BLOC Podcast

51: The Power of Play with Sarah Filman

May 31, 2022 Episode 51
BLOC Podcast
51: The Power of Play with Sarah Filman
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I chat with the founder of Playful Perspectives, Sarah Filman about how she helps develop teams and leaders through improv and play. 

Sarah Filman (she/her) is a certified leadership coach, playful facilitator, and improv comedian based in Seattle, Washington. She founded Playful Perspectives to support mission-driven individuals, leaders, and teams to grow, connect, and create to transform themselves and the world. Grounded in leadership and people management experience in both tech and non-profit organizations, she's passionate about the power of play to support radical growth, inclusive spaces, and thriving teams.

Visit Sarah's website at: https://www.playfulperspectives.com

Sarah's suggestion for those interested in learning more about leadership and power dynamics:

Cyndi Suarez's The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

Thanks for listening to the BLOC!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

Or check out what I'm working on over at https://www.getusefulstuff.com/

Sarah Filman:

is the way that you have been showing up? How is that serving you? If it's serving you in all the ways you want great, if it feels like actually it's holding you back in certain ways, what would it be like to change that?

Heidi Kirby:

Hello, friends and welcome to the blog, the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host Heidi Kirby. Recently, my good friend and fellow podcast host, Amy Patricek. Sick of these share what you learned podcast introduced me to Sarah Filman, the founder of playful perspective, who uses improv, in play, to help grow leaders and organizations. We talk about how exactly she does that. And what it looks like to incorporate improv to incorporate play in an environment with your team or with your leaders, to help them learn more about themselves and really reflect and grow. And while we're on the topic of leadership development, Just a friendly reminder that if you go to my website, Heidi kirby.com, you can find information on learning culture and strategy services that I offer as a consultant, different professional development, team building strategy, ad tech strategy and other types of services. If you're looking to build or grow a learning and development team, I'm here to help. I've worked for a lot of different companies of many different sizes, from NASA all the way down to a pre seed startup, and have worked with all different kinds of project management, learning management system, authoring tool technologies, and more. An all different kinds of professionals in the l&d space. Using my educational background and my wide experience, I would love to help you plan, your project, your program, your team, or even your team strategy. So reach out to me through my website. Or if you're not interested in the consulting services, sign up for my email newsletter. It comes out on the off weeks of the blog podcast. And in it I talk about basically all of the things that I found recently that I'm loving in lnd. So that's research, that's podcasts, that's video replays, webinars, events, and and more. So I hope you'll sign up for the email newsletter and if you need a consultant on learning and development, definitely reach out. Without further ado, here, Sarah Filman. Hey, Sarah, how are you?

Sarah Filman:

I am great. Heidi, how are you?

Heidi Kirby:

I am doing well. Let's dive right in. Why don't you tell me a little bit about you about your career journey and where you are now and how you got there. And anything fun you want to share as well. Okay,

Sarah Filman:

so hello, everybody listeners. My name is Sarah filmin. I am a leadership coach, playful facilitator and improv comedian I am based in Seattle, Washington, also a cat mom. For those of you out there loving your fur babies. I, I kind of described my career as almost like two chapters, I'd say Chapter Chapter One was I was a product manager and Product Manager lead at Microsoft working on the cloud, on the OneDrive platform. And but I always had the education, the education bugs, so I moved over to the nonprofit co.org. It's a computer science education nonprofit, and got there got to get really immersed in curriculum development, professional learning, what it means to be a professional facilitator. And so though, there was a thread there of kind of computer science, but really kind of scratch that itch for education there, and then kind of pull the threads on coaching and facilitation. So now that is what I do. Now in in chapter I don't know what chapter number to call it.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah. The latest chapter, the latest chapter.

Sarah Filman:

Yeah.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, I love that. So you do leadership coaching? Yes. But you have a unique spin on it. Tell me about that.

