Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
A Financial Times Top Business Book 2020 Improv performers look like creative geniuses, coming up with brilliant comedy on the spur of the moment. But they rely on some simple rules and techniques - ones which anyone can learn, and which can help us offstage to think creatively, collaborate with others and communicate with impact. Improvise! will show you how to handle whatever comes your way at work - from giving confident presentations and handling difficult conversations to coming up with great ideas and persuading others to make them happen. Comedian and improvisation for business coach Max Dickins combines examples from the world of work with exercises from the stage to teach you how to achieve extraordinary results with what you've already got.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 427
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
‘How to Win Friends and Influence People for the 21st century! A must read (and a re-read) for any organisation or individual seeking to find new, interesting and practical ways to succeed, in life and business alike.’
Emily Drew, EMEA director of sales enablement, Box
‘A Malcolm Gladwell-style page-turning guide to success. I could not put it down. I found myself laughing, then grabbing a pen to jot down tips I could use in the office.’
Belton Flournoy, director, Protiviti
‘This book had me from page one! I learned shed loads whilst laughing out loud. Anyone who wants to be a better version of themself should read it, anyone who wants to be a confident communicator should read it, anyone who feels sick at the thought of doing improv definitely needs to read it.’
Sherilyn Shackell, founder and CEO, The Marketing Academy
‘This book, and the practical steps in it, make “becoming more creative” a reality.’
Ian Priest, founder, VCCP; former president, IPA; founder and CEO, Grace Blue
‘I didn’t realise how fundamental improvisation is to everyday life until I read Max’s book. Max makes the concepts relatable by “speaking your language” and bringing ideas to life with his stories, humour and wit. You can feel his personality oozing as you giggle your way through the pages. I came away with a feeling of freedom – a freedom to be myself, a freedom from needing to control everything, and a freedom to not take things quite so seriously.’
Alice Ter-Haar, former Deliveroo EU marketing lead
‘In a time where emotional intelligence and “soft skills” are increasingly valued alongside technical knowledge, Improvise! should be essential reading for anyone heading out into the professional world.’
Ben Tyson, CEO and founder, Born Social
‘Unlock those barriers you didn’t realise were holding you back in your work life with practical and engaging know-how from the world of improv. You owe it to yourself and others to rediscover the curiosity and play already inside you. Yes and …!’
Kate Diver, head of people operations, Transferwise
‘Improvise! is a book that will help you see a new ways of doing things. It makes total sense and is packed full of tricks to help you work confidently with your teams. It’s a lovely balance of great examples, some really good case studies and is written in a way that won’t make you want to weep. Who knew we should all be using improv in business?’
Tash Walker, founder, The Mix London
‘A refreshing read. I can’t wait to put the lessons into practice.’
Jack Westerman, digital strategy manager, Accenture
‘The perfect antidote for the volatility of an unpredictable year. Through a series of well-crafted anecdotes, social observations and genuine laugh-out-loud moments, Max is able to transport the reader into a world of new and better possibilities through the art of improv.’
Seun Shobande, consumer marketing lead, Facebook
This book is dedicated to Naomi Petersen, the best improviser I know.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
‘Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’
—Mike Tyson
My editor signed off the first edition of this book for publication in January 2020. It was due to be published on May 7th that year. Ah, January 2020! Remember then? A time when, for most of us, the idea of a global outbreak of a deadly virus was just that, an idea. Something we’d see in a Bruce Willis movie. It would never actually happen, right? And then, it did. Publication of this book was pushed back till late August. The global economy imploded. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Millions of us totally changed how we lived and worked overnight. In fact, most commentators say that the COVID-19 outbreak sped up technological transformation by a factor of roughly five years.
Yet. The COVID pandemic is just one of many upending crises humanity has faced over recent years, although they seem to be coming thicker and faster. The Dot Com crash. 9/11. The Credit Crunch. And so on. Change, seen over this timeline, is the norm. We are losing our scripts. They are burning in our hands. The roles we are used to playing are being lost. Our lines are no longer relevant. So what do we do when we have no script? We improvise. Given the state of things, I would argue that the ability to improvise is perhaps the crucial skill in the modern world.
I have re-written this book to incorporate the consequences of the COVID pandemic and our new ways of working. You’ll also xiifind an in-depth guide to virtual communication in the appendix. The world of improv comedy offers not just a useful metaphor for these times, but also a practical methodology we can apply offstage to move through it with creativity and optimism. And I think that’s what we need at the moment. Hope. Confidence. A sense of humour. You will find all of these things in these pages.
