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How the Three Pillars of Improv can help you raise your employee engagement survey scores

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Wow

2018 was a banner year in employee engagement. Gallup found that 34% of employees surveyed were “Engaged”. Employees who are “Engaged” are the ones who are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.  This was the highest percentage of employees to say they were Engaged since Gallup started measuring in 2000. But even with these high levels, 66% of those surveyed continue to say, “I’m not feeling Engaged”. With a roaring economy that’s at almost full employment, no company can afford to have so many employees ready to leave their job when a slightly better offer comes along.

Employee satisfaction/engagement surveys can be a powerful tool to help you understand the mood, morale, and motivation level of your employees. Let’s take a look at how engagement surveys can be broken down between what can be addressed through management directives and what would benefit from a change in the organization’s culture. Then I’ll walk through how The Three Pillars of Improv™ can help build and maintain the soft skills that will make the desired changes.

The Low Hanging Fruit: Information And Empowerment

  • Is the employee empowered in the organization in a way which allows them to be successful?

The first set of questions I’d like to look at are the information and empowerment questions on an engagement survey. These are mostly aimed at discovering how the employee feels about their place in the structure of the organization and how information is disseminated to them. Because the feedback to these questions can be relatively easy to understand many organizations consider these questions to be the low hanging fruit of the survey. The solutions tend to be the easiest to identify and quickest to implement.

Let’s look at a common question on engagement surveys, “Do you have a clear understanding of the strategic objectives of the organization?” If employees say they feel they don’t understand where the organization is heading then management has something concrete which they can take actions to improve.

To clear up a feeling around a lack of information about the organization’s strategic goals, management can take several steps to improve how knowledge is transferred throughout the organization. For example, C-level leadership could host in-person town hall meetings with Q&A about their goals and initiatives. Additionally, they could direct marketing to create a newsletter with updates about where the organization is heading and what employees can do to help meet these goals.

A powerful way to help employees feel empowered is to set up solutions in one-on-one meetings. In these meetings, managers discuss the roadblocks employees feel are getting in their way and what management can do to remove them.

Changes in the employee’s satisfaction due to implementing these initiatives may take a while to work their way through to the survey responses. However, low hanging fruit like this provides management with the opportunity to quickly take decisive actions towards solutions. Employees will see these steps being implemented and after they believe that management is committed to these changes over the long term the employee feelings believe in the effort being made and feel more engaged. Employee feelings will shift… office culture will change… and survey scores will reflect this.

The Hard To Reach High Up Fruit: Soft skills

  • To what extent does the employee feel part of a successful team?
  • Is the employee’s relationship with management effective?
  • Does the employee feel they are valued?

It is often the invisible factors which have the highest impact on employee happiness. A recent report on employee engagement by TINYpulse shows the organization’s culture reigns supreme when it comes to employee engagement. “The top factors related to employee happiness turn out to be the intangible ones: interpersonal relationships, culture, and work environment. If your employees don’t like your culture, it’s impossible to take your organization where you want it to go.”

So much of an employee’s engagement is related to the organization’s culture. Management’s challenge in raising engagement scores is to find effective ways to make improvements which will impact the soft skills question responses.

For example, a common question on an employee engagement survey is, “Is your team an inspiration for you to do your best at the job?” Imagine your employees gave you low marks on this question. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just give your team lead the directive: “Go out there and make your team more inspirational!” and *POOF* everyone begins to work together like a well-oiled machine? If that’s worked for you in the past, that’s awesome! Most team leads I’ve seen would shrug their shoulders and say, “Great! I’d love to! But… I thought I was already being an inspiration. How do I get there from here?” (Spoiler Alert: Answers are below…)

Another question which appears on employee engagement surveys is, “Do you feel connected to your coworkers?” An important finding in the TINYpulse report was that “Coworkers are the number one thing employee’s love about their job.” Of course, that finding could be read to say, “The rest of my job is so awful that the people at the office, no matter how rotten they may be, are the thing I most look forward to about coming to work.” But let’s toss the pessimism aside and assume that this response means, “I like my job. And with that said I really enjoy being with my coworkers.” If only there was a way to effectively cultivate those coworkers relationships so everyone felt more satisfied with their job and gave us higher marks on the engagement survey…

Using The Three Pillars of Improv™  To Build A Positive Office Culture

The closer your employees feel towards one another, the more productive your team will be. You’ll also find they provide better service to their customers and interact in a more positive way with employees across the organization. The Three Pillars of Improv are designed to build a feeling of teamwork, empathy, and creativity. Once employees begin to use the tools we teach in our workshops, they are likely to form the close bonds with their co-workers which are so important in raising engagement scores. OK, so how can you use the Three Pillars of Improv in your office to create these results?

