Put Me In, Coach! Developing Your People's Strengths

In The Daily Improviser, I’ve talked quite a bit about the power of focusing on strengths in creating personal development plans. Again, too many individuals (and their managers) tend to think of development planning as only a matter of shoring up one’s weaknesses. However, as the Strengths Based Development movement says, the best leverage comes from identifying your strong points and getting even better at using them.

This equating of “areas for development” with “weaknesses” has another downside as well: It undermines the power of performance coaching (usually referred to as simply “coaching”) as a tool for helping people succeed in their work and their personal lives.

Coaching is a collaborative process based on the foundational belief that people have the ability to solve their own problems and achieve their own goals. The role of a coach – whether a manager, a peer, or even a direct report who “coaches up” – is to help the coachee define his goal, clearly define the gap between that goal and the current reality, and then determine specific ways in which he can – and will – bridge that gap.

In a true coaching situation, the coachee identifies and drives toward his own solutions, while the coach facilitates the process through the use of powerful questions such as: What will success look and feel like? How important is this to you? What could you do to achieve it?

Coaching is particularly powerful when used in conjunction with a strengths-based approach. If a coachee has already clarified her own strengths and has charted her own development path toward a goal that utilizes those strengths, she is already thinking in terms of “owning” her own career plan. This makes the coach’s work both easier and more impactful, and the coachee’s success more likely – true leverage in action.

Unfortunately, many managers only attempt a coaching approach once an employee becomes a “Problem” with a capital “P.” By this point, the leverage opportunity is usually lost – the coach and coachee are now so focused on the coachee’s shortcomings (often in an adversarial, highly charged way) that any notion of the action as a collaboration is often quickly dispensed with. “Coaching” then becomes more of a performance-management event, something done to the employee rather than with her. In addition, the “coaching” becomes much more time-consuming for the manager.

When applied in this way, “coaching” gets a bad rap. Yes, if an employee reaches the true Problem stage, the manager must take action – but usually the action that’s taken can’t accurately be described as “coaching.”

To paraphrase the old ad tagline, “You can pay now or pay later.” Are you leveraging your coaching efforts early enough in your people’s development journey so that you can avoid the Problem pitfalls later on?

(For more information on Coaching, see the website of Corporate Coach U.)

Behavioral Economics Shocker! SuperFreakonomics Authors Reveal All

In the book Freakonomics, co-authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner lied!

But I was way ahead of them.

Some background: In my November 8 article, I noted how Levitt and Dubner claimed a lack of a unifying theme in Freakonomics. Instead, they took what they called a “treasure-hunting approach” that allowed them to admit any number of disparate topics into their tent.

Then, in my previous article (November 17), I zeroed in on one statement in Freakonomics that seemed particularly salient to me: “People respond to incentives.” I then noted how these incentives complicate the quest for the ideal set out in the book The Three Laws of Performance: “Seeing [and saying] things as they are.”

Last week I eagerly started to read Levitt and Dubner’s sequel, SuperFreakonomics, and was greeted with the following first sentence:

"The time has come to admit that in our first book, we lied."

A preemptive strike before an upcoming Oprah appearance? I wondered. They went on to explain:

"The … lie appeared in the introduction [to Freakonomics], where we wrote that the book had no ‘unifying theme.’ … But in truth, the book did have a unifying theme, even if it wasn’t obvious at the time, even to us. If pressed you could boil it down to four words: People respond to incentives." [emphasis in original]

Ahem. Well, yes, of course – perfectly obvious.

It's obvious too (I hope) that I have tongue planted firmly in cheek as I write this. Yet I do think that Levitt and Dubner's point about incentives was a revelation as regards the reasons why we cooperate and collaborate with each other – and why (as I described in my previous article) taking such a “Yes And” approach can only go so far.

Of course, maybe I really wasn’t so far ahead of Levitt and Dubner at that. After all, in my first Freakonomics article, I grabbed onto their coattails and claimed not to have a “unifying theme” for The Daily Improviser blog either. I now feel challenged to see if I can discern such a theme myself.

Then again, maybe I’ll just leave that for the sequel.

What's My Motivation?

In several earlier articles, I discussed the importance for the Daily Improviser of “seeing things as they really are.”

However, as I was reading the book Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner, I realized the importance of a corollary theme: “saying things as they really are.”

Levitt and Dubner describe at length one reason why people can be less than upfront with the truth – a condition called information asymmetry, a fancy way of saying “I know something you don’t know!” The condition particularly afflicts experts of all stripes – realtors, insurance agents, physicians – whom we daily entrust with our health and well-being, under the assumption that they will use their expertise to serve our best interests.

However, Levitt and Dubner cite numerous instances where such trust is misplaced – where the experts don’t act in our best interests. For example, the home sellers’ agent who settles for less than top dollar, since the effort required to get that extra $5,000 for the seller is not worth the small additional commission the agent would realize.

