WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host Wayne Brown and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world whom we’re affectionately referring to as ‘Team ET.’ Today, we’ve travelled to Philadelphia to chat with experienced improviser and teacher, a gentleman schooled in leadership, comedy and theatre, Andrew Davies. With his certificate focused in facilitation from Georgetown University, School of Continuing Studies, Andrew is on a mission to transform the corporate world with the magic of improv. He uses his skills to help teams ditch the snoozefest meetings and embrace creativity and collaboration instead. Imagine a workplace where brainstorming feels like fun instead of a chore. Yep, that’s what we’re talking about. We also get into the nitty-gritty of how you don’t have to be the funniest person in the room to rock improv; it’s all about being present and supportive. As the director of Artly Working, which uses improv and theatre to help build stronger teams made up of happier people and higher performers, Andrew has led programs with over 100 innovative companies, the likes of Netflix, Pinterest, Meta and Google. He is passionate about bringing those skills to strengthen company culture and people experiences. His Better Meetings workshop helps teams to gather with purpose and play, designing and facilitating more effective meetings that people actually want to attend. Andrew has won several awards for his groundbreaking work and is also the co-founder of CharacTours, theatrical walking tour where the past visits you. Team, if you’re looking for an edge to your leadership approach, then improv may well be the answer. Tune in to our conversation today to understand more about how you can immediately leverage this skill and bring new life to your team and their performance.

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Hello team, welcome to another episode where we’re going to explore innovative approaches to workplace collaboration. And today we’ve got something a little bit special as we’re going to try and open your minds to how the principles of improvisational theatre can transform team dynamics and perhaps create genuine unity in a professional setting. I’m guessing if you were like me, most people don’t think of improv in that context, they probably think of it in the sense of comedy and quick wit. But what if I told you that some of the world’s leading companies are using improv technologies to build stronger, more connected teams? So, joining us to share his unique perspectives on this subject is Andrew Davies, the Better Meetings director at Artly Working. Andrew, welcome to the ET project, I’ve been looking forward to this discussion for some time as you know.

ANDREW DAVIES: Absolutely Wayne, thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat and hopefully open people’s minds about the possibilities of improv. Absolutely.

WAYNE BROWN: Perhaps before we dive too deep into it, what was your path that drew you to the improv world and taking it to the corporate space?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, I really found a love of improv and comedy from an early age, for sure. Monty Python was a big influence as a kid and I think still influences me in their combination of silly physicality and really smart, witty commentary, you know, like the communist peasant taking on King Arthur and the ridiculousness of that, but also the brilliance of it. And I think I did a lot of comedy as a kid, a lot of theater and improv, and I found improvisation when I was in New York City. And it was really eye opening, I think, in terms of how improv can be transformative, not just in making us laugh, but in how we feel about ourselves, in our courage, in our leadership skills, and in our ability to try new things. And it really felt like a muscle that is so useful for other people to work out, I felt like I was in the improv gym developing these amazing leadership and quick-thinking muscles and I wanted to share these with people. And so many of my friends in more traditional jobs in the corporate world talked about their challenges with their teammates, with their bosses, with their meetings, with the work structure. And every time they would talk about it, all I could think was, you need an improv team, like we need to work on this together. And so, I started experimenting and I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years now.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. You mentioned Monty Python, you would have been too young for Monty Python, surely, that was my age, John Cleese, and oh gosh, that takes me back now.

[00:05:00]

WAYNE BROWN: I was reminiscing before we started and I was thinking, who are the great improv artists that influenced me in any way? And I don’t know if you would say they’re really titled as improv, but Robin Williams and Billy Crystal sort of had this essence, if you like, for improv that struck me. Any others other than Monty Python for you?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, I mean, whose line is it anyway? Both the British and American shows was really my introduction to improv and they play what I now know is short form improv, which are kind of shorter games. But all of the team there, I mean, like Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles and Wayne Brady, they’re just unbelievably thoughtful in the moment, playful, doing characters, voices, songs, just really eye-opening and brilliant and remain to this day, kind of inspiring in that work. And then as I studied improv and got deeper into this world, learned about what we call long-form improv, which not everybody gets to see, which is where you take a word and make up a whole show. And so, there’s some brilliant masters of that, TJ and Dave are sort of personal icons who people might recognize but probably don’t know by name, but they have a two-man show they’ve been doing for 20 years that’s unbelievable and amazing.

