In this article I wanted to share an example of a prinicple that I am passionate about ‘Setting Your Team Up To Win’ and how we can implement this process when leading teams in other areas of life, as we do in business.
When our team wins, we win.
My daughter and I are directing a Peter Pan. This is our biggest production of the year for our local ‘Sorell on Stage’ community. We have forty actors participating some adults but mainly children.
What’s interesting about this project, is that I’ve applied the same principle I do when working with adults and training my clients in the ‘Leaders As Coaches’ (LAC) program. During auditions, we set up each person to win. Explaining exactly how we wanted them to be. I got their agreement on what we were looking for from the whole group right at the start.
We were looking for people with a good attitude.
Even with the younger children who represent the larger percentage of the cast and who are aged at eight or nine years old, I made sure they understood what we were looking for by asking them tell us what they thought we meant by having a good attitude, it was amazing what they came up with, they understood what we meant.
I explained to each of the children that it’s not just your acting ability or that fact that you can dance or you can sing, we’re looking for people who are positive and no matter what role you get, you’re going to approach it with your best efforts. You’re going to be listening and respectful of other cast members when you are not on stage by helping them, supporting them, congratulating and acknowledging them.
We had five groups of eight people, we gave them different parts and they auditioned in front of each other. We wanted to show them that this is what it’s going to be like, being in front of an audience. Making it real.
The audition process took time. We pushed them during the audition to lift their levels, we recorded each group and we watched videos back to see who we thought had the right energy for this production.
It’s about having your ‘Aces In The Right Places’. For example, one young fellow is doing really well, he is flying and some people were quite surprised at the role we gave him. We also have a female acting as Peter Pan because she can sing, but mainly because she has a great attitude and is very coachable.
We have currently completed three rehearsals. For each rehearsal we start with a warmup activity to make sure they’re ready. We discuss expectations like, being on time and being in communication and I invite the cast to think about, Who do you want to sit next to? Who’s going to help you concentrate or Who might take you away from concentration?
During the two-hour rehearsals these children, some of who are on the spectrum have sat in silence, respectfully clapping, supporting and acknowledging each other until it is their turn to be on stage.
We have also received feedback from the cast and parents of the cast as well as people within the ‘Sorell on Stage’ community letting us know they are really enjoying our approach.
Clearly, the point of this article is that when we take the time to ‘Set People Up To Win’ it is amazing what results show up.
We made sure that we auditioned everyone, even some children we saw last year for different productions who were not successful because of their attitude. This year they are back and we are seeing a different person, because we’ve got a different expectation of them.
We keep rewarding the behaviors we want to see more than the ones we don’t, we know who we need to keep an eye on and support them to keep their concentration, even adult’s struggle after 20 mins to maintain their concentration so we mix things up and do something physical to help keep them engaged.
They are doing great and it’s fun.
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Warm Regards
Craig Cherry