The first Pillar of Improv is to always say, “Yes! And…” Now, this doesn’t mean you always have to agree with what some else says, and it certainly does not turn you into a Jim Carrey style Yes Man (or woman). A “Yes! And…” frame of mind means that you are actively engaging with the people you are talking with in a positive way. You’re looking for the best outcome for everyone. When you say “Yes!” in a conversation you are acknowledging that you fully heard and understood what the other person said to you. Saying “And…” has you working with what you heard the other person say and moving the conversation forward. When people actively listen to each other in this way it helps to build closer, more trusting relationships.

The Second Pillar of Improv is to suspend judgments. When someone is talking to you, how often are you thinking ahead about what you’re going to say once… they… finally… stop… talking? We’re human. And all humans want to think ahead so we can apply patterns that have worked for us in the past to our present situation.  From time to time this means our mind wanders when we’re talking to someone even though we know we should be paying closer attention. Working with the second pillar reminds us of how important it is to quiet the conversation we have with ourselves in our heads. We learn to suspend our judgments about what the other person is saying so we are not thinking, “Is what they’re saying good/bad, right/wrong, important/fluffy?” When we suspend those judgments, we can be fully engaged in the conversation. The second pillar is all about listening first to understand and only after that do we speak to be understood. Learning effective techniques to listen more effectively helps build a positive office culture. That, of course, leads to improved employee engagement.

The Third Pillar of Improv is to always make your partner look good. Imagine an office where there are no ego battles, everyone is altruistic, and everyone is working to lift the other people up to their maximum potential. Like Lennon said, “You may think I’m a dreamer” but I believe that this is the most important change to a culture that a company can institute.

Don’t get me wrong, competition when done right, is a great thing. When competition is used to challenge and encourage each other to do our best, we can only get stronger as a team. The “Big Learning” from the third pillar is that I don’t need to beat anyone else down even when I’m competing at full strength. The part I really love about the third pillar is that when I’m working to make you look good, and I trust that you’re doing the same, the dividends paid to both of us are amazing. Bickering and squabbles disappear, teams are more productive, silos disappear, and the positivity is infectious.

If your office culture is more like The Game of Thrones than The Flash, imagine how powerful it would be to have the type of supportive culture in your office which the third pillar creates. Now imagine interacting with your clients with the intention of “Today we are going to make you look like a superhero.” How much more successful could your organization be if you were using the three pillars every day?

Practice Makes You Better

The fruit that comes from building a culture with effective soft skills is higher up on the tree, no doubt about it. It takes time, effort, and consistency to move these responses in a positive direction on an engagement survey. Many companies say they want to improve the culture, but almost as many fail to follow through with conviction. It’s important for management to touch base with their teams and continuously strive for improv(e)ment.

When you participate in an ImprovThis a workshop, at the end of a session you’ll be asked to think about a key takeaway that you want to bring to life. Next, you’ll be asked to find at least one specific way over the next seven days you will take what you learned in the workshop and implement it in real life. The next step is to schedule a meeting with another workshop participant at the end of those seven days. You’ll get together and discuss how both of your goals went… what worked for you and what you could have done differently if it didn’t go as expected. This discussion could be a one on one, but it is just as effectively done in a small group setting with several people who were in the workshop together. We encourage you to continue to set new goals and have weekly meetings to talk about how your goals went. The longer organizations continue to set and meet these goals, the more likely the lessons learned in the workshop will become a part of the culture.

Watch Your Engagement Scores Rise

At the end of the day, surveys are only a measurement tool. They can give you some insights you may not have been able to see in any other way, but surveys are not solutions in and of themselves. Nor should their results be used as the end goal. If your culture is one made up of saying “Yes! And…”, suspending judgements, and making your partner look good, chances are the engagement scores will be the icing on the cake of an awesome workplace culture.

Steve at the Red Cross 091818

Case Study: How the Three Pillars of Improv™ helped the American Red Cross

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Foreword:

I want to start by saying I was honored to be invited to present a teambuilding workshop to the American Red Cross of Chicago & Northern Illinois earlier this week. On a personal level, I was excited to work with the Red Cross. I’ve always been a huge fan of the work they do and I’m humbled by their mission to make the lives they touch better in times of emergencies. While I know what I did pales in comparison, I’m glad I was able to give them a ray of sunshine in a dark and stormy hurricane season.

When I sat down a few months ago with Dawn Breen, Regional Volunteer Services Officer for the American Red Cross of Chicago & Northern Illinois, we discussed what the American Red Cross was looking to achieve by partnering with ImprovThis. The key takeaways from that conversation formed the direction for what would eventually turn into the workshop ImprovThis presented earlier this week.

Designing around pain points:

The Red Cross had a few opportunities for growth they were looking to address. First, this region covers a large geographic area and they have staff and volunteers spread out across multiple offices. Their quarterly meeting presents a relatively rare opportunity which brings everyone together in a single location. The Red Cross wanted ImprovThis to create a feeling of everyone being one big team and to break down the barriers that the physical distance between the offices creates.