WAYNE BROWN: Maybe we should start by defining what do we mean by improv?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, so for me, there’s improv in a lot of different forms. But the improv that I studied is really improvisational comedy and improvisational theater. So, it’s really about building scenes and stories and telling stories that are fully improvised, usually with suggestions but not always. So, I think that’s really the core of it for me. And then when you take it out of the performance space, come bring it into organizations, to companies, it’s both the performance side of improv, but also the skills that are a part of that, that are applicable all the time; listening skills, collaboration skills, all those things that are so important.

WAYNE BROWN: On that note, Artly Working has worked with some impressive companies to say the least, Netflix, Google, Meta, just to name three, but is there a common thread that you see in the organizations you’re working with? Why are they reaching out to you? What is it they’re trying to achieve?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, we’ve been lucky to work with a lot of organizations, big and small, a lot of tech companies, as you mentioned too, I think appreciate the need to iterate, the need to innovate and the need to develop. I think companies that have grown up in the 21st century really understand that the way things are today doesn’t mean that’s the way things will be in a year from now. And so, what we’ve heard is that a lot of people really love the ability for their team to work together and build new ideas together. Frankly, during the pandemic their demand grew a lot because people were suddenly feeling disconnected as a team, disconnected as a workplace, and really didn’t know what does it mean to be on a team if you are fully remote? What does that look like? How do you actually connect with each other? And everyone was trying to just grab a beer and then meet on Zoom or online and it just doesn’t really work the same way it does in person. You can sit around a bar with people and get to know them, but it’s hard to sit around Zoom and get to know a group of people. So, we really came into a lot of these organizations and helped them find deeper connection, actually get to know each other, build inside jokes, understanding of strengths and weaknesses on your team. And we really feel that these teams understand that when they have stronger teams and happier people that their teams are more productive, they work better, and most importantly, they want to be there, right? They want to do the work. So, they’re not doing the bare minimum, they’re contributing to the team, they want the team to excel. And that’s so important, especially for these growing tech companies, big and small.

WAYNE BROWN: And why is improv such a great tool for creating that impact?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, I think improv is so important because play and improv really builds trust. I think a lot of organizations, when you start working for them, will have sort of their company buzzwords, their company mottos, but often they’re just a page on a website, where they’ll say, “trust your team, give it a hundred percent,” but you don’t feel that. People that work for the organization don’t necessarily feel that, they pretend, they clock in and clock out. But when you do improv together, you’re thrown into situations that feel very high stakes but are actually very low stakes. So, it’s a great way to practice that feeling of, okay, our team is up against the wall. How do we help each other and get out of it? Like one game we love to play, for instance, is just called, ‘I Love That.’

[00:10:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: And the way it starts is we get three or four people to the front of the room or on the screen when we’re doing this online and we give them a kind of apocalyptic scenario. You know, you’re being chased by zombies and you’re stuck on a train in the middle of the desert and there’s no way out. And they have to just kind of one at a time build their way out of there. And it allows them to think, okay, worst case scenario, how do we all help each other? And it’s funny and we’re laughing. But the team really gets to experience what if it all goes wrong? You know, how could we help each other? And it’s bonding, the play really builds that trust between the team, yeah.

