Dialogues in the dark training scenario. Comments on the training “Dialogue in the dark. - This situation is only in our country.

Oleg Lukyanov, HR Director of Ai-Teco Company. (work experience in the company - since April 2011)

The techniques of “removing from the comfort zone” during the training are known and have been used for a long time. This really significantly optimizes learning outcomes. As techniques, business cases are used that contain atypical, non-trivial tasks, time pressure, mixing work groups - in a word, everything that can create a feeling of discomfort. In fact, people have changed the paradigm of thinking, formed new approaches to solving problems, forced to look at the problem from the other side. This technique worked and, obviously, continues to work.

What the “Dialogue in the Dark” project offers is a new approach, previously, in any case, from the point of view of business training technologies that has not been widely applied and, undoubtedly, interesting. In addition to the social mission related to the involvement of people with disabilities in the active life, the project will certainly be in demand when training top-level management teams. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the management team of the company or the team of a major significant project. A training that allows you to practically practice the ability to listen and hear, communicate, having a limited amount of information, and retain the ability to soberly assess the situation in abnormal conditions, will inevitably become a bestseller.

Elena Petrova, PR-director of "Ay-Teco" company. (work experience in the company - 6.5 years)

Probably not much wrong, assuming that the idea of \u200b\u200b“Dialogue in the Dark”, at least in terms of the name of the training, was pushed by the organizers of “Dancing in the Dark” by Björk. And I wish the creators of this good undertaking the same well-deserved success that the cult film Lars von Trier “Dancer in the Dark” once expected.

Contrary to the call “Get out of the dusk!” The organizers of the training offer participants to deliberately enter this dusk and voluntarily plunge into blackness, realizing well: once in the realm of gloomy darkness and deafening, oppressive silence, each person in the group will open up for themselves and others with the most unexpected (or, conversely, the expected?) side. What will take possession of top managers in this peculiar and sensitively uncomfortable obscura camera (from Lat. Camera obscūra “dark room”): sticky fear, dreary despair, simple curiosity, desire to break free at all costs? What - stunned, depressed or updated, ready for change and new trials - they, moreover, literally, will be released?

Indeed, in business and management today, it is not so much IQ, not the level of professional training, general erudition and special skills, how much business EQ - the emotional intelligence of an effective manager that is gaining importance. This is the ability to control oneself and get along with others, “read” emotions and understand the intentions of other people, empathize, trust, persuade, adapt. This is the possession of interpersonal interaction skills, mutual assistance and the art of communication as the ability to listen, hear, speak and understand the interlocutor even without words.

This is the ability to creatively respond to difficulties, failures and obstacles, to be courteous, attentive and endowed with such personal competencies as empathy, sensitivity, initiative and internal discipline.

Paradoxical and unexpected as it may seem, all of this — as conceived by the organizers of the Dialogues — can be collectively learned in complete darkness and silence. I would like to hope that social entrepreneurs will succeed in this, and that at the end of the trainings, students will be enlightened, enlightened, and life will sound for them in a new way and will sparkle with bright colors. And the dialogue will certainly take place!

Elizaveta Orlova, Head of the Human Resources Department of the Moscow office of ITE Group:

As a former corporate trainer, I believe that any training will be effective only if the training participant himself wants to learn something and is ready to put the knowledge into practice. And in such a situation, teaching methods are not so important. Otherwise, attending any training session may be just another “entertainment event”. It is not entirely clear what exactly participation in the Dialogue in the Dark training will bring. There are other ways to understand the “differentness” of different people without resorting to such methods.

If this is one of the methods of more effective communication of information, then it is necessary to carefully choose the topics of trainings in which it can be used.

Business is used to counting money. He is unlikely to catch the story of the social significance of such a project. That is why its representatives must clearly understand in advance what result they can get by attending the Dialogue in the Dark training.

At first glance, I see the possibility of using similar methods in creativity training, which was mentioned in the article, as well as in team building programs. But the effectiveness of the training will be affected to a greater extent by the skill and experience of the person who will conduct this training.

