It Started with Camp Magic....

[Leif Hansen]

Leif Hansen is Chief Engagement Officer for
Spark
Interaction . For over two decades he has been
combining collaboration with creativity to inspire, engage and
connect individuals and groups. Helping people discover a deeper
level of trust, support, purpose, fun and creativity in their
personal lives and workplaces is what keeps Leif happy.

Interview with Leif Hansen

TGL: So, how did you get into the world of games?

Leif: I believe it started early with summer camps. I had a pretty challenging home life and so summer camps
were a much safer home for me to develop personally. It was there
that I discovered a magic I've since longed to repeat and to offer
to others. This magic came from a mix of certain key elements, the
safety that comes from a caring community, opportunities for
creative expression, the beauty of nature, the freedom and
acceptance in being one's silly self, setting goals with the
support of others (the YMCA “rag ceremony”), camp-wide
massive games, and the campfire magic where these would often all
come together.

TGL: Can you share one of those memories when it all came together?

Leif: I remember playing a camp-wide game one evening that ended by bringing most of the campers and staff down
to a more remote section of the camp beach. It soon became dark
and a campfire was lit and songs and stories soon sparked to life.
Towards the end of this segment a pirate story was told, when,
right at the climax, we heard shouts from out upon the water and
we saw a light on the mast of a boat. Pirates! A pirate-ship was
coming our way! The story had come to life! I don't remember all
the details except that they eventually landed on the beach,
engaged us with their pirate selves, and shared a treasure chest
full of S'mores. That was a magic moment. It is through
portal experiences like that night when I realize that life
is an adventure story, I realize the transformative
power of creativity and play; I realize the importance of
community, I realize the excitement of being fully engaged in the
moment, and I realize how much I long to enter and offer similar
experiences to others.

TGL: Have you had an opportunity to re-create a similar experience?

Leif: Yes, I've had a few very similar opportunities.

The first was my master's thesis project which was just too crazy to share in detail here. We'll just say that it involved twelve guests being invited by a council of elves to a weekend retreat to
discuss the elves' concerns (think Tolkien, not cute little
creatures) of technology's dehumanizing and disenchanting effects.
The weekend included such events as being woken at night to
participate in a mysterious candle-lit dance of Dryads, one of the
guest's becoming dangerously captivated by a glowing screen, and a
full day outdoor quest to free this younger guest by engaging in
various challenges and interacting with a host of unusual
characters. (If you are interested in further details, or
tailoring a similar quest for your team, I can talk with you or
send more information.)

Another opportunity was working with a group of teens and interviewing them about their various goals and fears. I would then work with the community we lived in to come up with weekly
quests for these youth to embark on—alone or as a
group—that would help them to face their fears or achieve
their goals.

There have been other related projects and interactivities, but those two were the most parallel to my magical pirate night. I'm happy to report that all elements of that early camp magic are
present in various combinations in all my work with Spark
Interaction—whether helping people who work with groups to
be more engaging and conscious of community-building, building
deeper trust with teams, coaching creative breakthroughs,
presenting to groups, or holding various theme-based workshops
like SoulTech.

TGL: What exactly happens in your SoulTech workshop?

Leif: I've received a surprising amount of attention around these workshops—from the LA Times, to
being featured on the Today Show, to being on a recent PBS online panel. They seem to be touching a national
nerve about our increasingly techno-centric culture.

SoulTech workshops, though they've had a few different names, are basically about helping individuals and organizations to become more productive and healthy in their relationship with technology.
We do this by giving people a safe, structured, and
collaboratively creative space to align their personal or
organizational values and goals with how they actually use
technology.

Technology is evolving at such an astounding rate that many of us haven't had, or taken, the time to reflect on how much it's really affecting our personal lives, families, and workplaces. These new
social and informational technologies are powerful, but as we all
know, as power increases, so does our need for responsibility. If
not, we may inadvertently end up becoming tools ourselves, or
worse, negatively impacting those we care about.

TGL: Yet you also promote these dangerous new technologies?

Leif: Yes, I get teased endlessly about my apparent hypocrisy. It would be hypocrisy if I hadn't stated from
the beginning that these workshops arose out of my own struggles
or if I hadn't continued to stay transparent about my learning
process. The fact is that I love new technologies, and yet I also
hate them, or at least I am concerned about them. My other
business, Spark
Social Media, has been primarily focused on helping
people to use social media to build online communities and on
teaching and training individuals and organizations about the
power of social media. However, I'm hoping to gradually shift my
tech emphasis to offering social media as a secondary layer of the
multi-modal or hybrid learning experiences I offer.

TGL: What is “multi-modal” or “hybrid” learning?