WAYNE BROWN: You have said, somewhere I read anyway, that improv isn’t only about being funny, it’s also about being real and being present. What do you mean by that, in essence?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, I think a lot of people, when we talk about doing improv, they ask themselves, well, am I funny or am I a performer? Right? And that improv is for funny people. It’s really for everyone. A lot of times I really think improv is for introverts. Right? Because what makes you a great improviser is actually different than some other forms of performance. What makes you a great improviser is being a great listener. Because you’re creating things in the moment, you really have to be an incredible listener in the moment to pick up on details. And if you’re a very funny person who’s very loud and performative, but aren’t a great listener, that’s going to be obvious to an audience right away. Right? Like if we were playing that game and I said, there’s zombies chasing you, you’re on the train. And Wayne, you just started monologuing about, oh, yeah, we get off the train and then the zombies jump on my back and then I flip them over and I, you know, and you weren’t listening to anything anyone else said, it would all fall apart. Right? So, improv is really about being a listener first and a performer second. Right? And building on each other’s ideas. So, I think in that way, it’s not about who is the funniest, it’s about who can hear the most details, who can remember all the details that have been shared and kind of build the world together that will ultimately get the biggest laugh.

WAYNE BROWN: Right. And of course, the challenge in today’s world is that virtual space and trying to do this through the screen, is there any particular methodology you have that enables that to happen when you’re doing a virtual?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, we do about half of our programs virtually and half in person. So, it’s definitely very common. And I really encourage folks who are listening to this who are on a team or lead a team virtually that your team needs like improv and participation and playfulness even more than people in person. In person, sometimes you can get away with a boring thing because then at least everyone has lunch together or has a beer together after work. When you’re working remotely, it’s so important to participate. So, two things you can do that are really easy. One is you can play games together that don’t involve speaking, that are silent and movement games. So, you could have people put in the chat of whatever app you’re using, you know, let’s act out something together, let’s move around, let’s get physical. So, put in an octopus and then everyone can act like an octopus at the same time. Right? So that we don’t need to be hearing, listening, we can just be following each other. We can play mirror games that way where we try and mirror each other. We love playing one called, ‘Who’s in Charge?’ where we have someone leave the virtual room and we pick who’s in charge and we all try and mirror them. But we try and move together so perfectly that they can’t tell who’s leading and who’s following. And the other way that’s great is to number our names. So, most things like Microsoft Teams or Zoom, we can put our name. So, if you just put like Wayne 1, Andrew 2, Jessica 3, now we can play a game where we take turns speaking in that order so we can go in a little round. So, you can kind of create a virtual circle that way online, that’s another great trick I like to share.

WAYNE BROWN: You have a couple of nice videos on the website that I was intrigued by just watching the dynamics within the group and it was quite a large team. But there was certainly a lot of engagement and you could see the buy-in, which I thought was incredible. Being a facilitator myself and doing a lot of virtual courses and programs at the moment it’s such a hard thing to actually get to that point, so, I’m very intrigued by this. There’s a phrase, “yes and…” and I believe it’s fairly central to the whole improv world. That it’s your building statement, how do you use that in context?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, “yes and…” if people know anything about improv, they often have heard that phrase, “yes and…” And so, it’s not about always saying yes to everything but the yes is about agreeing to what you’ve started. So, if one person starts a scene saying, “oh, man, it’s crazy on the moon. It’s so nice here.” The other person says yes to the fact that we’re on the moon and then can build on the idea. And it’s so central because it’s easy to get a laugh by saying no but it instantly ends the scene.