Second, we knew this time of year is a busy season for bad weather and disasters. The Red Cross asked ImprovThis to focus on light-hearted exercises and to “Bring The Fun!” The goal was to create a memorable experience where the participants would feel motivated and encouraged to use the tools they learned in the workshop once they return to their home offices.

Of course, everything was not going to be just fun and games. The Red Cross Leadership Team planned to present the results from the most recent Engagement survey during this meeting. They wanted to get everyone ready and excited to offer input on what initiatives could be taken to improve the survey scores over the coming year. With this in mind, they asked ImprovThis to create an environment where the staff and volunteers would feel creative and ready to think of out-of-the-box solutions.

Designing the solution:

After our initial conversation, Dawn and I landed three high-level goals for the teambuilding workshop:

  • Creating a closer bond between people who may not work together on a regular basis
  • Working across the organization’s departments to problem solve together
  • Instilling a feeling of empowerment, value, and appreciation in employees

With these goals as the starting point, we worked together to design a custom workshop for the Red Cross that fit into the meeting’s time constraints and delivered superior results. First, we focused on activities which would get the team up to speed on the Three Pillars of Improv™ as quickly as possible. Then I suggested several exercises that would have everyone interacting with people they may not normally interact with.  While all that was happening, there was a considerable weight put on “Bring The Fun!” because we were focused on the staff and volunteers building positive relationships with their teammates.

Our solution:

We decided that ImprovThis would facilitate six activities for the teambuilding workshop. We’d begin with some physical and voice warm-up exercises which participants could use to improve their effectiveness in public speaking. These warm-ups set the tone for the workshop by being fun and goofy.

The next section of the workshop looked at teambuilding and increasing the Emotional Intelligence (EQ) of the participants. The activities in this section trained the participants on how to use the Three Pillars of Improv™ to create stronger connections with their teammates. The discussion after each exercise provided examples of how they could use each pillar in their everyday life.

Some of the exercises were done in pairs and others had them working in small teams. Before each exercise, they were instructed to seek out people they may not normally interact with. Each of these exercises focused on at least two of the three goals Red Cross had set for the workshop including:

  • How to use the teambuilding skills to create stronger connections across teams
  • The importance of listening to understand before talking to be understood
  • Finding ways to work together to find creative solutions for difficult problems

Success Story:

Unfortunately, this team meeting was scheduled a few days after hurricane Florence made landfall in the Carolinas and required a response from the Red Cross. Even as many of their teammates were deployed for disaster relief, those who stayed behind to run the offices came together in downtown Chicago for their quarterly meeting.

At the beginning of the workshop, some individuals expressed a concern that they were going to get stuck doing exercises like “Now… act like a tree!” But as soon as the warm-up exercises kicked in, so did the fun and those fears quickly evaporated. (As a side note, no one had to act like a tree at any time during the workshop.)

Everyone was very involved throughout the workshop’s activities. The discussions that followed each exercise had an energy that was electric and contagious. The quantitative feedback from the participants paints a broad picture of how they felt about the workshop:

  • How helpful were the Improv activities in bringing the workshop’s content to life?
    4.73 points out of 5 possible
  • How likely are you to apply the concepts taught in the ImprovThis workshop?
    4.64 points out of 5 possible

The verbatim comments from the post-workshop survey help build the full picture of the success of this teambuilding workshop:

Fantastic experience. Stimulated great interaction and thought on how to communicate differently. – Mark B.

I really enjoyed the exercises and appreciated the fresh and interactive approach. This is just what we needed – thankful for the very memorable experience. – Erin C.

It was energetic and fun; allowed for learning + reflecting in a very positive way. Also encouraged working with people I may not have interacted with before or on a regular basis. – Emily B.

I highly recommend to anyone who works on a team! – Hannah M.

Before we could call the day a full success, we have to take a look at the effect the workshop had on the roundtable sessions. Remember, after the teambuilding exercises the Red Cross Leadership Team had work to do. They hosted several breakout sessions around areas the engagement survey results called attention to. The creative mindset the ImprovThis workshop cultivated lead the way for the roundtable discussions to be very effective in their brainstorming. As a result:

These roundtables were very successful. The ImprovThis teambuilding exercises helped bring the staff together. We came out of the discussions with some great ideas that may not have come to light without the tools the team learned in the workshop. – Dawn Breen.

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What sets ImprovThis apart from the rest

Other companies who do improv training may do a great job of entertaining you and your team with a funny show. Often corporate training is a side business compared to their theater shows and comedy classes. We will be entertaining as facilitators, don’t you worry. But our focus is on helping you build a positive, creative, and passionate corporate culture.

