Improv Notebook » Applied

Applied Improv Principles: Make Your Partner(s) Look Good

Richard Cox — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:53:12 +0000

In the article What is Applied Improv? I discussed seven principles of improv that apply in the work environment. Here I expand on the concept of “Making your Partner Look Good.”

Making your partner look good means listening, encouraging, and looking for ways to support what others are doing and is necessary for collaboration. It means suspending our tendency to make ourselves look good, and let go of competitive, adversarial and antagonistic behaviors that can be present in group dynamics. The good of the group is best served by everyone helping to push forward ideas.

Partner is a term that comes from acting and means your scene partner. When you apply the concept more widely in an applied improv setting it could be a co-worker, spouse, child, parent, boss, client, or the person who takes your ticket at the movies. In each case the way in which you can make them look good might be different, but the concept is the same. For here, I’ll just say partner.

What makes your partner look good? Pointing out their mistakes publicly, sarcastic remarks, or silently letting them go down in flames in a meeting are all examples you may have seen that do NOT accomplish the goal. Look for ways to help them, have compassion, be graceful, let them off the hook, empathize. Even more than that you could turn it around, improve, build, expand, transform, or celebrate what they have done or said.

In the chapter on saying Yes in Improv Wisdom * by Patricia Ryan Madson. She suggests an experiment of looking for any way to say yes and build on the ideas and desires of the people around you. This is an excellent way of making them look good. Find the goodness in everything they do and tell them! Don’t fake it – really search for the truth of the goodness. If you are open to it, you can find it.

* Madson, Patricia Ryan 2001. improv wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up

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What is Applied Improv?

Richard Cox — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:57:03 +0000

Applied Improv

Improv, or Improvisational Theater, is a pure form of collaboration, creativity, and communication as a performance art. Applied Improv is the adaptation and use of improv games, exercises and activities in any context other than performance. There is a wide range of contexts that improv is applied including healthcare, wellness, therapy, training, communication, soft skills, K-12 education, and many others. Further, Applied Improv has a practical and sometimes specific outcome other than fun or entertainment.

Higher Engagement

Applied Improv uses games and exercises as the scaffold for learning. In some cases the game itself is a metaphor for the learning, in others the the game is a framework used to actively interact with the content.
The act of play keeps the players engaged with the material for a longer period. By keeping people engaged with material and concepts for a longer period, more learning can happen and it happens in an active way that increases retention and learning.

Reflection

Applied improv is based in experiential learning and intrinsic to that process is reflection. Daudelin* (1996, 39) defines reflection saying, “Reflection is the process of stepping back from an experience to ponder, carefully and persistently, its meaning to the self through the development of inferences; learning is the creation of meaning from past or current events that serves as a guide for future behavior.”
After each game or exercise the reflection process allows for the participants to find the meaning, extract the learning, and find their own understanding of the material.

* Daudelin, M. W. 1996. Learning from experience through reflection. Organizational Dynamics 24(3): 36-48.

Fundamental Principles

Theatrical and applied improv activities teach a set of fundamental principles that serve as a great model for using these techniques in other applications. There are several fundamental principles that underlie improv and have applicability in improv, work, and life in general* (Madson, 2001).

* Madson, Patricia Ryan 2001. improv wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up

How do you define it?

Let me know what I missed. How you frame it. Agree. Disagree. Add your voice with a comment below.

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Quick Choice in the Thiagi GameLetter

Richard Cox — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:40:01 +0000

Every once in a while you come across a person – teacher, mentor, though leader – that allows for a big shift in how you approach the things you do. Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan is one such person for me.

Thiagi is the founder of The Thiagi Group and a leader in desigining training faster, cheaper, and better with an irreverent process that eliminates unnecessary steps that don’t add value. Each month he produces a GameLetter that is “SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS”.

A few months ago I wrote up a post on a training activity named Quick Choice that I generated with a group of collaborators and we sent it off to Thiagi. As you can see – we made the newsletter.

If you have not read any of Thiagi’s work or been to one of his workshops I can’t recommend it enough.

