Corporate
We offer a wide variety of training and entertainment options for our corporate clients.
We specialize in skills-training workshops for groups or individuals, in English and/or in French, and on a short or long-term basis. Our most commonly requested skills-training and workshop options are listed below.
We also have a wide variety of unique and interactive shows to suit all of your corporate event needs and holiday parties. For full descriptions, please visit our SHOWS page.
Themed Workshops (Improvisation-Based)
"Even though we only had one afternoon workshop session with the professionals from the Extant Jesters, I learned a lot about myself and my collegues and was given strategies to apply directly to my job. Thank you. It was eye-opening."
"We had so much fun, it didn't even feel like learning. The Extant Jesters managed to address key issues while ensuring we all laughed a lot. They planted the seeds for change without putting anyone on the spot. We all walked away from the workshop more self-aware and feeling positive about our team's capabilities."
All of the workshops we offer can be condensed into a 2-4 hour time slot and thus can fit neatly into your company's larger training day or retreat week-end. In each workshop, we use a variety of relevant "on-your-feet" improv games that create a safe, non-threatening, memorable and fun learning environment. These workshop themes include:
- Team Building
- Risk-Taking
- Creative Problem-Solving
- Stress Management
- Trust
- Empathy
- Status, Power and Body Language
- Communication and Listening
- Public Speaking
- Change Management
- Empowerment
- Commitment
Rehearsal For Reality Role-Play
"I was just so glad I mustered up the courage to step into the scenario to try to discuss with this difficult client you had prepared. The actor playing the client was exactly like the clients I deal wth everyday. It was uncanny! Everyone in my department is still talking about it months later!"
"This role-play simulation was unlike anything I had ever experienced... The interaction I had with the actor playing a manager in the workshop, and the feedback provided to me was hugely helpful to my actual real-life work situation.
This experience has helped me to better see issues from other perspectives, not just my manager's perspective but customer perspectives too. Since the training, I've also become more conscious of the tactics I employ when speaking with others, and I am now able to adjust my approach accordingly."
Our customized interpersonal skills training role-play scenarios are designed to help your employees improve internal and external business communication skills. These sessions are interactive and provide your employees with a unique "rehearsal for reality." Our professional actors take on the roles of imaginary customers, clients, co-workers, or managers (or whatever other roles best suit the scenario and your company's specific learning objectives) and your employees have the opportunity to interact with them. Throughout the process, they learn how to better navigate through tricky situations and help one another develop tactics so that they feel well-equipped when similar situations arise in reality in the future.
In lead up to the workshop day, we consult with you in detail about your learning objectives for the session and carefully construct and test-drive characters and scenarios that best reflect the issues and challenges your employees are facing. If appropriate, we also consult (usually via online questionnaire) with workshop participants to ensure that we understand all sides and complex perspectives before finalizing the scenarios and fictional characters.
The roles we create for the actors and workshop participants are always as true to life as possible (i.e. we use language and terms familiar to your place of work) but we also will never single out people from your actual office (i.e. if you have a manager named George Mann, we'll obviously not have our actor play a manager character named George Mann).
On the day of the workshop, participants from your company are briefed on the scenario and then, one at a time (or in groups if they are more comfortable), step into the scene and interact with the actor(s) to work through the issue at hand. The participant who has stepped into the scenario is able to call a "time out" if ever they feel uncomfortable or are at a loss for how to proceed, at which point they will be assisted by our facilitator and the other employees observing from the outside.
There is never one "right answer" or magic solution in these scenarios. As such, these role-play simulations provide a unique, interactive and non-threatening approach to solving problems and improving communication.
Following the scenarios, our professional actors provide specific feedback to all participants from the perspective of their character. (i.e. they will not say "you must never speak in a loud voice to your team-members" but will say rather, "when you raised your voice during our discussion, it made my character feel very intimidated and therefore I decided not to ask you the other questions I had wanted to address about the project for fear you'd be angry or impatient with me").
During the feedback sessions, our actors and facilitator also comment not only on what participants say or do but also on how they say or do these things (addressing the important role that body-language plays in cummunication).
FORUM THEATRE
Our Forum Theatre workshops are similar to our role-play scenarios, but rather than develop one or two short scenarios leading up to the workshop, we develop an entire short, scripted play. Our professional actors perform this play (approx. 20-25 minutes long, usually depicting a workplace-specific break down of communication with severe consequences) and then the audience members (or "spect-actors" as we like to call them) have the opportunity to pick up the story at key points, take on a role of their choice, and step into the scene to try to change the outcome. The forum theatre experience never fails to highlight how everyone involved is in some way responsible when things go right or wrong. Like our role-play scenarios, the situations depicted in our forum theatre plays are always complex (there is no clear "good guy" or "bad guy" or only one "right" way to solve the problem). Our Forum Theatre shows also always reflect your company's workplace reality and a multitude of perspectives.
For more information, and a CASE STUDY EXAMPLE of how the Forum Theatre experience unfolds, please visit our FORUM THEATRE page.
For more details on how our themed workshops, role-play scenarios or forum theatre formats work, or for a price quote, please feel free to CONTACT US.
Extant Jesters.
Vital Stories. Fresh Perspectives.
Phone: 416-887-8457