At ImprovThis our sole mission is to create fun, hands-on workshop style training sessions to build closer, more collaborative teams. We also focus on working with your team so these skills are implemented after the workshop and provide tools to ensure the learning becomes part of the culture.

To learn more about ImprovThis or to schedule a time to talk to us, check us out at:

www.improvthis.com

Noodles & Chopsticks

Emotional Intelligence (EQ), Improv, and the art of eating with chopsticks

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First date

What do chopsticks, improv, and teambuilding all have in common?

You are on a first date at the hot new Asian food restaurant everyone is raving about. As you look around, you see how others make it look so easy. They effortlessly use their chopsticks to pick up a single grain of fried rice that has strayed too far from the rest. You are doing your best… but you are just moments away from stabbing the sweet and sour shrimp that’s taunting you as it slips out of your grasp for the fourth time. Perhaps your date, who you wanted desperately to impress, tries to talk you through how to use chopsticks. They walk you through which fingers to use, where to place your fingers, and how to squeeze just right. While the double entendre is enticing, you’re struggling to apply everything they’re telling you and it’s just not working. You’re fully convinced that the sauced up shrimp is going to get the better of you. Luckily the waiter takes pity on you and shows you how to make a contraption using the wrapper and a rubber band. Now you have a set of thong-chopsticks. At least you’re not going to starve.

Date number two

This time your date doesn’t just tell you how to do it differently, they show you how to hold the chopsticks differently. The shrimp that were once vexing you are now rarely escaping your grasp. Now that you have the physical motion down you’re not worried you’ll have to go to bed without dinner. Each shrimp you manage to catch gets exponentially easier and the more you practice the easier it becomes. Your willingness to try something new and maybe look a bit goofy, learn through lots of repetition, and then practicing what you learned were the keys to success.

Chopsticks and EQ

Emotional Intelligence is a lot like learning to eat with chopsticks. They both take practice and you can become more skilled the more you practice.

Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a measure of your ability to reason about emotions and emotional information. This includes recognizing, understanding and managing feelings in ourselves and using this to interact with other people effectively. Unlike your IQ which is determined at the beginning of your life and relatively constant after that, your EQ can be trained and improved as you grow older.

No one is born with the skills to be a master at either chopsticks or EQ. But with practice, commitment to improving, and people who are willing to show the way you can learn to use both effectively. Mastering both of them may help you to get that third date.

Or… land your next step in your career. Many experts feel that EQ is just as important, if not more important, than your IQ for being successful at work.

  • In their book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves say, “People with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20% of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70% of the time.”
  • When writing about EQ for Fast Company Kes Thygesen says, “When someone has these qualities, they have the ability to work well with others and are effective in leading change. However, when someone is just “book smart,” they may not necessarily have emotional intelligence and therefore have a harder time learning from their mistakes.”

So while being intelligent is good, being able to work with others in an effective way is better. If I were asked by a genie if I’d rather have a high IQ or a high EQ, I’d answer, “Both”.  As it turns out if I wanted to be more effective in building relationships I’d most likely be better to go after the EQ.

EQ can be taught

Just like using chopsticks, there are many in the academic world who want to conduct research to see if we can improve our skills as life goes on. Ok. Maybe there is not as much research on chopsticks. On the other hand, John D. Mayer is a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire and is an expert in personality psychology and measurement. He was interviewed for an article in Scientific American and he lays out the case that adults can improve what he calls “emotional competence”. When talking about curricula focused on a person’s emotional functioning or ability to learn about emotions he says, “…the programs improve students’ social interactions, well-being and sometimes even academic achievement. The few studies that have focused exclusively on adult learning appear to follow the same pattern, so there is a good reason to believe that emotional knowledge and functioning can be enhanced in adulthood.”

the good news is that unlike your IQ your emotional intelligence can be improved. Sure, it takes some training and practice but in the end, you have the ability to improve one of the most important building blocks which defines who you are and how successful you’re likely to be.

Improv as an effective way to train your EQ

/im · prov/: a form of theatre in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted. It is created spontaneously by the performers. – Wikipedia

Successful improvisers get together regularly to “practice”. Practicing seems to be the antithesis of unplanned and unscripted. But in actuality, it is an integral part to the success of creating spontaneously. You see, improvisers have a set of “rules” they follow that help make sure they are all working together and going in the same direction, especially when no one knows the final destination. A good deal of an improviser’s practice time is dedicated to activities that focus on training EQ at the ensemble level so all of the players on a team have these skills. At ImprovThis we’ve distilled these rules into the Three Pillars of Improv™:

  1. Say “YES! And…”
  2. Suspend Judgements
  3. Make my partner look good

Approaching every conversation with the energy of “Yes! And..” leads to finding answers to sticky problems, being more creative in your solutions, and creating a culture of ownership and investment. Suspending judgments of other people’s ideas so that a full discussion of the idea can happen helps to keep emotions in check when the going gets rough. When a team is actively focused on making their partners look good it creates a culture of responsibility and accountability, blaming others and “not my circus, not my monkeys” is rarely heard.

