Enter, the group project.

Time and time again I’m reminded just how important the skills of an Improviser are, how much practice it takes to apply these behaviors on and off-stage and the reward for doing so.

Sometimes, we need a re-set or a re-boot to wake us up and remind us that these behaviors sometimes hide off-stage when things like stress, the need for control, deadlines, and “being right” want the spotlight for the quick ego boost they may provide.

Ah, silly person. No. These aren’t the rewards that count. It’s the reward that comes from being a team player that we desire most.

Be the kind of Improviser/group project member people want on their team… because you make them better.

So, how do we do that?

1. Notice More it is my obligation to notice, accept, and use every offer/idea that comes my way. We only notice the offers if we are listening and paying attention

2. Start with agreement – Because I believe everything my partner says is fascinating and even, genius — it is my obligation to notice their offer and start with a place of “yes”. To do this well, I need to withhold judgement and blocking in favor of more acceptance.

3. Build instead of tear down - “yes, and” the heck out of their idea.  Two heads are better than one. By building on their initial idea instead of simply sticking to my own I help make my partner look good…great, even!

What truly happens when we enact these guidelines and put them into practice every day is that we allow ourselves and our team-mates to be changed. It’s what happens when we notice, accept, and build more often. We’re in our own head less, and experiencing more.

And if we fail at this today, there is always tomorrow.

“Focus on the person, not the problem”.

It seems like it could be a catchy song, if only people would listen to it.

When an employee comes to you with what you see as an unsolvable problem, it’s time to dig deeper. As an Improviser, I’d ask you what the “offer” is. What is the employee really asking for? Furthermore, what does your employee need right now?

Our basic human need is to be heard. When managers respond to an emotional need with rationale data, an employee is not truly heard. Besides, chances are it’s not about the data. There is something else going on.

Get clear on the issue.

Our goal is not always to problem-solve. It’s to build relationships. That comes from noticing the offer in the room, accepting, and building off of it. We can’t “yes, and” if we aren’t fully paying attention to the other person.

And so… I went skiing. I really dislike skiing. Those darn chair lifts! As the chair lift wobbled and swayed in the cold and my kind friends distracted me from my fear by talking baseball and “Friends” trivia, the phrase “Say, Yes And” pierced through my head.

I thought, I really should say YES…when in my gut I knew I wanted to have said no.

This “Yes, And” experiment lasted a few more months. Until I realized a key distinction:

It’s more important to “Yes, And” your instincts than to say yes to everything.

Well-timed NO’s are strategic. They allow us to create space for more YES’s. 

Improv helps us develop our instinctual muscle, so that we are attuned to what feels true for us and what doesn’t.

This attunement also helps us feel what’s true or not true for the characters we play on stage. We know what makes them tick.

Most of us work-out our NO muscle more often than our YES muscle. Usually there is a reason for it. Ask, where is the NO coming from? As long as the “NO” comes from a real, honest place we are still supporting our partner, ourselves, and the scene.

The key is to not feel like we have to say YES to everything our partner says or does on-stage, but to still find a way to accept it and build on it.

A tricky nuance perhaps. I’d argue that the key is balance — How does your “NO” keep moving the story forward? What about this offer can you still accept?

The more we Improvise (on stage and in real life) the more we may realize that “Yes, And’ing” is less about rules and more about intention and instinct.

Yes, gosh darnit, it is! We’ve all been given feedback – welcome or unwelcome, formal or informal, yearly or monthly.

Performance feedback is an art. So let’s draw some connections to the art of Improvisation, shall we?

Peter Sims gets us thinking about how, and compares this art to the artsiest folk of all, Pixar animators.

1. Make it personal – no cookie cutter feedback here. Not everyone likes a praise sandwich, in fact, some people will throw away what’s inside and just focus on the praise, or visa-versa. Strong performance feedback has…
2. A narrative – a journey, a co-created one at that… between the feedback giver and receiver. Decide on a vision that you can co-create. To help you write this narrative focus on…
3. Agreement – what can the feedback receiver agree to (and come up with themselves) to improve? Utilize the power of give and take (Thanks, Adam Grant!).
4. Be specific – focus on specific behaviors, action items, and examples.

Pixar utilizes “plussing” as a developmental tool (you may call this “Yes, And…as you wish).

