LARP’ing at the staff meeting: a new low? or brilliant?
I’ve written a customer service-oriented LARP (Live Action Role Playing to those of you too cool to know this) which I will inflict on my staff at tomorrow’s all staff meeting. I think I’ve finally achieved some sort of peak? pit? in my career; basically my inner geek is merging with my inner pointy-haired manager to create this horrific form of self expression: a 30-minute LARP which aims to improve our customer service skills by requiring people to Really Listen to What People Are Saying in order to “solve” the problem. What next? I know, time to finish “IT: The Musical!”
filberthockey said:
Nov 03, 08 at 6:57 amI’ve been engaged in some problem-solving situations the last week where I injected myself as an intermediary disobstacle between two “communicating” parties. In two cases, I essentially talked and talked and talked until I finally figured out what it was that was not being understood between the two groups. Perhaps rather than expecting people to Really Listen to What People Are Saying, there is a role for the person whose function is to sit in the middle and figure out both perspectives.
admin said:
Nov 03, 08 at 5:27 pmI think this is called a mediator… which is useful in complicated situations. In this case, though, we were emulating a help desk transaction. A faculty member complains that he can’t get any help. You ask for more info. Faculty then says that no one ever answers the help desk phone. You ask for more info. Turns out, he’s calling the wrong number. Doh. I was trying to get people to spend more time listening and asking and less time trying to get people off their backs…it was pretty successful. Most people “got” the answer.