Let's Talk

Tag: improvisation

  • The Doctors Will See You Now….

    Last September, I launched [permalink href=”3195″] The Improv Evangelist[/permalink] initiative, offering free Applied Improv workshops to organisations anywhere in the UK, just because I believe in the incredible transformative power of Improv.

    This week a group of GPs-in-training fromt the West Midlands Deanery were the latest to go through the experience.

    Now remember, these are people who work in an environment where even a tiny error can have monumental consequences, and it becomes second nature to them to be careful, thoughtful, and risk-averse.  So I really wasn’t sure how they would respond to me spending a whole afteroon encouraging them to stop thinking, go with the flow, accept random choices, and make mistakes with joy and abandon.

    The results were nothing short of delightful.  This room of serious, studious doctors played with glee and delight, and created some fabulous and inventive moments.  But more importantly, they absolutely got the connection between the games we played, and the skills of listening, attending, accepting, responding with awareness, and sensitive teamwork that would be so useful to them in clinical practice.

    Two best quotes from the day – “As GPs we need to spend time listening more to patients, and responding and acting on their words, as opposed to using our own words” and “Lot’s of fun – did not stop smiling all afternoon.  Thank you!”

     

    Applied Improvisation

    I believe passionately in the transformative power of Applied Improvisation to build better teams and grow inspiring leaders.  Please take a look at my newly-launched website [popup url=”http://www.improvinitiative.com”]Improv Inititiave[/popup] for more information.

    Then contact me.

  • Lead Boldy, Follow Ardently

    The Diamond Dance

    A couple of weeks ago I was leading an exercise during a rehearsal with my Improv group.  In this exercise, people are placed in a diamond formation, like this, all facing in the same direction.

    They then have to move around the room as a group, with the person at the front leading. So when they are all facing towards the blue person, blue is leading, and everyone behind moves with them, in step and keeping pace. If blue swivels 90° towards red, everyone else swivels too, red is now at the front, and red leads. And so on, so that as the group move apparently as one, the leadership passes seamlessly and wordlessly between the people at the corners. It’s a simple, fun, experiential way to practice good team work, good leadership, good followership, sensitivity and flexibility. When people get really good at it, the fun next step is to put some music on, and turn it into The Diamond Dance – the person at the front leads the moves, and everyone else stays in sync. When done well it looks so good you could almost believe it’s choreographed.

    Anyway, on this occasion, the group was struggling a bit. Those leading were tending to either stride off at an odd angle without warning, leaving everyone else behind, or to move too tentatively while trying to look round anxiously and see what everyone was doing, and in the process giving unclear and unsure signals making it paradoxically harder to follow. To compound the problem, the followers themselves had a tendency to hesitate as they waited to see what was coming next. This caused them to drift from their position, disturbing the way the group was set out, and leading to much confusion, and especially muddled handovers during the transitions. In an attempt to overcome this, and to help them co-ordinate better, I heard myself call out “Lead Boldly, Follow Ardently!” And I immediately knew I had hit upon something.

     “Lead Boldy, Follow Ardently.” We were only playing a simple, silly game, yet surely, this is a phrase that can improve any team situation. The leader (note, small “l” – you don’t have to be a Leader to be in the lead) of any team effort needs to move boldly forward, giving clear and confident direction without ambiguity, hesitance or confusion. The followers (small “f” for same reason) can help enormously by showing complete and instant and support, responding flexibly to changes, and providing constant feedback. And if everyone is in the right place at the right time, the lead can be passed seamlessly from one to another as needed. When done well, it looks so good you could almost believe it’s choreographed!

  • Furnishished with Expectations

    I was thrilled and delighted earlier this year to be invited to run two Applied Improv workshops at UNESCO in Paris, as part of a series of development events for staff from the Culture Sector.  It’s great to know that more and more organisations are beginning to understand and appreciate the skills and learning that Improv can bring to the workplace.

