1. www.europeanbusinessreview.com 17
found the theatre to be so relevant and transferable to orga-
nizational contexts.1
Like the multitude of teams in any busi-
ness or organization, theatre works under tight timeframes,
requires the excellence and presence of many individuals with
different talents, and communicates a unique vision of the
world with the intent to attract and transform its constituents.
Workshop participants conclude the day by highlighting the
lessons of a rich theatre experience that can aid and support
the organizational leader.
The Leading High Performance workshop delivered at
Wharton by the Pig Iron Theatre Company draws upon
the rich experiential traditions of Joe Chaikin (presence),
David Kolb (experiential learning), Jacques Lecoq (physi-
cal theatre), Kenwyn Smith (group dynamics, power and
authority), and Michael Useem (the leadership moment)2 3
featuring the essential components of action, reflection, and
transference of learning to familiar organizational contexts.
Creating and performing a new play represents a stretch
experience4
for the team, as the participants are thrust into a
new environment and asked to learn new skills while reach-
ing high levels of performance as a team. The Wharton lead-
ership development framework highlights the importance of
stretch experiences, in particular, to meaningful and memo-
rable personal leadership development5
. These lessons and
their applications to teams in a variety of organizational con-
texts are described below.
In this program, Pig Iron leads a 12 hour team performance
training for an international group of executive education par-
ticipants. Using the Leading High Performance framework,
By Quinn Bauriedel & Jeff Klein
Like the multitude of teams in any organization, theatre
works under tight timeframes, combines many individuals
with different talents, and communicates a vision of the
world with the intent to attract and transform its constitu-
ents. Below, Quinn Bauriedel and Jeff Klein discuss Creating
and Leading High Performing Teams, an open-enrollment
program for organizational leaders
M
ichael Kemmerer faced a familiar leadership chal-
lenge. A recognized expert, Michael was asked to
assume leadership of a technical support team for
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His technical profi-
ciency was exemplary and he had a mastery of the specialized
knowledge necessary to provide quality support. Now he felt
himself tested in another way as he was tasked to lead a team
of his peers. He had done all the jobs that he was now leading
and felt, as many would, that there was a right way to do it.
His leadership style, at the time, was best described as “This is
how I would have done it.”
His epiphany came in the form of a play he created as
part of a newly-assembled team of managers. Looking back,
he describes the shift in perspective that he gained through
theatre – a realization that his leadership must encourage and
support the contributions of his team. “Everyone can lead in
his or her own right. We have knowledgeable folks that are
experts and they can be leaders. There is not just one leader in
the course of a day. There are many leaders,” said Kemmerer.
The Pig Iron Theatre Company and the Wharton
Leadership Program have collaborated to deliver leadership
development training and education to hundreds of MBA stu-
dents, managers, and executives over the past seven years. Of
particular interest for this article, the authors have partnered
to offer Creating and Leading High Performing Teams, an open-
enrollment program for organizational leaders delivered at
the Aresty Institute for Executive Education at The Wharton
School, University of Pennsylvania. While we are certainly
not the first to incorporate experiential theatre exercises into
leadership development programs, we do eagerly join the cadre
of theatre professionals and leadership educators who have
Collaborative Creativity:
Leading High Performance through Theatre
The program exemplifies Pig Iron’s belief that
we all work at our best when we are on the
creative edge, not repeating the same task
but achieving something new at a high level.
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2. 18 The European Business Review September - October 2013
Creating the Team
As educators, the authors strive to create and support teams
which will achieve the three criteria of the High Performing
Teams test: Did we accomplish the goal? Did we learn and
develop (individually and collectively) as a result? Would we
do it again?8
Presence and Play
All leaders rely on presence, and we find presence to be as
essential for team leaders as it is for artists and performers.
Without presence, a team can become distracted, disengaged
and unfocused. Successful team projects require the full pres-
ence and engagement of every member of the team, and the
Leading High Performing process invests a few hours in estab-
lishing the concept of an engaged team committed to creating
a collective product of high quality.
