Loosen the grip.
In the last post on this subject, I talked about how a key step to entertaining is to loosen our expectations about what the group of people we are working with need to be like.
They say great parents have few rules. This doesn’t mean that they let the kids run rampant, but it means that they give more space. A parent with more rules might see a rowdy group of kids, get stressed and yell at the kids. Not fun for anyone.
A parent with fewer rules might see the same group and decide that this is a highly energised group of kids. They might then make some new decisions about how to work with that rather than fight it. There’s less yelling and (most excitingly) less stress for the parent.
Instead of feeling stressed that the kids aren’t acting the way they ‘should’, they become interested in how they might work with the way they are.
As an actor, I also find this an effective way to entertain. To go on stage with a preconceived notion of how an audience should react, how they should listen and (worst of all) where they should laugh, is a death sentence. Not only will you go out there and not be ‘in the moment’ but you’re also in danger of beating yourself up after the performance.
The same is true for teaching or delivering any information to a group of learners- there’s no right or wrong in the way they should be. Here’s a belief I invite you to adopt as you experiment with entertaining to engage:
New Belief: Any behavior my learners display is perfect. Everything is an opportunity for me to explore new ways to engage.
The alternative of course is that there is a ‘right’ way to be and there is a ‘wrong’ way to be. This is the kind of rigidity that makes entertaining difficult and certainly is the antithesis of empowering anyone.
