Improving science communications with improv

In another life I was a science communicator, working with scientists to help them tell the story of their work. This was at a time when story and science was rarely in the same sentence, when enthusiasm for the work was tempered by the protocols of research, and when everything was told in the third person. I guess not much has changed.

And if I had known about improv (improvisational theatre) back then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had the courage, enthusiasm and conviction to use improv in my work and in training. Not so today.

This video shows Alan Alda taking a communications class with scientists and using improv theatre games to help them connect with their whole bodies, with their story and to allow their natural enthusiasm for their work to emerge. The before and after clips are very telling. I particularly liked this comment: “It’s much easier when you make it up, then when you write it up the night before.” Of course, she wasn’t referring to making up the story, rather to improvising the story and sharing her message. I think it’s important for all of us to share our messages, rather than just information. Messages affect us emotionally, and can be supported by data and information. But you are unlikey to change my mind or get buy-in to your idea just by bombarding me with more information.

This class using improv games and principles enables these scientists to show their enthusiasm and passion for their work, and hence communicate more effectively. Who wouldn’t want that?

Hat tip: Geoff Brown

The most common facilitation question

When offering facilitation training, one of the most common questions from facilitators is about how to deal with difficult people and tough crowds. This seems to be the single most common fear amongst facilitators, wondering how they will react to individual and group challenges, disruption, annoyance, cynicism or disruption.

So this is why I’m really excited about this one-day workshop I’m offering with mates Simo Routarinne (status and improv guru) and Johnnie Moore (all round great bloke) as a pre-conference workshop for this year’s European International Association of Facilitators (IAF) Conference in Helsinki, Finland. It’s on October 14 and is called On Your Knees – Status and Facilitation.

Here’s a little taster: Status, or power, games are inherent in meetings – whether acknowledged or not. Sometimes status can get in the way, creating tension between individuals and limiting the potential for authentic communication and engagement.

Understanding the dynamics of status is a brilliant tool for facilitators. Not only does it provide a lens in which to view the sometime baffling behaviour of participants, it is also a way of using your own status, that is raising or lowering it, to influence the group. Status is the tool we already use to create distance or close-ness between people.

On Your Knees will be seriously playful. We’ll look at the subtle – and not so subtle – ways in which we embody and play out status games in facilitation. We’ll explore multiple small and diverse interventions drawn from improvisational theatre.

Why is it called On Your Knees? You’ll have to come along to find out!

Registration details here. Early bird is until 20 September.

If you can’t make it, I’ll be writing about it here and we’ll be offering it wherever there might be demand.

Information about the Europe IAF Conference is here.

And here’s a podcast I did with Simo about status.

Improvising writing

I’ve never been afraid of writing. It’s my preferred form of expression. And, mostly, I enjoy it. I do think I’m afraid of committed writing though. You know, the sort of writing that ends up being something: a book, a play, a script, a thesis.

So I’m always interested in ways to trick myself into more committed writing.

I really liked Denzil Meyers’ Adventures in Micro-Fiction, an improvisational writing technique based on an improvisational form called the Harold.

And now Stella Duffy explains how she used Open Space to complete the 4th draft of a novel. She was stuck, and Lee Simpson of Improbable suggested, “it might not be so much a case of not knowing what to do, as not wanting to do it in the usual way.”

Stella explains:

“And that if I did actually know what to do, all I needed to do was come up with that agenda and then allow myself permission to work on it in OS – as and when I was drawn to/moved to, rather than ploughing through a list and grinding to a halt because it was so boring/difficult.

So, the next day, I took some time, called about two dozen sessions – for myself, alone – made up my timetable and each day for the next few weeks I worked on what I was drawn to work on, for as long as I wanted to stay there. The final edit was a pleasure, the book my most successful at the time.

It sounds incredibly obvious as I write it now, but at the time it felt like a huge liberation, trying a new process, one I had worked successfully for other forms, and giving it a go with my ‘real’ work.

And a joy, of course, finding that OS had solo application!”

And Harrison Owen wades in with some thoughts of his own on writing in Open Space.