Leif: It is emphasizing the power and necessity
of embracing both real-time experiences and virtual
experiences. Many people tend to emphasize only one, but I think
they are missing out. Real time experiences, particularly when
they involve Playformation (improvised play that brings
transformation), enable people to connect and grow on much deeper
levels than virtual experiences. However, social technologies do
some things that real-time experiences can't do as
well.

TGL: Like what? How can social technologies add value?

Leif: Social Technologies help people to stay connected after (or before) their real-time experiences, continue
the conversations they have started, invite others in from all
around the world, share their learning (through text, pictures,
audio, and video), democratize their sharing activities (through
voting and other approaches), remain transparent and accountable,
and accomplish much more.

TGL: Sounds good, so let's hear a bit more about Leif. What inspires you to wake up each day?

Leif: Well, I'm either motivated by an endless list of fears my ego has been rehearsing or I'm inspired to action
by a deeper desire to listen to my heart and enter life's
adventure. Unfortunately, most days, I start by listening to my
ego and become fueled by fear. After burning out on that, I make a
shift to the good juice by receiving inspiration, love and
guidance from my spiritual practices or my support network of
family, friends and peers.

TGL: What does it mean to you to “listen to your heart”?

Leif: Listening to my heart means first and foremost trusting. Trusting that life is ultimately good and that
all things, even the ones that seem stressful and undesirable, are
actually gifts in disguise. There's a great term I've picked up
for this paradigm—“Pronoia”. Pronoia is the opposite
of Paranoia, so it could be said to mean “The sneaking suspicion
that the universe is conspiring to bless you.” Without this
deep hope, I've notice that my ability to trust, receive love from
my community, serve others, be creative, play or stay in a
productive focused flow, is no where near as effective and
enjoyable. Pronoia, or at least what it reflects to me, is the
foundation for my vision and mission.

TGL: And what vision is that?

Leif: I'm excited by a vision of a world where people and organizations feel safe enough to discover their core
passions and take the risk of creatively expressing them. In that
world, people also remain curious, respectful and supportive of
the passions of others. Imagine what kinds of experiences,
engaging conversations, relationships, and awe-inspiring creations
would come from a world community like that!

TGL: And how does Spark Interaction help bring about that vision?

Leif: You could condense Spark's simplest core message down to igniting a deeper level of safety, freedom and
trust (in oneself and in others). We bring this spirit into our
training sessions, coaching, presentations, CoLabs
(ongoing collaborative support groups), and
workshops.

How do we do this? By striving to be honest and authentic, and sincerely caring for those we serve, we help create environments of safety and trust. And it has been proven without a shadow of a
doubt that when trust is high, productivity is high, cost is low,
and things move faster.

By using a process I've been calling Playformation, I engage people and groups in a creative, enjoyable, collaborative, whole-minded, playful manner. Many of the activities and exercises I use come from the world of
improvisational theater. And by nurturing my own personal and
spiritual development, I am able to continually grow and receive
inspiration that enables me to engage, inspire, and empower those
I work with.

With those priorities and practices in place, those we work with share increased creativity, innovation and productivity in their work and personal lives; increased trust, communication and care
in their relationships; feeling more prepared and empowered in
their decisions; more & better clients, increased revenue,
and increased satisfaction in their personal lives.

TGL: How can people find out more about you and your services?

Leif: I find much more progress can be made in a conversation, so my preference would be a phone call. Please call
me at 1-877-I-Am-Game. You can also email me at [e-mail] .

[Table of Contents]

Improv Game

Sculpted Playformation


by Leif Hansen

Summary

An Individual (or spokesperson for a team) facilitates the creation of two different sculpted scenes using people in the room. The people involved in the sculpt, which may include the
original sculptor, then improvise how the transformational
journey from the stuck sculpt to the transformed
sculpt takes place.

Who

Any person or group feeling stuck and wishing to experience transformation.

Flow

1. Ask for a volunteer or group representative.
2. Instruct this sculptor to briefly describe the stuck situation.
3. Instruct the sculptor to start creating a literal or abstract sculpture using other people. The sculpture might be a scene, a machine, an abstract feeling, or anything
   else.
4. The sculptor may request movements or sounds from the people to incorporate in her sculpture. She basically directs the sculpted scene until it feels like it represents the
   stuckness.
5. Instruct the sculptor to repeat steps 2 to 4, on the other side of the room, to represent the desired outcome or transformation.
6. Once the sculptor is satisfied with how both sculpts look, ask her to re-create the first stuck sculpt scene.
7. Ask the people in the sculpt to improvise moving across the room and changing into the transformed sculpt. The sculptor may offer direction on this journey, but is
   encouraged to let the group primarily use its own
   brilliance.
8. Debrief the sculptor and the group about what they observed and experienced from the process.

[Table of Contents]