350 - Workshops Without Words: Learning from the Clown with Suzanne Dietz

What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Miriam Hatnes, and with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show is Susanne Dietz, and she's a professional clown, and we speak about what facilitators Managers, actually every human being can learn from the clown. And I could not stop being amazed and surprised by the small and the big things that we can pick up to be more human and more real with each other. So stay tuned. And don't forget to scroll down to the show notes to find more information about Susanne and to subscribe to the show if you like it. And just as a disclaimer, Workshop's Work will soon retire and it will be replaced by my new podcast called Unprofessionalism. It will be there for you to listen to from January 2026. Thank you for listening. Enjoy the show. Susanne, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It took me a very long time to convince you to do this with me.

It did.

Very slow trust building. So I'm—

Am I slipknot building? No, no, I'm just like chronically unsure about using words about my job. So.

Welcome to the club. I think my mom still doesn't know what I do as a facilitator. So, um, I think that's true for most of us. Yeah.

I mean, but I mean, yeah, it is uncomfortable feeling to me that I, it feels like a big birthday party where there's many people that I don't know and they're curious to know what I do, apparently, cuz they click some button somewhere. And yeah, now the pressure is on, right?

It's a nice analogy, and I hope that you won't choose my strategy at birthday parties where I don't know anyone. I would go in the kitchen and start washing the dishes. So please don't do that. Susanne, when did you start calling yourself a facilitator?

Oh, I, I don't remember that. I do remember when I stopped calling myself a facilitator.

Oh, that's true.

That's about 9 months ago. I used to work at a, uh, agency, bureau. What's this called? An office, I think, that facilitates the birth of standards, like technical standards. And, uh, So, so I got the entire production, production chain of things into the room and, and, and, and got some regulators there as well. And, and then people would discuss together how they would talk about things from now on, like create a common language, find out how to do things together, find out where they actually annoy each other without knowing, stuff like that. Yeah, I really love that. I mean, I enjoyed the Yeah, the group work, the finding, making people prepared to, to have patience, to understand each other, to be curious about each other, to find out together that actually they know a lot, even if the topic is very new and everyone is like, oh, we cannot write a standard about this yet. So I enjoyed that.

Yeah.

And then I quit. So I also stopped calling myself a facilitator.

Mm.

And it's.

It's interesting. I, I love the way how you framed it. It sounds like a, a midwife to processes or standard, a midwife to standards. Yeah.

I like, yeah. Yes. Maybe. I mean, many people will not recognize this in the world of standards. Maybe they will think it's dry or experience it as very dry. But I think it's like common meaning building together. You, you find meaning together in Shared experiences and put them together, your experience together with someone else's experiences, more knowledge, basically. So that's—

Yeah. And so, so important because that's where usually it goes wrong, that people are not aligned. They're referring to different standards and, um, don't know what the others know, what they don't know.

Yeah. And actually now I say that I stopped calling myself a facilitator. Now I start to be curious if I still will not call myself a facilitator anymore after this talk.

Challenge accepted.

Thank you. Let's see.

So obviously my, the question at hand is, how do you call yourself now? And what made you quit?

Um, right now I call myself a clown, more specifically a care clown or a wellbeing clown. And I see it as my purpose to add aliveness to the lives of people in elderly homes and Asylum centers and, uh, yeah, people with dementia, for example, they can benefit a lot from a clown or, and yeah, and actually it also likes playing a lot on the street a lot. And I think people that are not locked up somewhere also can benefit hugely from some clown around.

Everyone deserves a clown. And I'm, I'm very curious about that part and I, um, I recorded I think I mentioned that one of my very first episodes was with a clown, with Stefan, um, because I took a clown workshop once, I think 10 years ago already.

Oh yeah.

And I'm still thinking back in awe because I learned so much from the clown. And I also acknowledge that most of the listeners might not have had this experience. So maybe we can start, what are maybe similarities? So not to explain what a clown is, let's start from what we know. What are the similarities between a facilitator and a clown?

Oh, I think there's many. Like when I worked as a facilitator, I started doing this clowning school on the side. And I think it was facilitation that taught me that, that clowning skills can be very useful far away from a stage.

Hmm.

Like it's, I don't have to put on a red nose and be a 100% clown to use the skills that I use as a clown for facilitation or other things in daily life. But it's also the other way around. I mean, facilitators do a lot of improvising basically. Like you, you, you are very good at not knowing. You start somewhere, you, you have the guts to start somewhere, and then you have People influence the process and everything that is growing from this process. You allow them to have influence there. You also consciously choose, so you're very aware of what is happening all the time in any moment, I think. But you still are like choosing and, and directing conversations in certain ways. I think facilitators cannot do their job without having attention for, for nonverbal signs, and to me clowning is like the, the, the craft of nonverbal communication. Like, I don't use words as a clown.

Not at all.

Not at all. That's my goal, basically.

Wow.

So now I imagine having a workshop with no words. What would it look like?

Oh, what would it look like?

Yeah, I'm curious. I would love to design it.

I would love to attend it. I had a guest on the show, Thomas Lahnthaler. We spoke about workshops without questions. And I spoke about workshops without sticky notes.

Great.

Oh, I once, I actually once was in a workshop without words. You were online.

Can you tell me about it?

That was very interesting. Um, because A, the music made a big impact. And we had to listen to, well, to the nonverbal. Haha. So we were using a digital whiteboard and then seeing the cursors on where they were in the space gave us an idea of where the others were in the process and then leaving notes to each other. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Like a silent meeting kind of. Yeah.