Interviewed by Alena Yurova, [email protected]
Journal,
august 2013

Natalia Bogacheva, Director of Human Resources, DeltaCredit Bank:

About this training method ("Dialogue in the Dark") I heard about a year ago. It seems to me a rather interesting and undeniably new training format for the Russian market. Unfortunately, it was not possible to experience it for yourself.

I also think that such a training format is suitable for companies with progressive views on the training of their employees. “Dialogue in the dark” will be of interest to organizations in which managers, managers who are sufficiently creative and open to new work. However, when deciding to participate in this training, it is necessary to take into account the individual personality characteristics of potential participants.

For example, a person suffering from necophobia (an obsessive fear of the dark) is unlikely to benefit from this event, and even vice versa. Or else: the very work in training under the guidance of a coach with disabilities requires a high level of tolerance of the participants, the lack of initial prejudice towards blind or dumb people.

These and other limitations make this training format an exclusive, piece-by-piece product rather than a mass one. Speaking about myself, I would love to participate in such trainings. Returning to the interesting in principle training and development formats, I recall the right-brain drawing. A great format that helps to learn to go beyond the usual patterns of action, allowing you to be surprised at your abilities and to transfer this experience in the future to the work environment, to solve difficult business problems.

Also from my experience - participation in non-standard “drum training”. Mastering rather primitive skills of playing various percussion instruments (drums, tambourines, rattles, etc.), the group must perform another, much more difficult task - to learn to hear each other and try to find the rhythm of the game, in which the sounds produced would add up to single rhythmic melody.

In combination with a competent analysis of group interaction under the guidance of a coach, this experience greatly contributes to team building and building effective interaction outside the training.

Probably, I will not say anything innovative about the techniques that influence the assimilation of information. It is important to correctly combine teaching methods aimed at different channels of perception of information. It is important to make the most of the experience and working situations of the participants themselves. It is important to involve participants in the solution of certain issues, tasks within the framework of the training, and “force” to transfer information to the working situation.

Prepared by Catherine Kahraman

Daria Tsiruleva, HR Director of KORUS Consulting:

The effectiveness of trainings - and this is precisely the question about it - is quite difficult to measure, any HR will confirm this. Of course, there are working techniques for measuring knowledge, understanding, skills, motivation and ongoing changes, but their results are not in grams and kilojoules, and certainly not in rubles. It is more about assessment by an expert trainer (usually interested) and self-assessment of the participant. In the programs that Tobias makes, the most valuable thing I consider is not the development of communication skills, leadership and trust, but the deep human experience to be different, unusual for yourself. I am sure that in this format, discoveries are inevitable, first of all, about oneself. In the dark, people will be different, but light or dark for your business - it depends on how you coexist with them outside the walls of the training room. Do they have the opportunity to be the best self in your company? If the answer is yes, feel free to turn off the light.

Interviewed by Alena Yurova, [email protected]

Unusual business trainings appeared in Moscow: visually impaired people teach managers to work in a team and listen to other people's opinions.

“I ask you to take turns to go to the next room,” a stern woman with glasses says to those who gathered for the training and gives out canes for the blind. Having thrown a stick strap on my wrist, I feel my fingers for the wall behind a thick black curtain and only after that I enter the darkness. Entrepreneur Elizabeth 40 years old has already stepped there, ten more people have lined up for me: women, girls and one bearded head of architectural projects Maxim. I walk in the dark at the call of a male voice, first along the wall, then pushing the cane forward. When I get very close, he offers to stop and wait for the others. Someone’s hand hastily puts a piece of paper into my palm — a circle. Around the lively voices of other participants in the training. They are interested in whether there are chairs and whether this is a large room. Excited whispering - as in the auditorium just before the start of the performance.

In Moscow, business trainings in the dark Dialogue in the Dark (www.dialogue-workshops.ru) appeared, where the visually impaired are the trainers. The concept was invented by the German Andreas Heineke, who has been engaged in the integration of the blind into society for 20 years, and on the other hand, introduces sighted people to new sensations that the darkness gives. Museums and cafes Dialogue in the Dark are not only in European cities, but also, for example, in Singapore. The international company Dialogue Social Enterprise has been training since 2001. And in February 2012, they began in Russian.

