Bangkok

Last month I joined two brilliant colleagues to deliver a suite of learning sessions for the HR function of a major global company in Bangkok, Thailand. I'm grateful to Wendy Harbutt of Dramatic Improvement for inviting me to join the team. The brief: help HR professionals step into the potential of their role and work with stakeholders in new ways.

We were often working with large groups — days with 90 participants, and a day with 300. The principle driving our work: insight lands better when people discover it themselves. Groups of this size bring logistical challenges, but they also open up space for powerful shared experiences.

For a room of ninety, I ran fast-paced presence workshops built around a simple pitch structure and the psychology of influence.

On the final day I ran a resilience session for 300, and here the creative constraint of working with such a large group helped generate a moment of magic. Everyone was asked to think of something they were carrying from work that they needed to let go of: the ghost of a project that didn't go as planned, a promotion they didn't get, a difficult conversation with a colleague that didn't go well. 300 people wrote down what they needed to let go of. Then, all 300 screwed their paper into a ball. We counted down from 10 to 1, and threw the paper balls at the window that flanked one side of the 29th-floor conference room, with spectacular views of Bangkok. It was a joyful moment of release — and, for those interested, research-backed too, as an effective therapeutic activity.

If you'd like your own team's training to feel less like a lecture and more like a rehearsal, let's talk.