there it's a sort of share the difficulty and not sort of trying to project a notion of infallibility or I've got all the answers for you because that's exactly what you don't want to have as your role and so that that's part of it as well so often initially you're opening the stage with confidence but then also being willing to share like yeah it seems like we've got a lot of frustrations and things are going around in a circle what do we want to do about that as opposed to acting like oh I'm a magician and I know this trick that I can pull out of my hat to help make others problems go away instead of recognizing that that's that's the case and the other thing is presence for me is kind of maybe say like be more present I'm like I don't know what that feels like for me it's often digging into curiosity that that's that's often thing for me just being curious which is where I get to the trying trying to be surprised I think trying to lean into that because I know that like everyone else I'm bad at being surprised I would send to put all the cognitive dissonance and all the other filters perceptive filters we have and confirmation bias to avoid that to really try to notice what I don't expect I love it anything else I was thinking of yeah an example of presence and what came to mind was at A.I.N. Stonybrook at Gabe Mercado's session and I forget which day but we were in a long oval of chairs if any of you were there and he shared a game yeah he shared a game with us and I just remember at the very beginning the way he was standing and so I'm just if you can remember that or any kind of example of when you've seen others have presence what did that look like or feel like but he commanded our attention and there was a sense of spaciousness he was grounded confident and I felt connected with him it was a sense of spaciousness you know oh go ahead it's in the chat because I've been having fun chatting away with everyone um but Patrick brought up like using a microphone and I just wanted to reiterate that like using like a wireless mic it's so lovely because then you can walk around the room like you're all talking about you can use your body language and you can use like this tone of voice and you can get quiet or you can get big and you're not like in this like I have a strong voice everyone can hear me right you know that really limits your responsiveness and your presence so just saying again yes everyone use microphones so you can be inclusive and responsive I think it relates to our conversation here in my improvisation workshops I have a lot of people who come and take them who have never done any hi kid they've never done any improvisation before and one of the things that I address is is that you need to be learned to be heard and to be seen because the improv impulse sometimes when someone is new to it is to disappear to hide behind others turn their back on the audience talk very quietly so that no one can hear what they have to say and so just being heard and seen is part of what confidence looks like that one of the things that we're doing is you know AIN is we're trying to identify the competencies that make for great facilitators and what some of what we've has come up today has been invaluable we've gone we've gone very deep and uh and I love that we're ending with some of what I perceive as the more obvious things that you need to be heard and seen uh let's take uh let's take a couple more minutes any anything else let's just popcorn I think one thing that's interesting when you do competencies because we in graduate school when we're doing you know how does someone pass a class and inflation that there's both here are competencies that someone needs to have so there's all this sort of here the kind that they demonstrate and at the same time it also starts to look like not so much for improv but what you hear often more often described in stand-up comedy that when comics get really great um no other comic can really be like them it's not the jokes it's really they're better at being themselves and so there's that element as well of it so there's both how do we get these shared competencies and then what is it for this individual what does their great facilitation look like and that's going to be different for different people absolutely so it's the ability to be yourself to be open to listen to expect to be surprised to have intention to really listen and be there with your participants as well as training all this stuff that we've got to train that sounded like a conclusion rebecca that was my that was that was where i was heading very thank you very much everyone for coming paul anything in closure yeah i want to thank you rebecca and thank all the participants for your physical virtual presence and your comments spoken and comments written the chat i hope will be available alongside the recording because there's some really nice summary points and questions that were raised there so this will be available as a recording and there is one more big topic before before the end of the year look out for that on the website the facebook page and possibly a newsletter and if you'd like to offer a topic for next year or to host one of the drop-in social chats where there's no topic but an emergent agenda then email me and let me know we're starting to compile next year's program right now so all offers and suggestions or even requests are welcome so i'm going to end the recording so if anyone has anything to say that they want to say that won't be recorded we'll be able to do that in a moment i'm stopping the recording right now