Sarah Filman:

Yeah. So Well, I would say first, when I think of leadership, I think traditionally folks think about kind of a certain status title role within an organization. I kind of think of leadership as everyone has the capacity to be leader because we all have the capacity to impact others with our actions with how we show up. And so I work I work with managers, emerging leaders, but also just people who want to make change happen in the world. And the way that I go about doing that is is a weaving of what I would call like traditional, traditional coaching, but also weaving in applied improvisation. where it makes sense, what's what's implied improvisation. So, improvisational comedy, right? See on the stage, it's where people make things up on the spot for your chuckles And yucks. And, but applied improvisation is where you take kind of the mindset skills behaviors of what it takes to do improv on the stage, and you pull it into offstage contexts. So things like thinking on the spot, or taking a risk or building on the ideas of others. Those are all the mindsets of improv. And but those are also incredibly useful in for example, leadership development. So that was that those are the things that I weave together in my work.

Heidi Kirby:

Nice. And how did you come up with that? How did you come up with it?

Sarah Filman:

Applied improvisation is is an existing field that I kind of stumbled into when I was taking improv classes. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, the personal growth that I'm experiencing here, the way that I'm able to handle my anxiety differently like this, there's something here that goes beyond just getting on stage. And it turns out, I was not the only one to think that. So I was able to get involved in some communities that practice this. And, you know, I really love working at the intersections of things. I think there's a lot of like innovation and creativity. So I was like, Well, I love coaching. It was my favorite kind of tool to use as a manager. I love this improv and supplied improv. I was like, what would it look like to weave those together? And I'm not the only one doing that. But I kind of went on my own soul searching, journey to be like, what, what would something uniquely that's uniquely aligned with what I can do look like?

Heidi Kirby:

Sure. Well, and I think that that's true of anything, right? Like, if you think you're, if you think you're being unique and original, you're you're probably wrong, right? If you think that the ideas that you're drawing from are all yours, like you're you're probably misguided, at least a little bit. But I think there's something to be sad for finding that niche, and like finding your area, that not just the intersection of two things that make sense, but the intersection of two things that you're really passionate about, too.

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. On the point of like, if you think you're creating something new, just Google it at first. But yeah, I mean, I think that there's something really special about saying here, here's what I want to uniquely bring to the world. And I'm going to weave those things together. And and that exploration has been really like a really fun, interesting, challenging journey.

Heidi Kirby:

Sure, sure. So thinking as an introvert, which is funny, because I have a podcast and a lot of people don't peg me as an introvert, but like, I really truly am like, you and I are talking one on one. I'm not talking to all of the people who are listening to the podcast, right? So that's very comfortable for me and I draw my energy and recharge by like, being alone, maybe, maybe dog maybe cat in the room, but other than that, just leave me alone, right? Yeah. And so the idea of like, attending a leadership or coaching event where there's play slash improv is a little bit intimidating. Do you get that from people and how do you handle that?

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, so Hello, fellow introvert. I definitely self described as an introvert as well as a highly sensitive person you know, my my nervous system can get frazzled very quickly, I can get overwhelmed very quickly. And my, the, when I went to my first improv class, it was actually with the goal of wanting to get more and more comfortable speaking in front of groups because I was managing a team at work and I loved one on ones it was great and nourishing, and then I would, you know, be on deck to lead my team meeting and we're just kind of panic deer in headlights type of thing. So What you just described a feeling intimidated by the idea of being like playful or improvising in front of others is, is absolutely normal, absolutely understandable. And it's probably the default response kind of introvert or extrovert regardless, to be to do things in a different way in front of your peers in front of people that you respect can be really intimidating. So I think, you know, the role of the facilitator or teacher, whatever, whoever is holding that space, is to help you ease into it and create the conditions for you to kind of jump into that pool together. So for example, you might think of like an improv comedy show and think of people on the spot making characters up talking for minutes on end in a scene. And that is not how an intro experience goes at all. Introductory experience might be like, Heidi, pick an animal that starts with the first letter of your name and make a sound so you know, I might be snake Sarah, it's, and then everybody can jump in and do that, too. So it's it's very, it like you walk into that water together.

