FAQs
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I’m sure drama-based learning is great fun, but how do I ensure that delegates leave one of your sessions with some tangible ‘take-aways’?
- Steps Drama Learning Development takes great care to work with the client in order to define what they would like their delegates to take away from a programme. With the organisation’s learning objectives firmly in mind, the Steps delivery team are primarily focused on making sure the delegates leave the session with a clear understanding of why they have attended and what they can bring back to the workplace: “focused, facilitated and, of course, fun”.
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Ah yes, facilitation. I have people in my organisation who either talk too much or say too little. If you have a delegate audience of, say, 25, how do you facilitate those sorts of people?
- The Steps team have a huge amount of experience in facilitating a variety of audiences and are adept at working with the different dynamics in a group. When an actor-facilitator is in role as - for example, as a manager finding it difficult to deliver a tough message to a direct report - s/he turns to the audience and asks for their help, the quietest people will often open up; they can quickly engage with the subject matter because they are communicating through and with the medium of drama. Very, very rarely does no one say anything. However, it is often the case that the quietest people are the ones who come to us at the end of a session and thank us for a very productive session: they have a different way of incorporating learning and ultimately we respect the fact that different people, teams and organisations have different learning styles – we never force anyone to say or do anything they do not want to say or do.
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The people who run Steps and its freelance delivery team all come from a background in the theatre – as actors, writers, directors, teachers - what understanding can they have of organisational life?
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Again, Steps’ breadth of experience of working with organisations is probably unparalleled amongst our competitors. It’s quite true that our background is the theatre and we see that as a strength, enabling us to gain a greater understanding of our clients and their needs. Steps understands its role – as a medium for communicating critical behavioural and organisational learning – and like any actor worth their salt, will use all their resources to make sure that that role is carried out with a dedicated and thorough professionalism.
We are also very careful about who works with us. We have a rigorous selection policy for our full-time staff and freelance associates and offer training at all levels and on a variety of subjects.
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Talking about competitors - why use Steps and not someone else?
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There are some very good drama-based practitioners in the learning and development field. What we don’t do is corporate entertainment – we stick to learning and development and are very focused to that end.
We don’t offer ‘off-the-shelf’ products. What we do for one client may influence what we do for another and we bring thoughts, ideas and processes from other areas to enhance our work, but no two programmes are the same!
Our expertise is in facilitating the learning process - using drama as our core methodology for doing so.
We don’t tell people what they should or should not be doing, but rather, we create an environment where delegates have to work things out for themselves and we raise awareness by facilitating discussion.
We are a highly professional organisation, started in 1992, currently employing 17 full-time client-serving and administrative staff and over 100 freelance associates.
We do bring fun to the learning process – vital for engaging the delegate and retaining the message.
Steps places great value in the relationship: between us and the client and us and our delivery team.
Steps prides itself on its ability to listen very carefully to the client, understand their needs, develop innovate learning solutions, and deliver to a very high standard. We put learning at the forefront of everything we do, and are passionately committed to the use of drama as a viable, practical and engaging learning methodology.
As mentioned already, Steps’ experience is considerable and our in-depth knowledge of critical business drivers and concerns is recognised as being of considerable value to the client.
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Isn’t drama-based learning just a fad that will simply fade away?
- The growth in drama-based learning over the last ten years has been phenomenal. Steps Drama Learning Development has been a market leader in this growth. Steps, and others, have demonstrated that this kind of training is not only sustainable, but engaging, thought-provoking, challenging and extremely useful.