If you read the above paragraph from the point of view of a theater troupe, now take a second to re-read it with the point of view of a manager running a marketing team. Or a call center team leader. Or just about any team in a corporate environment from the C-Suite all the way to the front line sales people. These tools are effective in building strong teams in just about every aspect of life.

Using these skills on a daily basis will help to improve your EQ. But the real power of doing Improv training is that it is a format where your entire team can learn these skills together. Having your team work together on exercises specifically designed to build what Bradberry & Greaves describe as “social competence skills” can help them to recognize ways they can increase Emotional Intelligence across the organization. Taking that step in unison can have a profound impact on the culture of a corporate team.

What sets ImprovThis apart from the rest

Other companies who do improv training may do a great job of entertaining you and your team with a funny show. Often corporate training is a side business compared to their theater shows and comedy classes. We will be entertaining as facilitators, don’t you worry. But our focus is on helping you build a positive, creative, and passionate corporate culture.

 

At ImprovThis our sole mission is to create fun, hands-on workshop style training sessions to build closer, more collaborative teams. We also focus on working with your team so these skills are implemented after the workshop and provide tools to ensure the learning becomes part of the culture.

 

To learn more about ImprovThis or to schedule a time to talk to us, check us out at:

www.improvthis.com

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How the Three Pillars of Improv can help your employees avoid the “Six signs that it’s time to quit your job”

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About a 7 minute read

A few weeks ago, Stephanie Vozza posted an article at Fast Company titled “Here are six signs that it’s time to quit your job”. Check out her article, it’s a good read. She wrote about how tough it can be to go to work day in and day out if you’re experiencing these symptoms:

  1.  You don’t want to get out of bed
  2. Relationships at work are toxic
  3. You’re losing interest
  4. You aren’t getting sufficient recognition
  5. The company has high turnover
  6. Your role is becoming less important

I’m going to refer to these as the Six Signs. We’ve all been there, and I if I felt all those things, I’d certainly see the appeal of jumping ship and looking for a greener pasture.

As someone who works to improve team communications and create positive corporate cultures when I saw these Six Signs my mind went right to, “What can management do to avoid this type of environment?” True, it’s not all management’s fault. Some people are just not the right fit for a particular corporate environment. And it’s also true that some managers and even entire companies just don’t care about creating a great culture in their employees. But for those of us who want to attract and keep top talent, it’s important to have the tools that will help us avoid the Six Signs.

I want my clients to be able to create a culture filled with passion, commitment, and joie de vivre in their company. One where they’re focused, on point, having fun, and bringing in cool clients and even cooler bonuses. Of course that type of environment takes real work to create. The solution I’ve found is to focus on making three simple activities a part of everyday life:

  1. Communicate with empathy
  2. Respect everyone
  3. Celebrate Success

THE THREE PILLARS OF IMPROV

One of the coolest things about working with the Three Pillars of Improv is that when they are put into practice empathetic communications, radical respect, and celebrations start to occur naturally.

Pillar number one: Always say, “Yes! And…”

Imagine constantly hearing “No” when you bring new ideas to your boss. It can zap morale faster than summer disappears in grade school. People start to feel like their creativity and contributions don’t matter and they aren’t being recognized for the ideas they have. If that feeling continues they’ll start to lose interest in sharing their ideas and the passion for their job is not far behind. Saying “No”, even when you are using different words to do it, will create a culture of negativity and bring your employees closer to the Six Signs it’s time to quit.

The antidote to creating a culture of “No” is to say “Yes! And…” to everything. The important thing about saying “Yes!” is that you are acknowledging what you are being told, not that you necessarily agree that the idea they are bringing to you. The driving force behind saying “Yes!” is that it will help everyone get on the same page and agree on what the common ground is. The next step of saying “And…” is just as important. The “And…” is where everyone involved talks about the idea, suggests ways to improve the idea, and finds a solution that will have everyone better off than when the conversation started. In improv, we call this exploring and heightening.

I’m always impressed at how powerful these two simple words are when I’m working with clients. They find they start saying “Yes! And…” they are more positive, open, and creative in their solutions than they were in the past. These clients get bonus points awarded because they have flipped the culture. Rather than an employee getting told “No” and feeling unrecognized or unimportant, they feel they are contributing to the solution.

Pillar number two: Suspend Judgements

We’ve all been there. Someone has come to us with an idea that turns the status quo completely upside down. Our first thought is, “That’s so crazy, there’s no way that could possibly work!” Now imagine how you’d feel if your thoughts and ideas were constantly being judged as wrong or not good enough. You may start to feel you are being ridiculed as too far out there or the one with bad ideas. I know when I’ve been in situations like this I’ve wanted to actively avoid working with those who were constantly putting me down. I was certainly not looking forward to getting out of bed and spending the next eight hours working with those people. And forget about working to find creative solutions to their problems.