[00:15:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: And so, the only way we build a scene is by keeping saying, “yes and…” to each other. And I think what’s beautiful about playing improv is to try to notice when in our day-to-day work lives when we’re saying, “yes and…” when we’re saying, “no.” So, oftentimes I like to help people think about how long can you wait before saying no. Sometimes when we’re in a meeting, someone starts sharing an idea and before they’ve even finished the idea in our head or out loud, sometimes we’re saying, “no, no, no, we tried that last year, it doesn’t work, we can’t do an offsite, that doesn’t work.” Or, “no, no, no, we tried an email marketing like that, it didn’t work.” And so before even fleshing out an idea, we’re saying no. So, improv can really help us think about, what if we just tried saying yes. So, like one game I love to play to even just start that yes, sometimes before we even get to the and, I want to practice just saying yes instead of no. So, I’ll play a game called ‘Band Names.’ This is a really simple one, Wayne, where you take turns with a partner making up a name for an imaginary band. Okay? And your only job as the partner is to say, “I love it, that’s a great band name.” Right? And the idea is just to notice, even though it doesn’t matter. Right? How quickly we judge things and judge ideas. So even if it’s just like, “oh, The Dolphins.” Right? Our brain very quickly is like, “I don’t know, is that a good band name? Maybe that’s not a good band name,” that we so quickly go to criticize even when there’s nothing at stake, it’s just a made-up band. So, I play that to get people thinking, what if at some point during your meetings, at some point in the office, you invited yourself to like turn off that critical brain for a moment and just encourage the other person. Right? To see their idea is great. So, when they come to you saying, “I think we should do a completely different marketing campaign,” and they start talking about it, before you poke holes in it, before you say no, just try saying yes for a bit. Just try thinking about it. I’m not saying you need to like throw a million dollars in every idea, but just mentally giving yourself that moment, you can really see where ideas go.

WAYNE BROWN: One of the things that I’ve experienced and I’ve seen in different companies is that the whole psychological safety space where it doesn’t exist when you encounter that type of thing, how do you overcome that in the early stages? How do you get people to shift that I’m reserved, I’m not really engaged, I don’t feel confident to speak out for fear of ridicule or making myself look silly, how do you overcome that in the beginning?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, it’s definitely a big challenge and something that folks talk to us about before we come in, saying, “my team are introverted,” or “my team are a little shy,” or, “they’re nervous about it.” I think we come in and, you know, one of the things we always say with Artly Working is we’re not asking you to be a Broadway performer right now, all we’re asking you is to notice and think about where you are on the scale of being up for things and try and just turn your dial like one little knot. Right? So that’s different for everyone. So, for some people I say if you just speak at all, if you come into the circle and say anything, for you that’s huge, for some people that is huge, and for other people they’re already there. So, it’s inviting people to say wherever you are, wherever you’re starting from is fine. We’re asking you to just notice, just start to notice, not judge yourself, not get angry and just try and like turn it up just a tiny bit. And the biggest part of it is that all doing it together, right? Is that so often I think in a workplace but in life in general we tell people you got to do that but we don’t do it ourselves. One of the things I look for when we visit organizations is, does the team leader or does the boss at a small organization, do they do the workshop with us? Right? Do they participate? Because when they do, they send the message to the team that like this is valuable, this is important and I’m going to put myself out there too, I’m going to risk embarrassment too. And that really sets a tone of participation and trust. But I think it really is about creating that safe space and then starting with really basic steps. I think people often think we’re going to come in and like build a stage and throw them up there and hand them a microphone and say, “go.” And that’s like level five, that’s like we get to five hours in. But we’re not starting there. We’re always starting with, like I said, silent games that get us to listen to each other with movement. Sometimes in partner games where we’re less afraid to make a mistake. This is something that I see with… I often think about the differences between kids and adults because I also do a lot of improv work with kids and teaching with kids. And kids when I ask for a volunteer, like every hand shoots up in the air and I don’t even ask for volunteers with adults because I know none of them will volunteer. Because we’re so scared of looking foolish that I just invite people to come up and I just say, “okay, Wayne, your turn. John, your turn. Jennifer, your turn.”