Plato famously commented that we can learn more about
someone in an hour of play than in a year of conversation, and
the Leading High Performance process uses playful and pow-
erful theatre techniques to accelerate trust and engagement
within the team. Through exercises introducing concepts such
as presence, breathing, body awareness, and contact, the team
finds the connections necessary to enable future work. Jesse
Leon, an Account Director at Discovery Communications,
Inc, commented about one such exercise, “The flocking exer-
cise [where participants follow the movements of leaders
who shift from leading the “flock” to following a new leader]
showed how we create unison. The role of the leader and the
role of the team evolves, and we start to mimic behavior and
follow each other.” Leadership of the team, in theatre and in
business, must smoothly transition from teammate to team-
mate as the skills and experience required by a dynamic envi-
ronment also shift.
Creating the Vision
We seek a vision that is compelling and engages the team
and the audience. Another colleague in the Wharton
program, mountaineer and entrepreneur Chris Warner, has
this to say about creating a vision: “It’s the leader’s job to
create a compelling saga, otherwise those around him [or
her] will fill it in with their own petty drama.”9
While the
pun is certainly intended here, what is unique about this
part of the process is that there is no designated leader, or
director, in theatre parlance. Success in this model requires
each team creates and performs an original piece of “Tony
Award-caliber” theatre.
The task is defined at the outset of the day. In the next
12 hours, each team will develop, write, design, rehearse,
and premiere an original 10-minute play that strives to
win a Tony Award. The standard is extraordinarily high –
perhaps unachievable! – so that focus and ambition never lag.
Kemmerer, reflecting after the fact on his thoughts at the top
of the day, said “there is no way a group of business people
are going to be able to do this.” The program exemplifies Pig
Iron’s belief that we all work at our best when we are on the
creative edge, not repeating the same task but instead achiev-
ing something new at a high level. Clearly, leadership is most
often built during extraordinary moments when leaders are
outside their comfort zones, stretching their potential and
learning experientially.
In their work in theatre, Pig Iron Theatre Company
employs a flat rather than pyramidal organizational struc-
ture – a rarity in the traditional world of established theatre.
Instead of starting with a script, giving the playwright full
ownership of all the ideas and creating a context in which
everyone else on the team merely interprets the playwright’s
vision, Pig Iron artists encounter the material together.
Having individuals with different expertise in the room –
actors, director, designers, technicians, and writers – yields
a generative performance from the efforts of all rather than
the vision of one. This process recognizes the necessity of
the team to solve an adaptive problem6
(a problem with no
known or readily-available answer) – a challenge like creat-
ing an original piece of theatre, launching a new product, or
acting on customer feedback.
The Leading High Performance process moves through
distinct phases which create the internal conditions
described by J. Richard Hackman in Leading Teams:7
a real
team, a compelling vision, and an enabling structure. The
external conditions – a supportive organization and compe-
tent coaching – are provided through the weeklong Creating
and Leading High Performing Teams program and the expert
instructors from Pig Iron, respectively. The Leading High
Performance process is described in detail below.
Stages of the Day
Breathing, body awareness, pacing, and
contact
Creating the Team
Exercises
Presence and Play
Creating the Vision
Personal journeys, storytellingIdeation and Envisioning
Physical storyboarding, testing clarityRefining and Aligning
Creating the Structure
Role definition, role assignmentDefining and Authorizing
Production, integrationPreparing and Deciding
Leading High Performance
Opening Night premiereExecuting and Performing
Leading
High
Performance
Creating
the Team
Creating
the Vision
Creating
the
Structure
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3. www.europeanbusinessreview.com 19
each team member to feel the responsibility for creating
and sustaining a compelling vision.
Ideation and Envisioning
This crucial step in the process ensures that creative input comes
from everyone. Before roles are assigned (or even revealed), the
teams spend time sharing individual stories about journeys and
significant events in their lives. Rather than starting with one
leader’s master plan, this phase seeks wild ideas and seemingly
impossible solutions and leads to collaboration because the
vision arrives before roles are defined. Everyone is an owner of
the project as all have submitted input.
Leon, summarizing an essential lesson from his recent
participation, said, “When you let go, when you let the team
work together… ideas start bubbling up, ideas I truly wasn’t
coming up with. At the end of the day, our success was based
on the ideas that came from the team, not just from me.” Too
often in organizations, personal agendas trump team goals
and vision. During this workshop, participants experience
first-hand the benefit of creating a vision first – with active
and equal contribution from the team – rather than becoming
mired in the interdepartmental politics that can bog down any
cross-functional team.
