CASE STUDIES

Improv has helped me in how I manage my team is especially improved my listening skills.
Whereas before, if I was in a meeting, I’d be obsessing about the agenda, trying to keep everything on track, and not really listening.
Now I’m in the room, engaging with people’s ideas, so I can understand and respond to them.
Also, I’ve removed but from my language, rather than responding to someone with Yes-But now I’ll say, “That’s really good, and have you thought about this?”
The idea is that we are building something together, as opposed to competing over who is right.
I am acutely aware now that the language you choose as an impact on others, if you use but will you think about is the next bit that follows.
The person just hears “No”.
But Improv is not saying yes to everything.
“I understand.” – Yes-And it’s about building a better version of what either of us has separately.
It’s still disagreement, but it’s productive.
It’s a healthier way of sharing your perspective with others.
Since I’ve met this simple change, people feed back to me that I am much more collaborative than I used to be.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF

I 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 once 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’ve always held myself to high standards, which previously went hand in hand with a deep rooted fear of failure.
Improv has taught 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’m 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’m upward managing and trying to influence change at the highest level in my organization.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF

I work in a heavily male dominated industry, and it’s still an old boys club.
I work mostly with men who have very high status, including traders and salespeople.
After doing improv training, I noticed speed of speech, volume, posture, eye contact, and overall physicality a lot more clearly, especially when meeting people for the first time.

If I adapt my own physicality and speech to match theirs, it puts me closer to the same level of status, and stops me feeling intimidated.

I spent the first six years of my career fighting to be recognized as someone who actually works there, rather than just a female, as I had to fight to be taken seriously before I could get on with my job.
Suddenly, matching status has helped to limit the amount of time I have to waste convincing people I can do my job, and means I can actually get on with it.
True high status also means being very relaxed about where you stand.
So when one man refused to acknowledge me, and only shook hands with and spoke to the man standing next to me, I walked away.
In the past, I’d have stood there and let his dismissive attitude affect my confidence.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF

I work in digital TV content, think apps, quizzes, games, and all that stuff that sits alongside TV shows.
A lot of my job revolves around pitching new content ideas to clients.
But before improv, I was always the kind of person who would tail off in the middle of a sentence, because I didn’t have the confidence in my own idea.
Or I just wouldn’t share an idea at all, unless i’d 100percent fully formulated it in my head, which of course is not how creative ideation sessions work.
Since I’ve been Improvising.
I’ve learned to follow the impulse to speak in those sessions rather than meticulously planning out what I’m I’m going to say, I trust that I can start a sentence without knowing exactly where it’s going to go.
And that I will find an ending for it, even if it’s not perfect.
For instance, working on some Halloween content for a Kids TV channel, I started with the idea of a selfie filter where you open your mouth and the end of that sentence by the time I got to it turned out to be 1000s of tiny spiders crawled out.
Not super appropriate for a channel aimed at eight year olds.
But it did provide a jumping off point for what turned out to be a really cool augmented reality game idea.
Where pointing the phone camera at the TV screen during show made weird spooky skulls appear that started moving towards you.
And you had to swipe them away before they got you a million miles away from the weird place I started in.
But it couldn’t have happened if I’d been filtering myself.
No matter how it feels sometimes.
Nobody has all the answers in life.
Despite the confident badder knowledge of certain slick individuals, meetings and conversations are not scripted.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF

It’s easy to dismiss ideas.
People are scared of looking silly.
So if an idea isn’t immediately brilliant, it’s easier to dismiss it.
But by doing that you often miss out on the little nuggets of a good idea. buried in a half baked idea in profits taught me to persevere and find the hidden magic in something a bit weird, daft unusual or obtuse.
When my team and I sit down to talk about a project in its early stages, Yes/And is the golden rule.
That way we can explore a concept and really work out if it could be fleshed out into a fully fledged ad campaign.
It’s an art not a science.
Often a brilliant advert ends up being greater than the sum of the brains that dreamed it up.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF

Doing improv has helped me to be more relaxed.
And think on my feet when attending scientific conferences, where I often have to speak to hundreds of people over several days about the work my organisation does.
This is not something I’m naturally good at.
But improv has helped me fake it to some extent.
Because now I focus more on listening to people and what they are contributing.
Rather than freezing up or following a mental script, it helps me to respond better to the moment.
But more than that, these conversations are a lot more rewarding for me now to, and hopefully also for those I’m speaking to rule three, ‘listen with your whole body’.

Max Dickins (14/7/2020), ‘Improvise!: Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work – Introduction’, Icon Books’, PDF