Listen up and say yes to the lessons comedy can teach

Learning the secrets of improv won’t necessarily make you funnier, but it should make you more effective at work, argues author and comedian Max Dickens

On the eve of a fight against fellow heavyweight Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson was asked by a journalist if he was worried about the plan Holyfield had been carefully concocting in his training for the bout. “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” replied Tyson. On the surface level, this quote seems like just another line from the annals of pre-fight boxing bravado. On closer inspection, Tyson, (not a man known for his subtle intellect), was making a perceptive point about not just boxing but about life. You can do all the preparation you want but when it comes down to it, victory will belong to the man/woman/team who can react best to the demands of the present moment. In short, victory will belong to those who can improvise.

Your first association with improvisation is probably comedy. Every summer – apart from this one – legions of improvised comedy shows swarm into Edinburgh’s attics, cellars, and conference rooms to tout their wares at the festival. Fringe favourites include, Showstoppers! The Improvised Musical and Paul Merton’s Impro Chums. Scotland has a strong improv scene of its own. In Edinburgh, Stu and Garry have been running their improv show at The Stand every Sunday for more than a decade. In Glasgow, classes at the Glasgow Improv Theatre were packed pre-pandemic. And improvisation has a growing presence in other cities too. Google ‘improv’ plus the name of your town and you’ll likely find somewhere you can give it a go.

But why would you want to? What can the non-comedian type have to gain from taking an improv class? The coronavirus pandemic has forced all of us to rip up our old scripts and start again in the ‘new normal.’ 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 them with creativity and optimism. Beyond the demands of now, improvisation is also a timeless skill at the heart of all effective communication. After all, when we are having conversations with clients, when we are collaborating with colleagues, or when we are leading teams, there are no scripts. We are always thinking on our feet. Is it not sensible, then, to learn how to do so as effectively as possible?

When you see improvisers on stage or in shows like Whose Line is it Anyway? they can look like geniuses, blessed with God-given talent not available to us mere mortals. However, these performers are relying on some simple rules and principles than anyone can learn and apply in their own daily lives – both online and offline. The first rule of improv is that it all begins with listening. This might seem counter-intuitive in an artform where entertainment is predicated on speaking. Yet first and foremost improvisers focus on listening attentively to their scene partner. For scene partner read client or colleague. If we want to connect with and to influence others, we need to understand them first. We cannot do this without listening brilliantly well.

So far so obvious. We all know we should listen. The challenge is that we often don’t, and when we do, we listen in the wrong way. At work we are often focused on ‘active listening.’ The trouble is, many of the behaviours taught with active listening – such as nodding, smiling and making encouraging noises while the other person speaks – are not essential for good listening. In fact, you could be doing all those behaviours while thinking about something else entirely. Often, we are not listening at all, but waiting to respond, stuck in our heads as we form a rebuttal. We know someone has listened to us only by what they do with what we have said. Improvisers define listening therefore as the willingness to be changed. If I am truly listening to you, your words land on me and change my response. I am willing to give up control of the conversation, to surrender what I was going to say to connect to what you actually said. Rather than talk at you, I relate to you.

This is more essential than ever in our new Zoom theocracy. On Zoom, there is a ‘monologue effect’ caused by the fact that only one person can speak at a time. In real life, we would pick up on non-verbal social clues about when to stop talking. We don’t get these online. As Marshall Mcluhan wrote, the medium becomes the message. On Zoom it’s easy to spend too long on transmit and not enough time on receive. We talk and interrupt too much; and collaboration suffers. Improvisers are acutely aware that they need to give (and not just take) focus in meetings. This is something to bear in mind in your next video conference. Especially if you have a naturally assertive communication style.

The second rule of improvisation is, Say ‘Yes, and.’ The improv philosophy of ‘Yes, and’ is all about accepting and building on the ideas of our colleagues or clients. The opposite of saying ‘Yes, and’ is to say ‘Yes, but.’ When we say ‘Yes, but’ we block ideas, shooting them down or steamrollering them with our own. We do this often not because we are rude, but because we want to show leadership: to give others the benefit of our expertise and experience. In short, we consider criticising ideas as a generous act, a sign of robust thinking. And this sort of interrogation is often useful. The trouble comes when we default to that mode of communication when a ‘Yes, and’ response would be more productive.

Doing so brings real world costs. By shutting down ideas we can create a culture where no-one wants to speak up. (This clearly isn’t productive at a time of constant change.) Also, by prematurely judging ideas, we might kill off innovative suggestions that could provide real value with a little more development. Ask yourself, at a time where new approaches are essential, is your communication style making their creation more or less likely?

This leads us onto the third and final rule of improvisation: ‘Everything is an offer.’ The founding belief here is that the potential we find in change is based on how we look at it. You are treating everything as an offer when you decide to frame anything that occurs in your environment – mistakes, problems, and curve balls – as serendipitous opportunities rather than frustrating challenges. Treating everything as offer is about asking, ‘What can I use here?’ rather than ‘What’s missing?’ This is especially important in a moment when we are all being asked to do more with less ingredients.

Cookery is an apt metaphor here. An average cook needs a finished recipe and a complete set of ingredients to create a delicious meal. A good cook can open the fridge, survey the leftovers, and create magic from whatever is there. The difference between the two is not skills, it is mindset. If you can learn to treat everything as an offer, to see possibility in the constraints, you’ll be able to see the opportunities amid the carnage. Like a true improviser, you’ll be able to win the fight despite the punch in the mouth. To do so you don’t need to be as brave as Mike Tyson. You just need the courage to say, ‘Yes, and.’

● Improvise! Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work (£12.99) is published by Icon Books on Thursday. Max Dickens is director of improvisation training company Hoopla www.hooplaimpro.com

The improv philosophy of ‘Yes, and’ is all about accepting and building on the ideas of our colleagues or clients