But then tell me more about the nonverbal. So where do you get the clues from? And what are you communicating?

Oh, do you mean the, the nonverbal clues that facilitators pick up or?

The clown.

The clown. Ah, okay. Then I got your question. Right at the moment, this is a very hard question for me to answer because it is, to me, the most natural way of communicating without words. And also, and then I also mean not using like sign language, which is referring to words. Because this is sometimes confused as being nonverbal, and I think it's not.

Good one.

What I mean by that is that maybe it helps when I explain what attracted me to clowning. And this is a very big part of it, actually.

Perfect. Thank you.

So how I got to clowning, specifically about the nonverbal part is, well, like I said, I have a preference for nonverbal. Communication. And I didn't know that because I was educated in a system that tells me that I need to use words to be understood. I need to use words to pass my exams. I need to, you know what I mean? This is, this is, words are very vital. And I did notice that I felt very uncomfortable about using them, like always a bit stressed and very unsure about being understood or not. And then at some point I ended up in a, well, first of all, in a sign language course, because I was attracted to this nonverbal thing. And then, I mean, it is part of the grammar of sign language that you express your emotion. You cannot say I am happy without looking abundantly happy and fusing the happiness in the way you're signing, the way you're using your hands, basically. So this was already very freeing for me, basically. And I, I hear this back from friends that saw me use sign language the first time. They were like, wow, you look like a different person. There's suddenly so much visible about what is going on inside you instead of this wall of thinking about what words that you should be using. Okay, so this is, this is something that helps me feel free in expressing myself. The, like the being allowed to express the emotion that is inside it. Um, and then I went through this course that, that uses theater exercises to like develop your self-confidence and your, your way of being in front of a group and stuff like that. And we had to do this nonverbal exercise. So we were walking. Where 2 people were in a, facing each other. It was a bench in the middle and you would face each other and walk up to the bench from both sides. This was the direction. The goal was to sit next to each other on the bench. And the idea, the made-up idea was that you would be attracted to each other, like starting to feel in love with it. But the real assignment was to feel for every step, like, okay, how is this impacting me? If I get closer, I look at you and I see that you're also coming closer. Do I still want to come closer, or do I want to? And then I noticed that being—I look for a word in English now—being onslagen, like being fired from an obligation. How do you say this?

Feeling obliged, pressured, fired from a obligation. Yeah, I will find.

Yeah, I find a word. I think, like being relieved from this obligation of using words, and that I also. knew that there would not be any words at all in the next 10 minutes, I could start feeling like, oh, okay, my, I noticed suddenly some kind of bodily awareness that I did not have before. So I felt like, oh, okay, I'm going to do a step and I really feel like I'm pushed back. My body just did, oh, okay, so I take a step back. So there, there came this clarity that I did not know from Thinking, that I did not know about deciding things from thinking or coming up with new things from using words in my brain, let's say. So I experience a lot of clarity when it comes to nonverbalness. Things become more easy also because they're always attached to something that is really there in reality. Like as a clown, you get this filter of not going too much into very complex emotions that are based on very complex thoughts. Like, I cannot play Hamlet as a clown. I cannot.

Mm-hmm.

It's just too complicated. But I can have this feeling of, I don't know, inlovedness that I translate to, I really want to give you a flower. And then I work with the flower and my wish to give it to you. And then see what comes from that. Maybe you accept the flower, maybe you don't. Maybe, well, anything can happen from there.

Yeah. And which sounds so much more approachable, relatable, connected. And human.

Yes, that's it. And that's what I missed in my facilitation job, in the way this world works in an office very often, I think, is that there's so little space for emotion, so little space for your, your impulse in the moment. And yeah, this is also what I call human and sexual. I use the same word sometimes.

Thank you. And now, so how I understand now where you get the nonverbal clues from is basically expressing emotions or situations in a very simple way, or maybe the inspiration that you get from the outside.

Yeah, it's a, it's like a double awareness that, that I trained a lot as a clown and that I use now when I'm in front of a group as well. There's always this tracking of what is going on inside. What am I feeling? What is my impulse? Am I getting bored? Very simple things, basically. Am I worried about something? Looking at the door all the time. I just notice what my body is doing. So, okay, I'm looking at the door all the time. Why am I doing that? Is there a reason for that? Can I not do it? What happens when I don't do it?

Yeah.

So there's this track record of emotional and physical movement that I do without really thinking about it. And of course, there's the awareness of what is happening around in other people, what they are showing. And I try to stay away from what I think they are showing.

Mm.

I really get to the things that my senses can see, feel, smell, hear. And I think then in that sense, movement is also a sense, uh, that I can feel nice in a certain movement or not.

This is so interesting. So when you, because I think many of us, me included, have learned to simply ignore what's going on inside and then looking to the door, connecting to a sense of worry. Might not be, oh, maybe I'm nervous, brushing it away and then covering up by thinking or speaking. How do you, and my assumption is that you would not tuck it away, but you make it part of the clowning of the performance. Or what are you doing? So once you're aware of everything that's happening, what do you do with it?

Yeah, I use it. I'm no, I have a choice. I always have a choice. I think that is a very important thing to realize.

Good reminder.

Thank you. I remind myself of this every day.