It turns out that there are tables in the dark room - the male voice of the presenter tells us about this, calling for breaking up into groups in accordance with the received papers. He will continue to lead us, deliberately not specifying the details of the tasks. One has to guess by what principle it is divided into groups. “Circle,” I say. “Triangle,” I hear a girlish voice nearby. So we snort, shake hands with each other and, grouped together, touch to look for tables. When everyone is seated, the facilitator wonders who is sitting with whom.

“I have a rectangle, I'm alone at the table,” Elizabeth's recognizable voice answers.

“And we are two squares, and we are at the table of triangles that push us,” says Maxim.

“Please go to your table and agree somehow, your squares or rectangles,” the moderator strictly demands, and we listen to a small skirmish about geometric shapes.

The lack of images or sounds can help find common ground for partners who are suspicious of each other, said Olga Anisimova, an employee of the Dersu Uzala Ecotourism Development Fund (she conducts team building trainings in nature reserves). According to her, trainers often use this technique by giving participants headphones or blindfold. “This is a good technique for concentrating a team performing a common task,” Olga explains. - Someone with open eyes and ears prevents them from focusing on their goals, but someone, on the contrary, out of habit spends all his resources to convey himself to everyone around him. Disabling one of the main functions of perception makes the brain rebuild, relate to the situation, look for innovative solutions. ”

Our moderator formulates tasks that are the same for all groups, we must complete them in a certain time. Each table has its own trainer who distributes materials, answers questions and gives advice. We are led by Eugene.

“I have the upper parts of two nesting dolls,” the translator Anya, sitting next to me, immediately calls the received items. We are a group trying to formulate in which order to give the details of the three nesting dolls to the coach so that he puts one into the other in order. The main condition of the problem is not to touch the details of the neighbors. By comparing the diameters of the parts obtained with the size of our palms, we determine the order of actions. Then, calmed and contented, we begin to chat about who does what: two translators, a journalist, the mother of a small child.

“Perhaps it’s worth checking to see if you have correctly determined the order,” our coach remarks phlegmatically.

We recheck the dimensions of parts in new ways. And suddenly it turns out that the diameters of the two tops coincide with Anya: each is equal to two phalanges of the index finger. The group trails off.

“Can you touch each other's fingers?” - timidly ask the coach.

It's possible. Anya and I are trying to quickly find out who has longer fingers. Hands tremble, you have to double-check. Gong strikes - end of discussion. The host first wonders with the group with the rectangles whether they managed to cope with the task.

“Everything is excellent here,” the architect Maxim confidently answers.

“We coped with our task,” confirms entrepreneur Elizabeth.

“Unfortunately, nothing came of it,” their blind coach says.

It turned out that this group misunderstood the problem: they decided to create their own art object instead of inserting nesting dolls into one another.

According to Galina Yakovenko, the coach and business consultant of the Training Boutique company, darkness is obviously useful in personal growth trainings, because it makes you turn to your own feelings and considerations, make decisions based on your own feelings. “And in business training this method can be used,” she continues. “For example, for staff working with clients, the darkness would help to learn to listen, understand the interlocutor by the way he speaks, by the melody of his speech.”

We spent two hours in the dark. They even drank tea with a pie, though not deciding to use a knife. Some sat until the very end with a cane in their hands.

After us, an analytical session was waiting in the light. The timid girls here said that now they understood: it is necessary to more persistently and reasonably propose their ideas to the bosses. The bosses claimed that they were convinced here: it is worth listening to what others say, even if subordinates.

I was discouraged by how confidently the blind coaches and leader led us in the dark, and how helpless they seemed in comparison with us in the light. According to Yanina Urusova, general director of the project “Without Borders”, which is the official representative of Dialogue Social Enterprise in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, it is the peculiarity of life without vision that makes them experts: “Only they can move freely in the dark and create an atmosphere of confidence and mutual understanding. Therefore, in Dialogue in the Dark, only people with visual impairments work as trainers. ”

Later, according to the founder of the project “Without Borders” Tobias Reisner, trainings in silence Dialogue in Silence with leading deaf-mute people will appear in Moscow.