Refining and Aligning
Before preparation and production can begin, the ideas gen-
erated during the ideation phase must be tested. The vision
must be “put on its feet” in front of an audience. The audi-
ence then provides direct and immediate feedback, much like
a new product focus group, that enables the team to refine its
performance for maximum impact.
Astera Primanto Bhakti, Director of the Centre for State
Revenue Policy in the Indonesian Ministry of Finance, high-
lights the impact of creating a compelling vision. “Team align-
ment,” said Bhakti, “around the vision and main objectives is
crucial, both for my team in the Pig Iron workshop and my
daily work.” Bhakti has brought this lesson into his commu-
nity partnership efforts, using direct feedback from commu-
nity members to refine government programs and reinforce
key success metrics.
Creating the Structure
We particularly appreciate Hackman’s notion of an “enabling
structure” within high performing teams. An enabling struc-
ture is more than an organizational chart and a set of job
descriptions – it also emphasizes key milestones, productive
team norms, and the interdependence of individual roles.
In practice, the enabling structure includes a detailed and
fast-paced production timeline and the sets of decisions that
each team member must make and understand. Roles are
defined and assigned, including writers, designers, actors,
and a director (the designated leader). Through the work of
making specific choices and integrating these decisions into
the final production, the team confronts common organiza-
tional challenges – coordination and collaboration, boundary
management, communication, and adaptation to environ-
mental changes.
Defining and Authorizing
Once the vision has been established and the team is com-
mitted to the project’s direction, roles – including writers,
designers, actors, and a director – are distributed. The roles
have clear guidelines and every team member will make
important decisions and integrate these choices into the
final product. The director is the designated leader of the
team, though the designated leader in the Leading High
Performance process is most typically experienced as a guide
toward a clearly defined end-point, selected by the team to
make the team shine brightly.
Leon described the ease with which roles were distributed:
“I was surprised to see – with such strong leadership in the
team – the ability of those strong leaders to step back and
take on the tasks they were asked to do. The greater good of
the team became quite clear and everyone got on board quite
quickly.” Stated simply, teammates take up their assigned
roles fully, savoring the opportunity to be a part of something
bigger than themselves.
Preparing and Deciding
The success of the play – or any project – depends on attention
to detail and precise, well-timed decisions. Once the vision has
been set, all on the team, in their various roles, must contrib-
ute to the goal of producing a play that evening. The team
must work efficiently and collaboratively, and take up their
authority to create the best possible outcome.
Bhatki, reflecting on this part of the day, commented,
“First of all, this part is very exciting for me – using theatre
for leadership training. I learned a lot about how to manage
people and how to deal with strict and limited time to achieve
a goal.” He highlights the quick decisions made by each team
member to translate the vision into an actual performance as
a lasting memory of the program.
Leading High Performance
Trust and alignment must be created before a team performs,
whether the team is a theatre company or a cross-functional
Before preparation and production can begin,the ideas generated during the ideation phase
must be tested.The audience then provides direct and immediate feedback,much like a new
product focus group, that enables the team to refine its performance for maximum impact.

4. 20 The European Business Review September - October 2013
product development group. At this stage
– the moments before and during perfor-
mance – Pig Iron takes the team back to
its initial level of engagement, vulner-
ability, and connection at the beginning
of the day. With a real team, an aligned
vision, and an enabling structure (located
in a supportive culture with easily acces-
sible expert coaching), the teams debut
their original theatrical productions.
Executing and Performing
The conclusion of this experiential learn-
ing module is a performance that has
been created from scratch during the
course of the 12-hour day. Before their
performances, the teams are reminded to
breathe, to be present, to listen, to support
their team and, once again, to share the
team’s vision with an audience. That one
second of team connection before exe-
cuting can make a world of difference.
The performances highlight stories
and themes that are quite compelling,
and capture the moments of joy, sorrow,
achievement, and loss that run through
all of our lives. Perhaps the best testa-
ment to the quality of the experience
comes from Kemmerer, who said, two
years after completing the program, “I
don’t remember what I did last week but
I remember the plays.”