I mean, yeah, the simple things, right? Yes, we have a choice. Okay, so you feel, you realize, you look at the door all the time. You wonder, okay, so what is it? Yeah. And then what is the choice?

The choice is, do I act on it or not? And what action do I choose? And actually, I talk about this example of looking at the door comes from my imagination, imagining myself as a facilitator still. Like, okay, I'm in front of this group and I'm looking at the door all the time. Am I worried about not everyone being here yet? Should I check if everyone's here? Did I hear before that there might be construction works going on and there's noise coming? Or I don't know.

Mm-hmm.

And then actually, I think it's important to, what I usually do both as a clown and as a facilitator, I think, is making this part of the shared world of me and my participants, because, or my audience, basically, it's basically the same to me. Because they also see me look there, consciously or unconsciously, they have noticed this.

Yeah. Oh, yes. So making the implicit explicit, that's for me the one thing that One of the 3 things facilitators need to do. And second, the word that comes to my mind is integrity, as closing the gap between what's outside and what's inside, what we're showing and what's going on.

Yeah, and I think, um, this is very, it's very human for one, and this is very relaxing for a group, I think, to show that you see and you know what they are seeing, and you're in If you let, like, like I said, you're in the same world and, and that is very relaxing for people to, to be confirmed that you're in the same world. Like you're, if you're facilitating somewhere and there's a, a huge sound of a car braking very, very much like, you know, it's outside. Everyone is waiting for the boom or not, you know, you cannot just go on with your talk and pretend nothing happened. And I see this happening quite a lot, actually, when people give talks or whatever. There's something that attracts the attention of everyone, and still you ignore it while you're the leader of the group, basically, or you're in front of the group. And I think that's scary.

Yeah, it's scary because there's suddenly, especially when you speak about a speaker on stage and even the facilitator, because suddenly you have Competition for attention, right? So ignoring it then puts you in the competition, whereas integrating it, then you win, right? And I can think of the biggest competition is a phone, right?

Yeah. Or email happening on the same screen as you're facilitating online or however.

So what would a facilitator with clowning skills, or what would the clown do? With the competing attention.

Yeah. Well, I had a very nice talk with a street clown recently. He plays on streets and he has a show that has like some kind of structure and there's music. And so it's really organized, but he's on the street. So there will always be many things that are not like happening in a normal theater or like a protected space. It's just not a protected space. It might be raining, it might start raining, there might be a kid crying because he lost his mom, there might be someone in the audience doing dancey things that everyone is looking at instead of him. I mean, and this all happened in one hour that I looked at this guy, or these examples that I just mentioned. So he has to deal with a lot of things. And I asked him how he does this and he actually mentions Something that is very similar to what you just mentioned. Like, I'm always on the lookout of anything that could be more interesting than I am. And this needs to get my attention before it gets the— well, if it's only one or two people distracted by this, then it deserves my attention. I incorporate it in the show in some way. I find a way for this. And of course, this is not easy. You need to build some kind of repertoire or trust that you can do this on the spot.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think this is, this is where it starts. And, and again, this is also can be something very small that did not, is not yet noticed by everyone, basically.

Mm-hmm. And it's interesting because I, I'm thinking of all the distractions that happen in a workshop space, all the air quotes, difficult people who are distracting. Um, it's the equivalent of the child crying or the person starting to dance, someone starting to rant. Yeah, the phones that get out, the emails that come in, and how important it is to acknowledge, incorporate, or to do something against or with this potential competition.

I find it interesting that you call this competition. I have to think of the moments when I walk on the street as a clown. There's many people that are not interested, or like they show that they are already fed up with you being there. You don't do anything yet, basically.

Another commonality with the facilitator.

Indeed. Instant resistance. Yes. We don't need you here. And actually what works for me, It can also be a shy kid. It doesn't need to be someone who's angry with you. It can also be a kid that is just very shy and scared of you in the first moment they see me. So what I actually learned to focus on, what works best, is to just have fun with myself. To not need the audience. To have like a real, real high quality of attention for something that I enjoy, that I find important. And at the same time, be very aware that there might be people that want to join. So I have this, this quality. I try to, to, to achieve this quality of, of being that, that is really helping. No, not helping, wrong word. This quality of allowing others to see me and what I am experiencing. So I'm the vulnerable one.

Mm-hmm.

They can see whatever I'm experiencing. They can, I'm there. They can connect to me anytime they want. And if they do, I will give them some influence in my play. And then we start building a world together. So we play together and they can see and feel that, that I did not think of an act when I was at home on the couch. And I'm now pushing this through your throat. And you have to laugh about it because I have a red nose. No, I don't care about your laughs. I don't need them. I'm also not looking for them. I actually only care about being real in that moment and about this connection. And then if, if that's there, then we can, yeah, then we create, I can do something, you react on it, I react on the same thing, we find a little I call it laws of nature. Like, it can be as simple as you point somewhere and I'm, my face goes there. You point somewhere else, my face goes there. And then we do this a few times and then maybe I start like, okay, now we can play with this. So maybe we can also turn it around. If I look somewhere, your finger goes there. Or the other person does something else. I don't know what they do with my, but I will incorporate this in the play. And at some point we have this. Agreement that my face and your finger are connected. Yeah, you build this game and you start playing with it, and then my goal is to find an adventure together. Because I mean, if you only bring things that they already know, then I could also stay home. There's no point in going to an elderly home with dementia, people with dementia, and not bring them something that they already know. So we have this game with the finger, and then at some point I tried to, okay, what, what What use can I make of this? Or how can I make this into something that is new for you or that is exciting in some way? And it depends very much on the person. So maybe I want them to touch something and I really keep looking at it for a long time. Or the other way around, I invite them to touch some weird things that I then have to look at or maybe even touch with my nose and get closer. Of course, you know, you get this It's really like a really tiny gain. And that, I think that is the essence of clowning, that it's always in the small things and that the trick is to not make it bigger than absolutely needed. To keep it in the real world.