Dina Yusupova

Alexander Kosko is the author of world-famous trainings and festivals in the field of bodily, dance-motor and voice therapy. This time A. Kosko comes from Israel to conduct the “Songs in the Dark” training for those who want to discover the pristine power and palette of colors of their voice. We will sing, dance, do vocal and acting exercises to reveal the singing voice. And all this - in a darkened room and with blindfolds. Living such moments and finding solutions, you will enrich yourself with new knowledge and experience.

This evening will be a fascinating and useful game to unleash the strength and power of your voice. We will sing, dance, do vocal and acting exercises to open our voices. And all this - in a darkened room and with blindfolds.

You will visit the tropical jungle and the ocean, enjoy the songs of a drunken feast and the mystical sounds of harmonious group singing, sing along to pop stars and even create your own unique stage image.

3.5 hours to reveal oneself:

  • Work out fears. Cope or significantly reduce the fear of the dark.
  • Unload the brain. Create a unique relaxation for areas of the brain overworked by bodily trance.
  • Remove doubts “what will they think, how will they look at me?”
  • With your eyes closed, you hear more musical nuances of your own voice and bodily sensations.
  • Emancipate and adjust your bodily attention, closing your eyes this is easier to achieve.
  • To contact with oneself. Strengthen contact with your body, the world of feelings and emotions.
  • Bleed intuition. Learning to trust your feelings and intuition more in situations of lack of control and suspense.
  • Release the clamps. Unleash breathing and relax part of bodily stiffness (muscle clamps).
  • Be with the others. Get a charge of positive emotions and warmth.

The duration of the training is 3.5 hours.

Attention!  Take comfortable yoga clothes with you: there will be a lot of physical exercises during the training. All processes will be held with respect to personal boundaries, compliance with safety standards, voluntary participation in tasks and confidentiality of personal experience.

To participate, you must register http://www.kaula.ru/meropriyatiya/11-08_kosko-pesni-v-temnote

  • Date: August 11, 2018 - 17:00 - 20:30
  • Difficulty Level: Suitable for everyone
  • Presenter: Alexander Kosko (Israel)
  • Cost: 2 500 rub. prepaid until August 4, after - 3,500 rubles.
  • Location: Kaula Yoga School at Semenovskaya (Moscow, 7 Semenovskaya pl.)

Are you afraid of the dark? Tobias Reisner, Bezgraniz Couture project partner, organizer of unusual business training in Russia, believes that an exact answer to this question can be obtained only by testing oneself in practice. He told about this, as well as about social entrepreneurship and employment of blind people, in an interview with +1 correspondent Alisa Orlova.

“Tobias, you managed to turn the limitations of blind people into advantages.” Tell me, is your project a business or a charity?

- The meaning of the “Dialogues in the Dark” training is not to talk about people who do not see. Our idea is that these are standard trainings, but as trainers, we attract the blind, as they do the job best and are well-oriented even in complete darkness. The program was developed by Andreas Heinecke, who launched it in more than 30 countries. Dialogues in the Dark is the first project in the world that combines the employment of blind people with a business approach. Our project is engaged in social entrepreneurship, which should not be confused with charity.

- What is the difference?

- We do not have sponsors, we spend the money that we earn on the project. Charity, philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship are three different things. Charity - they gave you money, and you helped someone, and usually this help is provided only for a short period of time. Philanthropy - you have created a socially-oriented project that exists on the money of sponsors on a long-term basis. Social entrepreneurship is a special type of activity, its meaning is that with our project we enter the market and look for those who are ready to buy our product. This is a special type of business. We invest all our profits in the development of the project.


   Business Training "Dialogues in the Dark"
Photo provided by Marketcompass LLC

- How is your training going?

- For us, darkness is a completely non-standard situation, but for a blind person it is ordinary. All communications at the training are voice. A blind coach gives and checks tasks, prompts and guides participants. The training lasts 3-8 hours, it has two main parts. About two hours, people are in the dark, the rest of the time is occupied by individual and group reflection of the participants, drawing conclusions for their practical activities. Globally, of course, we are not talking about career growth, but about meeting with ourselves.