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The stories we tell ourselves

Richard Cox — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:53:25 +0000

I was late. I was late and stuck. I was late and stuck in the line at the gas pump. And worst of all, I could see the people holding up the line I could not get out of. I watched for several minutes as all three people talked, joked, and admired the side of their car. And worst of all, they just sitting there, next to the pump, and not even pumping gas.I spent two minutes creating that story bit by bit. My mind filled all the details. It was so easy, I could clearly see what was happening right in front of me.

Human beings are natural storytellers. How many of your conversations are about telling friends what happened last week, last night, or even last meeting? That’s a story!

And then one small detail forced my carefully created story to evaporate into thin air. One of the people pulled a bent coat hanger out of the side of the car. The woman who owned the car was re-united with her keys inside the car and quickly moved on and the two others went back to the gas station offices.

I was relieved to be moving forward with my day again, slightly embarrased at how angry I had been for no reason, and excited by how quickly I was able to revise the whole story and write a new one. This is what happens in an improv scene, the audience and the players are always writing the story out into the future, but only one of those stories are ultimately told.

Each detail is a new piece that may undo many of ideas we had planned ahead. Our minds are constantly writing new endings to the stories in front of us. We need to remain flexible and allow each detail to create a whole new set of possibly next steps.

Our brains are an amazing gift as storytellers – as improvisers we can use that tool to help us stay in the moment.

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Quick Choice – Make fast decisions in a group

Richard Cox — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:27:45 +0000

Quick Choice

It happens all the time. You are in a meeting at work, a club, a group – and you are faced with a decision. What kind of pizza? What’s the next topic to discuss? How should the group spend it’s time next? You need a decision and you need it now!

I was in just such a meeting with a group of corporate trainers, coaches, and improvisers and we created Quick Choice. An exercise to quickly (in 6 minutes) get a group decision done.

Here is a PDF writeup of the exercise for you to try. Give it a shot – and leave a comment below with how you think it will work or how it did work!

Quick Choice PDF

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Reading, Writing and Improvisation

Richard Cox — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 06:20:37 +0000

My mom was a school teacher. Growing up, we had a vocabulary card every night at the dinner table. Its hard to say which I resisted most – eating stuffed peppers or using the new word in a sentence. This week I had a chance to right that wrong inflicted on me.

My friend Josephine is an improviser and an elementary school teacher. We taught a workshop this week for K-6 school teachers. Improv games and activities are a perfect way to teach literacy by applying them to reading, comprehension, vocabulary, writing, even phonics.

Category Die (Bye) is a game where players in a line have to say an item in the chosen category every time a conductor points to them. The conductor alternates players and the audience yells “Die!” or “Bye!” for any mistake – hesitation, repeats, not in the category, anything they like.

Building on her work from Santa Clara University, Josephine and I collaborated on teaching improv games and adapting them to the classroom. It’s simple to take familiar games like Category Die (or Bye in the case of kids) keep students attentive and engaged while they learn.

To adapt Category Die for reading you can use categories such as characters, location, objects, and emotions in a story

Almost any improv game can be used or adapted to helping students understand and learn stories, words, and meaning in any book. Many of the kinestetic games will work with younger kids and be a fun alternative for older kids.

Story Book Tableau - read a page from a picture book, and then let a group of students create a tableau that shows what happened. After that the picture in the book is shown and you can discuss what was in the picture and what was in the text.

We started out teaching the improv game and then exploring the adaptations. After just a few games the teachers started describing the ways they would use each game in their own classes. We accomplished out primary goal for the workshop – give them some concrete tools to go back and use at the beginning of the school year, from the first day of class.

What comes next? The next workshop will build and expand the improv toolbox they can use with their students. The possibilities are endless, because each game provides a frame that you can use with many different kinds of content.

As an adult, I can appreciate the benefits my mom being a teacher. Now, it’s my turn to teach as an improv coach and mom has already taken her first improv class. ( I still don’t like stuffed peppers though. )

Q: What improv game could you adapt to teach someone at work, at home, or at school?

A: Leave a comment below with the answer – I’d love to know.

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