“The point, he said, is to “build and improve on ideas without using judgmental language.

Here’s an example he offers in his book. An animator working on “Toy Story 3” shares her rough sketches and ideas with the director. “Instead of criticizing the sketch or saying ‘no,’ the director will build on the starting point by saying something like, ‘I like Woody’s eyes, and what if his eyes rolled left?”

Using words like “and” or “what if,” rather than “but” is a way to offer suggestions and allow for the creative juices to flow without fear, Mr. Sims said.”

Performance feedback is a muscle that can be developed with practice.  I’d argue that many of us inherently know this already, but don’t always put it into practice. If we want to improve, we can think about it as we would our own performance feedback. Focus on the specific behaviors we can improve on tomorrow, and who can help keep us accountable as we learn and grow?

We could come to similar, easily digestible conclusions with other, recent management development offerings. We could “lean in” more, “be more mindful”, or say yes or say no more often. But would this stick, or just make us more resentful, anxious, paranoid, or busy?

One thing is certain, I completely agree and appreciate Grant’s work and his message:

“The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves.”

As I see it, the key to encouraging more giving is by focusing on the feeling it brings.  In essence, we follow the feeling. Sometimes it is indescribable, but it sticks with us. 

If giving more, leaning in, taking more time for yourself, or saying no more often makes you feel better, more whole, more on purpose, then that is reason enough to do more of it. Perhaps it will allow you to give with more gusto, to listen in a way that offers the support your friend or co-worker needs.

We can save the quantity vs. quality of giving debate for another time. I feel better when I give help, advice, support, encouragement, and that is a powerful, potent, push to do more of it.

Mixing motivation and giving isn’t easy. If we view giving as a means to an end, (“matchers”, as Grant calls them in his research) than we’re missing the point.

Improvisers give in the form of making their partner look good. We give because it is the Improvisers credo. It builds trust. And it fuels creativity by opening us up to more possibilities and points of view.

But we are also good at saying no when we need to, when it feels instinctively wrong.  We are skilled at the polite, “NOPE!”. Guilt or pushing doesn’t motivate giving, that is certain.

“The most successful givers, Grant explains, are those who rate high in concern for others but also in self-interest. And they are strategic in their giving — they give to other givers and matchers, so that their work has the maximum desired effect; they are cautious about giving to takers; they give in ways that reinforce their social ties; and they consolidate their giving into chunks, so that the impact is intense enough to be gratifying.”

The impact of this work is profound if we give it and share it with others. It is the foundation of a learning organization, of a company of shared social capital and support. And it is sustained not because your boss told you to give more, or because you read about it in an article in the NY Times, but because you know how it feels when someone gave selflessly to you, and you want to pay it forward.

This is one of the tenants of “Status” – a tool Improvisers use to communicate, influence, empathize, and… play. Status is present in our every day lives and asks us to consider how we act, talk, and feel along a continuum of submission to dominance.

We can choose our status. It is ever in flux. Choosing our status can help us gain the confidence to own the stage.

Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School does a wonderful job of teaching us how to play with status, how being more mindful of status and body language helps shift us neurologically to act the way we want to feel.

Want to learn how? 

Or watch her TED talk, here.

A power pose is one way. What else triggers you and helps you act the way you want to feel?

It is an interesting experience to go through a Graduate level program as a training professional. As I learn, I’m not only thinking about the material, but how the material is presented. I am often very active in these discussions.

I left a Grad school class extremely frustrated tonight. I was given the “what” and the “why” without the “how”. Some days it’s just the “what”. I constantly seek practical application for what I am learning, specific answers and grounded, real-world comparisons. I am your typical adult learner, someone who wants relevance, application, and clarity. It’s not that I want to pump out the ambiguity – I am intensely interested in the material and just not clear on how to ground the learning. If it’s too high in the sky I get frustrated.

Tonight at dinner, my friend recounted an experiential learning experience where the facilitator told the students the answer (the ah-ha they should experience) AND how they should be feeling. “No no, they shouldn’t be told the answer”, I said. To me, experiential learning succeeds when the students uncover their own answers. I felt discomfort in another workshop I attended where we were told there was only one correct answer for a given exercise. It seemed to de-personalize the experience, I remembered. In workshops and training sessions that I lead, I hardly provide the answers…the students do.

