Space
Who occupies the centre, who yields it and how much physical room each person assumes they may use.
Rice Cookie Improv · Workshop example
Status is everywhere. So is the choice to use it warmly.
I led this Status workshop for Rice Cookie Improv. It explores Keith Johnstone’s idea that every interaction contains status and challenges the assumption that high status has to look cold, dominant or villainous.
- Facilitator
- Max Grillo
- Setting
- Rice Cookie Improv community
- Theme
- Status, warmth & relationships
The workshop question
If status is always present, what are we creating together?
In Johnstone’s approach, status is not simply rank, confidence or job title. It is relational and constantly negotiated through small behaviours: taking or yielding space, changing pace, directing attention, accepting an offer or expecting someone else to change.
The workshop gives participants a safe way to exaggerate those choices, observe their effects and discover that status is not a fixed personality trait. The useful question is less “Am I high or low status?” and more “What status relationship are we making in this moment, and does it help the group?”
High status does not need to shrink the room. At its best, it can be calm, warm and generous enough for other people to contribute.
Four observation lenses
Status becomes easier to discuss when it becomes visible.
Time
Who sets the pace, tolerates a pause, interrupts, waits or appears to expect that others will wait.
Attention
Where the group looks, whose offer is developed and whose contribution changes the direction of the scene.
Changeability
Who adapts, who expects others to adapt and whether flexibility reads as generosity, uncertainty or loss of status.
One exercise from the room
Raise your partner’s status.
Pairs play a short interaction with an unusual objective: make the other person appear capable, interesting and worth listening to—without making yourself disappear.
- 01
Choose a simple fictional task or conversation. Avoid a real performance issue or current conflict.
- 02
Both partners look for ways to receive, develop and credit the other person’s contribution.
- 03
Repeat while staying grounded: clear voice, unhurried pace, direct attention and no self-deprecation.
- 04
Debrief the observable behaviours. What made the partner look stronger? What allowed both people to hold status?
Facilitation boundary
Status work should not invite participants to caricature protected identities, imitate a real colleague or diagnose another person. Work with behaviours the group can observe and choose.
What the practice reveals
High status can make the room safer.
- Calm can carry more authority than volume.
- Warmth and decisiveness can exist together.
- Giving attention can raise another person without lowering you.
- A leader can hold the frame while leaving room for expertise.
What it does not prove
An exercise is evidence about a moment—not a personality test.
- Status behaviour changes with context and relationship.
- Formal authority and moment-to-moment status are not identical.
- A workshop cannot remove structural power or accountability.
- The debrief should stay curious rather than label participants.
One additional application
The same practice can inform meetings and leadership.
The community workshop stands on its own as an exploration of relationships and performance. For an organisation, the transfer works best when people test one behaviour in a fictional situation before connecting it to a real work moment.
Use a fictional meeting
Give pairs a low-risk prompt such as planning an imaginary launch. Participants can explore status choices without acting out a live dispute or imitating a colleague.
Practise high–high
Each partner tries to make the other person look capable while staying clear and grounded themselves. Debrief which behaviours created confidence, room and forward movement.
Redesign one meeting moment
Ask where useful status needs to rise or soften: opening the decision, inviting expertise, challenging an assumption, or closing with ownership.
Read the full reflection
Status is everywhere: the warm side of high status.
The accompanying article develops the Johnstone concept, the villain misconception and the implications for leadership in more depth.
Read the articleBring status awareness to your group
Where would warmer status change the room?
I can adapt this exploration for communities, teams, leadership cohorts and interactive events, with the level of challenge matched to the people present.