However, this book is relevant far beyond the coronavirus. The thing I am most proud of in my life is not this book or others I have written. It is not the business I have built. It is my relationship with my (now) fiancé. This has been an act of improvisation. I have had to be flexible in how I live and love. To bend around her values, her idiosyncrasies, her vision of the good life. I have had to listen more profoundly, both to her and my own inner world. To become aware of my own patterns, my own buttons, so that I discover new choices in how I relate to her and myself. I don’t think I could have built such a strong relationship without improvisation. That was one positive I took from the COVID outbreak: I proposed!
If you get half as much out of improvisation as I have, it will be transformational. Good luck.
Max
INTRODUCTION
‘All the world’s a stage.’
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
I am flustered already and I haven’t even started my first improvisation class. Rushing down Brick Lane in East London, glued to Google Maps on my phone, furtively looking up at street names: I’m running late. One minute behind schedule becomes five, becomes ten. I have no good reason for being late. My tardiness is almost certainly a subconscious act of self-sabotage. Being late gives me plausible deniability. I’m not a chicken for quitting, I think. It’s common sense. After all, I’ve missed the first ten minutes of the workshop. But I don’t give up. Not yet.
My heart racing and my back sweaty, I finally find the turn-off. I can see the entrance, 100 yards down the street on the right. The urge to quit suddenly grows more urgent. I suppose those of an artistic bent would describe the venue as bohemian. Less forgiving folks might opt for shanty town. Officially, it’s a converted fabric factory. The little voice in my head becomes louder still: This is obviously a ramshackle operation. Come on, cut your losses and let’s go home. But still I don’t throw in the towel. I check my watch: fifteen minutes late. It’s rude to go in now, I conclude, and finally I turn to leave. That’s when I’m spotted.
‘Are you here for the improv class?’
Shit.2
‘It’s quite hard to find, isn’t it?’ The man who has just emerged from the factory entrance is dauntingly cheerful. ‘It’s a bit hidden away. Don’t worry. We haven’t started yet; everyone’s running a bit late. We’re all upstairs.’
I smile weakly, my heart sinking. There is no escape now. Before I know it, I’m climbing a rickety outdoor staircase up to a converted attic. Inside are fifteen people sat on chairs in a circle, like some sort of therapy group for people addicted to damp. Except everyone’s chatting jovially; laughter fills the air. One lady is even handing out home-made brownies. ‘I’ve appointed myself Snack Captain,’ she explains, with such an easy joy that it makes me feel worse about myself.
I am not as nice as these people, I think, and I never will be.
I put my bag down and search through it, pointlessly – anything to avoid making small talk with the person sat next to me. Soon enough the class leader announces the beginning of the workshop. The chairs are pushed to the back of the room and we all gather in the middle again. It’s a real mix of people: a hotchpotch of actors, accountants, management consultants, housewives, students and more. The actors have all taken their shoes off. ‘This is a really lovely space,’ says one of them, quixotically. (I will eventually learn that ‘space’ is what actors call a room.)
Our cheerful teacher asks us to suspend judgement of everything in the workshop: to suspend judgement of the exercises we’ll do, of each other and most importantly of ourselves. What a wanker, I think, before realising that maybe I’m the wanker.
‘OK, we’re going to start with going around the circle and sharing our name,’ he says. Simple enough, I think, already practising saying my name in my head, as if it’s the solution to a particularly difficult equation rather than a word I’ve said a million times before. ‘But the twist is,’ he says, ‘you’re going to add a word 3before your name, but it must begin with the same letter. And you’ll combine it with an action. So, for example, Chris, you might be Clapping Chris.’
At this point I genuinely think of feigning a heart attack. But before I have the chance to throw myself moaning onto the floor, we begin to go round the circle, everyone coming up with their alliterative names, and then all of us repeating them back, all while doing the matching action. We have Jumping Jenny, Karate Kate and Digging Daniel. When it’s finally my turn I panic and designate myself ‘Manky Max’, choosing an action which is sort of a spasm-cum-fit of no discernible form. It feels offensive but in a way that no one can really put their finger on. But everyone joins me in my mistake, leaping into their own version, as if I’ve just choreographed the most wonderful dance in the world. Seconds later we’re on to Raging Raj.
‘OK, everyone, so this next exercise is called Bunny Bunny.’ The teacher, ‘Stirring Steve’, is grinning like a loon. It’s hard to know if he’s grinning because he’s having a great time or because he knows how stupid we’re all going to look in a few seconds. We begin the game and immediately I want the ground to swallow me up. The person to my right, Graham, an enthusiastic divorcee in a Hawaiian shirt, is facing me, making bunny ears with his fingers. ‘Bunny Bunny!’ he says, gleefully, miming the actions with every word. ‘Bunny Bunny!’
