One of the characteristics of high performing teams is an intentional practice of managing stress. We’ve talked before about how our interactive storytelling experiences can be useful in doing just that, but today we want to focus on another aspect of stress management. Specifically, we want to talk about how we create a safe space in our shared storytelling sessions.
One of our team building objectives, and something that we here at TourGuide Games believe is critical to developing high performing teams and building a team culture, is to provide a space that is free from many regular workplace stresses, as well as being a space where some interpersonal stressors can be expressed and explored in healthy ways. We do this in two ways: we seek to maintain an environment that is an emotional and intellectual safe space, and we utilize a suite of safety tools during our experiences to ensure that none of our participants are put at risk emotionally.
But why do we need a safe space?
Before we delve into those, let’s first talk about why a safe space is such a necessity in our eyes. While there are a host of challenges in team building, and in building high performing teams especially, one that is often overlooked is emotional and psychological safety. The drive to succeed, the highly competitive nature of out-performing others, and the perceived cutthroat nature of many business environments often leads to a place where emotional and intellectual safety are easily compromised in the rush to perform. This is, put in the simplest terms, bad.
More and more members of younger generations are making their way into the workforce, and they are bringing with them a heightened sense of the importance of emotional safety and the benefits of psychological safety. If that isn’t recognized and acted upon, many employers are going to find themselves with a growing number of deeply unsatisfied team members who feel that one of their core needs is not being met. And this should serve to emphasize once again the importance of team building, specifically the team building experiences we offer. One of our primary team building goals is the establishment of just such a safe space.
Creating a Safe Space
So how do we create a safe space in our interactive storytelling experiences? First and foremost, we rely on our TourGuides. They carry with them the training and experience to ensure that the storytelling space that they create with your team is not only an exciting and enjoyable one, but that it is also a safe one.
Our TourGuides are such an important part of the experience, not only because they guide and facilitate the story being told, but also because they are keeping an eye on the participants. We believe that our experiences are deepened when all of the participants are taking active roles, and our TourGuides are there to encourage engagement if someone seems to be disconnected or being cut out. They are also watching to make sure that none of the participants are feeling attacked or belittled or excluded. When our TourGuides observe something like that happening, they are there to adjust the situation, sometimes by shifting the scene to allow whatever tempers may be flaring to cool, sometimes by privately addressing a specific participant to check in on them, and sometimes by handing the story threads to the excluded team member.
Maintaining a Safe Space
Our TourGuides are very good at what they do. We wouldn’t entrust your team with them otherwise. However, there are times when a person may be experiencing a negative response to something happening within the experience yet not show any outward signs of distress. This is one of the primary reasons we employ a very powerful safety tool in all of our team building sessions: The X Card.
Now, in fairness, this is not the only safety tool we use. Our TourGuides are constantly utilizing different parts of our safety tool suite throughout the entire experience. The X Card, however, is one that we hand directly to all of our participants at the start of every session. You can think of the X Card in a few different ways. It can be a pause, it can be a rewind/undo, or it can be a ripcord. We give this tool to each one of your team members along with a very simple instruction: “If, at any time during this experience, you are feeling a trauma response, emotionally at risk, or just simply triggered, use your X Card.”
Our TourGuide will not question an X Card. Instead, they will pause the action and discuss with the team member who used the X Card what caused the feeling and how they would like to address it. This discussion can happen either with everyone or in private depending on what the person needs. From there, we offer two basic responses, although we trust our TourGuides to offer more depending on the discussion. The two responses are the rewind/undo, where we roll back the game and select a different path than the one that provoked the X Card, or we use the ripcord option where we simply close out the offending scene and move the story ahead to the next one. With this, we aim to remove the situation that puts someone at risk.
Our goal with all of our interactive storytelling experiences is to encourage a healthy culture of teamwork and mutual support. Those goals cannot be met without the development and growth of safe spaces. Thankfully, our TourGuides are here to help your team do just that. If you’d like more information on how, drop us a line! And if you’re ready to explore one of our collaborative experiences with your team, let us know!