As management, saying “Yes! And…” is a good first step towards a solution. But to make it more effective we need to Suspend Judgements. This is the second pillar of improv. It tells us to take our judgments of “He’s got his head in the clouds” and “That idea is never gonna work” and put them in the parking lot.

When we combine Suspend Judgements by saying “Yes! And…” we are actively creating a workplace where new ideas are embraced and the people who bring them to light are honored. As management, creating an environment where employees feel this way will help to build a culture that will keep those talented people inspired to make our products and services stronger when they come to work every day.

Pillar number three: Make my partner look good

Finally, imagine a time when you’ve worked crazy hours all week to build a presentation for your manager. You’ve nailed it. The slides are ready to go and you’ve prepped your boss on every possible front. You’re sitting in the back of the room as watch as they present your work. Your heart sinks lower and lower as your boss takes credit for everything you’ve done with no mention of you at all. No one wants to feel this way.

It could be that your boss is selfish and wants to keep all the glory for themselves. It could be that they are scared that if you give you the credit you’ll end up taking their job. Or it could be any number of other reasons. No matter the reason, creating an environment where people are feeling used and discarded is a sure path towards the Six Signs.

The best groups I’ve worked with are the ones where management and employees who consider themselves to be more than just a team. They consider themselves to be partners. I’m not saying they are equal partners, management still needs a viable chain of command. But when everyone feels they are involved in a project together, they reach the finish line much more effectively. They are working towards the same goal and they know they are getting their fair share of the work, rewards, and accolades.

“Making my partner look good” is a two-way street. We’ve all been on the worker bee side of the street where we make the honey and someone else gets to eat it. From the management side of the street, it’s just as important to make sure we’re working just as hard to make them look good. When I present someone else’s work to a customer I always give them credit by name and thank them for their contribution. It’s a small thing for me to do. When they know they will be treated as a partner not just in the work but in the recognition too, they feel that much more invested in the outcome. Making your partners look good is a step in the direction of not only attracting the best and brightest people but getting them to suggest their bright friends come work for you as well.

Pulling it all together

The Three Pillars can help build a corporate culture that actively keeps the Six Signs at bay. Suspending Judgements and always saying “Yes! And…” will have your teams communicating with empathy and finding the antidote to negativity and creating the three simple activities I mentioned at the top of this post:

  1. Communicate with empathy
  2. Respect everyone
  3. Celebrate Success

How can improv training help make your workplace even better?

At ImprovThis our sole mission is to create fun, hands-on workshop style training sessions to build closer, more collaborative teams. Our focus is on helping you build a positive, creative, and passionate corporate culture.

We create and facilitate activities which bring the Three Pillars of Improv to life in a way that allows your team to see how to use the tools in their everyday activities. We also provide you with the tools to ensure the learning becomes part of the culture so the benefit of the training will last long after the workshop is over.

To learn more about how ImprovThis can help you or if you’d like to schedule a time to talk to us, click the button below to go to our website: www.improvthis.com

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Millennials feel their employers are investing in their talent and humanity

The “Three Pillars of Improv” help Millennials use humor to build an authentic and fun communication style

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Millennials are looking for a work environment where their employers are investing in their talent as well as their humanity.

Imagine a world where everyone comes to the office everyday revved up and ready to go. You walk through the hallway to your desk knowing that your team is like a family. The functional kind of family that is. Sr. Leadership is fostering an amazingly positive workplace culture, everyone is encouraging creativity and productivity to flourish. People at your company understand how to work as one big team and they support each other to do their best on every project.

Does this sound like a normal day at your office? If so, you are well on your way to creating an atmosphere of collaboration that will pay dividends well into the future. If not, continue reading and we’ll show you how you can take the steps to move your team from as deep as the doldrums up to a whole new world.

What’s missing from the workplace these days?

The traditional “office” is changing. People are working remotely more often, whether it’s due to “At Home Fridays” or because they sit on the other side of the country. Communication styles are changing as fast as new technology and websites can be introduced. And, as always, workers are expected to do more with less. As humans, we have a huge capacity to accept “the new normal” in stride. However, we may not notice how this is impacting us and our workplace until the warning signs are too big to ignore. Signs may include:

  • Remote workers are feeling disconnected from the team
  • Stifled creativity and passion
  • Messages getting communicated ineffectively
  • Falling productivity
  • A culture of cynicism and negativity appearing
  • People looking for a self-win rather than a win for the team

It’s easy for leadership to give the direction, “A happy office is a productive office, so BE HAPPY!” But the management has the question “How do I make that happen, exactly?” This is often elusive to answer. (Spoiler: We’ll tell you how in a little bit.)

