After understanding how motivation works and how our industry has forced us into responsive mindsets, I started my search for ways to cultivate a healthy mindset. To create motivational environments. One of my first discoveries was Improv.
Improv allows us to develop our soft skills
Improv is an open format that allows us to develop our soft skills, mainly:
- Sharpness
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Listening
- fail-fast attitude
Important to notice is that it allows us. Improv should never be used to force people to train their soft skills. People who are participating decide for themselves if and which soft skills they will train (mostly unconscious). Unconscious because people already have a vague notion of which soft skills are important to them, and which they like. And because people have an innate drive to learn skills which are relevant to their environment, they will want to develop the soft skills that are relevant to themselves and their environment.
Use short Improv sessions to get people actively participating in interactive workshops
Improv doesn’t always have to be organized as a 1-2 hour workshop. You can also organize short sessions of 15-30 minutes before an interactive training or workshop. This way you can use Improv to:
- get people in an active/assertive mindset
- build up energy
- get people to know each other
- get people to make mistakes
During a short Improv Session, you should only do simple Improv exercises and not ask people to perform on stage. In the attached file (see below), those off-limit exercises are called the On-stage exercises.
Organize your own Improv sessions with these exercises
I have created a pdf file with Improv exercises that you can use to organize your own Improv Sessions.