Heidi Kirby:

And love it. And yeah, like, I'm not nearly as entertaining as Wayne Brady, or Drew Carey's. So yeah. And I shared a story with you. And we were chatting about the the podcast, the chat before the podcast, right about how I attended one improv class, I guess you would call it at my high school, and then just never went back again. Because it was such a, like, every everyone was competing for the center of attention. And so I think that's really interesting. But I was also thinking before this this afternoon, when I was thinking about our chat, and what we are going to talk about is that I think these types of exercises can inherently tell you a lot about the team, the structure, the organization, the culture, like all of those things, right? Because I was thinking back to a retreat that I had when I was on a team, and it was the team and multiple leaders for that department as well. And it was some sort of I can't remember the exact game, but we were all up out of our chairs playing this game together. It was like, kind of like a mind sweeper type. I don't know, I can't even remember exactly what it was. But there was there was such a vibe, right? Where like, the leaders were competitive, and they were loud. And they were really into it. And everyone else was like on the sidelines, kind of quiet, like not wanting to overstep, not wanting to get in the way. And I think that in that moment, it showed a lot about just the relationship between the individuals, contributors and leaders on that team.

Sarah Filman:

Yes, oh, thank you for sharing that. Like, I feel like what kind of these activities or workshops can do is that they kind of create a microcosm of it's like capturing your culture in a little bottle. Because how people are showing up in the workplace is probably how they're showing up in that workshop, you know, the person who's going to be maybe more hesitant to jump in not necessarily volunteer to go first, or the one who's jumping in and making things competitive, even when that wasn't necessarily the guidelines for the activity. And so what I think is really powerful about certain ways to structure these experiences is, do you just do the activity and stop there? Or as the facilitator or coach? Do you help people build awareness of how they're showing up, and the impact that can be having on others? It can create it's, you know, a container for people to experiment with showing up in different ways. So like, in my improv classes, for example, when we have a new game, there's always the same people that run up to try a new game who who don't care what I'm about to say they're going to do it. And so sometimes I'll say all before introducing a game, I'll say before I, before I give this next instruction, think about whether you might want to try being the first person up today. Whether you might might want to do a change from how you normally show up no pressure, but it's an it here's an invitation to show up differently and practice showing up differently. So that's really, I mean, I think your example just like hit on And the crux of where I think the power is here. Because in a very relatively short amount of time, you can reveal these patterns, these culture, the behaviors, and you can say, pause, what what's going on? What are we learning? How do we want to try it differently? How might we make this more fun? How might we make this work collaborative, and you've just created a little like test lab that you can do right there without having to, you know, wait till next week's meeting to try something different?

Heidi Kirby:

Sure, well, I think that there's there's not a lot of opportunity to show up as someone else in your in your lifetime, right, like I'm thinking, because you're mentioning, like the microcosm, and the way you were describing just like how people react is how we react from a young age, right? Like you're in first grade. And the same kids are always the ones raising their hand first. And the same kids are the always the ones sitting in the corner, just quietly working, right. And like, that's, that's something that we carry. And, you know, I think of, you know, college, for instance, that's like one area where you've got like this totally safe space to try new things and be someone new and different. But like, outside of that, like, where else do you really? Where are you really afforded that opportunity, especially if you've been at the same job for a number of years that people know how you are, and your behavior is predictable? And like, we love routines as humans, right? So it's, it's a great thing, I think, to give people that opportunity. Yeah,

Sarah Filman:

absolutely. And I think that and this is where maybe like the leadership coaching lens comes in, we can sometimes over identify with our habits, and say, This is who I am, I'm just, I'm never the person who raises my hand first, that's not me. And I think that this gives the opportunity to, to kind of examine that, and it could be you if you want it to be but I think realizing that a lot of these behaviors, you know, for good reasons became habits. And, and creating that opportunity to say yeah, what if you tried something else on? What happened? How did that feel? is the way that you have been showing up? How is that serving you? If it's serving you in all the ways you want? Great? If it feels like actually it's holding you back in certain ways, what would it be like to change that? And to your point, I think, yes, when you are been on a team for a long time, or you're in a relationship for a long time, and people are used to you showing up in a certain way, it is really hard and scary to shift. And we often use these moments of like, Oh, I'm in college, now I'm at a new job, I'm gonna do like, those are kind of more obvious moments that we can say I want to do this differently. But the truth is, even with the the relationships you've been in for a long time, or jobs that you've been in, there are those opportunities, there are those opportunities, I think coaching and code, you know, like these improv opportunities, can make us aware of that and make those shifts in our lives and work.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, so it sounds like it's a lot of fun, but it sounds like there's also this really serious reflective element of it as well. And I'm interested, if you've, like, I'm interested in the amount of like, truly difficult conversations that you've had to facilitate as a result of this.