So, why the discrepancy?

I recognize the differences between a graduate level seminar and a professional development workshop but the question still remains… how do you reconcile expectations with reality in a learning experience? How do you balance real-world application with self-discovery?

How do you weigh what the participant needs in the room (short-term) versus long-term?

The solution (remember, I want answers) perhaps, is to find a happy place between student expectations and reality and to recognize the different needs in the room. Maybe it’s to go one step further and uncover why these specific expectations exist.

As with any tough question, perhaps there isn’t a single answer. But when the costs of learning are high, I sure am looking for one.

Tonight, I ventured downtown to check out another public storytelling test-kitchen… the Moth StorySLAM — an open-mic storytelling competition held weekly in NYC and across the country. Here, the rules were a bit different. Brave participants had 5 minutes to tell a true story related to the night’s theme.

What happened in the room tonight was simply inspiring and beautiful. Not only were the 10 stories remarkably polished and moving, but the support, engagement, and positivity emanating from the 200+ people in the crowd was an incredibly special feeling.

The event got me thinking about learning communities, trust, tribes, and the power of story, vulnerability, empathy, and theme to inspire positive change — not just in a 5 minute story, but in a lifetime.

StorySlam events are held in big cities across the USA. Check out the calendar, here.

A group of incredibly smart, focused, and skilled future leaders was confused. No one had ever given them permission to fail before.

I told her what one of my mentors, Randy Nelson told me: life is not about error avoidance, it’s about error recovery.

I wasn’t actually encouraging them to fail, I simply encouraged this group to change their reaction to failure.

Most of us fail inward – meaning, our bodies tense up, we get smaller and we let the world know that we are ashamed.

Improvisers practice what same may see as a silly exercise called the “Failure Bow” – we turn failure from an inward defeat to an outward celebration. This small practice helps us act the way we want to feel.

Seth Godin speaks brilliantly about failure, here in this interview. Some of the highlights:

• those who fail more often, win – The people who don’t win are the ones that don’t fail at all and get stuck, or the ones that fail so big that they don’t get to play again.
• What are the risks that you can take that keep you in the game even if you fail?
•  Following the rules can lead to a fear of initiation and a fear of failure. Where can you work where failing is part of the rules?

The concept of embracing failure is broad and confusing for some – depending on your profession, and your past experience. This concept is also juicy and full of connection to vulnerability, innovation, creativity, you name it.

Simply put…error recovery builds resilience, it provides a new kind of reward…perhaps one that we aren’t teaching or recognizing enough.

Conflict is fascinating, but as someone who watches and coaches Improvisers I have to say that the choice to start a scene with conflict is all too common. Some know it’s an Improv Pet Peeve of mine –  and I try to get at the root of why this is a common choice for so many of us.

I believe there is something about choosing conflict that keeps us safe. It gives us a problem to solve, but also keeps us from truly connecting and playing in the unknown. We can snap into ‘conflict mode’ quicker than ‘connection mode’.

This article from HBR sheds light on the neurological responses involved in conflict:

“In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself — in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong — and as a result is unable to regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him).”

More More More…

Further more, when we argue, and we win, we want to keep winning and keep arguing.

“That’s partly due to another neurochemical process. When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s a the feeling any of us would want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again. We get addicted to being right.”

We run the risk of conflict not only being a choice, but a habit…one that we are neurologically rewarded for doing well in.

When Improvisers introduce conflict just for the sake of having something to do on stage, I stop and ask them to tell me what the conflict is really about. Often times they don’t know.

From competition to conversation

Improv is a team sport, just like so many businesses. Similarly, conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be productive and important.

What worries me is the instinctual choice to fight instead of doing the harder work…listening.

If we can view conflict as a conversation instead of a competition, remove the idea of winner versus loser, right versus wrong and instead push towards agreement and the notion of being changed by the other person, then I’m more interested in your dynamics, and your scene. Our brains would like that too:

“Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection and it opens up the networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, further increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (at least in the context of communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.”

Leaning in, in my world, essentially means “Yes, And”. Some call “Yes, And” an Improv rule. I call it a guideline, a mantra, a choice.

The choice is… to accept or to block. Leaning in means to accept what comes our way, to explore it, live in it, get messy with it… instead of push it away.