[00:20:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: Because it’s sadly something that happens to us in our lives where as kids, we’re afraid of missing out on the fun and as adults, we’re afraid of looking stupid, and that overrides things. And so, it’s finding that playfulness because, again, that ability to be not be afraid to have that crazy idea to look stupid can be so beneficial to the organization but a lot of times we are our own worst critic and we won’t even try. So, it’s creating that space to play has such ripple effects in all organizations.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, for sure. Are there any common signs when you’re working with these companies that you walk into a room and you can immediately see that there’s a lack of unity or there’s a lack of cohesion within that team?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, there’s definitely body language when you enter the room with a team or even body language sort of, online, like virtually like if folks are engaged and jumping in or distracted and their mind is elsewhere. So, it’s often the challenge to get folks to give our time. I think attention is one of our hardest things right now. You know, Chris Hayes just wrote this book about like the sirens call about the attention that we’re just being drawn constantly in different places. And so, when we’re online, that’s hard too, we always invite people like, go full screen, treat yourself, like, let your email sit for an hour, right? But it’s so hard for all of us to let things sit for a bit. So, with adults even, like I would do with teenagers, I invite them if they want to, to like put their phones down, put their phones to the side just as a gift to themselves of the focus. And a lot of teams are really… if they’re up for that, I know that they’re up for like doing what’s best for the team right now and they’re less worried about the day to day, they can see the big picture. So, that’s always great. But it is definitely a body language that you can feel in the room sometimes if the energy is high or low and how comfortable they are with each other, right? I really do think that it’s hard to have great ideas and great teams if you’re not comfortable with each other, if you don’t know each other, if you don’t have that trust, and trust doesn’t just happen, you have to work on it, you have to build it.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Our audience are largely leaders and if they’re sitting back listening to this, how would you approach this in the early stages of discussing with one of the leaders to come in and talk with their teams? How much time do they need to commit to? How regularly does this need to happen? What sort of information or input do we need to know?

ANDREW DAVIES: There’s definitely different services that we offer. What I usually try and recommend for folks is can you carve out an hour a month as a team to work on the trust as your team? Because for me, if you can say to your team that it’s worth it, at least for one hour a month, let’s say like noon on the first Friday of the month or whatever it is, that we’re going to do something as a team and some of those can be improv with us and some of those might be other things. But if you can put that focus, you as the leader, as the boss are saying to your team that you understand the value of your team and their trust of each other and that you’re actually going to put your money where your mouth is, you’re going to put the time into that. So that’s usually what I recommend. And for us that we can come in usually once or twice and give the team some tools that they can come back to. And so, we can help them design it. And we actually encourage them to have different people lead that monthly gathering. So, like different people lead each month. So, we have their voice, their perspective. But to build on both improv games in specific and also the participatory collaborative nature of that, even if it’s not an improv game, it might be something from their life. If they love Dungeons and Dragons bringing in something from that or if they’re a music person playing musical chairs with their team, whatever it is, right? It’s like bringing in that team trust. So that’s a big part of it. And then, we talk about specifically the different things that we offer. We do onboarding with teams where we design onboarding for all new employees. So, there are several organizations where every time a person joins the organization, we do part of their onboarding to help them think about the company values, but in a really hands-on way. So, the values aren’t just kind of abstract and on a website, but that they really feel them and experience them. So that’s one of the things I love. And then the other one, as you mentioned, I’m the Better Meetings director because I’ve designed like a three-visit plan to kind of work on better meetings as an organization, which is a real passion of mine.

WAYNE BROWN: What does that look like?

ANDREW DAVIES: What does a Better Meeting look like? Everyone listening is like, “I’ve never been to a good meeting, what does that look like?” So, it’s really again about like thinking about where you’re at as an organization with your meetings and then sharing a lot of the tools that I’ve found are super helpful and thinking about them.

[00:25:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: So, one thing I love to think about is, the A, B, Cs of Better Meetings that I share are affective, behavioral, cognitive. How do you want people to feel? A, affect. B is behavioral, what do you want people to do during your meeting and following your meeting? And C is cognitive, like, what do you want people to know? And I think so often folks don’t even take five or 10 minutes to think about those A, B, Cs or as an equivalent when they’re leading a meeting. And it really shows because they come in with like either the minutes from last meeting just going off that or just kind of jumping in and getting sidetracked every which way. And so, I share those tools with people and then I share some different improv games that I would use depending on your A, depending on how you want people to feel. If you want people to feel excited about how we’re doing, if you want people to feel nervous because we’re not making our quota, we’re not selling and our company is not going to make it if we don’t pick it up, there’s different tones for the meetings and that really affects how you conduct the meeting. So, we share kind of… and I’m happy to share with your listeners, we have like a one-page template that I share with folks. Like if you only have five minutes, here’s a checklist to go through for your meetings. But if you have more time, here are some of the principles and if it’s a big annual meeting, spend a day on it, spend a week on it, planning for it, and you’ll be better for it.

