Play’s the thing

ANYONE WHO has spent a long time in an office job will have suffered the indignities of a training day. The group-bonding exercise where workers fall into each other’s arms, as if they were part of a 1960s encounter group. The overenthusiastic guest lecturer who constructs a lengthy and banal presentation out of a series of random nouns. The debate about the company’s future which turns into an exercise in Stalinist self-criticism. It all resembles one of those nightmares when you find yourself marooned back in the school classroom.

If there is one good thing about the current pandemic, it is that no one is being sent to an awayday event at a seaside resort or a country retreat. Perhaps the whole idea will become less fashionable. Thankfully, there are inventive ways to undergo training online.

One management course uses the skills of an improvisational-comedy troupe, the Second City. “People are rarely taught to be a boss,” says Kelly Leonard of the Chicago-based outfit, and the course attempts to guide them in the right direction. The philosophy is based on a book called “Radical Candour” by Kim Scott, which argues that managers need to deliver and accept constructive feedback. She says that a “difficult but necessary part of being a boss [is] telling people clearly and directly when their work wasn’t good enough”. Of course, some bosses are too quick to criticise and never offer praise. So praise is also needed but it has to be “specific and sincere”.

The approach works, Ms Scott argues, only if employees believe that their managers care about them personally. And managers need to solicit and accept criticism from their subordinates.

The training was originally designed for use in workshops, something that would be impossible at a time of social distancing. Fortunately, the actors at the Second City created a sitcom, “The Feedback Loop”, to illustrate the ideas. In the video, people are made to endure a version of “Groundhog Day”, in which they keep reliving the same situations until they learn from their mistakes. The fictional workers learn not to be “obnoxiously aggressive” and “manipulatively insincere”; managers realise it is hopeless to be “ruinously empathetic”.

The show can be downloaded and discussed by staff and managers from the comfort of their own homes. Some people may feel that humour is inappropriate at a time of a global pandemic. But comedy can be a source of solace in a crisis. (Bartleby would insert a coronavirus joke here, but it will be days before you get it.)

Another creative way of imparting information is poetry. Gary Turk is a poet who has worked in British TV alongside Ricky Gervais and Richard Curtis, the man behind “Love Actually”. When Mr Turk’s then girlfriend complained that he spent too much time on the phone, he tried to take a break. He noticed how much time others spent with their devices and that inspired him to make a short film, which he narrated in rhyming verse. When he uploaded the film, called “Look Up”, to YouTube, it struck a chord, receiving 1m views within five days, and then, on the sixth day, getting another 10m.

After the video’s success, Mr Turk was contacted by other organisations which wanted to tap into his skills. Some of this work was promotional, such as for British Airways. But much was in the realm of public information (a campaign in Western Australia to stop people texting and driving) and some was for compliance training (notably a video on corruption and another on sexual harassment).

These can be difficult issues to cover. It is all too easy for the tone to become either too flippant or too preachy. Mr Turk’s videos get the message over in two to three minutes and may lead to a more open discussion than if the subjects were presented more formally. “Spoken-word videos are great at grabbing people’s attention—the rhyming patterns and lyrical structures make you listen carefully to every word,” Mr Turk argues. “It is also something fresh that most employees have never seen in their annual training or work presentations before.”

Columns should be set in prose
And this is often one of those.
But a fleeting burst of verse
Might not make the readers curse.
Though the hardest part will be
Finding rhymes for Bartleby.

A little bit of poetry and comedy goes a long way. One wouldn’t want an entire training day to consist of jokes or rhymes. But online or offline, these kinds of innovative techniques can enliven those endless seminars when the clock never seems to reach 5pm.