When faced with a new experience, task, or even a game we often want to know the rules. “Tell me what to do, and how to do it, help me feel certain”, say some of us. To hammer out the ambiguity is essentially what we are asking for.

Give me the boundaries, my role, task – let me feel comfortable by telling me the rules. The rules give me something to grab onto to keep me psychologically safe.

I see it in action all the time – in Graduate School class assignments, explaining a new Improv game, or big decisions.

When we are about to jump off the uncertainty cliff, we want to make sure our safety harness is attached.

Not knowing the rules produces a vulnerability unlike any other, especially when we don’t feel well-equipped for it. What if I don’t do this correctly? What if I fail?

The United States Army prepares its leaders for a life without certainty with a strategy called “Broadening”. Their development curriculum includes several stints of purposeful broadening – men and women are given assignments outside of their comfort zone to break the assembly line and predictability of the path. It’s more than a stretch assignment.

We won’t always know the rules. How comfortable are you when there might not be a right or wrong way to do something?

A broadening experience means truly leaning in – being able to sit with ambiguity and uncertainty. There may not always be rules in the places you need or want to go – but there is a purpose.

Forcing yourself out of your comfort zone prepares you for something else, allows you to make the rules, or teaches you that you may be comfortable with less rules than you thought.

Lean in.

There is an HBR Article floating around that got me fired up. Really fired up.

It was sent over by my friend Phil O’ Brien of Climbing Fish.

The article, written by Umair Haque, argues that the rise of “TED-style thinking” is one cause for our broken relationship with great ideas. He argues that the rise of bite-sized, easily digestible, talks, blogs, learning opportunities are…easy solutions. Here:

We’ve come to look at these quick, easy “solutions” as the very point of “ideas worth spreading. But this seems to me to miss the point and power of ideas entirely. Einstein’s great equation is not a “solution”; it is a theory — whose explanations unravel only greater mysteries and questions. It offers no immediate easy, quick “application” in the “real world,” but challenges us to reimagine what the “real world” is; it is a Great Idea because it offers us something bigger, more lasting, and more vital than a painless, disposable “solution.”

It’s true – audiences (especially adult audiences) want to know: how can I utilize this information now, how is this relevant to me, and what is the ANSWER?! I’ve seen it in the workshops I teach, the consultants I work with, and in my own experience.

I am not unlike the audiences of today. As I sit through each Graduate school class in my Master’s program I find myself struggling with classes that don’t provide immediate utility, relevance and answers. I worry about the cost, both opportunity and financial.

But what Haque is arguing, is for these learning experiences to encourage more questions than answers. To give us space to reflect and the time to transform these great ideas into more great ideas of our own. The learning I receive in graduate school makes me uncomfortable, far more than I’d argue a TED talk ever could. It is me at my most vulnerable self.

Why? It’s because I’m not given the simple, quick solution and immediate utility. But, I have the space to ruminate on it, share with my learning community and make the process relevant and meaningful for myself.

It’s a hard lesson to learn – especially when you are impatient, passionate, excited, and anxious.

“That is precisely how Great Ideas change us: not merely by pleasing us, but by challenging us. That is precisely how they elevate us: not merely by pandering to us, or by provoking us, but by enlightening the whole of us. That is precisely what makes Great Ideas truly worthy — not just easily palatable, and commercially profitable.”

I think of this often as I design and deliver corporate workshops and engage in many others. I remember that when I was first learning how to Improvise (which, I consider the “Great Idea” that changed my life), it wasn’t boiled down into one class or one 18-minute talk. Improv teaches you there is no right answer, or one solution. Sure, it’s also relevant and applicable, but not just in one clear way.

This “Great Idea” keeps me constantly off-center. This sort of learning helps a person truly come into their own, the learning isn’t spoon-fed, it’s up to them to grab the spoon. And, it’s stuck with me longer than any TED Talk, blog post, article ever could. It didn’t just spew knowledge, it fueled reflection and a desire for more experience.

Not all great ideas are intended for the masses or for digestible consumption, but that also means the ideas don’t have to be perfect or fully-formed to start to spread.

Learning is personal. Learning is meaningful. Learning is powerful. How can we as educators help keep this alive with the boundaries that technology, time, money, have set? I want to hear your great ideas.