The point, Levitt and Dubner say, is not that the experts are bad people “but that they simply are people – and people inevitably respond to incentives.”

“Incentives,” though, doesn’t necessarily equate with “lining one’s pockets.” As Maslow would probably agree, people have many different types of interests they try to serve in addition to economic interests – being accepted by a group, maintaining a relationship, being perceived as a fair-minded person. Each of these interests can lead a person to “not say what they see.” (Think of this the next time your Significant Other asks you “How does this look?”)

Again, like Levitt and Dubner, I leave aside the question of whether this state of affairs is inherently good or bad. I would just note that their observation – “People respond to incentives” – is another factor to keep in mind when considering the barriers to seeing – and saying – things “as they are.”

Are There Limits to Positivity?

I’ve been writing quite a bit in this blog about the role of positivity in improvisation and the ways in which the Daily Improviser can benefit from adopting a “Yes And” attitude in his day-to-day life.


So it was with great interest that I read an article that’s been making the cyber-rounds lately about a new study that says: Negativity can be good for you.

The study, by psychology professor Joseph Forgas of the University of New South Wales, observed:

"Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages.”

This article was a timely find for me, because lately I’ve been considering the larger question: Are there limits to positivity?

Right off, I’d say: Yes! And here’s one example – involving the “Yes And” principle itself.

As I’ve mentioned before, I see “Yes And” as consisting of the following:

1) Accepting the Person


2) Acknowledging the Possibilities


3) Advancing with Positive Purpose

But “Yes And” does not necessarily mean Agreeing with the Position or Adopting the Proposal! “Say Yes And” does not mean “Say Yes to Anything.”  In fact, if the other person puts forth a view that runs up against a firmly held conviction of yours, then “Yes And” would counsel you to say an emphatic “NO!” – followed by 1, 2, and 3 above.

Unfortunately - to paraphrase Dizzy Dean - a lot of people who ain’t sayin’ "Yes" ain’t doin’ the other three either. A flat "NO!", without more, stops all progress in its tracks and inevitably leads to unproductive conflict – for both the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser.

So, viewed in this way, the "Yes And" concept illustrates that, yes, there is a limit to positivity - and yet the alternative is not negativity but a demilitarized zone somewhere in the middle where Yes and No can coexist.

(For a further discussion of "Yes And" as applied to conflict resolution, see my earlier article on the And Stance.)

The Daily Improviser: Coming Attractions!

After conducting a quick cost-benefit analysis in the aisle of my local Target store, I decided to purchase the book Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I was immediately taken with the range of topics they cover - the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan - certainly an unorthodox approach for a book about economics. And Levitt and Dubner readily acknowledge as much:

“In some regards, this is a strange concept for a book. Most books put forth a single theme, crisply expressed in a sentence or two, and then tell the entire story of that theme: the history of salt; the fragility of democracy; the use and misuse of punctuation. This book has no such unifying theme…. [We] opted instead for a sort of treasure-hunting approach.”

Well, I suppose that’s a fair description of what I’ve been (somewhat unconsciously) doing with the Daily Improviser blog: Hunting for the gems of improvisational wisdom lurking within such disparate topics as strategic planning, leadership, basketball, driving, movie-going, rock and roll, late-night monster movies, and talking to my cat. Rather than following a map and a set itinerary that track the final destination and the milestones along the way, I’ve been letting each new discovery provide clues to the next leg of the journey. Periodically I’ll stop, look back to see where I’ve been, and do some reckoning of where I am now and where I’d like to go.

As to where this journey might lead next, I’ll seek guidance from Levitt and Dubner’s thoughts about the scope of their book:

“Since the science of economics is primarily a set of tools, as opposed to a subject matter, then no subject, however offbeat, need be beyond its reach.”

If you replace “the science of economics” with “the art of improvisation,” then you (and I) can expect future Daily Improviser entries to cover … just about anything!

The Improvising Restaurant: Made (Up) to Order!

I was struck by an account I read in the book A Perfect Mess (by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman) of a New York restaurateur named Danny Meyer – a classic Daily Improviser who’s shaken up the very concept of dining out with his various (and wildly varying) Manhattan eateries.

Abrahamson and Freedman describe the loose operational philosophy instituted by Meyer for his enterprises – an approach, say the authors, that runs against the traditional notion of the top chef as “absolute, heavy-handed ruler, if not raging tyrant” in the kitchen. As they describe it: “Meyer wants the kitchens of his restaurants to be scenes of rampant and collegial improvisation, not dictatorial consistency and rigidity.”

This improvisational spirit applies even more to the wait staff, who interact engagingly with patrons and make spur-of-the-moment offers such as free samples of menu items (to help the wavering diner decide) and complimentary bottles of wine.

Sounds like a total “just-wing-it” sensibility as applied to an organization, right? Well, not exactly – because, as the authors observe:

“[A] restaurant can’t run well as a glorious mess of improvisation…. [D]ishes have to be completed and delivered to tables with impeccable timing – a mechanically complex process that, if marred in any way, will ruin a dining experience no matter how brilliant the menu or engaging the waiters.”

