I’m also getting ready to launch a tailored coaching program for those who work with groups and who are specifically interested in increasing the level of engagement, interactivity & community with the people they work with.  You can get a sneak peak here.  The first image is what your bird’s eye overview would look like (we can tailor it to your particular categories of interest).

This second picture gives a sense of what it would look like to zoom into a particular category, add a goal, and then add a ‘SMART’ action item.  As we work together, I can also leave comments on each goal and action-item.

You can click above for the full newsletter, or read the interview below.

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Leif Hansen is Chief Engagement Officer for Spark Interaction . For over two decades he has been combining collaboration with creativity to inspire, engage and connect individuals and groups. Helping people discover a deeper level of trust, support, purpose, fun and creativity in their personal lives and workplaces is what keeps Leif happy.

Interview with Leif Hansen

TGL: So, how did you get into the world of games?

Leif: I believe it started early with summer camps. I had a pretty challenging home life and so summer camps were a much safer home for me to develop personally. It was there that I discovered a magic I’ve since longed to repeat and to offer to others. This magic came from a mix of certain key elements, the safety that comes from a caring community, opportunities for creative expression, the beauty of nature, the freedom and acceptance in being one’s silly self, setting goals with the support of others (the YMCA “rag ceremony”), camp-wide massive games, and the campfire magic where these would often all come together.

TGL: Can you share one of those memories when it all came together?

Leif: I remember playing a camp-wide game one evening that ended by bringing most of the campers and staff down to a more remote section of the camp beach. It soon became dark and a campfire was lit and songs and stories soon sparked to life. Towards the end of this segment a pirate story was told, when, right at the climax, we heard shouts from out upon the water and we saw a light on the mast of a boat. Pirates! A pirate-ship was coming our way! The story had come to life! I don’t remember all the details except that they eventually landed on the beach, engaged us with their pirate selves, and shared a treasure chest full of S’mores. That was a magic moment. It is through portal experiences like that night when I realize that life is an adventure story, I realize the transformative power of creativity and play; I realize the importance of community, I realize the excitement of being fully engaged in the moment, and I realize how much I long to enter and offer similar experiences to others.

TGL: Have you had an opportunity to re-create a similar experience?

Leif: Yes, I’ve had a few very similar opportunities.

The first was my master’s thesis project which was just too crazy to share in detail here. We’ll just say that it involved twelve guests being invited by a council of elves to a weekend retreat to discuss the elves’ concerns (think Tolkien, not cute little creatures) of technology’s dehumanizing and disenchanting effects. The weekend included such events as being woken at night to participate in a mysterious candle-lit dance of Dryads, one of the guest’s becoming dangerously captivated by a glowing screen, and a full day outdoor quest to free this younger guest by engaging in various challenges and interacting with a host of unusual characters. (If you are interested in further details, or tailoring a similar quest for your team, I can talk with you or send more information.)

Another opportunity was working with a group of teens and interviewing them about their various goals and fears. I would then work with the community we lived in to come up with weekly quests for these youth to embark on—alone or as a group—that would help them to face their fears or achieve their goals.

There have been other related projects and interactivities, but those two were the most parallel to my magical pirate night. I’m happy to report that all elements of that early camp magic are present in various combinations in all my work with Spark Interaction—whether helping people who work with groups to be more engaging and conscious of community-building, building deeper trust with teams, coaching creative breakthroughs, presenting to groups, or holding various theme-based workshops like SoulTech.

TGL: What exactly happens in your SoulTech workshop?

Leif: I’ve received a surprising amount of attention around these workshops—from the LA Times, to being featured on the Today Show, to being on a recent PBS online panel. They seem to be touching a national nerve about our increasingly techno-centric culture.

SoulTech workshops, though they’ve had a few different names, are basically about helping individuals and organizations to become more productive and healthy in their relationship with technology. We do this by giving people a safe, structured, and collaboratively creative space to align their personal or organizational values and goals with how they actually use technology.

Technology is evolving at such an astounding rate that many of us haven’t had, or taken, the time to reflect on how much it’s really affecting our personal lives, families, and workplaces. These new social and informational technologies are powerful, but as we all know, as power increases, so does our need for responsibility. If not, we may inadvertently end up becoming tools ourselves, or worse, negatively impacting those we care about.