Can you finish the sentence?

This is the question posed by Learning and Leadership expert Kevin Eikenberry, here.

What do you want to learn about for the rest of your life? What holds your attention enough to keep you motivated and interested, especially during tough times?

When you have a clear purpose and strong desire to learn…well, you are unstoppable. And, if you can combine this drive with a constant beginner’s mind…well, you are my hero. These are nine powerful, wonderful, vulnerable words.

Leaders inspire and help others to finish their sentence, or turn it on its head, or keep you out of your comfort zone, who pose more questions instead of answers and who stress the importance of a mission.

Sometimes, nine words are enough.

The more we try to exert influence over circumstances we can’t and don’t actually control, the more frustrated we can become.

Beginning Improvisers are often fearful their first time taking the stage. Neurologically they feel threatened, and this fear shows up in different behaviors. Often times the feeling of threat or lack of safety makes us want to control the scene because we think we can control the outcome.

In spite of what we think, we never know the outcome of anything.

When the stakes are high, our task to not control the outcome gets tougher. We feel that we have something to lose. When money, pride, reputation are on the line, the job gets even tougher – especially if you are a leader.

Teaching others to let go, accept offers, and say “yes, and” means controlling less and supporting more. It can be a fundamental shift to our psychological and neurological safety.

In tough, stressful and threatening situations, we revert back to our natural instincts and habits. If we are to help others lead through change and high-stakes, it will take practice and it will take work but the outcome will be worth it…of that we are certain.

‎”Whenever someone comes to me for help, I listen very hard and ask myself, ‘What does this person really want? And what will they do to keep from getting it?” – William Perry, Harvard Professor of Education

Navigating life without a script means finding the balance between freedom and structure. For Improvisers, it means getting clear on the basics of the scene, feeling grounded in the structure so that we can move and build new ideas with complete freedom.

A trick we use to keep us centered, motivated, and able to navigate ambiguity is to know our objective in the scene. What is it that my character wants, and why?

Once we get clear on these answers, a scene can really flow.

But, how often do we go into a scene, a meeting, a phone call, a class, an opportunity and truly know what our objective is?

Getting clear on our objective does more than just help you – it helps your partner in crime. If I don’t know what it is you want, how can I support you?

For me, the most memorable Improv scenes to watch and to play in are those where characters have a clear objective that comes from a very truthful, sometimes vulnerable place. For example, they don’t just want to win the science fair, but they want someone to tell them how great they are… for the very first time.

Having a clear objective is a way to measure change. Did we get what we wanted? Did it mean something to us? What’s my temperature reading before and after? How am I progressing?

When I’m coaching Improvisers or those in a professional development setting, it’s common for people to either not have an objective or to not verbalize it.

We can’t always think of the objective spontaneously, but we can tune into the character, or ourselves to think about what is it that I really want? Sometimes it takes some work, and some encouragement:

1. Know the “why”, not only the “what” – figure out why your objective matters to you. Sometimes asking “The Five Why’s” can help with this. 
2. Be open to your objective changing. Don’t hold so fast to it that you close yourself off.
3. Finally – don’t be afraid to ask for help.

If you ask me, the great divide between “the creative person” and the non-creative type is phony.

Anyone can be creative. It’s not a category you fall into, the job you are assigned, the assessment you take. Creativity starts with permission.

To be creative is to give yourself and to give others the permission to explore, to have new ideas and to follow them. 

Creative people are more comfortable with the freedom inside structure than just the structure itself. They are more comfortable exploring, less on logic and rules and more on what could be.

They take risks because they have given themselves permission to. They think broadly, in opposites, in analogies, or in obvious straight-forward methods.

It’s a shift – from a judging to learner mindset, a mechanistic or organismic structure, technical to adaptive problem solving, or whole-brain thinking. But, becoming more creative involves not just a neurological shift but an environmental shift as well.

Peter Sims talks about this in this article, “Ultimately, while basic design and creative methods can be learned much like muscles, and developed and strengthened through practice, this shift in mindset requires a different kind of leadership.”

Helping others become more creative involves giving them permission to fail, to have big ideas, to take risks and to blur the lines between who is deemed creative and who isn’t.

Check the books, but I’d wager that no one bet on a blackout during the Super Bowl.