Some companies try to answer the question with an offsite meeting. So they go to Las Vegas. Leadership gives powerful motivational speeches. Employees are busy with clanking knives as they eat their way through a chicken dinner. Then for the highlight of the evening, everyone is “invited” to go to the bar next door to sing karaoke as a team building event.

Other companies simply put a foosball table in the break room.

If those solutions work for you, then that’s great! And if they keep everyone motivated for the long run, then that’s even better. However, we often see those solutions being stop gaps at best because they miss the heart of the issue.

How good is your company at creating the environment that attracts the best talent?

There is a fundamental shift happening in the American workplace as Millennials begin to make up the largest percentage of the workforce. As every generation does, they are changing the way the workplace looks. Business Insider reported on a study by PGI saying:

  • 71% of Millennials want their co-workers to be a second family
  • 88% want a fun and social environment (60% of Boomers feel this way)

How good of a job is your company doing in providing this type of atmosphere?

Far from being the generation lost in their iPhones, Millennials are leading a paradigm shift by demanding that their time in the office be more inclusive, more collaborative, and dare I say it: “More Happy.”

Also, as a generation that grew up with advertising at every turn and corporate self-indulgence that almost wrecked the global economy, they are a generation which highly values authenticity. Both for Millennials who are your employees as well as your customers, it’s important for everyone in your company to learn how to communicate in an authentic manner.

The trick is building a corporate culture which both embraces authenticity and creates a familial environment that brings “The Happy” in full force.

Humor builds authentic, fun communication

I know most people don’t pour over humor research as much as I do so let me share a few fun facts. Bringing humor into the office has many potential upsides including productivity goes up(American Psychological Association), people are less stressed(www.sciencedaily.com), you get paid more(Harvard Business Review), and you, your team, and your stakeholders are happier (Journal of Aging Research).

Additional research(TEDx Talk by Andrew Tarvin) shows the main reasons people don’t use humor at work are:

  • Fear that the boss/co-workers won’t approve of using humor
  • People don’t know how to use humor or just don’t think they’re funny

Overcoming the roadblocks

The first issue is easy to overcome. Just by bringing a training company like ImprovThis in to do a presentation you’ll demonstrate to your team your office is an environment where using humor is not only approved of but it’s encouraged.

To break through the second concern, ImprovThis has developed “The Three Pillars of Improv”. This is a unique way of looking at the rules improvisers use to be successful on stage and we have created training activities based on these rules that work well in the workplace.

Many people have a fear of trying to use humor because they have it confused with actually being funny. Our workshops focus on using humor as a communication skill, not on being an entertainer. This takes away any pressure felt around trying to find laughs.

What sets ImprovThis apart from the rest

Other companies who do improv training may do a great job of entertaining you and your team with a funny show. Often corporate training is a side business compared to their theater shows and comedy classes. At ImprovThis our sole mission is to create fun, hands-on workshop style training sessions to build closer, more collaborative teams. We will be entertaining as facilitators, don’t you worry, but our goal is to help you make your environment one that you and your team are looking forward to driving through rush hour traffic to get to. Daily.

To learn more about ImprovThis or to schedule a time to talk to us, check us out at:
www.improvthis.com

Emotional Intelligence Venn Diagram

Improv helps you develop your EQ (Emotional Intelligence)

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noun: emotional intelligence

The capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
“emotional intelligence is the key to both personal and professional success”

Who are you? Who, who? Who who?
(Hint: It’s your IQ, Personality, and EQ)

You define your world through the three parts of “You” which combine to create a unique person. Think of yourself as a Venn diagram where three distinct circles overlap in the middle to explain who you are as a whole. Those three circles contain your Intelligence Quotient, Personality Type, and Emotional Intelligence. Where they overlap and the way they connect with each other creates a good model to understand who you are and how you interact with the world around you. Understanding how these three parts of you interact and how learning how you can develop your EQ are certain to have a significant impact on your success.

Everyone’s favorite graph: Your Venn Diagram

First, there’s your Intelligence Quotient (IQ). This defines your capacity to learn new things from books, training classes, etc. It’s your ability to reason and solve problems… it’s your “Wonk Factor”. Most researchers believe a person’s IQ is reasonably stable through adult life, it won’t move more than a point or two no matter what you do. Studying and learning will help make you smarter about those topics, but I’m sorry to report those brain training websites are unlikely to make your capacity to learn any better. You’re likely to be as Wonky today as you’ll ever be.

