![]() ![]() But the modern workplace, and certainly the future workplace, needs to be populated by people who are self-aware and emotionally intelligent who are collaborative rather than competitive who don’t get stuck in silos but are aware of the complex map of stakeholders relying on them. In the past, there has been a temptation for people, particularly leaders, to compartmentalise their lives and leave their personalities at the door they are warriors at work and loving parents at home. Good King, Warrior, Good Mother, Medicine Woman Storytelling is a skill that needs to be learnt once again. We all know how to tell stories as kids but once we become number crunchers, we forget. But this is not a typical strength of many CEOs. Any organisational challenge is an opportunity to tell an effective story and engage your audience. As a leader, you need to be the chief storyteller and control the narrative of your organisation. The methods we use help to prepare leaders for the events that will ultimately define their leadership. From this success, Olivier Mythodrama was born, using storytelling and drama as a means to demonstrate the essence of modern leadership. Participants could easily identify with Henry and his struggles, and then reflect on their own situation and experiences through the story. I took Henry V as a leadership intervention to Cranfield School of Management and Saïd Business School, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Henry V is an inspirational leader Julius Caesar concerns the themes of power, politics and influence Macbeth explores the dangers of derailing behaviour The Tempest seeks to understand the dynamics of change and As You Like It enables positive change culture. ![]() The treatment of Othello, or Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, may be outdated in terms of societal changes but the human dynamics underneath the plays are eternal. He just had it, and the result of that genius is enduringly relevant and rich case studies about leaders and their followers. Broadly about a young leader grappling with a big project, it is full of lessons about inspiration and purpose, passion and motivation.Įncouraged by business guru Charles Handy and poet David Whyte, we had the idea to present a Mythodrama experience to business leaders - the ‘mytho’ being the great stories and insights into human nature that Shakespeare created and the ‘drama’ being the learning experience and the vehicle for communicating the story. While working alongside Mark Rylance, who also believed in the mythic structure, we studied the play as a map of human development. I was then asked to direct Henry V for the opening of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in 1997. It became clear that stories could be used as containers for learning within a professional organisation. Over the course of three years, I immersed myself in these ideas and carried out research into men’s development in an organisational context. All great stories have a skeleton under the surface that holds the real meaning and drives the narrative. I came across a men’s movement led by the American poet Robert Bly that utilised mythopoetics - the idea of going deeper into the narrative of a story to try and identify, what I call, its mythic backbone. Following the death of my father when I was still relatively young, I explored my own personal development and became interested in what the life of a mature man looked like in the modern world. I grew up in a theatre family my mum and dad were both actors and from a very young age, I would go to the theatre to watch their plays. The notion of storytelling has always been a big part of my life. It is a rather alternative approach to leadership education, but as Richard explains here, one that is very much needed as 21st-century leadership evolves and takes on many new facets The son of thespians Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright, and a theatre director for more than 10 years, Richard took his fascination with storytelling and turned it into Olivier Mythodrama, a leadership development consultancy that uses theatre to harness the power of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
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