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Welcome to
The
Ariel Group's Newsletter
May 2005| Vol. 1, Issue
4
 Founders' Spotlight
Dear Friends,
In
this issue of The Ariel Review, we celebrate  our recently being named Business of the
Year by ISA—The Association of Learning Providers.
The Awards Committee selected Ariel from among the organization’s
100 plus members, recognizing the success of our programs,
our financial growth, our client service and an internal
culture that fosters employee development and satisfaction.
Little did
we imagine when we founded The Ariel Group 13 years
ago that we would grow to such a size and become recognized
as leaders for our innovative approach. As actors we
knew in our hearts that we had a lot to offer individuals
outside our profession. We are heartened and grateful
that so many have listened to our message and learned
from our work. We have many people to thank along the
way for our success.
First of
all we would like to acknowledge our wonderful and growing
team of facilitators. We now have 38 certified facilitators
in the United States and Europe, delivering outstanding
classroom experiences to nearly 5,000 business leaders
every year. We cannot thank you enough for your dedication
to quality and for going above and beyond every day.
Secondly
we want to pay tribute to the unsung heroes of Ariel,
our dedicated and hard-working office team. From our
account managers who treat our clients with such care,
to our operations and finance staff who quietly ensure
our success by taking care of every detail and provide
our facilitators with cheerful and timely support.
Finally we
must thank our clients. Many of you took a leap of faith
with us in the early days, plunging into new and unorthodox
approaches to developing leadership skills. Your courage
to try something new and your openness to expand beyond
your comfort zones has inspired us over the years.
We were particularly
moved by the committee’s recognition of our company’s
culture. We try hard to build a community in which every
member, even our most distant independent contractor,
can feel a connection. We have also endeavored to do
good while doing well and are pleased that our efforts
to provide services to those in need through Ariel Outreach
(see related article) have been recognized. We hope
this will inspire others to do the same. We firmly believe
that creating a culture based on community and generosity
not only provides a fulfilling place to work but also
inspires all of us to deliver excellence in everything
we do.
Warmly,
Belle
Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar
Ariel Founding Partners
Magazine
Extols Ariel’s Emphasis on Passion and Emotion
The
February issue of The Meeting Professional magazine
singled out The Ariel Group for doing what we do best:
injecting creativity into a training meeting. The magazine
pointed to Ariel’s use of acting exercises that
are designed to help course attendees “connect
authentically” with their thoughts and feelings
by acting them out.
The publication quotes Kathy Lubar, Ariel co-founder,
as saying that, “Leaders are responsible for the
authentic excitement of their organizations. If you
can’t connect with your own passion, how can you
possibly get other people motivated about whatever your
vision is.”
The article went on to explain one exercise that our
trainers use. In it we ask each person in the group
to speak extemporaneously on any general topic.
While the person is speaking, our meeting coach shouts
out a different emotion such as love or anger, asking
the participant to reflect that emotion in their speech.
Later we help them see how emotions can be applied to
business situations.
The magazine citation ties in well with chapter six
of our book, Leadership Presence. In that section, titled
“Emotion Drives Expressiveness,” Ariel co-founders
Lubar and Belle Halpern talk about the misconception
that still plagues many organizations: “the notion
of the leader as an aloof authority, above it all, cool,
calm, dispassionate, always in control, swayed only
by careful reasoning based on hard data.”
As the authors point out, all human interaction is full
of emotion. Fortunately, the idea that people should
leave their feelings at the door when they come to work
is beginning to change. In fact, they say, success depends
more on emotional skills than on traditional ideas about
intelligence. Many organizations are now recognizing
something called EI or emotional intelligence.
One of those people, Daniel Goleman, said in the Harvard
Business Review that, “Emotional leadership is
the spark that ignites a company’s performance,
creating a bonfire of success or a landscape of ashes.”
We have developed three guidelines for leaders about
inserting emotion into their language:
1.
Generate excitement by expressing emotion
2. Express authentic emotion
3. Use passionate purpose to invest your words and action
with authentic feeling.
By authentic we mean genuine and true, real and appropriate
for the occasion. As actors we know that performers
don’t pretend feelings. That’s a common
misconception. Yes, they may pretend to be a character
but the good actors bring real feelings of their own
into each character they play.
Anyone who has been to an amateur performance has witnessed
beginning actors struggling with the kind of “self-censorship”
and fear of exposing themselves that the rest of us
have. That’s why we tell leaders to express an
authentic emotion.
Another aid that we tell those in our classes about
is putting passion into words and actions. In our book
we list (page 151) some verbs that excite us and will
put power and emotion into any leader’s communication.
These include words such as “beseech,” “dazzle,”
“placate,” and “tantalize.”
These are words that live and impart passion and meaning.
Using emotions in the workplace will work for leaders
as well as it does for actors onstage. That’s
why we’ve made it a fundamental part of what we
teach.