TGL: Yet you also promote these dangerous new technologies?

Leif: Yes, I get teased endlessly about my apparent hypocrisy. It would be hypocrisy if I hadn’t stated from the beginning that these workshops arose out of my own struggles or if I hadn’t continued to stay transparent about my learning process. The fact is that I love new technologies, and yet I also hate them, or at least I am concerned about them. My other business, Spark Social Media, has been primarily focused on helping people to use social media to build online communities and on teaching and training individuals and organizations about the power of social media. However, I’m hoping to gradually shift my tech emphasis to offering social media as a secondary layer of the multi-modal or hybrid learning experiences I offer.

TGL: What is “multi-modal” or “hybrid” learning?

Leif: It is emphasizing the power and necessity of embracing both real-time experiences and virtual experiences. Many people tend to emphasize only one, but I think they are missing out. Real time experiences, particularly when they involve Playformation (improvised play that brings transformation), enable people to connect and grow on much deeper levels than virtual experiences. However, social technologies do some things that real-time experiences can’t do as well.

TGL: Like what? How can social technologies add value?

Leif: Social Technologies help people to stay connected after (or before) their real-time experiences, continue the conversations they have started, invite others in from all around the world, share their learning (through text, pictures, audio, and video), democratize their sharing activities (through voting and other approaches), remain transparent and accountable, and accomplish much more.

TGL: Sounds good, so let’s hear a bit more about Leif. What inspires you to wake up each day?

Leif: Well, I’m either motivated by an endless list of fears my ego has been rehearsing or I’m inspired to action by a deeper desire to listen to my heart and enter life’s adventure. Unfortunately, most days, I start by listening to my ego and become fueled by fear. After burning out on that, I make a shift to the good juice by receiving inspiration, love and guidance from my spiritual practices or my support network of family, friends and peers.

TGL: What does it mean to you to “listen to your heart”?

Leif: Listening to my heart means first and foremost trusting. Trusting that life is ultimately good and that all things, even the ones that seem stressful and undesirable, are actually gifts in disguise. There’s a great term I’ve picked up for this paradigm—“Pronoia”. Pronoia is the opposite of Paranoia, so it could be said to mean “The sneaking suspicion that the universe is conspiring to bless you.” Without this deep hope, I’ve notice that my ability to trust, receive love from my community, serve others, be creative, play or stay in a productive focused flow, is no where near as effective and enjoyable. Pronoia, or at least what it reflects to me, is the foundation for my vision and mission.

TGL: And what vision is that?

Leif: I’m excited by a vision of a world where people and organizations feel safe enough to discover their core passions and take the risk of creatively expressing them. In that world, people also remain curious, respectful and supportive of the passions of others. Imagine what kinds of experiences, engaging conversations, relationships, and awe-inspiring creations would come from a world community like that!

TGL: And how does Spark Interaction help bring about that vision?

Leif: You could condense Spark’s simplest core message down to igniting a deeper level of safety, freedom and trust (in oneself and in others). We bring this spirit into our training sessions, coaching, presentations, CoLabs (ongoing collaborative support groups), and workshops.

How do we do this? By striving to be honest and authentic, and sincerely caring for those we serve, we help create environments of safety and trust. And it has been proven without a shadow of a doubt that when trust is high, productivity is high, cost is low, and things move faster.

By using a process I’ve been calling Playformation, I engage people and groups in a creative, enjoyable, collaborative, whole-minded, playful manner. Many of the activities and exercises I use come from the world of improvisational theater. And by nurturing my own personal and spiritual development, I am able to continually grow and receive inspiration that enables me to engage, inspire, and empower those I work with.

With those priorities and practices in place, those we work with share increased creativity, innovation and productivity in their work and personal lives; increased trust, communication and care in their relationships; feeling more prepared and empowered in their decisions; more & better clients, increased revenue, and increased satisfaction in their personal lives.

TGL: How can people find out more about you and your services?

Leif: I find much more progress can be made in a conversation, so my preference would be a phone call. Please call me at 1-877-I-Am-Game.