I promise myself that this first improv class will also be my last. I smile unconvincingly at the delirious Graham, before turning to face another member of the group. ‘Bunny Bunny,’ I say, no louder than a whisper. ‘Bunny Bunny …’
The blizzard of eccentric exercises continues. At various points over the following hour I am pretending to be a dog, a shopping channel presenter and a sentient fridge, until finally and mercifully 4we take a break. The Snack Captain goes back on patrol. I mutter that I’m going to the toilet, but really I am about to sneak out of the building and never come back. But as I pick up my bag, Stirring Steve corners me, as if he has a sixth sense for people who are thinking of doing a runner.
‘Manky Max really made me laugh!’ he says.
I bashfully look at the floor. ‘I’m not great at thinking on my feet, so …’
Steve asks me what has brought me to this workshop. ‘Oh, you know, just fancied doing something a bit different.’
I cringe when I hear myself say this because this is a lie – a lie I don’t have to tell but which I tell anyway, presumably because I am too embarrassed to tell the truth. On the face of it, I am a confident and adventurous person. I make my living from doing stand-up comedy. For most people, this is the epitome of swagger and spontaneity. But appearances can be deceiving. Because anyone who has done stand-up will tell you that ‘confidence’ and ‘spontaneity’ are con tricks. You can learn to look confident without feeling it at all. It’s a simple matter of presentational technique. Similarly, spontaneity is a stubborn myth of the art form. The truth is, almost every syllable of a stand-up’s act is pre-planned, pre-written and pre-rehearsed. Even the so-called ‘mistakes’ are repeated on cue, every night of the week.
They say that people start doing comedy because it allows them to control why people laugh at them – control being the operative word. As a stand-up you are the most powerful person in the room. You are the only one with a microphone. You are the only person lit up, the only one with a script. While it might look dangerous and terrifying to the layperson, if you are competent, being onstage is the safest place in the world. I had started standup because, on some level, I felt insecure. The laughs I got were 5affirmation of my self-worth. Onstage I was King. But I wanted to feel confident for more than twenty minutes a day. I felt that improv might help me feel it offstage too.
But I don’t tell Stirring Steve any of this. Instead I say something glib, something to deflect, something to stop the conversation in its tracks. I don’t leave the workshop.
Steve’s small act of kindness means that I come to the next session, and then the next, and then the next. After I complete my eight-week beginners course, I sign up for another. And then another. Eventually, I form my own improvised comedy group, The Committee.1 Over the subsequent years we perform hundreds and hundreds of shows. It still feels surreal to say it, but I am now a professional improviser. And Stirring Steve is my business partner!
* * *
WHAT IS IMPROVISATION?
I’m lucky enough to travel the globe sharing improvisation concepts and skills with amazing clients like Google, Facebook and Unilever. Demand grows every year as the world wakes up to the power of improvisation to make us more effective communicators, more flexible collaborators and more creative thinkers, whether we are working online or off. In fact, improvisation is now part of the curriculum of all the major business schools worldwide. So, whether you’re a product manager in a global technology firm, run your own small business, are starting out in your career, or are developing a side hustle, improvisation can help you to tackle the challenges you face every day at work – and in life. Think of this book as both a beginner’s tour around the key concepts and a practical user’s guide. You’ll discover that improvisation offers brilliant new perspectives in tackling some of life’s oldest challenges: 6
How do we overcome our fear of failure?How do we build meaningful relationships with other people?How do we speak confidently in front of an audience?How do we effectively overcome conflict?How do we come up with new ideas?How do we lead people with authenticity and charisma?Improvisation can help you deal with the new and the unexpected too. Improvisers know how to hit curveballs out of the park. Later we’ll explore the techniques they use to do it, so that you can use them too. Imagine the power of facing the world with the belief that you can handle anything it throws at you. This is the seductive potential of improvisation. It’s a confidence I’ve enjoyed using onstage countless times – and the stage is where most people’s associations with improv lie. When you think of the word ‘improvisation’ you probably think of comedians like Tina Fey, Steve Carell or Paul Merton. You probably think of TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? or movies like Spinal Tap or maybe even jazz.
But improvisation isn’t just for comics, actors and musicians. Improvisation is for everyone. In fact, we all improvise every single day. We just don’t realise it. After all, life isn’t scripted. When we have a conversation, we improvise. When we miss the last train home, we improvise. What is parenting but one long improvisation? And don’t get me started on global pandemics! 7Improvisation is the art of acting without a plan. Or, more commonly, the art of acting when your plan turns out to be incomplete or even completely useless. This is an essential human capacity because few plans survive contact with reality. What you do when that happens will determine whether you succeed or not.
Improv teaches you that, although you can’t follow a plan for every scenario, you can be equipped for every scenario. While we have no control over whether life gives us lemons or not, we can develop a mindset that allows us to turn them into lemonade as and when required. Improvisation training, therefore, is preparing to be unprepared. Of course, some things in life are planned in detail. But even within well-defined plans we often improvise too. A great example of this is when we follow recipes.