Second, there’s your Personality Type. I like to think of personality type as being a combination of Personality and Temperament. Temperament is like the canvas of a painting, it’s an inherited trait which creates the underlying fabric of who you are. Personality is what you as the artist have built on top of the canvas. No matter if you are a Bob Ross “wet-on-wet” landscape with tons of layers painted on top of each other or a Jackson Pollock “drip” painting with wild sprays of color everywhere, all the brush strokes come together to build the tinted glasses you see the world through. Most of the experts tell us that your personality type is inborn and does not change. Of course, you can train yourself to recognize areas of your personality where you want to act differently and train yourself how to act in a way that is contrary to your personality type. But at the end of the day, you are always going to interpret the world through your specific tinted glasses. Even if you’ve learned to act and react in a way that’s working better for you than what your base instincts are pushing you towards, you can’t change the color your glasses are tinted.

Third, there’s EQ, or your level of Emotional Intelligence. Psychology Today defines EQ as

“The ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. It is generally said to include three skills: emotional awareness; the ability to harness emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving; and the ability to manage emotions, which includes regulating your own emotions and cheering up or calming down other people.” Personally, I like to think of EQ as, “your behavior towards yourself and others”.

And here’s the kicker: Your EQ is not set in stone by your childhood or genetic inheritance. EQ id the only part of who you are which can be changed through deliberate training and practice. But like anything that’s worth changing, it takes real work and dedication to make a change.

Be the change you want to see

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzicat writing for the Harvard Business Review says: Good coaching programs do work.

The metrics he’s found in his research are quite compelling. With a well-designed coaching program improvements of 25% can easily be achieved with the most coachable element of EQ, interpersonal skills, showing a 50% improvement in the short term. In his article he points out:

  •          Coaching around Psychological flexibility — the ability to accept and deal with (as opposed to avoiding) unpleasant situations — is effective
  •          No human behavior is unchangeable
  •          Good coaching programs do work.
  •          The benefits of EQ-coaching are not just confined to the workplace, they improve health, happiness, social interactions, and reduce stress
  •          The most important aspect of effective EQ-coaching is giving people accurate feedback

Improvisers need to develop their EQ

Granted, Improv is often seen as nothing more than a night out at a theater. We go to experience actors entertaining us with fun scenes based on suggestions which we, the audience, shout out to them. While that is certainly true, at ImprovThis we take having fun seriously. One way we do that is we teach how to use the “Three Pillars of Improv” in a way that improves your EQ.

In order for your night at the theater to be enjoyable, the Improv actors you’re watching have likely taken classes, worked with coaches, and rehearsed so they can build their EQ. Improv actors realize that their entire world is made up in the moment, based on a suggestion they received only seconds before. In order to make the show work, they need to be able to trust each other and handle the interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. We’re not just talking about the characters in the scene’s relationships with other, but also the actor’s relationships with each other even when they’re not on stage.

You are an improviser everyday

Every non-scripted conversation you’ve ever had is you doing improv. Ok, you may not be on stage and you may not be trying to make an audience laugh in every conversation. But at the heart of it all, you are still talking another person. You’re still working with information you just received. You have no idea where the conversation will twist and turn. If you have a high EQ, it’s more likely that these conversations will flow smoothly and you’ll be building strong relationships.

Improv helps you develop your EQ (and strong relationships)

Speech communications classes, reading about what the great Dale Carnegie called “how to win friends and influence people”, and reading blogs like this are all great places to learn about communicating. Many people find role-playing is also an effective tool. All of those things and many more great tools exist. However, I’ve found Improv training to be one of the most effective tools to improve EQ in existence.

In our workshops, we engage teams who work together every day and teach them how to increase their EQ using the tools of the improviser. We do this by using fun activities and exercises which focus on specific parts of how to improve their interpersonal communication. We employ several exercises which have people slowing down their communication style so they get in touch with increasing their EQ. For example:

  • Listening to understand rather thinking about how they are going to respond while the other person is talking
  • Focusing on the person you are with right now and building a personal connection
  • Filtering out all of the background noise that infects our daily lives and gets in the way of communicating effectively
  • Paying closer attention to the body language of the person you are with and building the skills to interact with them in a way that has them feeling important and taken care of
  • Suspending judgments of other people’s ideas and working with those ideas in an empathetic way

Using these skills on a daily basis will help to improve your EQ. But the real power of doing Improv training is that it is a format where your entire team can learn these skills together. Having your team work on exercises like these together can help them to recognize ways they can increase their the Emotional Intelligence across the organization. Taking that step in unison can have a profound impact on the culture of a corporate team.

What sets ImprovThis apart from the rest

Other companies who do improv training may do a great job of entertaining you and your team with a funny show. Often corporate training is a side business compared to their theater shows and comedy classes. We will be entertaining as facilitators, don’t you worry. But our focus is on helping you build a positive, creative, and passionate corporate culture.

At ImprovThis our sole mission is to create fun, hands-on workshop style training sessions to build closer, more collaborative teams. We also focus on working with your team so these skills are implemented after the workshop and provide tools to ensure the learning becomes part of the culture.

To learn more about ImprovThis or to schedule a time to talk to us, check us out at:
www.improvthis.com