[Table of Contents]

Improv Game

Sculpted Playformation
by Leif Hansen

Summary

An Individual (or spokesperson for a team) facilitates the creation of two different sculpted scenes using people in the room. The people involved in the sculpt, which may include the original sculptor, then improvise how the transformational journey from the stuck sculpt to the transformed sculpt takes place.

Who

Any person or group feeling stuck and wishing to experience transformation.

Flow

1. Ask for a volunteer or group representative.
2. Instruct this sculptor to briefly describe the stuck situation.
3. Instruct the sculptor to start creating a literal or abstract sculpture using other people. The sculpture might be a scene, a machine, an abstract feeling, or anything else.
4. The sculptor may request movements or sounds from the people to incorporate in her sculpture. She basically directs the sculpted scene until it feels like it represents the stuckness.
5. Instruct the sculptor to repeat steps 2 to 4, on the other side of the room, to represent the desired outcome or transformation.
6. Once the sculptor is satisfied with how both sculpts look, ask her to re-create the first stuck sculpt scene.
7. Ask the people in the sculpt to improvise moving across the room and changing into the transformed sculpt. The sculptor may offer direction on this journey, but is encouraged to let the group primarily use its own brilliance.
8. Debrief the sculptor and the group about what they observed and experienced from the process.

PBS MediaShift | 5Across October, 2009 | Technology Overload

You’re self-employed, or thinking about becoming self-employed, and you deeply want to be doing work that you enjoy and that provides for you financially. “Why spend the majority of my life, my vocation, doing work I don’t like or believe in?”  You want your work to be meaningful, to make the world a better place, and to be a channel for you to express your passions creatively.  You know you have some excellent ideas and needed talent. Perhaps you even have a good business plan and have started making some progress…

…But something keeps getting in the way, blocking you from becoming more successful.  You frequently wonder what it is: the economy? better marketing? not enough time? too much time? computer distractions? a lack of discipline? bad luck? an ill defined niche?  a lack in self-confidence?  WHAT?

You’re not alone.  There are thousands of us like you out here.  We want the same thing.  Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses, different areas of expertise and ignorance.  Each of us wants to make a living following and creatively expressing our deepest passions.  You could call us Passion-led Professionals.  The main problem?  You’re trying to a wonderful thing, but an often staggering complex and challenging thing, mostly by yourself.

So, why not get the support you need?

• All Spark Interaction services are 100% money-back guaranteed, so there is no risk to you.
• Accelerate your revenue generation; Increase your work satisfaction; Refine your clarity & focus.
• Our processes are effective, creative, fun & use a hybrid of online & offline learning technologies.
• A simple & effective place to start is by calling us to set up a free 30 minute discovery consultation. We’d also be happy to simply point you to other resources and services that can help your small business thrive.
• Call us about setting up a series of breakthrough business coaching sessions.
• Call us to find out about joining a new ‘Colab’ (a collaborative goal-acceleration group.)
• Join one of our upcoming Biznik workshops

“Leif is the consummate professional, he’s someone who strives to help his fellow indies succeed, he’s highly creative and is a very kind-hearted guy, too!”
-Nancy Hanauer {More Compliments}

Call 1-877-I-am.game or 206-428-7626

Leif Hansen

Chief Engagement Officer

Whether you’re a:

• passion-led professional with your own small business,
• a parent trying to express your core passions beyond being ‘mom/dad’,
• a retiree wondering what’s next in life,
• or a recent grad who feels lost in a web of options

we understand that ache to live a meaningful, purposeful, enjoyable & full life. Everybody has this ache, but not everybody is ready and willing to pay attention to it or act on it. It’s exciting to start following your heart, but it can also be scary as hell. That’s why it’s important to us that you know we’re here to help you rock it.

No matter what the other voices say (inside or outside your head):

• You can find the safety & support you need to take the risks of making real changes in your life and business.
• You can reconnect with your core passions and find ways to creatively express them while making a living
• You can do work that you enjoy and believe in, while making a difference in this world.
• You can rediscover what its like to be free enough to playfully connect & create with others.

Need to feel inspired? Contact us to find out more about our workshops.

Visit Spark Social Media to learn more about how you can harness the power of social technologies to grow your organization or event.

Visit The Applied Improvisation Network