WAYNE BROWN: The A, B, C is very heavily rooted in psychology, so it has got a good foundation, right? So, the affect, behavioral, cognitive approach is very interesting.

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah.

WAYNE BROWN: In a larger organization, and some of the ones we mentioned earlier are larger organizations, you’re going to have departments and they typically form a silo. Have you had any experience where you try and bridge the silos, you bridge the gap between those silos to bring that unity to them?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, we definitely try to share our methodology and share like the A, B, Cs and encourage them to share that company-wide or if they have a version of it that works for them to share that because it’s definitely helpful to be on the same page, like when talking in between teams, right? But for us, it’s a lot of working with individual teams and the change kind of coming from the middle out, I guess, or the bottom up, right? From one team to another, seeing the effectiveness of it and talking to other team leaders. So, for us, it’s often about, for the team leaders, if our meeting system is working, if you’re finding more affective things, can you share those tools with other team leaders and kind of spread it that way? Because all these good organizations, the reason they’re good is because when there’s a good idea, it spreads, right? That when someone figures out the way to do something, that idea spreads. And that’s so important. Like so important spreading that around because, like you said, it’s crucial to have that in all these different departments. If you have one department that’s on a new routine and doing better, but other departments aren’t able to keep up, it is dissonant. So, it’s definitely helpful to work together. But we usually try and focus on teams, I would say of like 15 to 50 people that size of a group. We’re not trying to like meet with everyone at Facebook on the same day or, you know, everyone at these organizations for many obvious reasons. But I think it’s really like working with the leaders is great. Yeah.

WAYNE BROWN: Even 50 people is a large number, a large group to try and marshal and get them working together.

ANDREW DAVIES: For sure. For sure.

WAYNE BROWN: We spoke a little bit earlier about the whole concept of building that unity, building the team. One of the downsides that often gets thrown back or one of the negatives that people often refer to is it feels so much like a one off. We go away on a retreat and we work together and yes, it’s great for that moment, we’re all on the same page. But then we come back to the real world and life overtakes us again. So, I would imagine it becomes somehow habit-forming if you persist with it long enough. Is that your experience?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, it’s definitely a challenge that folks struggle with, right? Is that like you said, we go to this offsite, we have three days as a team, we feel amazingly bonded and then we get back to work the next week and it kind of feels like business as usual. So, a couple of ways that I try to combat that is one, like I said, in those initial conversations saying, set aside a time every month to check back in, right? Set aside a time knowing that life is going to happen and you’re going to need to like refill, you’re going to need to recharge. Once a year is not enough to like recharge your team and feel connected. Another one is that I really encourage folks to, even during our Better Meetings first session, think about an upcoming meeting and plan for that. Try out this methodology at your next meeting and for the next few weeks.