It's the exact opposite of what we do in daily life.

Yeah.

Isn't it? Where we tend to make things bigger than they actually are.

Yeah. And then clowns are being called dramatic. It's, it's interesting, right?

Yes. And maybe that's what's so scary about them. This absolute independence, as you explained it. You enjoy doing what you do and trust that your excitement will invite others without forcing them, not needing their approval, not needing to be liked.

Yeah, I don't need to be liked. And at the same time, there is an invitation.

Mm-hmm.

Lingering. So I don't need them for my joy. I don't need them to be in a certain way. They can do anything they want. But the big difference with the play in theater is that a clown cannot exist without his audience. I do need input from you, and the input can be that you ignore me, which is perfect. I can work with that.

And then you would imitate the person ignoring you, or you would fight for their attention, or?

No, maybe if everyone is ignoring me, I mean, imagine being in a shopping street and there's like 50 people passing you every minute and no one is looking at you.

Sorry.

Or at least like visibly looking at you because you have been seen, of course, but everyone is actively ignoring you. Oh, what would I do? Well, maybe, maybe I would just be sitting there and be sad about it. Hmm. Be sad, clown. And I guarantee you there will be someone who says, oh, it's a child. There's that, or there's a child that comes sit next to me, or something will happen. So it's about the patience of not forcing my idea of what is interaction or what is input that I need on, on my audience, basically.

And what I hear. So there's one thing I hear and there's one very big curiosity. I'll park the curiosity here. So what I hear is you keep things as simple as possible, so you don't make them bigger, but the emotions you're amplifying, right?

Mm-hmm.

From what I hear. So when you, because when you just sit down and be a bit sad, then people might confuse it with you taking a break, right? Or not being interested. So you have to, from what I hear is you really have to amplify the emotion. But not the action or the, the story.

Yeah. And still, it has to be very clear that you're playing with this emotion. Like, and I think there's parallels there with facilitators quite a lot that you're always like, if I'm on a stage or if I'm being a clown on the street or whatever, I play with my emotions basically. And many people see this as doing it very big and making a joke. Uh, very big and, and, and, and overreacting basically. I want to say 2 things about that. One is, that's why you have to be careful because there you become scary as a clown.

Mm-hmm.

If you take things too soon.

Mm-hmm.

Like if I react this big out of nothing, then you're a scary clown. I mean, people want to see what triggered this emotion.

Yep.

And then they want to have the time to see this emotion grow in you. So it starts very tiny and then it becomes bigger. And at some point you might be shaking all over from anger or sadness or whatever. But then I have to— your audience has followed this, this development basically. And it's, and then it's not that big anymore. Then it's just a very big expression of something. That they can relate to. So this is again about being in the same world. I start in the same world as them. Yeah. I'm just sitting there.

And they're part of it.

I have an emotion. I dare to show it. And when I notice that there's people engaging or looking, then I can have it grow a bit. So that's the part about being scary. I have big emotions. So this is what I want to say. Expressing emotions is not always A good thing in any way. Very good point. It still has to be something that others can, can understand, basically.

Yeah, in, in communication, in relationship, in so that, yeah, you take them along on the journey.

Yeah, because I don't want them to feel responsible for my emotion. I want to show it and I wanted to use it as a means for connection. I wanted to use it as a Entrance for play. I want to use it for an invitation to interact with me, but I don't want them to feel responsible for, you know, my emotion. And I especially don't want them to feel like it is, yeah, it is real, but it's not real. Like I'm still carrying it. I'm having fun actually with it. Yes, I play that I'm, I'm sad, but I play it in a way that, that is what I'm trained as a clown. To play it in a way that I enjoy being sad in this way and expressing it in this way. So again, I don't need you basically as an audience, but you're very much invited here.

And this, this tension, I would like to dig a little bit deeper into this tension because I think it's a, it's a real art. So I'm thinking of 2 situations, one real life situation. Where someone who might be introverted, independent, does something on their own, but actually feels lonely and is very quickly dismissed as arrogant.

Yeah.

So it's this independence that I don't need you, but somehow the world perceives the person as closed and unapproachable. And then there's a clown way where you do your own thing, you enjoy it. So it's the same thing, but the world perceives you as, oh, I am invited to interact.

I know.

And I think the other example is in the facilitation world where I have seen facilitators never calling the group back after a break.

Uh-huh.

Or never asking them to start, never saying, okay, so let's start. It's It's 5 past the time. Let's get started. Please have a seat. But they would just sit, take a seat or do something and somehow communicating nonverbally the invitation that it's time to start and the group gets it.

Yeah. You naturally draw attention. You suck it up like a—

So how do you do that, that you don't fall into the trap of, oh, nobody wants to play with me? Or I'm too cool to play with anyone. Whoa.

