Mandhyan

How many times has a facilitation process gone south when it should be going north?

Our plans flip. Our designs dip. And people in the room go, yes, but that is difficult… yes, but we have already tried it… yes, but the board will not approve of this change.

These moments are familiar to every facilitator. They are not signs of resistance; they are signs of being human. As Some Wise Old Man might remind us, “People do not resist change; they resist being changed.” And in Asia, where harmony, hierarchy, and face shape the emotional climate of a room, these “yes, but” responses often arrive before ideas have had a chance to breathe.

Yet if we want to turn that around — if we want to transform yes, but into yes, and — we need a shift in the emotional weather of the room. We want to hear, yes, and we like it… yes, and we can do this… yes, and that is a great idea that the board will approve.

This shift is not magic. It is facilitation. And the lightness, the science, and the art of improv can help us achieve that. Improv provides psychological safety, increases engagement, and unleashes creative thinking to get you the results the room and your client desire.

I once facilitated a leadership workshop in Southeast Asia where the morning began with the usual carefulness: polite nods, measured comments, and the kind of participation that signals respect more than enthusiasm. Then, during a reflection round, something small happened — a moment of shared recognition. Someone described a familiar workplace faux pas, and the room let out a soft, knowing laugh. Not at the person. Not at the situation. But at the gentle absurdity of how human we all are.
Another participant added a story of their own. A third built on that.

And suddenly the room shifted.
• Shoulders relaxed.
• Eyes softened.
• People leaned in.

It was the kind of lightness that emerges when people feel safe enough to be real. Instead of pulling them back to the agenda, I followed the energy. A simple “Yes, AND…” opened the door. Within minutes, the group was generating ideas faster than we could capture them. The collective intelligence of the room — dormant all morning — finally woke up.

Neuroscience explains this beautifully. When someone’s idea is accepted and built upon, mirror neurons fire, creating emotional synchrony. The amygdala relaxes, reducing fear of judgment or loss of face — concerns that are particularly strong in Asian contexts. As safety increases, the prefrontal cortex activates, enabling creativity, insight, and problem solving.

The sequence is simple:
• Safety rises.
• Openness follows.
• Conversations flow.
• Creativity emerges.
• Action becomes possible.

Improv accelerates this sequence by creating micro moments of acceptance that ripple through the group. It is not performance; it is neurobiology expressed through human warmth.

This is also where Authentic Influence© aligns naturally with improv. Its three pillars — Clarity, Creativity, and Conscientiousness — mirror the internal shifts that improv triggers. Clarity emerges when facilitators accept what is truly happening in the room rather than resisting it. Creativity flourishes when ideas are expanded instead of blocked. Conscientiousness guides the facilitator to hold the group with care and cultural sensitivity — essential in Asian facilitation, where tone and relational harmony matter as much as content.

For process facilitators in Asia, this integration of improv, neuroscience, and Authentic Influence© is not optional; it is essential. Our groups often carry unspoken norms: respect for hierarchy, caution around disagreement, a preference for harmony, and a desire not to stand out. Improv does not fight these dynamics; it works with them. It creates a climate where people feel safe to speak, where ideas build instead of collide, and where the group mind becomes wiser than any individual voice.

The same Wise Old Man once said, “Before you move a mountain, first move the mind.”

Improv helps us do exactly that — gently, respectfully, and with a touch of lightness that reminds people they are allowed to be human.

So, come join me at the IAF Conference in Guangzhou this October, where we will explore how improv, neuroscience, and Authentic Influence come together to transform the facilitation experience.

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In 1968, inside 3M’s labs in Minnesota, Dr. Spencer Silver made a mistake.

He was trying to create a super‑strong adhesive.
Instead, he created the opposite — a weak, low‑tack glue that barely held on.

Interesting, yes. Useful, no.
For six years, he carried it around the company like a quiet secret no one knew what to do with.

Then in 1974, engineer Art Fry — tidy, curious, the kind of man who notices small problems — kept losing his bookmarks during choir practice. One morning, he remembered Silver’s odd adhesive. He brushed a little on a scrap of paper, pressed it onto a page… and it stayed.

Not too strong.
Not too weak.
Just right.

Management didn’t see the value.
But Fry kept pushing.

By 1977, 3M had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing and test‑marketing the product — then called Press ’n Peel — in four cities.
It failed.

Customers didn’t get it.

The idea was inches away from being cancelled.

So Fry tried something bold: give it away.

3M shipped boxes of samples to offices in Boise, Idaho. No marketing. No pitch. Just experience.

And suddenly the phones started ringing.
“Where can we buy more of those little sticky notes?”

Within weeks, 90% of people who tried them wanted more.

In 1980, 3M launched the product nationwide under a new name:
Post‑it® Notes.

Forty years later, this once‑rejected idea generates millions of dollars in global revenue every year and remains one of 3M’s most iconic, profitable, and enduring products.

All because one man made a mistake…
and another man had a small problem…
and together they saw possibility where others saw nothing.

Sometimes the idea that almost dies is the one that ends up changing the way the world works.

When Kindness Walked Up To Me: Maano po!

In 2010, the world was still limping from the financial crisis, and I was limping with it. Work had thinned, hope had thinned, and then life delivered a blow I never saw coming — my older brother passed away at sixty‑three. The news hollowed me out. I wanted to fly home, to stand beside him one last time, but circumstances held me in Manila. All I could do was arrange for his eldest son, my nephew in Pasay, to fly down and perform the rites I could not.

That evening, I drove toward his subdivision, but I didn’t have the heart to navigate the long, winding road to his house. I stopped instead at a quiet corner behind the neighborhood and asked him to meet me there. I wanted to send a final embrace to my brother through his son.

While waiting, I sat on an empty bench under a tired streetlamp. A dozen Filipino children were playing patintero nearby, their laughter rising and falling like a small, stubborn flame against the night. I sat with my head bowed, grief pressing on my chest, the world dimming around the edges.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that.

But then I felt soft footsteps gather near me. When I lifted my head, all the children had formed a line in front of me — quiet, composed, almost ceremonial. I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing.

The first child stepped forward, took my right hand gently, bowed, and touched his forehead to the back of it.

“Maano po,” he whispered.

I froze. Before I could react, the next child did the same. Then the next. One by one, each of them offered that simple, ancient gesture — a blessing, a greeting, a recognition of shared humanity. “Maano po.” “Maano po.” “Maano po.”

By the time the last child returned to the game, tears were already sliding down my cheeks. I had no words. No explanation. No logic to hold on to. Only the unmistakable feeling that something tender and unseen had moved through that street corner and lifted the poison from my grief.

A while later, my nephew arrived. I hugged him tightly and sent my love home through him. But long after he left, the image of those children under the streetlamp stayed with me — their small hands, their quiet reverence, their instinctive kindness.

Years later, I finally understood what I had witnessed.

It was pakikiramdam — the Filipino sensitivity to the emotional weather of another human being.
It was malasakit — the impulse to care, to soothe, to step forward without being asked.
It was the inheritance of generations, passed from parent to child, neighbor to neighbor, community to community.

Those children didn’t know my story. They didn’t know my loss. But they knew, in the way Filipino hearts have always known, when another soul is hurting. And they responded the only way they had been taught: with presence, with gentleness, with compassion that asks for nothing in return.

That night, a dozen little angels found me on a street corner and reminded me of the oldest truth in this land — that we are never left alone in our sorrow. Not here. Not in this culture. Not in this country that has made caring for others a way of life.

True story to be included in the book, ExPat InSights