How Clowning Transforms Business, Meetings, and Leadership

Dan Rudolph
Jul 14
4 min read

Updated: Jul 16

by Dan Rudoph

We often associate clowns with public performance spaces like circuses, theatres and carnivals. Nowadays 'finding your inner clown' is also becoming more widely accepted as a powerful means of personal development and growth. But the potential for clowning to be applied in the professional context of business may still seem like a novel, and slightly bizarre, idea.

At Clown Spirit, our mission is to unleash as many clowns into the world as possible, and to do this we have to push the boundaries, challenge assumptions. We see all acts of clown as important, no matter the context. In fact in order to unleash their true power we need to encourage clowning to occur in all the spaces, whether obvious or more niche. So why not in the business space?

At CLOWNVERGENCE, our online conference in April 2025, we brought together a diverse group of business experts, including business owners, academics, and consultants, who have been exploring and experimenting with innovative ways to exploit the benefits of clowning in their work. It was a lively and fascinating panel, and in this post I’ll be sharing some of what we learned from them.

Using Clowning in Professional Contexts

Here are examples of how some leaders are integrating clowning and play into their work –including facilitation, leadership, education reform, and business investing.

Start Meetings With Clowning

Want to bring more lightness, wellbeing, and connection into your meetings? Try these two simple clowning and play practices:

✅ Laughing Practice

See the example below given by Manish Jain, founder of Swaraj University and a leading advocate for reimagining education and learning - where he invites the group into laughter to start the meeting.

Manish Jain speaks about the importance of connecting with the Trickster energy in these times, and leads a simple laughter exercise to help us do that.

✅ Shaking Practice

See the example below led by Rehana Tejpar, facilitator, leadership coach, mediator, movement artist, and founder of Bloom Consulting. She shares the practice of starting the meeting with shaking to invite people out of their heads and into their bodies.

Rehana Tejpar's talk from CLOWNVERGENCE 2025 in which she explores dance as a life practice for systems transformation at the personal level and leads several movement-based exercises.

These playful practices can support people to get out of their heads and into their bodies, to connect more with each other, to regulate the central nervous system so people have fewer barriers to authenticity and many more positive impacts.

These are just two examples, there are so many clown practices and qualities that can be woven in to meetings and organizational contexts.

Learning About Business Through Clowning

Julia Marcelis, shared how clown school at Dell’Arte International gave her more impactful business skills than her expensive university business degree. She shared three lessons that she learned about business - in a deeply embodied way - through Clowning:

Three Business Lessons From Clowning

Embrace Action and FailureClowning teaches you to value taking action, embrace failure, and see mistakes as learning opportunities. Meet failure with curiosity and novel solutions.
See Endless PossibilitiesApproach challenges with childlike curiosity, where innovation, connection and potential naturally arise.
Center EmpathyStay deeply connected to your audience, clients, or team – understanding their real needs.

Bringing Clown Wisdom to Leadership, Wealth and Purpose

Rodger Spiller, founder of Money Matters, believes business as usual is broken. The economy and markets often operate with absurd logic. In his work, he integrates clowning to rethink wealth, leadership, and purpose.

Why Clowns Matter in Business

Rodger describes wise clowns as:

Courageously human – showing up authentically without masks
Modeling psychological safety – inviting others to be real
Creatively disruptive – asking unexpected questions and breaking stale patterns
Opening space for fresh thinking

Clowning, he says, is essential to creating the change we need in business and society.

Clowning and Strategic Planning

The empathy, playfulness and vulnerability of clown can be particularly valuable as a catalyst for teams to come together and envision new possibilities, such as in a strategic planning retreat.

Last year, in my own facilitation work I supported an organization to integrate clowning and play into their annual strategic planning process.

We began with a 2.5-hour immersive play experience with their core team, followed by an informal dinner. This kick-off created connection, built empathy, and allowed the team to bring honest emotional expression into their strategic planning process, which followed on the proceeding two days.

The Executive Director shared how opening with play helped individuals on the team to be more themselves, bring more trust, empathy and vulnerability into the team dynamics which ultimately led to a more effective and human-centered strategy session.

What to do if you want to use clowning to enhance your own business journey

Whether you are a professional performer or an undercover clown in your workplace, clowning is a powerful way to transform business, meetings, and leadership. The world needs your authentic, playful, courageous Clown Spirit now more than ever.

If you’re a clown wanting to build your business skills or an entrepreneur who wants to unleash their clown energy, check out our upcoming 12-week Business for Clowns course starting August 11.