[00:30:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: Because it’s really in putting it into practice that we learn, right? I really feel we learn from doing, right? Not from learning, like we learn from putting things into practice, from teaching a methodology, right? I think that’s when we really understand something is when we can teach someone else that game or that approach or that methodology. And so, from the get-go, thinking about leading with that is so important. And the third and final thing I’d share is that, I think it was President Obama that often used the phrase, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” And I think that’s so important with things like meetings, is that sometimes folks will spend like three hours doing the methodology and planning one meeting and that meeting will be amazing but they’ll come away feeling like I can’t spend three hours planning every month’s meeting. That’s why I say, like, don’t let that be the enemy of the good. Even if you just have 10 minutes before the meeting to check in on those A, B, Cs, it’ll make such a difference and don’t beat yourself up for not spending five hours on it. Celebrate that you spent like 15 minutes before the meeting really solidifying that because oftentimes if we haven’t had those hours, we’re just like, “yeah, forget it, we’ll just see what happens, I won’t even spend any time.” And we kind of give up in advance. And so, it’s not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and doing what you can that really makes a difference, I think.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, for sure. My own style is I’m a collector of ideas and now I try and implement them and see how little I actually understood. But to your point, it’s when we do things that we actually learn. It’s not necessarily the learning, it’s when we try and implement. Are there any examples over the years that you’ve been involved in this that come to mind of a classic success story using improv to really build a team?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, absolutely. I’m thinking about a team that we worked with, I believe it was at Pinterest that we were working with, and we were helping them kind of feel confident as a team that all of them kind of took ownership of the projects they were working on and their specific team. We played a game that we love to play called ‘Speech’ where you get put on the spot in the middle of a circle and you have to give a speech, but you don’t know what the speech is about until you’re in the middle of the circle. And so, you get put on the spot, you have to make the speech. And at the time we unpacked how intimidating that felt for folks. And folks talked about on the team how this felt scary, it felt discouraging, overwhelming. And then we worked with them again like six months later and they told me a story of how two of their team members were going to present something and were sick that day and just kind of shared the slide deck with the team. And they were like, “someone else has got to present this, we can’t do it.” And they stepped up and they told me that the experience of knowing that they could be on the spot and kind of feel confident themselves that they had those skills, that they had experienced that high stakes feeling but could get through it was fine and that they did the presentation and it went great and that to their clients it didn’t feel any different. And so, I think for me that was an example of the way that the practice of improv that feels really high stakes prepares us for those truly high stakes moments where folks step out. Like, one story that I love to share with leaders, you mentioned a lot of your folks are leaders, is that some people know this but a lot of people don’t is that Martin Luther King that his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was essentially improvised, that he was at the Washington Mall with a completely different plan, it wasn’t going well and he was encouraged to tell them about the dream and he pivoted in that moment to share the ‘I Have a Dream speech’ and what an impact that made and he had told nuggets of it before and pieces of it. But the confidence to go with that in the moment I think was so important and I love to share that with leaders because I doubt they’re giving any speech that’s any more important than that speech and if he can recognize in that moment that it’s worth improvising to say what needs to be said that each of us in our organizations can recognize that whatever we’ve prepared, we’ve got to be in the moment and be ready to improvise to do what we need to do.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. One of the things that one of my mentors used to do with me was to say, okay, you’re up doing a presentation and you’re not sure exactly what questions are going to come back so practice three different questions for each presentation and improvise on the answer, don’t prepare the answer but improvise in giving the answer and it certainly gives you a higher sense of confidence and certainly that you’re going to be able to handle whatever gets thrown at you.

[00:35:00]

WAYNE BROWN: And I think that’s one of the things I love about improv is somebody can hand you a piece of paper with a word on it and you just have to run with it and take it from there and when you’re doing it in a team somebody is going to pick up something you say and continue to build and I think that is really the definition of teamwork.

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, absolutely, picking each other up. I think improv really makes the intangible very tangible. I think thinking on your feet leadership speaking feels to people often like these are things that are intangible, you can’t teach it or you either have it or you don’t but improv makes it very tangible, you feel it in the moment, you feel what it’s like to be completely starting from scratch or building off your friends’ idea and it makes it just very concrete in a way that’s helpful.

WAYNE BROWN: So, Andrew if a leader is out there listening to this and they like the concept, they want to get out there and try it, what’s the one thing that they could start doing tomorrow just to get the ball rolling with improv?

