IMPROVISATION-BASED TRAINING
What it is:
Improvisation is performing without a script — you make everything up on the spot, in real time. Onstage, improvisation produces imaginative, funny, connected performances. How? Improvisers follow a "system" of ideas, rules, and practices that are rooted in the creative and collaborative activity of highly focused active listening.
The great news for business is that the discipline and practices of stage improvisation are directly transferable to everyday life and work. Our conversations, relationships, teams, and work projects are all (potentially) creative, collaborative improvisational activities.
Why it helps:
Our lives can easily become scripted. We often get stuck in our roles, and they're hard to break out of — even when they hold you and your organization back. People and organizations need ways to get outside the box, to take risks, to make new choices and discover new possibilities. Improvisation-based training provides concrete skill development and a catalyst for new ways of thinking and behaving. Improvisation lets you — makes you — throw away your script as you listen, focus, and attend creatively to everything and everyone in your environment. And that leads to new performances, new possibilities, and change.
How it works:
We start by learning about your organization's professional development needs (e.g. leadership, diversity, selling, etc.). Then we map a set of improvisation exercises and games to these specific needs, and/or develop new exercises to fit the situation. Either way, the new tools and ideas that we teach are directly relevant to your business.
In the workshop, our trainers (professional improvisers and educators all) teach you to improvise so that the scenes at work (conversations, meetings, relationships, presentations, etc.) can become connected, creative, persuasive and effective. How do we get business people to improvise? We're experts at creating safe, supportive, enjoyable environments in which participants feel free to leave their comfort zones — in the service of learning, growth and development.
Partner, Booz Allen Hamilton