Whoa. Well, the things that I have to think about now, there's 2 things I have to think about now. And one of them is that it has to do with your own beliefs. Like if you're still partly very anxious that no one is coming while I'm sitting here, then this will be visible in some way in your body, in your communication that is there anyway, that you're not sure and that you might come and get them anyway, but they're not showing up, right?

So, so then they get lazy. Oh, they will come anyway. You don't have to do anything.

It helps to not perform, basically. That is how I would phrase it. It helps to not perform. Um, because then all of your being will unconsciously be directed to this This thing that you want to give attention, and somehow this is how attention works. People will get curious for what, what your attention, what is your attention directed at. And then there's things that you can help it, and you can also help yourself get this clutter in your nonverbal communication out, basically, by just really, like, focusing your gaze, making sure your feet are directed at the thing that you're You're interested in. The same with when, when you talk to people in a group, like if you're talking to someone, just turn your feet to this person, turn your entire body there.

Mm-hmm.

And shift it like totally when you're looking at someone else without like really making fences to the other side, but you show with your entire body and you help yourself directing your own attention places and that, that kind of naturally Helps the other person's attentions. And there's this thing of silence. Yeah. So I name these nonverbal things and I do them in silence.

Yeah. Very interesting. And I can also see how the shifting of the body, you can shift totally to one person and then it's a sign to the outside world, don't interrupt. Or you can kind of be half open. Inviting someone else to join your little conversation.

Yeah. And also be totally evolved with this person. If you have a bit more distance, for example, you can be totally directed to this person, but they'll still be open for someone to join your little space together. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot there, I think. And it's the same with, we do this lovely game at clowning school. It's called Uh, it can be quite confronting as well. It's, maybe you can do it with colleague facilitators. It's called the competition for attention. So this is actually using your word. There's 2 people and they both want the attention of the crowd.

Hmm.

And the crowd is constantly telling you who gets their attention at that point. So there's constantly names being called. And you can, you just get to experiment what works and what doesn't. And there I learned that it really helps to not do so much and to really be centered and just look at the people. Just, it's really being there, stay breathing, looking at them. And then something will go a bit strange in people's brains. Like something is happening here. There's so much. Rest and attention and, and, and some, it's first anticipation building, basically. I think this is a trick. Uh, and then you have to improvise something that is worthy of the anticipation, of course.

Yeah. And then I'm thinking back to the tricks you mentioned before. How can you make it about the other person, then suddenly incorporate them in your show or the audience? Everything that's—

There's the other side of the exercise. It's called The competition for no attention. So then you want all the attention to be on the other person.

Interesting.

And it's, it's, it's all nonverbal. So you get to do so many things as a facilitator, I think, in leading a discussion or something with all your nonverbal cues that, that direct attention to yourself. You claim it, you give it to someone else and not to the other person in the room. So there's, there's lots, lot, lot to do with body language there, and you can really play with this and experiment.

Yeah.

Together.

I'm thinking of this odd, this odd situation that I think every facilitator knows. We're inviting the group to share.

Uh-huh.

And then people look at you as a facilitator sharing instead of the group.

Yeah.

Right? So this is a moment where you want the least attention. So how can you get this person Um, and I would then look to all the other people, so force myself not to look at the person who's talking to me, kind of give them a clue also to look at other people. But this feels very staged and odd.

I can see that. Because then you're also ignoring that they are looking at you, right? Exactly.

Which is not very nice. And then I cannot really listen to them because I'm performing and I cannot perform and listen at the same time. What's the clown's advice?

Damn, the clown's advice. Yeah, why don't you just say it?

Hmm. Why don't I just say it? Yeah. True.

You're in a room with many people. Can you approach a bit? Why do you find it so bad that they look at you? I mean, I see the thing for connection, but at the same time, I think there's also this stage of being a participant that you do connect already, like feel safe with your facilitator maybe, but not with everyone in your room yet. And then, yeah, true. I'm not ready for that. Maybe.

That's a good question. So why would they do that? I think the reason why I feel uncomfortable is I don't care about your sharing, right? All these results are for the group. You're working on something in the process. So if I know and understand, that's nice for me, but it doesn't help. And then it would also become just a sharing back to me instead of building on each other or becoming a conversation.

Yeah. And now you're, I mean, I'm, I'm sure you have all the verbal tricks to, to, to have other people ask questions again and, and, you know, stuff like that. And now it would be nice to have like the nonverbal equivalent for that, you mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's less like a seal.

Hmm. Yeah, I would, maybe I would try if this happens a lot, I would make it into a little exercise.

Mm-hmm.

For them that you just try to, you experiment a bit with this looking at each other. Um, just having this body practice of not having one direction of looking while you're top, but looking around while I do that. Mm-hmm. Program that a bit. Explain maybe why this is important to you. Um, because it's, it can be very uncomfortable. Right. I mean, yeah, in school I have been taught to talk to the teacher and not to anyone else.

Interesting. Uh, yeah, yeah, true. Yes.

Don't, don't, don't just make notes to your neighbor. Don't, I mean, you're next to each other and it's a, it's a really small room and you feel everything that's going on inside, but you're supposed to ignore all. Yeah. So. What are you expecting from me here? Do, do I know as a participant that, that I'm allowed to interact with all of these people around me all the time?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Haven't thought of that.

And I think there's a lot of, yeah, like maybe even, I maybe even call it culture building together. Like, like starting out, how do you start your, your, your workshop? There's clowns that start their, their show on the street, for example, they They know where the people will be before they start the show. And at some point the people will come and sit, but this person has put a big rope across all the seats that are there.