- In Russia, many prejudices are associated with disability. People are afraid to discuss this topic, "so as not to scam."

- Not only in Russia. Everywhere. What do you think is the percentage of people who were born blind? 2%, and all the others lost their vision as a result of illness, accident or because of their age. This statistic is surprising. People begin to realize that no one is safe from anything.

- And what are your requirements for blind employees when hiring?

- The main thing is qualification, experience in such a position. We need people who can communicate on equal terms with our customers, mainly managers from various companies. Higher education and business skills required by a good business mentor are required. If an employee speaks a foreign language, he can go to another country for an internship.


   Dialogues in the Dark: Participants and Trainers
Photo provided by Marketcompass LLC

- How to turn an idea into a successful business project? Share the recipe.

- Need an idea and an idea of \u200b\u200bhow to build all the processes. Second, you must have a business plan and an understanding of how this can be monetized. And thirdly, we need a team. And you need to be patient. Most likely, the reality will be different from your business plan.

- Is such a situation only in our country?

- The first years of “Dialogues in the Dark” did not bring profit. Nowhere, not only in Russia. Sometimes I wonder how we survived. In Russia today I see a positive trend, recently a large number of trainings have been booked. We plan to launch “Dialogues in silence”, with the participation of people with hearing impairment, “Dialogues with time” with trainers of 70-92 years old who talk about what brings us age.

- Why do you continue to do this?

“You won’t earn all the money.” When I build another business, including social, I get positive emotions and grow as a person. And I also see noticeable results from attending trainings, including in Russia. It delights me. This is the reward.

What are your thoughts on forced teambuilding and business training? Do you think that they are clumsy and just wasting your time? Or are they helpful and increase motivation and productivity? One thing is certain - almost all readers are familiar with the standards of classical trainings and teambuildings, such as field trips, lectures, rope trainings, and cooking classes. But have you ever had to wear a costume for sumo wrestlers, pretend to be a zombie, talk in a pack of wolves, ride a horse just to create an atmosphere of trust in the team and get to know your colleagues? Probably not. Below we list some unusual and extraordinary corporate events.

Dialogue in the dark

In 1995, the German Andreas Heineck invented and created the project “Dialogues in the Dark”. Professor Heinecke believes that by living a few hours in life as a blind one can destroy the stereotypical perception of blind people, cultivate a positive attitude towards them and turn their minds around. On the one hand, the project is aimed at integrating blind people into society, and on the other, it introduces sighted people to new sensations that darkness gives. The coaches are the visually impaired, and the training itself takes place in a completely dark room and lasts several hours. In team building can participate from two people to several dozen. Within two hours, Dialogue in the Dark trainers offer to solve several tasks, breaking people up into groups. The group is a small analogue of a company where, for the successful completion of a very simple task, one needs to work in a coordinated, competent manner: each one has to choose a role (who is the leader, who is the obedient executor), act calmly and quickly, agree on standards, find mutual understanding. These common words, usually translated in all companies as a corporate culture, turn out to be worth their weight in gold for a team of people falling into darkness. The lesson, as a rule, begins with the simplest tasks - to determine the size of the room, split into teams, find a table in a dark room, take chairs and so on. Such training is aimed at identifying leadership qualities and team building, but can also be transformed for other needs. For example, for employees working with clients, the darkness helps to learn to listen, understand the interlocutor by the way he speaks, by the melody of his speech.

People vs Zombies

The corporate culture of the United States is experiencing a boom in the training of people against zombies, which in a playful way represent survival from attackers of alive corpses. The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a game that fosters a sense of cohesion in an unusual way came up on the campus of Goucher College with students from Chris Weed and Brad Sappington. They develop guidelines and rules, and commercial franchise firms organize games around the world. Such trainings are popular today both in summer camps and schools, and at military bases. The roles of zombies are played by hired actors, and company employees portray a surviving group of people who need to complete various missions and survive. Players are usually armed with cannons with foam, their goal is to hit a zombie player with a shot. Zombies are disarmed and must mark "people" to satisfy their "hunger", thus excluding them from the game. The result is a mixture of paintball and costume performance.
  Since players must work in perfect unity to outwit zombies, such an activity allows you to establish trust and deep connections in the team, immediately removing social boundaries. As the creators say: “Zombies do not discriminate against you on either a racial or gender basis. They just eat you if you don’t know how to work in a team. " Players who have ever participated in the "battle with the zombies", report that this is the most unforgettable experience of building cooperation and cooperation in the team.