If you’re the sort of person who is able to follow a recipe to the letter then I salute you. I am genuinely in awe of both your discipline and your precision. I comfort myself with the knowledge that you are a rare breed. Most of us are much more laissez-faire in the kitchen. When cooking a dish, we look down at the endless list of herbs, spices and condiments, and we panic. What the hell is harissa?! we think. The guests are coming in 40 minutes!
So, what do you do? You think of substitutions. You look in the cupboard, venture to the spice rack, pick up the curry powder and think, I’ll lob some of that in. Onwards and upwards with the dish. It’s not the same colour as the photo in the book. You did things in slightly the wrong order. You didn’t chop the sweet potatoes thinly enough, so now they’re taking ages to cook through. Plus, half-way into proceedings you had to go wipe your four year old’s bum. And now the sauce has caught on the bottom of the pan. So you stir in some cream, load it with salt and pepper – anything to make it taste less burnt. The point is, while the plan was useful to an extent, the unpredictable demands of the present moment 8required you to adapt as you moved in order to reach your goal. This is improvisation.
Of course, when you’ve cooked for a while, you don’t need recipes anymore. An experienced and confident cook can get home in the evening, open the fridge and combine whatever resources they have at their disposal to create something delicious. Rather than moaning about what they don’t have, or fantasising about what they could have, they improvise a solution that is a celebration of what is actually available to them at the time. This is fundamentally the great joy of improvisation. It doesn’t require you to have more time, more money or more resources, of any kind. Improvisation helps you get better results with the same ingredients. All by using small shifts of mindset and behaviour.
WHAT IMPROV IS NOT
The idea that improvisation is comedy, theatre or music is just one of many popular misconceptions. Improvisation is also not about being good at ‘bullshit’. Nor is it merely ‘making it up as you go along’ or ‘flying by the seat of your pants’. Yes, good improvisers are often best-in-class bullshitters. But the point of learning the art of improv is not so you can fake expertise when you haven’t got it. Nor is it about making up for a lazy lack of preparation. Instead, we improvise at the point where our preparation and expertise become irrelevant. When do they become irrelevant? It depends on the nature of problem we are facing.
As we will explore in more depth later in the book, there are three sorts of problems we commonly face in the world: simple, complicated and complex. An example of a simple problem is frying an egg. There is a proven best practice method of frying an egg. It makes no sense to improvise here; we just need 9to follow what works. An example of a complicated problem is fixing a car engine. Again, experts in the field have a proven best practice approach for fixing cars. No improvisation required here either, just expert knowledge. But a complex problem does require improvisation.
A complex problem is one we have never faced before, or certainly not in its current guise. We can’t just learn all the rules or study how someone else has solved it before, because no one has. An example of a complex problem is pivoting to an online offering, starting a disruptive new business or designing a marketing campaign for a new product category. There is no recipe for success here, at least not a precise one. Knowledge, therefore, is only partially relevant. Instead, we have to create the recipe ourselves by trying stuff and responding to feedback as we move. In other words, we have to improvise.
But improvising is not the opposite of knowledge or expertise. When an improviser is onstage, they use everything they already know, everything currently available to them in the environment and everything provided by their colleagues to create value. Improvisation is not about the creation of something out of nothing. Improvisation is about the creation of something out of everything. Rather than falling back on a plan, or on their knowledge, improvisers use everything at their disposal in the present moment to define and respond to the unique challenge in front of them.
Improvisation is also not the opposite of planning. As improviser and author Bob Kulhan puts it: ‘Improvisation thrives where planning meets execution, and the art of improvisation is really about making fast decisions and adapting when faced with unanticipated situations.’2 As the old adage goes, plans are useless, but planning is essential. Even improvisers prepare for shows. The cast of Whose Line, for example, will practise the games they will 10be playing onstage on the evening of the performance. But what they say in those games on the night will entirely depend on audience suggestions and on the responses of their fellow performers. Improvisers are not against plans, but the reality of the present moment trumps all.
Improvisation is not merely an emergency measure either – although it certainly can be useful to dig yourself out of a hole. (For example, you’ve forgotten your daughter’s school play and now you’ve got to make a Shrek costume by 7am the next morning – using only black bin liners, some green spray paint and some old ping pong balls.) In this book we will focus on a much more positive conception of it that focuses on noticing resources you may have previously overlooked and using them to pursue your most meaningful goals.