In Closing
All high performing teams – execu-
tive teams, sales teams, artistic teams,
product development teams – recog-
nize the importance of vision. Too
often, individual goals and team goals
are out of alignment with individuals
sometimes seeking personal gain at the
expense of the team’s success. When
teams succeed, however, it is the result
of everyone working toward a clear
vision. We find that when a group of
individuals comes together to form a
team, their success is often the result
the School of Social Policy and Practice
at the University of Pennsylvania. He
is responsible for the portfolio of lead-
ership development programs avail-
able to Wharton undergraduates, full-
time MBAs, and executive MBAs. His
research and teaching focuses on collabo-
ration within and across boundaries, and
he designs and delivers leadership work-
shops and courses for executive clients
through Wharton Executive Education.
As a Learning Director, Jeff leads two
weeklong executive courses, Creating
and Leading High Performing Teams
and The Leadership Edge. He can be
reached at kleinja@wharton.upenn.edu.
http://wlp.wharton.upenn.edu
References
1. See, for example, Posner, B (2008). “The
Play’s the Thing: Reflections on Leadership
from the Theatre,” Journal of Management
Inquiry, 17: 35-41, and Gagnon, S., et al
(2012). “Learning to Lead, Unscripted:
Developing Affiliative Leadership Through
Improvisational Theatre,” Human Resource
Development Review, 11: 299-325.
2. For more information on experiential
leadership development, we refer you to
Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source
of Learning and Development (Kolb); Groups in
Conflict: Prisons in Disguise (Smith); and The
Leadership Moment (Useem).
3. For more information on the educational
traditions of the theatre, we refer you to The
Presence of the Actor (Chaikin) and The Moving
Body: Teaching Creative Theatre (Lecoq).
4. Klein, J (2012). “Leadership Development
and the High Performing Team: The
Wharton Leadership Program,” The
European Business Review, September-October
2012, 40-42.
5. Useem, M (2012). “The Leader’s
Checklist,” The European Business Review,
January-February 2012, 7-10.
6. Heifetz, R (1994). Leadership Without Easy
Answers. Harvard University Press.
7. Hackman, J (2002). Leading Teams: Setting
the Stage for Great Performances, Harvard
Business School Press.
8. The High Performing Teams test is
described in more detail in: Klein, J (2012).
“Leadership Development and the High
Performing Team: The Wharton Leadership
Program,” The European Business Review,
September-October 2012, 40-42, with
acknowledgment to J. Richard Hackman
and Rodrigo Jordan.
9. See Warner, C (2008). High Altitude
Leadership: What the World’s Most Forbidding
PeaksTeach Us About Success. Jossey-Bass Press.
of everyone believing in the vision, a
vision that is bigger than any individual.
Michael Kemmerer learned, through
the Pig Iron – Wharton collabora-
tion, that success will come not from
him playing all the parts on his team
but from the seamless orchestration of
many individuals all working toward
one goal. Theatre is a discipline that
does not happen through one person’s
efforts. A play that is written, directed,
performed, designed, produced, stage-
managed, house managed and marketed
by one person does not exist. Successful,
Tony Award winning theatre, therefore,
is the result of a grand and compelling
vision, real collaboration from every-
one involved, integrated thinking, and a
sense that everyone is a vital contribu-
tor to the whole. If we demand this from
our theatre, why not demand it from our
business teams?
About the Authors
Quinn Bauriedel is a Founder and
Co-artistic director of the OBIE Award-
winning Pig Iron Theatre Company.
He teaches The Leader As Storyteller,
Leadership Presence, and Leading High
Performance to executives and MBA
students through the Wharton School
and to leading businesses and organiza-
tions. Quinn is the recipient of a Pew
Fellowship, a Luce Fellowship (spon-
soring a year of study in Indonesia),
a Fox Fellowship and was one of 50
American artists in 2010 to be named
a USA Knight Fellow. He regularly
teaches at Princeton University and
Swarthmore College and leads work-
shops throughout the U.S. and abroad.
He can be reached at Quinn@pigiron.org.
http://www.pigiron.org/
Jeff Klein is the Executive Director
of the Wharton Leadership Program and
a Lecturer at The Wharton School and
All high performing teams – executive teams, sales teams,
artistic teams, product development teams – recognize the
importance of vision.When teams succeed,however,it is the
result of everyone working toward a clear vision.
FeatureLeadership