Status Work inspired by Simos open space

[Cheryl Gould]

Great food for thought. I want to continue the idea about what is really contributing to one's status. So far, I"m thinking it's posture, gesture, vocal tone, amount of space one's own body commands, the place (as in one's own office or home versus a public park) the relationship between 2 people, one's assumptions and I'm still wanting to put one's sense of self-esteem or self-confidence in the mix. I use status as an important concept in my workshops and I"d really like to keep getting clearer about what's at play. What do you think is involved?

[Dan D.]

I did my own workshop on "Status."
I couldn't explain it beforehand, or what I was looking for (beforehand),
but we tried it and it worked well.
Really well.

If you read "Improvise" by Mick Napier, he says all scenes are about Status.
(I believe that's the book... maybe they're starting to all blend together.)
It's so true.

If you think most scenes are: "Something different happens on this day,"
I think that's where Status comes in.

Someone's made vulnerable.
Someone loses control.
Someone is misunderstood.
etc.

It's always about gaining or losing Status.

Usually the big audience reaction, or connection, involves the Status change in the scene.

It's the give and take between the people (and/or characters) in the scene.

[Robin Starr]

Hi Cheryl - I am so intrigued by the various manifistations of status. Have you already had the Skype chat? I hope I didn't miss it.

I'm intrigued by the point you make about self esteem/confidence and status. It brings up a couple things for me. One is that language is so difficult in that we're talking about non verbal reality using words, and the words I choose may not mean to you what they meant to me. Oh so tricky! That's why I've loved seeing Simo at work. His work SHOWS it.

I'm working now on the notion that status is independent of self esteem(include self confidence in that). I have been watching interactions with interest for a couple of years, and see people who are very capable and successful use low status to get what they want. Along the same lines, I've seen people use high status cues to cover for themselves. It's also a way to get included in a group, to find out where you "stand", etc. My working hypothesis is that I don't think the correlation is there between status display and esteem (me using my words)

I suspect that status displays are how our "reptilian mind" gets what it wants. I too was very interested in Alans workshop. I am working on a theory that since fight or flight is a socially unacceptible, basically uncool way to behave, we use status instead. Waddya think?

[Simon Strong]

Cheryl,

Happy to do a Skype chat. I could do either Thursday (6th November) at lunchtime or next Tuesday (11th November).

However, my wife is 9 months pregnant and 'in the zone' - so any coneference call may get cancelled at very short notice due to a more pressing engagement!

Let me know...

Simon

[Cheryl Gould]

Simon, I'm teaching thursday but tuesday the 11th is a possibility I'm wondering if this might be easier via email. I'm in California so it might be tricky figuring out times that work. I love your posts and would surely enjoy the opportunity for more free flowing conversation. Congratulations on the new life showing up soon. I see your email on your profile so I'll check in with you that way about next week.

[Simon Strong]

We tried to get Keith and Desmond to meet about 5 years ago. But we couldn’t get their diaries to hook up. They did have a chat by phone.

I’ve played status games created by Keith with Desmond, and he gave a reinterpretation of them. Taking the whole thing full circle.

Neutralising status is, for me, a really important concept. Although I do struggle with language…

When we play with status, high and low go back to front… If I playfully lower your status it actually raises your status. So even though I technically have higher status I am raising yours, which creates status interference and eliminates its effect.

Playing with status effectively neutralises it. When we are unthreatened by the other person we can enter a zone of being able to effortlessly and appropriately calibrate our status to what is happening. Status is not important to us when we are out with friends. It becomes important and potentially destructive when we have an argument - a disagreement over the pecking order.

Male and female friendship games are really fun to play with and endlessly controversial. Men tend to raise their own status and lower other peoples… for fun. Women tend to lower their own status and raise other peoples.

When someone leaves the group, men will either raise the status of the person leaving or, more commonly, ignore them. Women, on the other hand, will tend to lower the status of the person leaving the group. This is more frequently known as gossiping and bitching, which is grossly unfair as it is a social mechanism to create group cohesion.