Finally, improv is not just for wacky, archetypally ‘creative’ people. It also has a lot to offer those of a more analytical bent, those people who work in jobs that are tightly regulated or perhaps overtly technical. Clearly, not everything in life should be improvised. For example, nobody wants you to spontaneously make decisions around risk management. But, no matter what sort of job you have, there are hundreds of situations where improvisation is relevant to you. Everyone has to solve problems, to collaborate with others, influence colleagues, overcome conflict, or bounce back from failure. The domain of improvisation is the myriad tiny encounters we have every single day with other people and with ourselves. It is self-improvement on a granular scale, tweaking our responses to these encounters so we can extract more connection, more confidence, more creativity and – most of all – more joy from life. Introvert or extrovert, improvisation is for everyone. Because life is improvisation. 11
WHY IMPROVISATION HAS NEVER BEEN MORE RELEVANT
I like to think of improvisation as yoga for your soft skills. If yoga makes your body more flexible, then improvisation makes your thinking, your behaviours and your communication more agile. And never has agility been so essential. We live in what has been termed a VUCA world: defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The speed of modern life is incredible. Of course, there has always been change in the world. But it seems to be happening faster and faster. The reasons for this are well known and they all centre around technology. Things aren’t going to slow down, either. In fact, they’re likely to accelerate even more.
You only need to consider Moore’s Law, which says that the processing power of our computers doubles every two years. We’ve had the Digital Revolution – personal computers, the internet and so on – but now the Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us. Robotics, artificial intelligence and other new technologies are bringing their own disruptions. The statistics are inspiring or terrifying, depending on your point of view. But they all point to the same thing: the nature of the work we do is undergoing a radical transformation.
Let’s start with the most controversial aspect of the future of work: job losses. Throughout human history there have been endless bleak predictions about machines making human beings economically obsolete, including a recent report by the University of Oxford which suggested that 47 per cent of jobs in the US were at risk of automation. However, subsequent research by the World Bank and World Economic Forum predicts that, while technology is certainly going to destroy millions and millions of jobs, it 12will also create millions of jobs too. In fact, the World Economic Forum suggests that technology will have comfortably provided a net benefit in terms of job creation by 2022.3
For most white collar workers, the question is not whether or not there will be enough jobs but what the jobs will be like. Currently most jobs are mix of both simple routine tasks and more complex non-routine tasks. For example, scheduling a meeting is a routine task, whereas building a relationship with a potential new client is a non-routine task. But as our jobs are augmented by technology, more and more of these routine tasks will be automated, meaning that the non-routine, more uniquely ‘human’ tasks will become much more central to our roles.4
In many organisations this is happening already. Our jobs are less about delivering tried and tested ‘off-the-shelf ’ solutions and much more about co-creating innovative solutions with clients in the moment. As our job tasks change, so will the skills required of us at work. According to that same report by the World Bank, the top three skills of the future are: complex problem-solving, teamwork and adaptability. The World Economic Forum also rates complex problem-solving as the most important skill for future workers (a skill we will address in Chapter 6). Their research shows that the following skills will also be highly rated:
CreativityPersuasionResilienceFlexibilityEmotional intelligence13LeadershipSocial influenceService orientation.You’ll notice that all of these are so-called ‘soft skills,’ best understood as social, emotional and thinking abilities (as opposed to job-specific technical knowledge, or ‘hard skills’). The clear takeaway is that, in a world dominated by technology, to stay relevant we must learn to be more human than ever before. We will never beat the robots at their own game. We must focus instead on being better at our own. Over the next six chapters, you’ll learn how to excel at each and every one of them.
CASE STUDY: Sarah McKinless, head of product
I’ve learned more about myself through improv than any professional training course. I’ve always known that listening is important. But improv was the first time I was taught how to do it effectively. I learned that listening isn’t about waiting your turn in a conversation; nor is it about focusing solely on the words you hear. Improv taught me to pay attention to everything, which is particularly helpful when coaching my direct reports. I learned to identify key information, themes and biases in people’s communication, which helps me to navigate sales conversations to understand the stakeholders’ needs and wants. I learned to think critically about the status of the speaker and its effect on those listening, which I use when working with regional teams to influence change.
I have always held myself to high standards, which previously went hand-in-hand with a deep-rooted fear of failure. Improv has 14taught me to take risks and embrace situations when something goes wrong. I learned to manage my emotions in these moments and move forward in a positive way. This is critical to my current role heading up a department: when something fails, people look to me for calm leadership. Beyond this, improv has taught me to read a room and adapt whatever I am doing based on the audience response. I use this every day, whether I’m presenting at a conference or introducing a new idea to my team. I’ve learned to quickly reflect on the effectiveness of my language, tone and expression, then make necessary adaptations to better engage my audience. This is especially helpful when I am upward managing and trying to influence change at the highest level in my organisation. ■
MEET THE CAST
I’ve argued above that learning how to improvise is a ‘must have’ in the modern working world, but the gifts of improvisation are relevant far beyond the workplace. In fact, the origins of improvisation show its inherently social purpose. The modern incarnation of improv can be traced back to the seminal work of Viola Spolin in early 1940s Chicago. Inspired by the ideas of sociologist Neva Boyd, Spolin created a drama programme in order to help migrant women and children assimilate into Chicago culture.
