My team got to lead one of our favorite workshops today—Better Communication Through Improvisation. We were working with leaders from a hospital, department heads from all over the organization.
As so often happens with this particular workshop, when we were introduced and the word “improvisation” came up, a variety of interesting faces and body language emerged. One woman completely stopped moving, as if she hoped by being perfectly still we wouldn’t see her. Another had a look on her face that said, “Uh huh. We’ll see.” A man near her crossed his arms over his chest, giving himself some protection against this wacky activity.
I asked them how they felt when I said “improvisation.” They laughed, some nervously, and we talked for a minute about what they could expect. Then they all stood, leaving the safety of the tables and PowerPoint and agenda. Within a minute they were laughing genuinely, enjoying each other.
My favorite moment today came when they were doing an exercise called “Conducted Stories.”The only rule was that each storyteller had to accept completely whatever the person before them had already created, and build on that. In quick succession, groups of three made up, with no prior planning, incredible stories about whales in Ferraris, frozen mushroom popsicle stands, and trips to the zoo to visit teapots.
As many times as I’ve done this, it is still miraculous to me to see what happens when people simply trust each other, take what comes their way, and shut down their inner editor for a few minutes. The trick, though, is bringing that mindset of openness in to our “real lives”—what would it look like today to just build on what the person before you said, without critique or adjustment?