Mm-hmm.

So you just sit and you think, oh, there's a rope, nice decoration. Perfect. But no, the start of the show takes 10 minutes and it's about this guy who needs the rope. So he's like rolling the rope on his arm. Bit by bit, in this way, interacting with everyone that sits around the rope, which is everyone, taking care of them in the process. Like if he sees that you have cold feet, he will find you some new shoes from your neighbor or whatever. It's clowning solutions to your problem. He recognizes your problem. Um, he will find you a seat if you look a bit old and you maybe cannot stand for 45 minutes. He has this like excuse for interaction with you and he also makes you interact together there. So he, he says like, I'm important, but you're important too. And, and this is about like a, a nonverbal contract by just showing what you're doing. And I would be really interested in, in finding ways of doing that as a facilitator to, to really like program this bit of—

Yeah.

How, yeah, where do you direct your attention? Are you the important one? Or is it the other people? Yeah. Can I train this? Can I break this free for the moment?

And how can we create a kind of warmup that no, everyone thinks nobody's aware that it's already part of it, that somehow creates connection and awareness and attention?

Yeah. And this, and this. Also this ease of being together and showing bits of yourself, because it is a bit scary, right? To share what you're thinking in that moment, or people might judge you. There's all these kinds of criticisms.

They will judge you. That's what we do all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. You might know how they will judge you. You might not know. It's not easy.

It's scary.

To make that Yeah. So that, this is something that I learn right now. Like, I am a clown and I go to these places to play for people, but I also go to, to offices and places to like transfer a bit of clown skills to these environments.

Mm-hmm.

Have a bit of a workshop there or give a, give a tiny talk on a conference about how to start an interaction with someone you don't know.

Mm-hmm. Things like that. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

And I noticed there that one of the things that I have grown in most since I do this clowning thing is the being at ease with showing bits of myself. There's this, I call it a healthy shamelessness, basically. So there's a lot of rest in, in, yeah, this is how I'm feeling right now. Or this is, I'm bored, or I'm curious for this. I'm really curious for this. And I even dare to show that I'm really curious for it. What changed for me is that when I was in front of a group as a facilitator, when I worked at the office a year ago, I would have lots of my attention with the other people around.

Mm-hmm.

I would be looking at the others and kind of forget that they're also looking at me and that they want to see something there. And that it helps them to see something there, I would say, to feel comfortable. And it's the same with your participants. This is scary to do. And they have to share something. They have to contribute it. They show bits of themselves, their thoughts, their creativity there. You don't know what has been going on before and if they feel comfortable sharing all of these things. They might be very, very scared for it. And then there's also all these people looking at you. So, yeah, I think it would be very helpful to have like a warm-up bit that does take this into account, like the becoming more comfortable with being looked at. And this can be done very nonverbally.

Yeah.

I would advise it to do it nonverbally because these words actually distract you from the uncomfortableness. So to, to really embrace this, this feeling and to To be able to still share while being uncomfortable and allowing others to see this about you, that you're uncomfortable but still sharing.

It's very beautiful and sounds very, yeah, scary.

It does, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think this is what the nonverbal does for me, that there's many things that words put a bit of distance to, words make safe. Um, that you cannot ignore anymore when you're not using words. And it's at the same time helpful in the sense that there's not so much discussion about words either. So you can get very lost in discussions about words.

Oh yes.

And what they mean and what you meant and what you said and what you did not say and stuff like that.

Oh yes, you can write a book about that.

And all of this disappears when you do things nonverbal. So it's this, it's a way of avoiding or working with resistance that opens up a very different space.

And I, and when I hear resistance and think of the clown, I'm thinking of laughter as a form of relief.

There.

So maybe bringing something to the surface that it's been there, but everyone maybe tried to ignore. So-called elephant and then to make it bigger or to, and then to have everyone laugh together and suddenly it's okay. Yeah. That's another, I think, quality of the clown.

Would be great sailing together, having fun sailing together. I think that would be great for a warmup as well.

Oh yeah. So when, um, when you speak in or work with offices, what are the qualities that Maybe you don't have to cite them all, but what are a few examples of the qualities that you encourage office workers, professionals to learn from the clown?

Ooh. Well, I would love for more play. So, and I, I noticed that really people have to relearn to play sometimes when they're not children anymore. Like this is really, this, I, to me, it's like the opposite of of planning and efficiency, basically. Letting go of the idea of how it should be, the plan, the protocol, uh, this idea that things should be efficient and optimized for something completely different. Um, like fun.

Mm-hmm.

Or getting yourself into trouble and finding ways to do your thing anyway, but maybe in in a very different way than you expected, and that you can only find out by just starting out wrong. Like, um, example, I want to write an email and I start by closing my laptop. It feels very wrong to me. It feels very inefficient. Like there's, there's no way that I will be writing this email anytime soon now. I mean, my laptop is being restarting. Yeah. And at the same time, it can as well be that I just pick up the phone and call this person, or that I think, oh, what I want to say is la la la la la la la la. And then I open up my laptop again and write it in 3 sentences and then I'm done, even though I thought before that it would be very complex and complicated. Um, so sometimes it just helps to Start out completely wrong. Or to find joy in things. Like, I miss a lot of joy in office spaces. I think I would vote for more joy. And it can be in tiny things. I mean, people think of clowns as— I had a colleague, colleague, tiny anecdote. I had a colleague that asked like a bit jokingly and a bit seriously when they heard about my clowning. Uh, ah, so now you're on stage farting. Like, this, this is apparently a picture of a clown. You're doing a bit of silly tricks that are supposed to make people laugh.