What happens in a moment of complete ambiguity, where a scheduled and somewhat scripted control room has to go off-script?

This clip from CBS News takes us behind the scenes of the moment, and also reveals an important lesson in how to improvise.

Improvisers are skilled at succinct communication, especially in the beginning of a scene where everything is unknown including our characters, their relationship, and the environment. We establish the platform of the scene so that our fellow players feel safe and knowledgeable about the basic parameters. We practice being obvious and clear to help make our partner look good. We work to speak a common language as quickly as possible.

Watch about 60 seconds into the clip as two crew members work to clarify what’s happening in “their scene”. The crew member’s partner twice asks, “what does that mean?” before his partner says the obvious…. we have a game delay.

In a moment of ambiguity, when emotions and adrenaline are high, those who are skilled at navigating ambiguity help make their partner look good by communicating in a way that helps get us out of the dark.

Why is it your favorite scene?

If you are like me, favorite scenes emerge because the characters were changed by what someone else said.

When I coach Improvisation teams, I stress the importance of focusing on the relationship between the characters, above all else. The advice can be somewhat vague so I ask students to take it one step further. I ask them to:

“Be changed by what your partner said”.  ”Be changed by what you hear”.

Humans find change to be fascinating, even if we go out of our way to avoid it ourselves. I’d argue that we want and root for change when we watch our favorite shows or movies. It is that evolution of a character, and their ability to be changed by what they hear that keeps the character growing and learning, but also quite vulnerable.

The ability to let ourselves be changed by a conversation or an encounter is the key to listening like an improviser. It takes us a step beyond head nods and eye contact, and connects us more deeply to our scene partner because they know they’ve been heard.

“The real power and innovation of jazz is that a group of people can come together and create art – improvised art – and can negotiate their agendas with each other. And that negotiation is the art” – Wynton Marsalis”

Improvisers are trained to be masters of the “give and the take” – to simultaneously let go of control but to speak their ideas with confidence and boldness. How can this be, you might ask? Does nothing get accomplished?

It’s quite the opposite. The improviser’s negotiation table is a blank stage – there is no delineation between winner and loser, best or worst. It is a team sport where the rules of our negotiation are simple:

1. Accept and add on

2. Make the other person look good.

Beginning improvisers start by improvising in a way that’s comfortable for them – and that tends to fall on either end of the spectrum between being extremely timid or extremely domineering on stage. With practice and confidence the fear dissipates and one begins to see not only the benefits of both the give and take but is also comfortable playing either role.

One of my favorite examples of the Improvisers Negotiation in action comes from Keith Johnstone and it’s called Invisible Tug of War.

Ask two teams to mime playing tug-of-war, without a rope… and let this go on for a few moments. See what happens – and debrief around chivalry, give and take, noticing offers and making the other “team” look good.

“During an interview, your potential new boss asks you to briefly describe your qualifications. At this moment, you have a single objective: be impressive. So you begin to rattle off your list of accomplishments…”

…and before you know it, 5 minutes have gone by. Fear kicks in, the clock is running, and we resort to lists instead of the big picture.

Getting clear, concise and specific in an interview, presentation, or meeting isn’t always easy, especially if we are focusing on the quantity of our material as opposed to the quality.

Naturally, our instincts tell us so because of a phenomenon called “Presenter’s Paradox”… the assumption that more is better.

“More is actually not better, if what you are adding is of lesser quality than the rest of your offerings. Highly favorable or positive things are diminished or diluted in the eye of the beholder when they are presented in the company of only moderately favorable or positive things.”

So if more is not the answer, what do we do? 

1. Consider choosing a new objective – “be impressive” sounds fine, but we owe it ourselves to really understand and get clear on our objective, and work backwards from there. Improvisers choose every action based on their character’s objective and it does wonders to help them inform the scene and navigate the unknown.
2. Less lists, more stories – use storytelling to help focus on the big picture. Turn your bullet-point accomplishments into key story points with a beginning, middle and end. Look to the Story Spine for help on this one.
3. Ask yourself “The 5 Why’s” to help you get clear and specific.
4. Remember that even though you’re in the hot seat, the interview or presentation isn’t all about you. Follow the improviser guideline of “making your partner look good” by finding opportunities for connection, commonality and interaction.