This programme eschewed the traditional formal teaching style and was instead made up of a series of experiential exercises structured like games. Boyd believed that play was integral to the human experience. In structured play, a group needs to be aware of the constant adjustments that all the players make during a game. It puts the focus, therefore, on the group and not the individual. Boyd believed that: ‘The spirit of play develops social 15adaptability, ethics, mental and emotional control, and imagination.’ In short, play helps make us better people.
Improvisation is still learned through games today. I will share many of the classic exercises in this book. I encourage you to take them, use them and make them your own. Improvisation is inherently democratic. No one owns it. Certainly not me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. We’ll hear from many of these historical pioneers of improv throughout the book – people like Viola Spolin, Del Close and Keith Johnstone who helped create the simple set of principles and ‘rules’ that improvisers still use even now.
It seems strange to talk about rules in the context of improvisation. After all, improvisation is about making it all up, right? Aren’t rules the antithesis of spontaneity? Here lies the paradox of improvisation. It isn’t about untrammelled spontaneity at all. For example, let’s briefly return to the cooking analogy from earlier. Say you get home from work, open the fridge and try to improvise a pasta dish using whatever ingredients you find. This doesn’t mean that anything goes. Sure, you have a huge amount of freedom over what you make the pasta sauce from – but not total freedom. You still fall back on your knowledge or experience about which ingredients roughly go with what, not to mention the basic principles of cooking. You improvise within these broad walls, and the results are all the better for it.
Not only do rules help us achieve a degree of consistency in our performance, they also provide a necessary balance between freedom and structure. Because, while too many rules are stifling, having no limitations at all would be overwhelming. The rules set us free: they provide a structure within which we can play. Each chapter will be structured around one of these rules.
Before we look to applying them offstage, let’s see them in the context of an improvised scene. It’s a technique we’ll return to 16many times in the book because, although this isn’t a book about how to do comedic improvisation, it is useful to see these rules in the context in which they were originally conceived. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I take you to a comedy club in London.
8:31PM AT A COMEDY THEATRE IN LONDON BRIDGE
The MC finishes her duties, introducing the next act. Warm applause and whooping fills the room. An improv group goes onstage. They are about to perform an improvised comedy sketch show. The first scene will be inspired by an audience suggestion, and every scene after that will be inspired by what has come before. Nothing has been planned or pre-prepared. Up goes the trademark call: ‘To start our show, can we please have a suggestion of anything at all?’ The audience erupts. The word that’s yelled first, and that etiquette demands the group take, is ‘ball’. The troupe thank the audience for their suggestion and assemble on the ‘back line’ ready to begin the show.
What do you associate with the word ‘ball’? Onstage, every member of our improv team has their own answer, each as idiosyncratic as they are. There is no right or wrong choice. This is the nature of free association. One player thinks of a literal ball, such as a tennis ball. Another thinks of a ballgown. The third thinks of the phrase ‘having a ball’, as in to enjoy oneself. Of course, they have no idea what the others are thinking, but they proceed regardless. Two actors come onstage to begin the first scene, one slightly before the other.
Convention dictates that the first actor out gets to make the ‘initiation’ (the first line of the scene). The second actor waits to hear what this line is and then responds. This is the heart of 17improvisation: the giving and receiving of ‘offers’. An offer is simply any piece of information that is added to the scene. It might be verbal or nonverbal, a line of dialogue or simply a shrug. Offers are the currency of improv – the bricks from which any scene is built. The audience wait hushed for the scene to unfold. Neither they nor the performers have any idea what will happen next. Here are the first two lines of the scene:
A: ‘Melon baller? Melon baller? What sort of wedding gift is a melon baller?’
B: ‘It’s not important, darling, is it? What’s important is we had a wonderful day and we love each other.’
Notice the various different offers in Person A’s line. First, the subject of the scene is clearly the melon baller. Second, this melon baller is obviously a wedding gift. But there’s another offer in there too: the tone in which she says it. This person is clearly not a happy bunny! In order to respond to this line effectively and entertainingly, Person B needs to listen very closely to his scene partner. We’ll discover that this is one of the counterintuitive aspects of improv: it’s about listening more than it is about speaking. We’ll explore the art of listening in Chapter 2.
Let’s pause to consider for a moment that Player B will have walked onto the stage at the beginning of this scene with his own idea as to what the scene should be about. Yet as soon as Player A gives her idea, Player B throws his away in order to focus on making her idea work as best he can. Notice too how he not only accepts Player A’s offers (melon baller, wedding gift, irritation) but also adds some offers of his own (they have just got married and it is their gift!). Improvisers call this fundamental principle the 18philosophy of ‘yes, and’ (it’s the subject of Chapter 1). Let’s see how the scene continues.
A: ‘We had an expensive day, certainly. A hundred pounds a head, it cost. What do we get in return? A fucking melon baller.’