But actually they make everyone uncomfortable. Oh, and at the same time, even the fart is something deeply human that makes everyone— I just wrote a LinkedIn post about the fart.

You did?

Yes. And how unprofessional it is and still so deeply human. It is true. But, uh, when we sneeze, we get a bless you.

Yeah.

Right?

It is crazy.

And when we burp, we might be a little bit ashamed, but when we fart, oh geez.

Yeah.

And to bring laughter to that and ease, it's also nice.

I think that's the thing. That's where I wanted to go, that the laughter is not the goal in itself. Like the goal is to be together somewhere and to be real in the moment and to experience the same thing and to build your own tiny little world together. And that maybe the person next door does not understand.

Yeah.

But we were there when it was made and we understand it and we can have fun with it together.

Yeah.

We can feel alive in it together. We can have our little adventure.

Yeah.

So that is play for me. Like it's about fun. It's about finding joy in very small things. It can be, oh, I enjoy, sometimes you have a keyboard that has like one key that feels very nice when you touch it, right? So why not try finding words in your email that, that uses this key a lot?

I mean, and hopefully it's not the delete key. Oh, maybe it is.

No, but I mean, this is, this is what playing does, right? Yeah. It, it challenges you. It gives you joy that like the only guide to your actions at that moment is this curiosity and, and fun for yourself. And it brings you in places that you would never think of. Mm-hmm.

Like your brain using protocols and plans and And what I see is just retraining our brains to focus on what could actually be fun and joy, and hence seeing your daily job maybe in a different light.

Yeah, I think clowning skills can bring a lot of lightness to boring daily life things or things that you, you feel like you've seen a thousand times already before and you start to be annoyed with. So that's one, play and fun. Yeah. I think clowning skills, it's a lot about expressing what is there. I think clowns can bring a new idea of what authenticity is. Mm-hmm. Like we talk a lot about this on the, on work, in working environments, I think like we all have to be authentic right now. And there's lots of ideas about what it is.

Yeah. What is your idea?

Um, I don't like the word so much, but I, I, I would describe it as, as when thinking or sensemaking and doing and feeling, like the experience itself, like coincide at the same moment. So on the one hand, there's this very automatic behavior, like if you touch something very hot that you Retract your hand. That is doing before thinking. There's the preparing a speech for 3 days, having written out every word. That's the thinking before doing. And there's something in between where you're very aware of what is happening at every moment, what is growing inside you, what is growing outside you, and where you have this choice that we talked about before.

Mm-hmm.

Like, how do I navigate it?

Yeah. Then authenticity sounds like emotional maturity and like a skill rather than something you do.

Yeah, I think so.

I like that.

Yeah, indeed. It is, it is you who is allowing or not allowing soul impulse to, to be in reality, right? Without intention. So I think authenticity can never be an excuse to be a dick.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, and I think it can never be in the way of my connection with my audience or with my participants. It needs to be in service of that. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a little filter on my authenticity, I would say, and it filters for play opportunity. It filters for things that I can express nonverbally. Because there's many things that I feel and go on in my brain that I cannot express nonverbally. It filters for fun, it filters for lightness, for things that I can express with lightness. Because if something gets too close to my traumas, then I cannot express it with lightness, right? So—

Very good point, yeah. If we feel triggered to the bones—

Yeah, I mean, you can be very authentic in that, but it's not helpful for your process, right? And this is the way we try to talk about authenticity. So it's always helpful for us being here as humans. We want to do something together. We want to achieve something, but also we want to feel good about it while we do it, right? And we want to feel good about ourselves.

Yeah.

I could go on for ages, I feel like.

Yeah. And I have, um, 3 more questions that I want to ask in the 13 minutes we have left.

Imagine.

And I hope that this is not too much. The next one, I, I should have, could have asked it, uh, an hour ago, but better late than never. Have you brought the— because you, you mentioned that you quit your job as a facilitator and then you moved to clowning. Have you brought clowning skills during this transition phase? Have you brought clowning skills to your facilitation job? And how did that work?

Yeah, I did. And then I don't mean like 100% clown, but like the way I offer it to offices right now is, is that, I mean, we, we practice something in a workshop, you try it out, it enlarges your possibilities of action, and then you do 30% of it in daily life and things still change, right? So this is how I took it to the office basically. And it, it came with moments of physical humor in between interactions. With colleagues, with clients as well. Like, I don't know, it can be as silly as having a cup of coffee that has waves in it in a certain way, and that you notice that if you move in a certain way, that it does something that corresponds to your waving, and you play a bit with that, and you allow them to see this. It can be me diving underneath a plant that was hanging, like, like, like these big hanging plants, like, you know, and you're supposed to walk around them, but you can also walk underneath. It's, it's little playful things that can be about, I, I started sharing way more honestly about how I felt about certain meetings, for example. Like I, I noticed that, that I don't feel happy when I see this meeting appear in my calendar. Am I the only one? No, I'm not. Okay. But you know, so there's some, yeah, like I said, this is.

Yeah.

shamelessness about how I experience something and allowing that to be heard by others.