Having written a few books myself, in retrospect, I guess I did them all in Open Space. The one thing that became absolutely clear was that if I did not have the passion, nothing would work. Grinding it out was no help and best just to put the project on the shelf until it called me. However, once called, there was no stopping until it was over. I never knew at the beginning where the book was going, never had an outline — and truth to tell always felt that the book wrote me.  Sounds pretty much like the 4 Principles and the Law of Two Feet.

So my take aways from this little exploration: follow your passion, don’t plan and wait for the book (or play or whatever) to write me. Now that’s something I can commit to!

Trying too hard

Sometimes I find myself trying too hard. Trying too hard to impress, or to keep the peace, or to come up with a brilliant idea. And this despite that I know that I can’t do all or any of those things even some, let alone all, of the time – and certainly not on demand. It’s when I catch myself trying too hard that I try to become more playful. And that’s where it gets tricky, because it’s hard (ironic eh?) to be very playful on your own. Much easier to get sucked in to the prevailing mood. It’s remarkably easy to forget playfulness in the midst of all the serious stuff of life (read tedium) – paying bills, catching trains or planes, standing in queues, or (God forbid!) attending meetings.

Why be more playful? I think it opens opportunity. I think it’s fun and when I’m having fun I’m more likely to try something new or adventurous and who knows where it might lead? I also think it helps others to relax too. I was chatting with a friend the other day who played an improv game with a group of his colleagues. He said he learnt more about them in that few minutes than in years of regular meetings. He saw who jumped straight in, who opted out. He saw a different side to his colleagues. I wondered if it was a ‘different’ side, or whether he was seeing the ‘real’ person, rather than the work persona?

A few weeks ago I ran a workshop with a group of people using improv games for much of the time. Later, the feedback I received was that people felt “challenged, inspired, confused, excited and energised”. All from being playful! I’m reminded of the 80s when the management mantra was to leave your personal life at home and not bring your personal self and problems to the work place. Always seemed bizarre to me as to how I was supposed to split myself into the ‘work Viv and the ‘home’ Viv. Seems some people have taken this to heart though and still see work as ‘serious’ and play as well, something else that’s not really appropriate in the world of work. Thankfully this is changing, and there are lots of commentators who talk about the benefits of play and of having fun, yes, even at work!: Keith Sawyer, Alex Kjerulf. And it’s not a new theme for me either. I’ve written about it before here and here.

So, how to be more playful? As well as the usual paraphenalia I carry with me, I’m going to try and find ways of actually being playful more often. Maybe I should dig those juggling balls out of the cupboard and have them in my bag? Which brings me to the question of whether I need things to be playful? Or other people to play with? Or whether playfulness is a state of mind? I guess it’s all of the above.

My challenge is to be true to my own convictions: I know that play, and laughter, releases endorphins. I know that play triggers different parts of the brain. I know that the way we act when playing games is a window to how we act in other situations. I know that I’m more open when playing games. I know I have more ideas, and even if I don’t, I have more fun anyway. And I also know that I stress over what people will think of me when I suggest a game in lieu of a more serious, more conventional, approach.

It’s certainly easier, and maybe even safer, to be conventional, to be unexceptional. Challenging the status quo has always been an uncomfortable place to be. I have enough experience of facilitation now that I know how to be predictable, and I know how to use a whole range of processes to deliver perceived outcomes for the client. I know how to use management speak, how to play the corporate game. Problem is, I don’t want to. I prefer to challenge, to disrupt and to take people to their learning edge where something might actually shift as a result of what we do together. It’s unpredictable. It’s sometimes scary (yep, for me too!). It’s one of the reasons I have this blog – to capture these thoughts, to share them, and to find playmates (wanna play?).

For me, and my clients, some of whom do some of the most serious work imaginable, playfulness is a way to seriously explore what they do and how they do it – to innovate even. Guess that’s why my business is called Beyond the Edge.

This, I think, is the work I’ve been waiting to do.

HT to my playmates. You know who you are.

Finding love through improv

William Hall, founder of BATS Improv in San Francisco, wrote about finding love through improv. He says: Improv is one of the most playful things we can do as adults.  It combines fantasy, role-playing, social interaction and the excitement of performance.  It’s an emotionally charged activity.

Is it any wonder then that people fall in love playing improv?