B: ‘Johnny and Phyllis are nice people. Perhaps they’re a little hard up at the moment?’
A: ‘The cheek of it. Do you remember what we got them for their wedding? An ice-cream maker. It cost 200 quid.’
B: ‘We might find a melon baller useful, darling.’
A: ‘I’ve got an idea how we could use it – to ball his stupid eyes out! I’m going to call him! I’m going to ring him, right now!’
B: ‘NO! Darling. Please don’t …’
A:Mimes dialling a phone.
Notice how collaboration works in this scene. Nobody controls it. Player A can’t control it because the meaning of her line is only confirmed by how it is received by Player B. Similarly, Player B can’t take control of the scene with his response either. Each offer is not left alone but embellished and (mis)interpreted by either player at every turn. Thus, they genuinely co-create the scene, while maintaining their own individual voices. No one dominates the conversation, no one steamrollers the other person with their idea, and yet in just eight lines the scene quickly builds to a moment of drama. We’ll explore in depth how you can collaborate in this way offstage in Chapter 5.
Notice too how, despite being under so much pressure, both Player A and Player B trust themselves completely. They commit 19to their ideas, banishing any self-doubt. Of course, like the rest of us, they have an inner critic, but they have learned how to control and act despite it. We’ll look at how you can do the same in Chapter 3. Finally, we can also see how, despite not knowing what the response of the other player will be, neither Player A nor Player B is fazed at any point. They are flexible in the moment, reframing the unexpected offers thrown their way as opportunities rather than roadblocks, as if they were always part of the plan, all the while working at great speed. We will explore how you can approach life with the same agility in Chapter 6.
FREEDOM IN YOUR OWN IMAGE
Earlier I told you the story of why I attended my first improv class. It was confidence I sought, and it was confidence I (thought I) got. However, as I reflected on my journey into improvisation while writing this book, I realised that improv has given me something more nuanced and valuable than confidence: it has given me freedom. Freedom from the need to look cool or be perfect. Freedom from needing to know what happens next. Freedom to learn by doing. Freedom to play and to make mistakes. Freedom to be myself. And, even more blessedly, freedom from myself.
When I improvise, I am totally absorbed in the moment. One hundred per cent of my focus is on my scene partner. Nothing else exists apart from me, them and the sound of the audience. I may have entered the theatre fatigued from a stressful day; I may have just had a blazing row with my girlfriend; I may have just read an email full of bad news. All that disappears when I step onto stage. I lose myself in the show and enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of ‘flow’.5
20My reward for entering this flow state is that I lose track of time. A show may last an hour but, once it’s over, seems to have flashed by in the blink of an eye. Yet, while I am in a scene, time seems to slow down. Choices that to an audience look like millisecond decisions feel deliberate and thought through. I experience a feeling of profound control. This may seem paradoxical, given the nature of the artform. After all, there is no script and I am at the mercy of the choices of my fellow improvisers. But it is an experience of total efficacy – a feeling of having access to unbelievable skills.
It’s not just skills but creativity too. I access ideas that were unreachable offstage. I use words that I had no idea I knew. At the best moments, it’s like I have a direct line with God. This is not to say that I’m a godlike improviser! Far from it. But that’s how it feels when I am improvising well. It’s as if information is channelled through me. It doesn’t have to be found or invented; it’s just there. My scene partner says something, and I respond with words that only register to me as they leave my lips. I am myself, only better, and it is all effortless.
This book is about how you can gain the same sort of freedom. And while you can’t achieve it without putting in some effort, unlike many models of personal and professional development this book doesn’t ask you to make a sea-change in behaviour. Instead, the principles of improvisation slot seamlessly into what you are already doing. This is about tweaks in mindset and methodology. You need no new resources to begin. In fact, I believe that thinking and acting like an improviser can help you achieve extraordinary results with what you’ve already got. The improv mindset is not ‘What’s missing here?’ Instead it’s ‘What do I have?’
You might think that, as a former stand-up comedian, I fit into the perfect cliché of the improviser: an extrovert, a show-off, a 21clown. It might be said that it’s easy for someone like me to feel free in this way. Does improv offer anything for the shy introvert? The answer is an unmitigated yes. If you visit your average improv class, you might even say it was weighted towards the introverts over the extroverts. They sign up not just because they want to have some fun, but to learn to be more confident and sure of themselves. Improv is a community that emphasises repeatedly that it is OK to be yourself, that it’s OK to make mistakes and not be perfect, that what we build will be weaker without you. If improvisation is about anything, it is about inclusivity. Improvisation really is for everyone.
But whether you are an extrovert or an introvert is beside the point. The point is not about where you start. The point is about where you want to go. If we are to get different results in life, we need to take a different approach. That much is obvious. We need to break out of our old ways of doing things, throw away our old scripts, be brave enough to act without them. But you don’t need to be an adventurous person to take this leap. You become adventurous by taking the leap. To put it another way: we are never ready for change. We become ready through the process of changing. It is in this spirit that we begin.