    The workshops proved popular, people signed up, the day was set.  I carefully planned out a series of fun but structured games and exercises, to illuminate the valuable training platform Improv offers in this kind of corporate setting.  What could possibly go wrong?

    Then, on the day, I was taken into the room that had been booked…

    I gulped. “Ok”, I said, “No problem, can we just push the desks to the side?”  Absolutely no chance!  Apart from the permissions in septuplicate that would be needed, these beautiful, heavy, bespoke, each-one-a-work-of-art desks from the 50’s were actually fixed to the floor, unmovable because of all the microphones and headphone wires and simultaneous-translation paraphernalia bolted on to every one.

    I threw away my carefully structured workshop plan – time to improvise indeed!  I ended up doing quite a lot of circle-based exercises around the podium in the middle, small group work in the corners of the room, and a couple of sitting-down games with people actually perched on the desks (don’t tell the Conservators!).  I am pleased and relieved to report that the sessions were a success, and the participants reported finding them both fun and enlightening.  But it was a close call!

  • And that’s why they call it a Play…

    It’s been 11 years since I hung up my spurs as a professional theatre director, and refocused my working life as a trainer/facilitator/consultant.   Since then I have been asked many times whether I missed the theatrical life, and had any plans to stage a return. My answer has always been a steadfast and happy “Nope!”   The multitude of things I do now fully engage and challenge me, and life had no noticeable gaps.   Which is why it was such a surprise last month to suddenly find myself coming out of retirement and directing not one, but two different pieces of theatre.

    The first was a result of being commissioned by my own life-partner, the extraordinary Wanjiku Nyachae.  It’s almost impossible to categorise the work Wanjiku does – she is trained as a psychotherapist, economist, arts consultant, coaching and mentoring guru, and all-round relational leadership champion.   She had hired me to create a piece of storytelling theatre to help launch an event she had been commissioned to produce for the prestigious Ashridge Business School, as part of their week-long Director’s Potential Programme for senior Daimler executives.   The good news is that any fears I might have had about working for the first time ever with (or, even more accurately and worryingly, for) my other half were completely unfounded – in fact it was a great joy.   The even better news is that the evening was a fantastic success.   I fulfilled my brief by creating and directing a retelling of The Emperor’s New Clothes with three actors and a musician, and it was wonderfully received by the ladies and gents of Daimler from all around the world.

    I’d nearly forgotten what liberating fun the rehearsal room could be – the five of us spent our three rehearsal days laughing, playing, inventing and working joyfully together, while effortlessly managing to create a slick, tight, funny modern take on the classic fairytale, relevant to today’s business leaders.  We even set ourselves the challenge of leaving the ending open so our audience could choose how the story should unfold, and we could then improvise it for them.

    I have [permalink href=”2476″]blogged before[/permalink] on my conviction that the best training and learning takes place in a state of playfulness.   Here was a reminder that it is not only learning that thrives in this environment.   I state here without fear of contradiction that all teams, all work, all projects, all creativity and innovation, all improvement, all development, all change – in fact more or less any activity you can think of – unfolds more easily, more collaboratively, more pleasurably, and more effortlessly, in a state of open playfulness.  If you need further proof of this, I have added the inspirational book PLAY by Dr Stuart Brown, to my [permalink href=”2376″]recommended reading list[/permalink]. It’s packed with research and evidence supporting this assertion.

    Oh, yes, I said I was directing two theatre pieces.   You’ll have to wait for my next blog to find out about the second one.

  • Fun but far from Frivolous

    I’ve just got back from a 3-day conference in Amsterdam of the Applied Improvisation Network.  A gathering of about 200 people from all over the world, who use Improv not just for entertainment, but to bring about social, personal, political or organisational change.

    Now, if you’ve read my [permalink href=”34″]page on Applied Improvisation[/permalink], you will understand that training in theatre Improv promotes and nurtures a number of very pleasing characteristics in people, including openness to others’ ideas, a willingness to try anything, a sense of adventure with little concern for failure, and above all a truly playful outlook and a huge capacity for fun.  And now I’ve discovered what that means when you multiply it by 200!

