In my previous post, I mentioned a list of some suggested development areas for people looking to improve their Change Leadership capabilities – e.g., “suspend your critical judgment,” “promote a positive climate,” “get out of your comfort zone.” As with any individual development process, of course, knowing what to change is one thing – actually changing is another.
As my Applied Improvisation Network colleague Gary Schwartz always says, in order to put knowledge to work, you need to somehow get it “in the bones.” And this is what improvisation training can do for the Daily Improviser: Take your knowledge out of the head and put it into the body, where it can permeate your whole being.
For example, take one of the items from the Change Leadership list – “Watch your emotional reaction to mistakes.” Performance improvisers know that if they fear failure, they’ll do everything they can to avoid it rather than take the risks needed to create interesting scenes. One exercise they engage in to acquaint the whole body with mistakes is called Circus Bow.
In Circus Bow, participants form a circle and take turns walking into the middle – but purposely trip and fall before getting there. Each time, the participant picks himself up, dusts himself off, and performs an elaborate bow with great panache, as if to say “I meant to do that!” The other participants then applaud wildly and commend him on such an entertaining spectacle.
A small thing? Yes – but a physical one. Circus Bow is intended to provide a visceral reinforcement of the “head knowledge” that beating ourselves up over mistakes is counterproductive if we want to conduct ourselves as risk-taking, envelope-pushing Change Leaders. As Kat Koppett says in describing a similar activity in her book Training to Imagine, “It is only by making friends with failure that we will be willing to risk enough to succeed.”
So does that mean that, the next time a Daily Improviser’s Powerpoint presentation goes awry, she should drop to the floor, spring back up, and give a Circus Bow to her CEO? Of course not – and that’s not the point of her practicing the exercise in an improv class. Again, it’s not about developing skill as much as it is about cultivating an attitude - in this case, an attitude that says, “Hey, if I’m not occasionally failing, I’m not living!”
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As my Applied Improvisation Network colleague Gary Schwartz always says, in order to put knowledge to work, you need to somehow get it “in the bones.” And this is what improvisation training can do for the Daily Improviser: Take your knowledge out of the head and put it into the body, where it can permeate your whole being.
For example, take one of the items from the Change Leadership list – “Watch your emotional reaction to mistakes.” Performance improvisers know that if they fear failure, they’ll do everything they can to avoid it rather than take the risks needed to create interesting scenes. One exercise they engage in to acquaint the whole body with mistakes is called Circus Bow.
In Circus Bow, participants form a circle and take turns walking into the middle – but purposely trip and fall before getting there. Each time, the participant picks himself up, dusts himself off, and performs an elaborate bow with great panache, as if to say “I meant to do that!” The other participants then applaud wildly and commend him on such an entertaining spectacle.
A small thing? Yes – but a physical one. Circus Bow is intended to provide a visceral reinforcement of the “head knowledge” that beating ourselves up over mistakes is counterproductive if we want to conduct ourselves as risk-taking, envelope-pushing Change Leaders. As Kat Koppett says in describing a similar activity in her book Training to Imagine, “It is only by making friends with failure that we will be willing to risk enough to succeed.”
So does that mean that, the next time a Daily Improviser’s Powerpoint presentation goes awry, she should drop to the floor, spring back up, and give a Circus Bow to her CEO? Of course not – and that’s not the point of her practicing the exercise in an improv class. Again, it’s not about developing skill as much as it is about cultivating an attitude - in this case, an attitude that says, “Hey, if I’m not occasionally failing, I’m not living!”
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