I love the self-permission to express emotions because a facilitator would say, I'm surprised to see this meeting in my agenda, and I wonder whether I'm the only one who's surprised. Where the clown says, I see this meeting in my agenda, it doesn't make me happy. And it's, it's basically the same thing, but one In the latter, you own the emotion, which would be regarded by many as highly unprofessional, right? Like, you cannot say— meetings are not there to make you happy, right? And at the same time, it's an expression that invites reaction, invites conversation, invites humanness.

Yeah, I show you a bit of me and I hope That you do so too. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. And there's this bit of stretching what is normal. Like, I felt way more comfortable failing, asking silly questions, asking, why are you wearing that today? Um, if someone was putting on very yellow shoes, which would be a very plummy thing to do, right? But I'm just, I don't know what's going on in your brain, so I need to ask. Things, things like very basic. And actually, fair people reacted very nicely to it. I felt way more connected with clients as well as with colleagues. There was this one moment that we had this new colleague coming around and then they, uh, had a mentor and this mentor introduced us. And the mentor said, uh, this is Susanne. She's still very playful. And this was very funny to me because at It had many layers, like a layer of, we accept you that you do this and we like you for it. It also had the layer, she does this, it's not normal for everyone here.

Yeah, which is also acknowledging the reality of others, right?

Indeed. Yeah. I, I really enjoyed that. And, and, and I noticed also in meetings that, um, also with the physical humor thing, it's, it's very tiny moments. moments, but people don't get confused. They don't question the quality of my work because of it. They can see the difference. It's like, I've seen this movie once about, uh, it's not a movie, it's like a very short clip on YouTube. It's a human traffic light in the Philippines somewhere. He's a man standing on a crossroad and he's directing the vehicles. And there's very official signs for doing that. You might know them. But he's dancing. He's dancing all day and he still does his job and no one gets confused about when they get to go and when they, and they need to stop because he's separating the languages of dancing and the traffic light function.

Yeah.

It's the same with this, that you can inject a lot of lightness in your professional interactions without losing your image of Being a very professional person.

Yeah. Yeah. What remains your facilitation challenge? You have facilitation challenges as a clown?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, as a facilitator in the job, I, I felt way too responsible for the outcome. And it was my challenge to, to not overprepare to, I mean, I have everything in me to Overprepared to, to, to measure everything, every little input that anyone gives at any moment, like right away with, okay, is this going to get us anywhere? I want to go too fast, things like that. And I think clowning there helped me a lot to like do things differently there. It's training, surrendering to the process. It really helps me to not focus on the outcome, but direct all my attention to the process.

Yeah.

And navigate based on what is already there. And I still notice this as a clown sometimes. Sometimes I get a tiny assignment, maybe in a class or workshop, or we think of something and then, uh, I have to think of a scene I had to play in clowning school. There was this tiny instruction, we were 2 people on stage and the teacher said, okay, Susanne, you're a bat right now. The other person, you are a seagull right now. Okay. We're going to look at the meeting between the seagull and the bat in 3 seconds. 3, 2, 1, go. Okay. I had 3 seconds and these 3 seconds my brain was racing like, okay, I need to be a bat now and everyone has to be very convinced that I'm a bat. How can I be a bat? Bats make ultrasound noise. Bats hang upside down on the ceiling. Bats do all kinds of things that I cannot do. And then he was counting at zero and my body just did something. And it looked a bit like a bat and people believed it to be a bat. And then we started this interaction of bats and still my head was racing all the time. This is not a bat. This is not a bat. I still think that I need to find a way to hang upside down in some way or be real, be a real bat, you know, stuff like that. And I'm still learning to like manage these kind of critical voices that are there all the time. The ones that are the, the ones that want to control, the ones that want to know how this scene is going to end on, on, yeah. But I, I decided to improvise, so I don't know. The only thing I know is that I can collect building blocks and that I can make a story out of this and that at some point some magic will happen. And then if I get very disciplined about, about the improvising thing, then, then something will happen and it will turn out fine. But it's very tricky to stay there in that space.

Yes. Yes. I'm glad to hear that you're still human. What is it that you would have wished you'd known before? What would be your advice to your younger self?

Oh, that I don't need a good reason or an excuse to connect to someone. Mm-hmm. Yeah. At some point I started, uh, I, I had to choose my studies and I chose to study cultural anthropology. And actually it was because I, I really wanted an excuse for my curiosity. I, I did want to interview my grandma about her life. I wanted to be able to go somewhere in a different country and ask the people about their lives and why they live that way. I wanted to ask my neighbor this because they also have a very interesting life that I don't know a lot about. And this was like an excuse for my curiosity and an excuse for finding out how, how the same kind of life can be lived very differently, basically. And I mean, I think this is still driving me also in this clowning thing, this fascination for, for what else is possible. Like start anew, what would happen? And clowning allows me to do that a lot. It's part of the deal. I don't understand anything, what, what about anything, what it is. You can give me any object and I get to choose what I understand about it and what not. I get to reinvent it and get in trouble with it and maybe also save myself from trouble with it in some unexpected way. So there's a lot of options in life and normal is only normal because we decided together that This is normal. We can make a different decision every day. And that's, that's basically, I always, I, as a kid, I needed excuses for that kind of thinking. I really like my life now. I embrace it.

Nice. Yeah, I can see that. Oh, thank you so much, Susanne.

Thank you.

For accepting and, uh, this invitation to explore the calm. And for so many golden nuggets, great food for thought.

Oh, wow. I'm curious what you will take from it.

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