Reasons for this go back to hunter / gatherer days, and the most effective social behaviours. Men needed to be able to work independently on the hunt and cope with rapid reshuffling of the pecking order. Women needed to bond the group together so made themselves more pleasant to be around and penalised ‘leaving the group’ behaviour.

All of this ties into Tribalism and sense of identity. My take on status is that social interactions allow us to try to define our identity in relation to the other person.

[Simo Routarinne]

Wow Simon!

Thanks for sharing the historical roots of Keith's statuswork! When I wrote my book of status (Power and Interactiopn) 2007 I did extensive research on the subject and found Desmond Morris's books too, but did not know whether Keith actually had referred to those. I remember him mentioning Konrad Lorenz though.

I do agree with everything you said Simon! The only wording I stopped to think about was 'neutralizing status'. I would say that you can never neutralize status, remove it or make it inactive. The seesaw effect is always there. But I suppose you did not even mean exactly that?

Being friends means usually being playful with status. So in a playful mode status transactions are not serious, they are not taken seriously. But at any moment we could accidentally or intentionally transfer back to 'serious mode' and there we are again balancing at the seesaw very seriously :-)

Yes I do agree that the question of status, sex and gender is very interesting too, LOL

A smile, and a quick glance away and back!

Simo

[Cheryl Gould]

Well, I for one appreciate all the conversation here. I'm fascinated by this stuff and each posting sparks a new way of thinking about this. I am particularly interested in the idea of wanting to balance or at least see-saw in a small playful way in my interactions. I'm also interested in the idea of purposely lowering one's status to try and make others feel comfortable. And also in the idea that what's going on inside might be different from the external expression. From the book "Blink" and some of the work on mapping facial muscles, it seems that we can't really hide what we feel inside completely and that it shows up on the face instantaneously bypassing the brains ability to stop it. After a short time (maybe a second) we can then "show" something different on our faces. In Alan's session he talked briefly about the three part brain and how everything has to come up the brainstem and through the reptilian brain, then the limbic system before getting processed by the neo-cortex so it seems we are hard wired to have reactions before thinking. My apologies for the mess of thoughts here and I'm hoping it will make sense to someone and continue this conversation about status ;)

[Simo Routarinne]

Cheryl, fascinating!
I try to comment briefly, got no time, but just have to, lol!

Your thoughts are accurate, right to the point. I do not think anybody should 'pretend' with status expression, but to be as sincere as they can. There is no reason to hide our reactions either: think of stepping on somebody's toes accidentally. It is quite normal to lower one's status right after that incident to show that this attack was not intended (if it was not, of course:-) and also by this lowering of one's status ask for the other one not to counterattack.

I hope I was in Alan's session, because when I did my research for the book I stumbled several times on information about amygdala (corpus amygdaloideum). It seems to be 'the status organ' in our brain. It is the first organ to react when there is a possible danger, and it reacts before our conscious mind does. You might jump and scream before you actually see the snake on your path etc... Would have loved to hear what Alan thinks about that!

Status is about social dominance, about avoiding dangerous combats by predicting the possible outcome by our postures, movement rhythm and eyecontact etc... It is originally and in extremes about hostility and fear, about whether we should fight or flee or just freeze. And those things are exactly the ones amygdala is taking care of.

So reacting to other people's status expression is really not a conscious choice!!!
It is deeply built into our system.

That is why I think it is useful to know about statuses as much as we can...

More later, love you Cheryl!

Simo

[Simon Strong]

Hi all,

I’m a bit late to this discussion, having just joined AIN. Hope this is useful:

Status comes from Desmond Morris – who was curator of mammals at London Zoo and presenter of Zoo Time on TV in England back in the '60's. Desmond become famous for studying humans as if they were just another animal species in his book ‘The Naked Ape’. He then went on to become a life-long man watcher.