Which got me thinking about the principles of improv and how they are, yet again, pretty cool principles for life with the people we love – whether we fell in love with them through improv or otherwise. Here’s some that come to my mind. What others would you add?

Make your partner look good

Make, and accept, offers…say ‘yes’

Be present – pay attention

Be average

Play more games

Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person – mind, body, intelligence and creativity. Viola Spolin

Thanks to my improv buddies, Rich Cox and William Hall, over at Improv Notebook, for reminding me of this quote. And thanks to Johnnie Moore for playing.

We learn by playing. We all know how to do it because we have all done it as children. Somewhere play becomes ‘not real work’. Real work somehow happens in our heads, using our ‘intelligence’. When did play get such a bad rap, I wonder?

Over the last three weeks, Johnnie and I have played together in vastly different locations with people from different countries, with different expectations, needs and experience. All know how to play. A seemingly simple, meaningless game exposes each of us to our patterns of behaviour, to the voices in our own head that tells us what we should and shouldn’t be doing, making up rules that don’t exist and creating anxiety about performance, failure and the need to know.

A game has the potential to tap into emotions that we hide, from feelings we bury, and to spark ideas that might surprise us. As long as we give ourselves permission to play, and to notice the effects.

And here’s an interesting thing about games. Games don’t need to be hectic or raucous. They can be calm, and calming, and still have the potential to inspire, delight, scare and surprise.

Gibberish. Brilliant!

In November last year, after the Applied Improv Conference,  I wrote a note on my blog that said this: “There are so many applications for gibberish in facilitation that I don’t know where to start. Don’t know why I haven’t used gibberish much before – that’s about to change!”

Last week I finally got around to using gibberish in a workshop with people from all different countries – many of them with English as a second language. I was co-facilitating with Johnnie Moore and we were egging each other on to take risks (one of the joys of co-facilitating I discovered, much better than the critical voice in my own head!)

I was only marginally more experienced with gibberish than the participants, and they got it straight away. Maybe they liked how levelling it was, or how delightful it is to ask a partner to do something in gibberish and for them to understand, or how gibberish translator creates the sort of laughter that comes from deep inside, and feels oh, so good. Makes me smile just writing about it and remembering the playfulness and joy on the faces of the participants. How often do we see that in workshops?

Wondering what to do next I said, “there’s an app for that.” I wasn’t kidding. On my iPhone is the app iProv, 250+ improv games – shake the phone and it randomly chooses one. We looked up gibberish in the index and found Gibberish Reunion. Here’s what it said:

A group of improvisers enter a playing area speaking gibberish. They are at a reunion, not having seen each other for quite some time. After a few minutes of catching up in their native language, they gather in a circle and begin to sing gibberish songs they all know.

Neither of us had done this before, but what the heck – it was worth trying. There were four small groups. We introduced the reunion game and they jumped right in. Before long there were songs and dancing and eventually they ‘noticed’ the other groups and before long there was one huge reunion and everyone singing – all in gibberish. Brilliant!

Oh, and the purpose of the workshop, and why gibberish? Why games?  There are lots of ways for me to explore my own reactions, strengths, challenges, what inspires me, what stops me dead in my tracks, and how I react under stress. But none of them are as good, or as much fun, as playing improv games. I see patterns of behaviour, in myself and others. I become aware of blocking, in myself and in others. I learn about myself and others.

And thanks to my playback buddies at Melbourne Playback Theatre Company for reminding me that we act our way into a new way of thinking rather than think our way into a new way of acting. Improv games provide the ideal vehicle to act differently, to be playful, to discover stuff about how we interact with each other and our work.

So when the brief asks for building resilience and confidence amongst the participants to operate effectively in chaos, what better vehicle than improv? Can we measure what they learned? No. Maybe even the participants are unsure what they learned. Learning and insight emerge, and can’t be regulated by the clock. Some people went away with huge insights about how they might respond differently, better even, in the stressful work they do. Others had huge ah-ha moments about themselves. For others, who knows? At least we know they had fun, and will remember the games. Maybe they’ll even remember them when next faced with responding to an emergency that requires all of their skill, attention, compassion and focus.