So, come to the edge. Look over a while. Then jump. You’ll realise that you could fly all along.
Chapter 1
‘YES, AND’
‘There are people who prefer to say “yes” and there are people who prefer to say “no”. Those who say “yes” are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say “no” are rewarded by the safety they attain.’6
—Keith Johnstone
Yes. And. Two short, simple words which, together, define an entire approach to living, working and playing. ‘Yes, and …’ is the beating heart of all improvisation. It is the elixir that allows improvisers to create something out of nothing. There is magic in these words. Except … it’s not magical at all. It’s a simple rule of thumb that anyone can use to build almost anything. In this chapter I’ll show you how ‘yes, and’ can help make you more creative at work, have better conversations at home and be more adventurous everywhere.
But what exactly is this ‘yes, and’ concept? For improvisers, it is many different things. First, it’s a practical technique: a tool we use to build scenes or ideas together as a group. Second, it’s a way of thinking that will set us on a path to every other key concept in improvisation. By the end of this chapter we’ll see that the best way to think of ‘yes, and’ is as more than either a methodology or a philosophy, but as a Tao: a way of being in the world. You’re either a ‘yes, and’ sort of person or you’re not – but ‘yes, and’ people are 24made not born. That’s what this book is all about. Ready to start? It all begins with ‘yes’.
ALWAYS THINK ‘YES, AND …’
The best way to understand how this works is through example. So, here’s how it looks onstage. Say you and I are doing a scene together. I get the first line. I crouch on my haunches, pat the stage with my hand, and say:
‘It’s been a hot summer, Jack, too hot. The damn fields are like concrete. Who’d be a farmer, eh?’
You listen carefully to this blistering piece of dialogue. Then, having basked in the warm light of my celestial talent, it’s your turn to speak. How might you respond to my line? Here are two options. Choose the one you think is better for the scene:
1: ‘Aye, Ted, it’s been the hottest summer I’ve ever known. I’m sweating in places I didn’t even know I had.’
Or:
2: ‘Farm? I think you’ve been smoking something, mate! We’re on a spaceship! And who are you calling Jack? My name is Barnabus, King of the Uber drivers.’
Which line did you go for? Line 1 is a ‘yes, and’ response, whereas in improv parlance line 2 is a ‘block’. Admittedly, ‘My name is 25Barnabus, King of the Uber drivers’ is an amazing line. It’s just not an amazing line for this scene. In fact, it’s a terrible line for this scene. Because, first, you’ve thrown me under a bus by denying the reality of my ‘offer’. (I told the audience we were on a farm, not a spaceship!) And, second, you totally ignored my idea and steamrollered it with your own. As improvisers we now have two totally different ideas of what’s going on in the scene. Without agreement we’re not building anything, we’re moving sideways. A hard job has suddenly got harder and the audience is not impressed.
This disaster is very easily avoided. In improv, instead of blocking or negating other people’s ideas, we accept and build on them. This is the meaning of ‘yes, and’. By saying line 1, you have accepted all the details contained within my initiating line (the ‘yes’): your character’s name is Jack; we’re on a farm; it’s hot. You’ve also built on them by adding some information of your own (the ‘and’), which allows us to move the scene forwards. First, you’ve endowed me with a name, adding that my character is called Ted. Second, you’ve intimated that your personal hygiene is a disgrace. This fun offer is something that I can now build on with my own ‘yes, and’ response. For example, our scene might grow like this:
ME: It’s been a hot summer, Jack, too hot. The damn fields are like concrete. Who’d be a farmer, eh?
YOU: Aye, Ted, it’s been the hottest summer I’ve ever known. I’m sweating in places I didn’t even know I had.
ME: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that actually, Jack. I think it’s about time you started wearing deodorant.
26Now, admittedly, we’re hardly at Will Ferrell levels of zinger yet. But we do have the acorn of a fun situation. By accepting each other’s offers, we’ve established a platform from which we can build the rest of the scene together. We’ve established that there are two gruff farmers, one of whom has a body odour problem, which the other thinks he needs help with. What’s more, to the audience, we look telepathic, when really all we are doing is paying close attention to each other’s offers and then responding in kind with our own. You might continue this scene as follows:
YOU: I don’t believe in male grooming. A woman likes a man who smells of himself.
And so on. You’ll have your own views about the comedic potential of this scene. But the point stands that we would never have got to this level of complexity and fun without the simple practice of agreeing with, and then building on, the established reality. We certainly would not have got there this quickly. We’d obviously need to push things on further in order to reach comedy nirvana. But this simple process of ‘yes, and’ will get us there eventually.