Sumo wrestling

Despite some doubts about efficiency, sumo wrestling is gaining popularity in the UK. To organize sumo training, many companies have been created that provide customers with costumes (the kit even includes a headdress that resembles a sumoist's hairstyle), a doha wrestling arena, and competent judges of the gaji. An additional entourage is a smoke-emitting apparatus and Japanese soundtracks. Of course, no purism in following the rules can be expected. In the trainings that stage the sumo wrestling, the main thing is fun and fun, not victory. The organizers claim that there is no better way to build a healthy relationship with a manager than topple him to the ground, wearing a thick vinyl suit, while colleagues stand around and cheer.

Wolf training

In the West, team building with the participation of animals is no longer a rarity. Not only horses and donkeys, but even wolves help people become a team. Janet Neigel is a professional zoologist and psychologist. Working with dogs, she realized that dogs and wolves can teach people a lot. “Relations in a pack of wolves are very similar to human, we have something to learn from them,” says Dr. Janet Nigel. So, she launched a business training on leadership development in the Schorfheide Nature Reserve in northeastern Germany.

These trainings are based on the conclusions of the psychoanalyst and professor at the University of Vienna, Raoul Schneider, that the system of human relations is similar to the system of relations among wolves. In a pack of wolves and in people's lives, one can distinguish leaders (alpha), the closest candidates for their place and at the same time their defenders (beta), the main part of society (gamma) and outsiders (omega). Alpha leaders are always characterized by emphasized calm and psychological superiority. He must earn his position and be able to always act in the interests of the pack. Thus, pressure and aggression are excluded in a pack of wolves, but very warm relations between all individuals are brought up. This is taught at the training.

Corporate trainings are very popular, because it is during the meetings of large companies of people that there is much in common with a wolf pack. First, communication with tamed wolves takes place in the aviary, then observation of a flock of wild wolves is carried out in the reserve. Thus, observing the behavior of the pack and the leader from the inside and comparing it with office life, employees learn to resolve conflicts and build healthy communication in the team.

Riding training

Business seminars with horses were invented by spouses Krebs from Germany in 1996. They conduct classes in the format of riding lessons without coaches and trainers. It is horses that teach participants in the training how to develop leadership skills, achieve goals, accept their own weaknesses and overcome obstacles. Gerhard Krebs is confident that working with horses makes people feel responsible, confident, develops a degree of understanding of everything that happens. This is exactly what is needed to develop leadership skills. In addition, horses are always 100% objective and sincere. They don’t care what your position is called or how much you earn. In order for the horse to obey and execute commands, it is necessary to forget about the status, guiding experience, and trust your own intuition to become an authority. Thus, training, gait and gallop teach participants to become true leaders.

Blind driving

Blindfold companies say this is "a unique way to solve complex office problems in a fun and exciting way." The organizer checks the course, plans the route, provides the team with a car, and puts the blindfold on the driver. When a driver, one of the team members, is completely disoriented in space, then his “eyes” are colleagues. This is a good reason to find out how high the level of confidence is in the colleagues who are currently sitting behind their backs, who are now entrusted with the management of actions, indicating turns while the engine is running. General goal: to be the first to finish at the appointed time. This task is mainly aimed at building the ability to work together as a team.

Training in Antarctica

Large companies also offer interesting trainings for their employees. For example, Coca-Cola holds an unusual business training for its best employees every year in Antarctica. The training is led by world-famous researcher Robert Swan. In 1986, Swan became the first person on Earth to visit both extreme points of the planet - the North and South poles. Once a year, the traveler organizes a training expedition, during which, in the struggle for life, he shows the participants what team work is and how to become a real leader.

 

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