Disruptive facilitation #5 – It’s just a silly game

For the past few days I’ve been facilitating a workshop with my friend Johnnie Moore. Apart from the obvious joys of co-facilitating, we’ve been drawing on our shared passion for improv and using a range of improv games with our participants. And let me be really clear – this is not an improv game here or there to illustrate a point, or explore some abstract concept (and yes, improv games are good for that too). This has been wall-to-wall improv games. We’d decide on an opening game (or offer) and then see where that took us. From that there would emerge another game. Sometimes we’d be stuck. Sometimes the game wouldn’t work so well. Sometimes we’d be surprised. The simplest game (group counting, for example) would surface the richest insights.

At one point today, we had demonstrated a game with a small group in front of the rest. It was Three-Headed Expert. It was okay, a bit flat and we both noticed. We broke the larger group into smaller groups and asked them to play the game. They got it. They understood the concept of ‘being average’, they laughed and they debriefed without us having to do anything. All the while this was happening we were wringing our hands, wondering what to do to ‘rescue’ the situation. We didn’t have to. All we had to do was notice what was happening and trust that a bunch of intelligent human beings could play a silly game and make sense of it without any prompting from us.

Well, from me. This is my learning edge – to stop interpreting for others.

This demonstrated again that we really do “act our way into a new way of thinking, rather than thinking our way into a new way of acting.” I’m often anxious when facilitating that people will ‘get it’ – that it’s some failure on my part if they don’t. Johnnie reminded me of Viola Spolin’s response: “If they don’t get it, just play another game.”

Yay to that.

Perfectionism

Dan Pink has a post on perfectionism, that adds another dimension to thoughts I’ve been riffing with Johnnie Moore and David Robinson around what we’re calling The Tyranny of Excellence.

One of the principles of improv is to ‘be average’ – to give yourself permission to stop worrying what others think, do what you do, and allow yourself to shine. David describes it as ‘putting down your clever and picking up your ordinary’. I wrote about it here. This nearly always gets a strong reaction – either ranging from “Yes! At last.” to “Oh, no, that can’t be right.”

Here’s some recent research that Dan cites:

According to research reported in this Miller-McCune article, perfectionism comes in two varieties: adaptive and maladaptive. And one of the key determinants of the type of perfectionism someone displays is whether the quest for perfection is “motivated from an inner urge or an outside push.”

…if you’re pursuing perfection because of pressure from others — parents, bosses, peers — that’s likely to take you down the path of dissatisfaction and reduced well-being.

The Tyranny of Excellence  sets us up to fail. It oppresses us by demanding we be creative, strive for excellence, make the right decision – even the best decision – to not be ordinary. It can be both internally driven, by that small voice telling us we’re an impostor or not ‘good’ enough, or externally driven by feedback and judgement. Is it any wonder that it’s easier then to just do nothing, to give up trying to meet such unreachable standards? And here’s the rub. What is ordinary to me, what I do really well because it is ordinary (to me) may very well seem extraordinary to you (because it’s not ordinary to you).

So it seems it’s a good step to aim for perfection if it’s what you want, not to appease others. And maybe it’s also worth considering the idea of ‘satisficing’ rather than ‘maximising’ as described by Sarah Wilson.

Here’s some of what she wrote:

Then there’s this idea of “satisficing”, a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice, coined by an economist. Satisficing involves making decisions by first selecting criteria that matters most to you, then going with the first option that ticks all such boxes.

Thing is, most of us are “maximizers” – we put off deciding until we’ve examined every possible option, which makes life not unlike a bottomless purgatorial pit. I’d argue our culture encourages us to maximize, to believe a perfect decision exists; it justifies the enless choices consumerism chucks at us. But – quelle irony – research shows satisficers actually make better decisions than maximizers, and are happier to boot.

Slideshare for sharing survey results

This slideshow brings together a range of my interests.

Regular readers will know that I have a thing for improv, and try and attend the annual Applied Improv Conference to get my dose of spontaneity, new ideas, laughs, connecting with old friends, meeting cool new people and a general injection of enthusiasm and potential collaborations.

In the last couple of years I’ve helped gather feedback about the conference, analysed the results and prepared a slideshow to share the results.

In making the slideshow I can indulge my passion for design, typography and photography (and try to bring them all together into something, well, Insanely Great!)

Check it out for yourself. It’s best viewed full screen.