The best thing about improv as a tool for improvement in the workplace, is the small time commitment.

Many businesses are cutting back on training days and team away days due to the difficult financial climate.

How can businesses continue to thrive or to improve without giving employees some time away from the day-to-day duties?

My solution would be to integrate some improvisational games into the business week. It could be ten minutes a day or half an hour a week…whatever works for you. Anything less frequently than once a week might not be beneficial as people are likely to find it hard to progress with the skills.

There is a lot of research out there to say that employees who spend time getting to know each other and having fun together, will work more cohesively and productively. That sounds like common sense to me! A bunch of miserable strangers isn’t an ideal team after all!

So how can you incorporate a little of the spirit of improv. I would suggest some of the games that allow people to be silly and goofy. Give people the opportunity to be carefree, at least for the duration of these games. If we can learn to look like fools in front of each other, we can feel more comfortable with making mistakes in our work and more importantly, owning up to these mistakes. Because improv teaches us to take risks and to experiment. Ultimately, improv is a tool that can enhance creativity and innovation in the workplace.

So whether or not your team is stuck in a rut, try including some improv games…

1. Down (a fun and silly dancing game)

2. Alien, Tiger, Cow (This game explores influence and group mind)

3. Group Order (a quick thinking communication game that helps you learn a fact about your co-workers each time you play)

If you decide to try this at your workplace, feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

Interesting and simple improv talk – click here

The Big Bang Theory – Sheldon and Penny do Improv

http://www.fastcompany.com/article/work-smart-stop-multi-tasking-and-do-one-thing-at-a-time

Check out the video.

A brilliant game for listening and developing group mind is The Oracle. It’s a mini-version of Word At A Time Story, which features in my earlier blog posts. An Oracle is a mystical creature, who you can ask any question to….the answers are sometimes a little unexpected…check out me and some friends performing an Oracle at a recent show at The Nightingale Theatre in Brighton, UK.

One of my favourite music improv games is called Pointing Song. It’s a great exercise for listening, collaborating and thinking outside the box.

It’s a game that works best with 6-10 people. We get an audience suggestion for a theme and then each person comes up with a riff – this can be percussive, a melody line, some kind of bass, something on the off beat, loud, quiet, fast, slow, anything – so long as it fits with the accompaniment which is very open. It’s good to think about something with more than one meaning, something more philosophical perhaps.

Somebody is nominated the director and they point at people in turn to sing their riff, as the game progresses, people are pointed at in 2′s, 3′s, 4′s and more and eventually it has everyone singing their riff together and ultimately, all changing to one single riff, using the power of group mind (and listening!)

In this example from a show, we were given Archaeology as a subject. This was the result….

Well, if you have The Blues, then music improv is surely the way to cure them. I challenge anyone to try some music improv and not end up laughing. By definition it is fun and funny. It doesn’t matter if you are an entirely rubbish singer or an accomplished one, it doesn’t even matter if you can rhyme or not, all that matters is committing to the game/scene and going for it. I’m sure from an audience point of view, a nice voice and a good rhyme is just a bonus. There is a game called The Blues where we ask the audience to call out bad things that have happened to them recently and then we title it. In this clip, we were given The Automobile Blues. It’s a great example of different skill levels and different approaches to the task.