Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/changing-no-to-yes/5016422/
I recently heard a child care director say, “My job is to say yes to my staff as much as possible.” Wow, I thought. Does that ever get her into trouble? Still, as a strong advocate for better working conditions and organizational systems that truly support staff to accomplish what we want them to do, I love this notion. It also seems very parallel to what we want staff to be doing with children, finding ways to say yes, rather than no.One of the principles of improvisational theater also relates to this idea of saying yes. Have you ever been part of a playback theater performance? The theater troupe asks someone in the audience to give them a brief story to act out. Within fifteen seconds of a story being told the stage suddenly erupts with a remarkable rendition of the possible emotions or sentiments underneath the story. The troupe uses movement, facial expressions, sounds, words, and dialog that appear choreographed and the interpretation of the story almost always resonates with the story teller and the whole audience. When asked how they are able to respond so quickly to the story and each other, the actors tell us that their ...