Improvisation

Improvisation can be moving, engaging and energising. I use it to support stronger, more quick-witted teamwork, customer relationships and creativity. It can bring life to offsites and other team activities.

When working with groups, I believe its important to be attentive to what is emerging moment-by-moment. Improvisation influences the way I work quite strongly. Sometimes I will introduce improv activities explicitly, whilst at others it simply serves as a kind of background sensibility to the way I work.

What is improv?

John Lennon famously observed that life is what happens when you're making other plans. Improvisation is the core skill of achieving success even when plans go awry. In this work, I help teams increase their skills at responding to change, adversity and surprise.

My approach is influenced by the lessons of improvisational theatre, where actors create scenes with only limited structure and no script.

Intuitive learning

The skills are learnt by playing a series of deceptively simple exercises which are then related to the practical problems people encounter in their work. There is relatively little formal instruction as participants learn by doing.

People learn what works intuitively. It's a much more stimulating process than chalk and talk (or death by powerpoint). I find improvisation allows serious issues to be tackled with a lightness of touch. This can disarm people's natural resistance to conventional training or facilitation.

Principles

The core principles emphasised are:

Yes, And Finding ways to build upon the events that come our way and to include different perspectives. This is not a simple injunction to agree, but rather to acknowledge what happens and incorporate its lessons in our response.

Co-creativity Realising how great ideas can emerge from the engagement between people, and how diversity and difference can greatly strengthen a team's ability to develop effectively

Risk taking A constructive approach to taking risks and responding to perceived mistakes.

Relaxed, even playful, openness to new ideas. Maintaining a sense of spontaneity, and diverging out from the obvious into the far reaches of imagination.

Attentiveness Improv work is a great training in the importance of active listening and remaining engaged with one's colleagues.

For more about Improv: A professor discovers that improvisation could be just the skill today's managers need for continued success.

Better than brainstorming

Improvisation is more effective as a team activity than conventional brainstorming. Brainstorming often accentuates divisions between people who are seen as creative and those who are not. Improv, on the other hand, gives people experience of shared creativity which is more satisfying. It also nurtures the skills people can use to collaborate more constructively.

Brainstorming is generally seen as a specialised activity taking place outside daily life - whereas improv principles can be integrated into our ordinary working routines.

To use the familiar analogy, brainstorming focuses on the fish, where improv focuses on the fishing: it helps us to create a collaborative spirit where each person feels engaged and involved.