Your Workplace Conference 2009: Paul Houle

Paul Houle’s dynamic and energizing session gave a unique perspective on how we can create a culture of inclusion in our workplace and realize extraordinary outcomes. He is a charismatic performer, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and facilitator.

Paul Houle is a performer extraordinaire. The founder and president of Boom! The Power of Rhythm™, Houle took the entire ensemble of conference attendees through a dynamic participative session in which everyone was a musician – not “trying to be” or “making a half-hearted attempt at”, but a real musician, part of an entire percussion orchestra.

Yet Houle is more than a charismatic and talented performer, and he is more than a trainer and orchestral conductor. He is wise in the ways of corporations, organizations and other workplaces, and uses music and the creative process as a metaphor for how work gets done.

Houle divided the participants into four different groups. As they sat around his centre stage, he directed them in their music playing, encouraging them to actively listen to each other for their cues – when to enter the music and how to keep to the pulse of the music. Houle noted that the art of the music comes in the spaces between the notes – how we have to leave a space for someone else to fill.

The parallels to the workplace spill forth: how we, as individuals, need to actively listen to others to find out when our work starts and stops. How departments need to listen to other departments for their cues to enter the work stream. How a new task in one area affects other areas.

When people found their musical space, they played with more commitment and there was inclusiveness, respectful negotiation and collaboration. The group’s success was mutually determined, rather than controlled by a single point of leadership.

The conference delegates all left the session with a great feeling of unity and accomplishment, having created something that, no doubt, everyone thought was impossible at the start of the session. Being individuals and community in the same moment was a tremendously powerful and engaging experience for everyone in the room.

AUTHOR: LISA SANSOM