The Emperor's New Clothes

Portia will co-present a new Agile Fairytale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes – Meaningful Interactions in Stressful situations” with Jenni Jepsen on 25-26 November at the XP Days Benelux 2010 conference in Heeze, near Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

The Emperor is parading in his new clothes! See him in all his glory! Which role will you play? The mischievous weaver who robs the kingdom and sells the Emperor his birthday suit? Or the obsequious minister who assures the Emperor his bottom doesn’t look big in it? Or the innocent child who tells it like it is? We all interact with different types of characters in our daily lives which may give rise to stressful situations.

Together we will learn how to communicate better with others, especially at times of stress, by transforming our behaviour from incongruence to congruence. We will learn to recognise incongruence by role-playing the 4 Coping Stances, based on the Satir Model, then learn how to transform our behaviour from one of incongruence to congruence (the fifth stance) by thinking about interactions in terms of Self, Other and Context.