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, I think you know, in the work that I do, I kind of think of it as this like slider, right? Like some some teams bring me in and they're like, we just, gosh, we just want to have a good time pleased we just we just want to have a good time. And so in that case, like the introspection and reflection knob dial is dialed like way down and like the let's just like have fun is dialed way up. But you know, in certain situations, it makes sense to dial up that that introspection. So I think it depends on what the goals were of, of the session. And are we talking about a team who's been together are these individuals who are opting into an experience? So for example, I teach an improv for anxiety class. That is just individuals who self identify as having anxiety coming together. And while we do a lot of like unpacking of that kind of inner experience, and learning from it, there's a They're, they don't have to work together or really like resolve conflicts together or so it just kind of varies. They're

Heidi Kirby:

interesting. That's all very cool. And so what the other piece that's interesting to me is that it sounds like for someone to even work with you, there has to be at least at the base level, some kind of like, psychologically safe work environment. But I could also see where sometimes people don't realize, right, like, you look at other teams that you could say, oh, like, that's a toxic work environment. And sometimes you don't really realize that about your own until something happens, right? So I'm wondering if you've experienced, you know, maybe the realization that things aren't as comfortable or as open or as communicative, as maybe people thought they would be?

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, and I think that that's where I think when I work with teams, like a lot of times, it will start on that more like playful, let's do t just kind of like team building. And then it can be in either things that I'm noticing or little things that come up in debriefs of activities or follow ups with the the leaders of the team that we can say, hey, that there might have been something they're like, what would it look like to dig in on that together? Because you're right, like, sometimes, we don't know. Like, it's actually, you know, I think the strongest when we talk about culture, like there's the named culture, and then like the unspoken culture, and a lot of times what we say the culture is not actually what's happening. And it's not until you pull a group into that microcosm, that you actually realize some of the unspoken culture or get to a place that you can that you can name it. And that I mean, one of the tenants of improv is like, you kind of build with what is. And so it's a lot about, like noticing what is happening, and being curious about it. And that curiosity comes from like a coaching lens as well. And so, you know, I think, experiencing a team as they are, and then just being curious about what you're seeing, and asking about it and seeing where that goes and pulling on that thread together.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, and the other thing I really love about it is, I love the idea of learning through failure. And, you know, we talk about learning through failure when you create, like scenario based learning experiences, or the very, like, the example everyone knows, is like Super Mario, right? And like, how do you make it through a level of of any video game? Really, you fail a million times and course correct. And get through it, you know, the final time. But I think it really provides the opportunity because Oh, my gosh, you know, if the game is you have to, you know, think of an animal that starts with the first letter of your name. The first thing I thought of when you said that was hippo, and I'm like, What sound does a hippo make? Like, I don't even know, does a hippo make a sound? And so already in my head, I'm like, Well, I failed the first exercise like, Okay, what would I have picked? instead? How about a horse? Okay, that one I can do. But you know, when you're in the moment, and you know, you experienced this, even when you're not doing improv, if you're leaving a meeting, or, you know, having a conversation with anyone at the grocery store, even right, sometimes you just cannot find the words and you just, you know, mess it up. And ruins ruin the flow or the, you know, the rhythm, if you will. And I think that it's important to provide those safe spaces to fail so that people can build confidence, but also just feel better about the fact that we all fail, right?

