Playing Slave status. Playing King status.

One of the many joys of long form improvisation is the infinite varieties of play available at any moment. Sitting out in Union Square is in some ways an ultimate expression of being open to playing any game that arises when someone sits down at the table.

Z, a chef and restaurant owner at a restaurant downtown sat down. She explained an HR problem that she was having in the back of the house:

I have a chef de cuisine currently working for me who I may or may not replace. There are some great and not so great issues about this employee. I have to audition someone in the kitchen during lunch or dinner service but I can’t let my current employee know that this person might/could replace them or change their status in the kitchen. How to best deal with this diplomatically?

What came to mind right away was a totally uncreative, but perhaps obvious, question: why wouldn’t a paid day off for the current employee work with the rest of the kitchen brigade?

Z said that the nature of their kitchen they really needed all hands on deck for service to run efficiently. I pointed out to Z that that alone might be something to look at but that wasn’t what we were aiming at that day.

In all of our lives we become terribly invested in “my” position or “my” status and work incredibly hard to maintain it. I know that I have fought bitterly in my past to maintain a picture that I had of myself.

Part of the difficulty that Z was having was that her chef de cuisine had status issues that Z felt she couldn’t get around. With children on playground it is easy to see that when two or more kids decide to play a game and they agree to the rules of the game. There are no shackles but suddenly the robber is in jail and the police officer has put them there. And until they are done playing those rules hold.

Not only do children enjoy the process of playing but suddenly new roles can emerge in the process of playing. “I’ve been in jail too long. It’s your turn to be the robber.” And then they switch. There is something transformative about playing that gets us out of our linear status oriented brain. In long form improv one game that gets played out again and again in myriad ways is the status game. Characters have relationships on stage with a ratio of status – King/Slave, Doctor/Patient etc… The relationship isn’t the most important thing but how the status plays out. It is fun for the players to discover how status rumbles through a scene and how a slave might actually be the boss of the king – or whatever.

It seemed to me that this status play in the kitchen could be shaken up by playing. I suggested to Z that she bring in her potential hire and explain to the kitchen staff that they will be engaging in a team building exercise and to explain this as strictly a game, an exercise in playfulness and experimentation. Nobody is being judged. The game they will be playing would be “First Day of Cooking School.”

The game would be that for morning prep the current hire and the potential hire would each “teach” the other for an 30 minutes or so – leading them through a dish and prep work as needed but when the time elapsed and the prep and cooking was not done the other chef had to take over from where the other left off. I emphasized how this was just a game and not aimed at making one or the other look better or worse but to explain that this was an exercise in learning and teaching.

Z was over the moon for this. She said that this allowed her to see how each gives and takes direction and deals with changing authorities in the kitchen – which happens often. All this while hopefully learning new skills.  Z paid me and went on her way.

It seems to me that this sort of learning and teaching status switching game can be widely applied in hiring situations in numerous industries. At its best it allows an opening of the heart and injects a playful spirit into the workspace which generally could use heart and spirit.

Post-script – about a week later Z visited me again and said that this game worked incredibly well. She set up a few cooking school style challenges for them to play with and lead the other through. The two chefs got along incredibly well as people and as chefs in the kitchen and she felt that hiring them both would allow for greater flexibility in kitchen scheduling as well as better food coming out. She paid me again.

I am convinced that play is an opportunity to short circuit many habitual obstructions that we run into in work and in our lives. How might improv or playing open up in the situation you are stuck overseeing? How can this access to playing with status transform leadership for you?