How We Work

What is PowerPlay?

PowerPlay is a professional training and development company. We help organizations improve their work environment by facilitating difficult dialogues about interpersonal behavior. What makes us unique is that we utilize professional actors to do this. We help start conversations about often-ignored human dynamics that can affect and diminish performance.

How does that work?

It's kind of like a laboratory. But instead of mice, we use people.

Our model can be broken down into three parts: Observe. Interact. Replay.

1. OBSERVE. Our actors present difficult but familiar interpersonal situations. Your job as a participant is simply to observe. These scenarios might be as brief as a fleeting moment of gender bias in a hallway, or as overwhelming as an impassioned public comment portion of a town hall meeting.
2. INTERACT. This is what sets PowerPlay apart. Our facilitators stop the action and lead the participants in an interactive conversation with the characters about their experience in the scene. We'll dig into what might motivate someone's inappropriate conduct. We'll uncover human reactions to certain behaviors that might be difficult to express in the workplace. Our facilitators will start to untangle some of these issues and examine them in the context of your employees' own experiences.
3. REPLAY. And this is where it gets fun. Participants will offer the characters suggestions about how they might be able to navigate these situations more successfully. Then, in real time, the actors will replay the scene, utilizing these suggestions. It's a safe, dynamic, low-risk way to experiment with human behavior and test out interpersonal strategies.