Ariel Outreach
: Outreach Update
2005
As part of our
"Ariel Outreach" program, The Ariel Group dedicates
10% of our post-tax profit to delivering programs to
underserved communities and service agencies. In this
space we will be describing our experiences working
with these wonderful organizations.
We’ve been very busy on the Ariel Outreach
front in recent months. Here are some of the projects
we’ve been working on.
We continue
our work within the Massachusetts prison system. One
of our senior consultants has been doing very inspiring
work in the Bay State Prison coaching inmates on storytelling
and other skills. Her good work builds directly on the
workshops we offered a couple of years ago at the South
Bay House of Correction.
Based
on her wonderful work we have been invited back to participate
in a new Houses of Healing program that has started
at Cedar Junction, in the maximum security prison in
Walpole. Jenny Philips, is developing this new program
AND is excited about our participation. She tells us
that, "The climate is right now for some real change
in the prison system and we can all help!"
We
have provided two workshops for the Acre Family Day
Care, a non-profit in Lowell, Massachusetts that trains
and supports low income women in running in home day
care facilities. We worked with the 18 members of the
staff from Executive Director through the wonderful
folks who provide transportation for the children. We
provided a one-day teambuilding that allowed THIS hard-working
group to get to know one another (and welcome recently
hired staff) in a completely new way. In our second
workshop they addressed the difficult topic of challenging
workplace interactions. “We were all excited but
pretty nervous about anything that involved acting,”
said Kristen Wesloh, interim director at Acre, “but
it turned out to be a fun and highly rewarding experience.
We bonded as a team and felt re-vitalized pride in the
important work we do in our community.”
In addition
to our program delivery work we have awarded $15,000
in grants to “arts-related” projects that
will be run by our facilitators and other local artists.
These creative and worthwhile projects include working
with migrant children in Germany, providing music and
stage combat workshops as well as free tickets to the
Boston Shakespeare Project’s production of Measure
for Measure. We are providing graphic design services
to Lowell based non-profits through the Jericho Road
Project.
Several other
Ariel facilitators are joining forces with the Side
by Side post-release prison program to create a theater
troupe of ex-prisoners under the auspices of the non-profit
City Mission Society’s Public Voice Project. This
troupe will move out into the greater-Boston community
in the Fall of 2005 to help educate and enlighten both
the general public and legislators on issues relating
to criminal justice.
Finally we
have scheduled a company wide service day for June 3rd
during which our entire office staff and a core of our
facilitators will do repair and renovation work in Lowell
family day care facilities. At the end of the day we’ll
celebrate with a community dinner and Ariel facilitators
will provide entertainment.
A Book We Recommend
Daniel Pink's
"A Whole New Mind"
Daniel
Pink’s new book “A Whole New Mind”
(Riverhead Press) is an eminently readable and thought
provoking look at shift from the Information Age to
the Conceptual Age. Pink’s thesis is that the
linear, left brain thinking that built our technology-based
economy is not enough. We need to develop and apply
the skills associated with the right brain.
Of
course this right brain thinking resonates with us because
our roots are in the arts – the traditional domain
of Right-brainers. But Pink argues his case convincingly,
citing business examples like General Motors CEO Bob
Lutz saying “we’re in the art business”
and research from the likes of cognitive scientist Richard
Schank who says humans are geared to understand stories
better than logic.
Pink
goes on to identify “Six Senses” needed
to thrive in the Conceptual Age; Design, Story, Symphony,
Empathy, Play and Meaning. You’re going to have
to read the book to find out what he means. It is worth
the effort.
Recent
Comments From Our Clients
This
story was sent to us from the manager of a group of engineers
from a major telecommunications company. Shortly
after our session ended, a group of us had the opportunity
to present our regional accomplishments with our Senior
Leaders. We decided to shake things up a bit and revamp
the way that we have done these meetings in the past.
This
was new ground for all of us and we felt very compelled
to make this meeting the new benchmark for them going
forward. We started the meeting off by introducing all
of the new leaders in our organization and we did this
with a boxing theme. I brought in a karaoke machine,
big red boxing gloves and a couple of theme songs to
Rocky. This went over very well and afforded us an opportunity
to introduce some drama to our meeting.
This
was a huge step for us as we are all a bunch of introverted,
stuffy engineering types - or so they thought! We also
decided to present all of our results together instead
of each person getting up to present the results from
their respective teams. This allowed us to show that
we are really one team with one goal of customer satisfaction.
We kept the audience on their toes bypositioning ourselves
around the room and by moving frequently to take full
advantage of the space available.
We
received glowing reviews from the participants and heard
comments from others who thought it would be difficult
to follow our act at the next meeting. All of the new
things we tried as well as the success we had in presenting
are a direct result of having opened our minds and hearts
to the joy of "presenting with presence."
Thanks for being such a great facilitator and mentor.
Visit http://www.arielgroup.com/ or call 781-761-9000
to find out how The Ariel Group can help you and your
employees:
- Communicate for results.
- Build strong professional
relationships.
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