4 Ways to Improve Teams with Improv

I’ve been thinking a lot about how improv can help us with our leadership, teams, and lives in 2022. Why? Well, because I think a lot about improv as a tool for our lives offstage. Always. Period. And also because the past two years have been, well, a pretty clear improvisation! We have been visibly reminded that we are not in control and we are, in fact, improvising in life. More than ever we are faced with awareness of our vulnerabilities, insecurities, and realities. We’ve had to improvise our lives and our work. So whether you signed up for an improv class or not, you are improvising.

Now that we’ve established that you’re an improviser, and each day is an improvisation, let’s talk about principles that help the professional improvisers handle all the uncertainty onstage. These principles, just like they help improvisers onstage, can help improvisers in life (i.e. YOU) offstage.

Say “yes,?and”.

Saying “yes, and” is a fundamental principle of improv. It means acknowledging what’s been said/done/established, and building on it. So if I’m in a scene and I say “we’re on a boat” and my scene partner says “no, we’re on an airplane”, that doesn’t help the scene move forward. We’ll be arguing about whether we’re on a boat or an airplane and the audience will leave because they came to watch an improv show, not an episode of Jerry Springer. However, if I say “we’re on a boat” and my scene partner says “yes, and there’s a bunch of dolphins coming our way”, we’re on the same page (or boat, in this case?:) and building the scene together.

Saying “yes, and” in leadership and life means acknowledging what’s in front of you, and then taking action. I’ve come up with some simple ABC’s of saying “yes, and” that might help you out…

Acknowledge what has been said and then take?Action

Build on each other’s?ideas.?

Once you acknowledge what has been established and take action, that action must build on what has been established already.

Communicate.?

Keep communicating. Saying “yes, and” is about building on one another’s ideas and contributions. Consider building a house. I lay a brick, then you lay a brick. And we both need to keep putting down bricks until the house is built. That means, we’re continuing to communicate.

The other way saying “yes, and” can help us and our teams in 2022 is to remember the duality of life and work. This can be true AND that can be true. Try this. Stand straight up and then bend over to touch your toes. You’re going down (your head is down) AND you’re going up (your hips are up). In an improv scene this and that are true. Improvisers can be on a boat AND be rollerblading (though I don’t endorse this activity). Improvisers can be singing cheerfully AND grieving. An improviser can be setting the table for a dinner party AND feeling lonely. Someone on your team can be confidently delivering a presentation AND feel insecure about their work. Someone can appear cheerful and upbeat at work AND also be feeling sad about something in their personal life. Someone on your team can be visibly upset AND also be very grateful.

This is especially helpful to practice when breaking through stereotypes and biases. If you believe someone is one way because they’re also something else that you associate with that one way, well, your mind is being lazy (also known as a psychological heuristic ). Someone can buy lunch for their colleagues every week and be paying off student loan debt. Someone can live rurally and donate to services for people experiencing homelessness in cities. An employee can appear healthy and fit and be experiencing chronic illness. People are complex, multi-dimensional, and situations are spherical, not linear.

This is a pretty deep way to practice “yes, and” and it takes work. I’m planting this seed AND I’m going to leave it alone for now. I welcome conversations about this topic and I’ll want to write something more in depth to go into this with more examples.

An important note about saying “yes, and”. Saying “yes, and” doesn’t mean you’re literally saying “yes”. In fact, you can say “yes”, acknowledge the reality, “and” then say “no”. You can say “yes, and” then say “no”. More on that in an upcoming post.

Take everything as a?gift.

Okay, 2020 and 2021 have been filled with the kind of gifts we want to return asap, no questions asked. And, yet, there are also so many gifts we want to keep. In our many virtual Improve experiences over the past two years I’ve asked people about some of the gifts they’ve received during the pandemic. Some of the most common answers include:

• Spending more time with my kids
• Spending less time in traffic
• Getting a pet
• Having more time to exercise
• Cooking more
• Learning a new hobby or skill
• Discovering new things about my neighborhood

Ask yourself, what are the gifts that you received during the last two, visibly unpredictable and rapidly changing years?

In improv scenes, everything is a gift. We don’t have a script, so we take every word, facial expression, movement, moment of silence, as a gift letting us know what this scene might be about as we write the script in real time.

Pay attention to the gifts around you this year. When you approach life as a series of gifts it sets you up to be much more adaptable and creative no matter what those gifts are. Even challenges have gifts included…they’re just buried under all those packing peanuts.

Play the scene you’re?in.

Be present and pay attention to what’s going on around you. When we improvise, on stage, playing the scene we’re in and paying attention is how we notice all those gifts that help us continue to say “yes, and” build the scene.

In life and work, similarly, when we pay attention to what’s happening around us and when we remain present in the moment we’re in, we notice things we wouldn’t otherwise notice. We might pick up on the tone of which our colleague is telling us something. We might hear a nuance of an idea that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed.

When you are present in the moment you connect more with yourself and your colleagues.

If it feels weird, do it (unless it’s at someone else’s expense).

Improv makes comedy by doing the unusual thing and making weird choices. At work, with your teams, this doesn’t mean you’ll be making weird voices or dressing in costume to Zoom meetings (though, by all means, you do you). Really, how this translates into work and teams is to make new and unusual choices with an eye towards growth.

Take any fast growing company as an example. What worked as a team of 4 isn’t going to work as a team of 40. And what works as a team of 40 isn’t going to work as a team of 400. As we grow, if we want to grow, we need to make new choices. New choices lead to new outcomes.

What worked as an all in-person team may not all work as a remote team. And what worked as an all remote team may not work as a hybrid team. And what worked as a previously all in-person team may not work as a recently returned to an office team. Adapt. Change. Be willing to let go of old ideas and replace them with new and improved ideas. These new ideas and behaviors might feel weird at first, because they’re different. Weird choices can be growth choices.

There are a zillion more ways that improv principles can improve your life and work. I welcome conversations about how you are improvising in work and life. Please share in the comments and/or if you want to learn more or have a conversation about your team, specifically, can improve with improv, please send me an email or set up a call with me .

Here’s to a new and improved 2022!

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