Generative Communication and Purposeful Play
- David Purdy
- Oct 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 7
My father founded a bank and my mother was an artist.
I am their son.
Today, I'm a business professor. But, I'm also a classically-trained musician and actor, who panicked and went into finance for 25 years. The picture above shows one of my weirder efforts to try to make all that make sense!
I have been trying to make sense of my business and creative sides for a long time. In truth, I'd argue that with the rise of AI, we all need to bring both sides to our careers and our larger lives. My hope is that Generative Communication and Purposeful Play will help in that effort.
Generative Communication draws on both the science and the art of interpersonal communications to create win-win outcomes for our conversations with others — one-on-one, in small groups, and even in front of an audience. The approach is based on the notion that we are more than purely rational creatures. We are co-creating ourselves through the stories we tell with others, both face-to-face and online. The most radical premise is that humans are hardwired to play, as a means of creative problem solving and trust building. See my post The Power of Purposeful Play. Moreover, building trusting relationships playfully can lower our ‘bad stress’ — the kind that overwhelms us — and heighten our ‘good stress’ — which can help us take on our stretch goals more readily. This can help us heighten the constructive impact we can make in the world.
As a business professor, I have a more specific goal for my clients and students: to help business people connect, communicate and collaborate so effectively that they’ll always be a step ahead of AI. Doing so requires practitioners to communicate artfully, using all of their humanity to grab their audience’s attention in a meaningfully memorable way and to do so, so compellingly as to drive behavior change.
Here's what follows:
The Generative Communication Model - I define a model designed to make us bot proof
The Embodying Leadership Presence section argues that memorizing ideas about leadership isn't enough and offers a foundation for 'taking the space'
Going further, in Embodied Storytelling Through the Arts, I argue that we need to light up all our senses, reliving our stories as we tell them
In Living in the Age of Anxiety 2.0, we discuss how the arts can help us ground each other in shared experience
Finally, in Science Meets Belief - Some Science Behind Generative Communication, I share some of the science that explains how we feel our way through our lives while telling ourself stories about what it all might - or might not - mean.
The Generative Communication Model
When it introduced ChatGPT, OpenAI coined the phrase GPT or Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. The aspiration was to craft 'human-like' responses to user questions. But, where the idea falls short is that AI can only rearrange what humans have already created. Only humans can create completely Generative ideas. And, that's the goal of Generative Communication: to reclaim and continuously develop our uniquely human ability to create.
Aristotle noted that we can create ideas deductively — from the top down — or inductively — from the bottom up. But, in the 19th century, Pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce described a third type of idea, which he called 'abductive.' Abductive ideas emerge from an 'a-ha' moment and can only be generated by humans.
For example, Nikola Tesla invented a workable form of alternating current electricity while reciting a poem by Goethe as he walked through a park. His design for a brushless generator/motor used a magnetic dance to usher in the modern world. My hope is that that kind of thinking will always require humans. Generative Communication seeks to foster that kind of human discovery.
To create and share truly generative messages, you need to determine three things given who they are and what they expect of you. Doing that requires you to use your hearts as well as your heads. Despite our deepest habit, it requires us, in effect, to be AMBidextrous:
What’s going to get their Attention?
What are they likely to find Meaningfully Memorable about what you have to say?
And what of that is going to get them to change their Behavior?
Figuring all of that out is only the beginning. Next, you need to enter that conversation in a PAOP way, being:
Fully Present
Aware of the quality of your energy – and theirs!
Open to what emerges in the moment (think of improv’s ‘Yes, And’ mindset)
Ready to Play purposefully
Generative Communication suggests that practitioners become more effective at wielding all of their artful human faculties to understand what’s at play in the stories we tell. Hence, the theories and practices around multimodal aesthetic intelligence are used to make our stories truly captivating.
Embodying Leadership Presence
All of this is built on the most ephemeral essence of effective communication: Leadership Presence. And, it may be harder to develop that kind of presence when anxiety levels have become almost societal epidemics. Moreover, in competitive business cultures that challenge can be even greater. Your presence tanks because you’re listening to the noise in your own head, not the person or situation in front of you. So how do we quiet that internal chatter?