Keith Johnstone was reading Morris’ book ‘The Human Zoo’ when he was working at the Royal Court Theatre, and took the idea of status into a workshop where it transformed performances, and created a language to navigate scenes and relationships.

Status describes dominance and appeasement signals.

Dominance signals say “back off”. Appeasement signals are used to defuse situations and to turn off the attack strategy. Appeasement signals are used to ensure that no serious damage is inflicted. So we might say that when we see high and low status displays, we are witnessing two people who disagree finding a way to make a decision based on other factors. One party is resorting to a social warning or intimidation, which would then be escalated to a physical or other repercussion if the other party does not comply (play low status).

Status is both relative and contextual. This means that my status is relative to the other person and not absolute. And it is also reliant on the context. So my status might be lowered by Keith Johnstone when talking about impro(v), it will switch when change subject to branding and organisational change programmes. Likewise, President Bush can have his status lowered by a child or a pretzel, however he will remain the President until the end of this election.

Which brings us to pomp and power. The industrial revolution showed the workers how to take power. And in the West we divided the two. In England, the Queen has all the pomp and none of the power. The Prime Minister has all the power, and none of the pomp. When the Queen displays any power the nation is up in arms. And when Margaret Thatcher declared “we have a grandchild” she was roundly lambasted for daring to use the Royal ‘we’.

High and low status relates to pairs. Once we add a third person we get a pecking order (first observed by the nobel prize winning Austrian biologist / ethologist Konrad Lorenz studying the hierarchical order in which birds got food). So high and low status describe a pecking order of two. After that those terms become, to some extent, redundant. This is where Keith got the pick a number game from.

So Status describes the fundamental currency of human transactions. We all trade in status, and we use different status strategies to get us what we want from different status types, and to negotiate our relationships.

One of the reasons that status is important in a business setting is sales. If I am selling you an idea, you have to lower your status to buy it. There is therefore a tendency for the buyer to make a status display to remind suppliers who the boss is. So in advertising, the client demands that the logo is made bigger. Alternatively, the seller offers the idea in a low status way which invites the buyer to dismiss it.

Neutralising status ensures that this does not happen. You can neutralise status by making friends with your colleagues and clients. This means playing with status – raising and lowering you status to demonstrate that you are unthreatened by them. Being able to shift your status makes you more effective in your communication (most communication is about body language which in turn is about status which is about negotiating our relationship with the other person).

Men and women play different status games to make friends based on evolutionary needs. However this blog is taking up far too much room to go into that…!

If anyone wants to chat, let me know and we can Skype.

[Cheryl Gould]

Simon, Excellent post. I would love to talk further about this with you on Skype or otherwise. Maybe if others are interested we could even do some kind of conference call on skype?

[Viv McWaters]

My interview with Simo about status will be on my podcast website very soon www.winkipod.com.au

I've found an understanding of status to be invaluable when facilitating. My awareness means I can see a status challenge for what it is and respond by trying to close the status gap - always be changing my status rather than diminishing the other. I now incorporate status work into facilitation training I do - it's an invaluable skill to have at your disposal and only necessary when communication breaks down because of status games between individuals. Most people won't even be aware of it - so I simply use approaches I've learnt from improv to narrow the status gap and enable communication. It's a hugely interesting area and we should all encourage Simo to write a book in English!!!! (or at least translate his current book :-) as there are very few references to status, except Johnstone, of course.

Cheers

Viv

[Leif Hansen]

Thanks Simo.
One thing I'm wondering about, since taking your last session:

It seems like becoming more conscious (thinking about) my status or others' status might not always be a good thing -it might cause me to make assumptions or manipulate myself to imitate an insincere lower/higher status, etc.

On the other hand, observing those exterior qualities you listed above might be interesting to reveal the inner state of myself or others.

I don't know, I guess I feel like I'd rather just simplify the whole thing and focus on treating everybody with the same level of respect, value and status.

Am I making sense? What I'm wondering is what does one DO with this information once its observed, etc.?

Thanks!
-Leif