Using Storytelling Theatrics for Leadership Training

Abstract

The Problem

How can leaders learn to use power in ways that minimize oppression and resistance, and instead are more liberating? As perceived oppression leads to resistance, leaders who are untrained in these power dynamics may enact oppressive behaviors and trigger resistance without awareness or intention to do so.

The Solution

This article describes a leadership training process we call storytelling theatrics. These storytelling theatrics formats explore power dynamics in multi-voiced scenarios that incorporate many perspectives. This method gives participants a voice in their own learning and creates actors instead of auditors. It brings hidden sources of oppression to center stage, to fully explore more liberating possibilities for both followers and leaders. Leaders can minimize repression and resistance if they understand, uncover, and confront these expressions of power.

The Stakeholders

Organizational leaders as well as their followers are stakeholders in this embodied theatrical training. This intervention creates benefit for both leaders and followers, because both are potentially oppressed by power dynamics.