ANDREW DAVIES: I think that one thing they can do is to notice at their next gathering if they’re asking their team to think on their feet to improvise, to brainstorm, to collaborate in that way and like I was saying to start to notice, are they saying yes to each other, right? Is their team’s instinct to say, “yes and…” or is their instinct to say, “no, but…” first, right? And just to notice that, I think is really a first step because if you start to notice that your team, your organization is full of folks who are saying no to each other, you’re really shutting down ideas before you even hear them. So, I think that’s a great starting point and if you are feeling that, is a great place to ask, what can we do a little bit better? How can we encourage our team with their ideas. Seth Godin the prolific author and thinker has this phrase, ‘more bad ideas that I love,’ right? That the only way we get good ideas is more bad ideas and that’s really what improv is, is not being afraid to have more bad ideas. So, is your team encouraging each other to have more bad ideas or are they shutting them down and can you notice that and then try to turn the ship a little bit towards, “yes.”

WAYNE BROWN: Great advice. And any books that you recommend to sort of support that journey or any videos or websites people can go to and sort of develop their understanding of the whole concept?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, absolutely. I have like lots on my bookshelf around me, so I’ll think about what to recommend, there’s a book called ‘Business Improv, that’s a great one by Val Gee and Sarah Gee. I think which is all about improv games and applications for a team in the workplace and they encourage you to do like one a week. And each chapter is like a very short chapter with one game. So that’s a great one that’s very tangible. If you’re interested in kind of understanding improv a little bit more, my favorite book about that is called, ‘Do Improvise,’ by Robert Poynton. It’s a short book, it’s about a hundred pages, but he really succinctly breaks down what improv is. One of his phrases that I love is that, “in improv everything is an offer.” And how beautiful of a gift that is for your team. It’s not that everything that happens is good or every idea in improv is brilliant, but everything is an offer. Like, this weekend, I’m in Philadelphia as we record this, there were some Canadian fires that led to smoke and there’s like smoky conditions. And so, the weather was telling us like don’t go outside and this was like frustrating, I had all these plans for like a bike ride with my toddlers, such a fun weekend, but I thought okay everything is an offer, right? That’s what it is. And so instead we really had a creative indoor day, my wife got all our cardboard boxes from things and we built a robot queen with my two sons and they were decorating with stickers. So, ‘Do Improvise’ by Robert Poynton is a lot like that and there’s many more but I’d start there, with those two, I’ll share that.

WAYNE BROWN: Nice. Anything you’re working on at the moment that you’re sort of excited about or you see in the future?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, absolutely. So, with Artly working we’re really at the moment designing programs to do with college students because we’ve been talking a lot with folks about challenges specifically for the age cohort of folks in their 20s and the skill sets that they need for the workplace and how there are a lot of intergenerational problems in the workplace at the moment with 60-year-olds and 25-year-olds trying to communicate and we’re trying to help with that.

[00:40:00]

ANDREW DAVIES: And I’m working on my first book, kind of about my approach in my work, called ‘Participate’ and it’s really from personal courage to community change. The idea of the book is how improv can help us kind of find our own courage, find our own tools and help us to transform our communities both in the workplace, in our neighborhood, in our family using those tools of improv. So, I’m working on that this year and hoping for it to be out in mid-2026, I would say it’ll be out.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, that sounds like another appointment that you and I might have to have and we’re going to discuss the book.

ANDREW DAVIES: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would love that. I would love that.

WAYNE BROWN: Artly working, where did the organization stem from? Is this your creation or this is something that you joined?

ANDREW DAVIES: Yeah, so I’ve been a part of the brainstorming for this from the beginning. This is created by my good friend and collaborator Dave Klasko in Brooklyn, I guess about 10 years ago now and I’ve come on kind of about five years ago to really help him as we got really busy during the pandemic in figuring out how to do things online. And then like I said, my focus has really been on meetings and gatherings and those as kind of a critical crux point for teams of whether things are working or not. I think your team is like working or not all the time, but the meetings, the gatherings, are really when it comes to a head and you can see like, oh, we’re really cooking or like, oh, we’re really struggling. So yeah.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, we wish you all the best and Andrew Davies, thanks for being on the ET project.

ANDREW DAVIES: Absolutely. Thank you so much Wayne for having me and I’m so delighted to be with you.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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