    This was my first AIN conference, and I wasn’t too sure what to expect.  So imagine my delight to arrive at the opening plenary session at 10.00am on day one, straight from my overnight ferry and train, to be greeted by a keyboard player entertaining the delegates with popular Dutch tunes.  The locals were singing along gleefully and unselfconsciously in their native tongue, and all the non-Dutch-speakers were just as lustily singing along too, in whatever language or gibberish they could muster!

    This sense of play and fun pervaded the entire conference.  Between each speaker that first morning, the same musician improvised ditties of praise and thanks for their contributions.  We played bingo between presentations, and prizes were duly distributed.  A little later on we were asked to clear our chairs to the side of the hall, and the pianist decided to play a little polka to help us along – within a few bars a 10-minute impromptu barn-dance was under way.  For the next three days I laughed, danced, sang, told and heard stories, and played along with all the other Improv-trained delegates.  This was the most fun I have ever had at a conference in my entire life, bar none. 

    But be clear – this was no frivolous or silly waste of time.  We had all spent good money to get there, some travelling in from the other side of the world.  There were attendees there who work at high-to-stratospheric levels in Business, in Government, in Education, in Health and in Social Welfare.  The topics under discussion were serious and far-ranging, and included social exclusion and cohesion, business productivity and leadership, economic growth and sustainability, workplace assertiveness and bullying, organisational and social change, neuroscience, and much more beside.   

    It is vital we don’t confuse fun with frivolity – in many ways the opposite is true.   By definition, active members of the Applied Improvisation Network understand at a profound level that learning is at its best when people are having fun.  That collaborative ideas are more likely to emerge when people are being playful.  That a roomful of supportive, playful people will learn quicker, retain more, solve problems faster, teamwork better and network more productively.  And now I have seen it with my own eyes, and experienced it viscerally.

    That is why I am redoubling my commitment to ensure that every one of my training and facilitation interventions will be fun, lively and permeated with the joyous spirit of Applied Improvisation.

  • Whistling in the Light

    [permalink href=”35″]Box of Frogs[/permalink] has been meeting for 6 months now. There are around a dozen regular attenders, and about another 20 or 30 who drop in occasionally. We’ve been talking for a while now about performing in public. Because it’s one thing to amuse ourselves, it’s another to stand up in front of a real audience and see if what you do has any genuine entertainment value. So I approached a local venue who has a cabaret night once a month, and got us a 20 minute slot in early September.

    Last night we held tryouts. The difference between a normal workshop evening and last night, was the whistle. Instead of being in the role of workshop leader/facilitator who is focussed on giving encouragement, gentle feedback and positive support, I played the brutal Ringmaster who callously blew the whistle every time anyone hesitated, stumbled or was just boring.

    The result was fascinating -people loved it! Trying to survive the whistle was not the agonising experience we thought it might be – it was fun! Being whistled off was not only painless but usually quite joyful, as it was quite clear to everyone that it was a) justified, b) an act of mercy for someone who is failing out there, and c) just plain funny. Watching someone giving it their best shot, failing cheerfully and spectacularly, and, crucially, not being upset by the failure but instead embracing it geefully, is a delight to behold.

    Everyone agreed that not only was the evening great fun, but also a brilliant learning experience to get such direct, instant feedback on what works and what doesn’t. I shall definitely start to include “whistle” sessions in all my regular Impro workshops.

    As ever, there is a lesson for everday life here. How often, at work, at home, are we given such instant, direct, impartial feedback on what we do? Are there ways that such feedback be given so that instead of feeling like a criticism of the person, it is a genuine objective response to that particular moment of action or performance? And how can we create environments in which we feel so safe, where we are so comfortable with the possibility of failure, so personally unattached to the outcome, that we are gladly willing to give it our best shot, and be delighted when we are “whistled off” because of the great learning and fun it has provided?