Sarah Filman:

Yeah. Well, and I think in what you just described, you've hit on the secret, which is that like, life is improvisation. We move through the world. And we have conversations unexpected things happen, we react to them. That's our entire life. So really, an improvisational mindset then is, how do I think about failure? How do I think about mistakes? How do I treat everything that other people are giving me as a gift that I can build with? And so yeah, that relationship to mistakes. I was actually in this improv for anxiety class, we were reviewing a game that we had done the week In the last week, and we did it, and no mistakes were being made. And I said, pause. We are not making enough mistakes here. This game is designed to make mistakes, if we are moving at the speed of getting out of our head and being on our toes, and really just trying to be in the moment and not overthink it, we will be making way more mistakes. And so we got in our improv stance with our, our knees bent, and you know, hands ready. And when added again, there were 10 times more mistakes, and there was 10 times more laughter, people like, it was really more enjoyable, and kind of the lesson of like, being perfect or trying to be perfect is not fun. Ah, and so celebrating those mistakes moving forward. You know, it's it's a really special environment where you can start to shift that relationship to them my relationship to mistakes and failure now, is so so different, after immersing myself in this world of improv and, and seeing, seeing the really cool and unique things that can come out of out of our mistakes.

Heidi Kirby:

Absolutely, yeah, I not necessarily mistakes, but I always tell people that 60% of my ideas are bad. But I'm gonna tell you 100% of them anyway, just in case, there's one that you can like, take and build on.

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, and we don't know, right? You don't know what somebody could build with. I've been blown away by what I like something that I say. And I'm like, Oh, God, that was that was not good. And but somebody, but somebody with their different mind and their different experiences, their different outlook on the world was able to take it and run with it. And then in the way that they ran with it. I was like, oh, you know, cool. Like, that's amazing. And like that, that is so special. To learn from that to say like, yeah, I just why pre judge everything that I say, if you had picked hippo, Heidi, and Ben, and you had said, I don't know what noise it makes, we could have said Heidi, make it up, make it up? And if you had gone Oh, we I would have been like That's exactly right. That's exactly the right mix.

Heidi Kirby:

There we go. I love it. So what types of situations like how would somebody find themselves in a position to go, Hey, we should have Sarah from playful perspectives come work with our team?

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, great question. Well, so I think I kind of mentioned earlier, a lot of times the like the gateway is like, because I think a lot of people have I think different budgets that they pull from, right, they have kind of their morale budget. And then maybe they're like professional development budget. And so I think from like a morale budget standpoint, that's where the like, let's just do some, like fun team building, maybe some lightweight debriefs together, let's like learn about some of these mindsets, behaviors of improv of applied improvisation. And then there's more of the kind of like professional development of like, you know, our team. You know, I'm noticing these things about our team. I'm noticing people hesitate. I'm noticing in brainstorms, people seem to be holding back, or I'm noticing that people are people are talking past each other a lot. And I really want to work on like, active listening. And so I do think it kind of takes, be it the leader or manager of the team, somebody who's noticing, noticing an opportunity for growth and development for the team. Things like things like I just mentioned, so listening, building on each other's ideas, risk taking. And so when you've identified those that's like, you know, what are different ways that we could go about it and I kind of think of applied improv and coaching, there are processes that you can lay lay over those things. And so that would I think, be the spark to be like, what would it be like to get somebody in here to help us do this in like a fun, embodied active experiential way? That that is the work that I do with with groups. Sure. And then kind of doing like the one on one leadership coaching as well.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, no, that's great. Okay, so then my last question for you is the same one that I asked all my guests. And it's, if you had to choose one resource that you would recommend for people that want to either integrate play into leadership or interested just in this concept, what would it be? And why?

Sarah Filman:

Yeah, so there's a book that I kind of like keep at the ready. It's, it's called The Power manual, how to master complex power dynamics. The author is Cindy Suarez. And, you know, what I think is really powerful about this book is that it's about power dynamics, and revealing them, which I think leaders need to be really conscious of and aware of, but then the author's daughter was a theater major. And so the author got kind of became aware of the role that like theater games can play in building this awareness of power dynamics. So the whole back of the book is like all these activities that can be used to reveal some of these power dynamics. So I think anybody who's like really looking to get in deep, would really enjoy this and get a lot out of it. So that's my, that's my resource recommendation for you.

Heidi Kirby:

Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I've really enjoyed learning more.

Sarah Filman:

Thank you, Heidi. This has been such a fun experience.

Heidi Kirby:

Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.