Transformation without a pedagogy is just activities

Notes from cycling during a London rainstorm

After an interesting day at the Capability Leaders Forum with Econsultancy, a question that kept surfacing was how do we get to the "why" of what we do. Cycling home through a London rainstorm (of course), I had time to sit with it.

Many years ago, I facilitated theatre for change workshops in prisons, schools and children's care homes. So bear with me, because I'm going there.

In facilitation, the bridge between the why and the what has a name: pedagogy. Aka the underlying theory of how learning or change actually happens through the work. The set of beliefs about power, knowledge, participation and transformation that shape every choice you make in the room.

One of the tools we used in theatre was Forum Theatre. The pedagogy underneath Forum is that spectators are oppressed by being passive, that knowledge about a situation lives in the people experiencing it and that rehearsing alternatives is itself a form of political action. Every structural choice comes from that commitment. Why? Because we wanted to solve societal or political problems together.

So two facilitators could run a workshop using the exact same warm-up and exactly the same image theatre exercise and the room would feel completely different depending on the pedagogy underneath. A drama therapist’s facilitation choice might be from their why being that there are things in a person that can't be reached through talking alone, but can be reached through metaphor, role, story and the body. A Boalian facilitator chooses Forum Theatre because their why is they want to break down the barrier between actors and audience in service of social or political change.

In theatre there is naturally a different choice in delivery depending on the facilitator’s why. This should be the same in corporate transformation. Every choice when building team capability should be as deliberate as the choice to use Boal’s framework over Neuro-Dramatic-Play or any other framework. Based on conversations at the Capability Leaders Forum, we don’t always see that in practice.

Currently, we’re often handed why from above (hit the number, grow the brand, acquire the customers) and a what from below (the campaigns, the decks, the templates).

Be the person in the room with your own why and tailoring the transformation around your beliefs about power, knowledge, participation and transformation… don’t just agree with what is on the plan.