This is where a powerful Japanese concept comes in: Ima Kokoro — roughly translated as “current heart-mind.” As discussed in a previous post, the top character, Ima, means the present moment — the now — and that’s the only real foundation for trust and relationships. The second character — Kokoro — means both mind and heart. The insight is that you can’t tackle complexity or build relationships with just logic. You need to unify thinking and feeling in the moment to truly master your Leadership Presence. (For more on this, see below.)
Embodied Storytelling Through the Arts
So, you show up. Next you have to tell your story. Storytelling has long been considered a key business communication tool. But, I would argue it’s under appreciated. It’s not just how we beat the odds to end up in front of the room. It’s understanding how we carry our stories in our bodies.
In effect, we are a living story that our bodies retell us over and over by how we feel. The trick is to recognize that embodied self narrative and build on it when it works and rebuild it when it doesn’t. We can heighten our ability to understand those stories in ourselves and others, and, hence, share them more effectively. That ability is the heart of the Arts.
Storytelling weaves all the arts together: writing offers logic flow, physicality brings movement, rhythm gives musicality, and imagery paints vivid mental pictures. It ties what we do externally to who we are internally — our identity. And that brings us to a key storytelling framework: The Hero’s Journey. See Joseph Campbell’s wonderful work seeking human universals from mythological traditions from around the world. Those universals arise from the pattern of life itself — departure, transformation, and return.
That said, I think it's important to realize that there’s more to life than fighting dragons. There’s nurturing families and building communities, businesses and other institutions as well. It takes many different kinds of heroes to make our world. So, let's be sure to celebrate our everyday journeys as well!
Living in the Age of Anxiety 2.0
Much has been written about the high levels of anxiety that pervade our world. And, there are many theories as to what’s driving it - the alienating impact of social media, economic uncertainties, political worries, to name but a few. At times, our ecosystem seems designed to keep us doom scrolling. As such, our anxiety arises from a problematic feedback loop with our ecosystem — face-to-face, virtual and internal. All the while we can habitually ruminate about the past or worry about the future. But, the Arts require us to be fully present in the moment and, as such, have much to teach us.
Indeed, the Arts — and disciplines that support their mastery — can help us interrupt that anxiety loop. They demand focus and physical action. They can help us externalize inner chaos. My hope is that as a society, we can put the Arts to work, using Arts-based theories and practices to help ground us and inspire our most creative selves.
On a personal note, my mother suffered from severe anxiety for much of her life. Traditional mental health care helped only temporarily—until she began painting. Painting grounded her. It channeled her struggle into creation. Eventually, she earned a master’s degree in oil painting and went on to paint uplifting murals in the very hospitals where she’d once been treated. Art became healing. Science now confirms this: creativity leverages our natural wiring for wellness. (For more from Arts & Health world, see The Jameel Arts & Health Lab, which was co-founded by my colleague Dr. Nisha Sajnani, who worked with me to create our Improvisation for Effective Leadership class at NYU Stern’s School of Business.)
We, too, must evolve our stories together — embracing creativity and stepping beyond our comfort zones. When we enlarge those comfort zones, we can increase our impact on the world. Real success and deep effectiveness come from unifying the present heart and mind, practicing Purposeful Play to spark creativity and connection, and embodying our authentic selves in the stories we co-create with others.
The Arts can be important helpmates along the way. They're not just 'nice to have.' They’re our oldest form of wisdom in action—evolutionary rationality made flesh. That visceral, gut-level creativity is what makes us deeply human and unlikely to be pushed aside by the Bots!
Science Meets Belief - Some Science Behind Generative Communication
Neuroscience reinforces this creative view of self. V.S. Ramachandran’s research shows that rationality requires simultaneous thought and feeling. The self isn’t in one spot in the brain—it’s generated dynamically across networks involving both cognitive and emotional processes. Being and believing are creative acts. To “know thyself” is to continuously create yourself through a unified head and heart.
For those who want to go deeper into the science of the mind-body-art connection, explore the field of neuroaesthetics. Check out Gabby Starr’s Feeling Beauty and Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel’s The Age of Insight. They bridge the gap beautifully—between head and heart, art and science, and perhaps between who we are and who we might yet become.
