Our approach and methods.
I am always doing that which I cannot do, so that I may learn to do it.
— PABLO PICASSO
What’s required of leaders is changing.
Leaders who rely on existing knowledge and a need for certainty are at an extreme disadvantage in today’s world.
Leaders must take risks, embrace the unknown, increase engagement, and co-create value with clients and colleagues. They need to have vision, and the ability to build community and create environments in which others can do new things — before they know how.
To grow the crucial leadership capabilities that meet the needs of a challenging, exciting, and relentlessly emergent world, new methods for learning and development are needed.
The Becoming Principle.
The Becoming Principle® is the innovative human development approach that teaches business professionals to do what they cannot do, so that they may learn to do it.
- Human beings are not only who we are. We’re also who we are not yet — that is, who we are becoming.
- The human capacity to become is fully appreciated in children. We all played, improvised and performed when we were young, and human development science shows how essential these activities are for developing cognitively, creatively and emotionally.
- But adults are not encouraged to engage in this process of experimentation and discovery. Instead, we’re told to play it safe, get it right, “be who you are.”
- So we need to create the conditions for this kind of development. We create these conditions by helping leaders to awaken and engage their innate ability to perform — to simultaneously experience who they are and who they are not… yet.
- Learning how to perform builds confidence and helps leaders strengthen
- Self and relational awareness
- Social and emotional agility
- Courage to engage in new ways
- Ability to embrace and learn from failure
- With the support of our expert team of coaches, leaders engage in real-time transformation.
Our programs employ the following methods:
- Improvisation and theater exercises designed to grow participants’ abilities to experiment; to build their courage, creativity, and focus; enhance their skills in making new choices, thinking on their feet, taking risks, listening and building with diverse input; and seeing, building and being part of an ensemble.
- Teaching modules focused on specific leadership capabilities — storytelling, influencing, presentation and presence, communication and collaboration, client sales and relationship building, coaching and feedback, challenging conversations, etc. — that are relevant to the organization’s objectives
- Scene work (role-plays) that embody the challenges leaders and teams are facing in their business. These can be allegorical (i.e. taking place outside the specific business but capturing the dynamics and challenges), or set within the business. Participants perform in these scenes and are directed by our expert coaches.
- Theatrical vignettes, performed by professional actors, that “hold a mirror” up to your company, and portray the way things are now and the way they could be.
- Ongoing reflection and debriefing in small and large groups to consolidate these new experiences, ideas, and practices.
- Performance coaching groups — subsets of the full participant body that meet with a coach for practice, rehearsal, reflection, peer and expert coaching, and shared accountability.
What clients say
Performance of a Lifetime (POAL) distinguishes themselves in three ways. First is trust. Every interaction with them comes from a position of how they can help me and my organization meet our needs. The second is, credibility. They really know their craft and they apply it in a way that makes sense for business. Third, they go the extra step to really get to know who they’re working with and to understand what they’re going through. So if somebody asks me, ‘What’s with this Performance of a Lifetime group?’ I’d say, ‘Trust me, they are the bees knees. Give them a call…they are the best.'”
Performance of a Lifetime helped to radically transform the method we use for conducting sales discovery and how we pitch to clients. They ran programs for us in seven countries and in four languages. Their instructors are masterful at deliberately and thoughtfully teaching and supporting our sellers’ shift from being self-focused to making their clients the hero of their stories.”
The US Olympic Committee had Performance of a Lifetime work with the 500 US Olympic athletes preparing for Beijing 2008. Before this experience, I never knew how closely connected improvisational theater and team sports were. There were all of these individual amazing athletes — it’s hard not to only be focused on yourself. But with POAL’s help all of these individuals became a team. POAL made such an incredible difference.”