So how do improvisation and structure coexist in Meyer’s restaurants? As the authors say, Meyer realized that spontaneous “happy surprises” could only be delivered to customers in the following way:

“[W]aiters would need to be able to rely on a highly ordered, highly predictable system of preparing and delivering food, leaving them free to improvise with customers on everything else. And that notion of a measure of randomness supported by a layer of order is the final pillar in [Meyer’s] philosophy.” [emphasis added]

This “layer of order” in Meyer’s restaurants can be found in exhaustive, explicit systems for preparing dishes and assigning waiters to tables, with processes facilitated by an expediter who manages the interfaces between the randomness and the order. As an associate of Meyer's says, "Danny's model for a restaurant is a jazz ensemble. There's a background theme that's predictable, and the instruments can improvise around it."

So maybe my angst over not being a “make it all up on the spot” kind of Daily Improviser is all for naught. Perhaps the improvising-within-a-structure model has its place, especially for Daily Improviser Organizations such as Danny Meyer's.

(For another example of a Daily Improviser Organization that reflects the improvising-within-a-structure model, see my earlier article on Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.)

Don't (Just) Say Yes!

As I mentioned in one of my recent articles, the first rule of improvisation is “Say ‘Yes And.’” But why not just say “Yes”? What does the “And” add?

Perhaps we can gain some insight here from that noted Daily Improviser, former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In his highly entertaining book about Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to the United States, K Blows Top, Peter Carlson relates an anecdote which involved Khrushchev’s “insistently promoting” the transfer of Soviet agricultural schools from Moscow to the countryside. The idea rankled the schools’ professors and students, who preferred the amenities of city life. Carlson continues:

"Of course, neither the professors nor the students argued with the dictator…. ‘Everyone nodded their heads and agreed,’ Khrushchev recalled. Yet somehow they just never got around to executing the premier’s plan.


“Khrushchev had discovered the secret method that … people have used to defy princes, presidents, dictators, and CEOs for innumerable centuries: ‘The most dangerous form of resistance,’ he said, ‘is when they yes you to death.’”

Khrushchev had stumbled, I believe, on the same discovery made by improv guru Del Close regarding the blocking effect of just saying “yes” without any follow-through or follow-up.

In improv, a performer must of course agree with the reality asserted by his onstage partners. But as Charna Halpern points out in the book Truth in Comedy, Close’s concept of Yes And goes further:

“The Yes And rule simply means that whenever two actors are on stage, they agree with each other to the Nth degree. If one asks the other a question, the other must respond positively, and then provide additional information, no matter how small: ‘Yes, you’re right, and I also think we should …’” [emphasis added]

Clearly, just saying “yes” without the “and” can block a scene as much as saying “yes but" or “no” (or "nyet") since it puts the onus on the other performer to have all the ideas and indicates a lack of commitment to the scene on the part of the “yes” man.

Similarly, for the Daily Improviser, moving forward involves first saying “yes” to another’s idea and then building upon that “yes” by taking such actions as contributing additional ideas, exploring the best aspects of each idea, suggesting ways to implement the ideas, and committing time to making the effort work.

For the Daily Improviser as leader, the "Yes And" concept can remind you that when you receive a flat “yes” response without the “and,” the speaker might really mean “I’m not sure,” “I don’t know,” or even “Noooo way!” If you sense that a different message is flowing beneath the surface “yes,” be prepared to take a deeper dive to test the source of that seeming agreement.

Positivity and the First Rule of Improv

In recent articles I described what I call taking a widescreen view of life, that is, looking at the events of one’s life as broadly as possible and using a positive filter to interpret those events. I contrasted this widescreen concept with the notion of learned helplessness, in which a person’s interpretations of events as permanent, personal, and pervasive lead to negativity and lack of resilience.

This past week I was excited to rediscover another body of work that echoes the widescreen concept – and backs it up with solid research.

I’m referring to the work of Barbara Fredrickson, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina who is a pioneer in the field of positive psychology and the author of the book Positivity. Fredrickson has developed what she calls the Broaden-and-Build theory to describe how positive emotions (such as joy, interest, contentment, and love) produce their benefits in our lives.

First, says Fredrickson, positive emotions “broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire: joy sparks the urge to play, interest sparks the urge to explore, contentment sparks the urge to savor and integrate, and love sparks a recurring cycle of each of these urges within safe, close relationships.” By contrast, she says, negative emotions are marked by a narrowing of our mindsets and a limiting of our action repertoire to such options as attacking or fleeing.

Second, Fredrickson notes that this broadening of our awareness of possible responses “promotes discovery of novel and creative actions, ideas and social bonds, which in turn build that individual's personal resources; ranging from physical and intellectual resources, to social and psychological resources.”

Like me, you may have always intuitively sensed the link between positive feelings and the Broaden-and-Build effect that Fredrickson describes. If I think back to the times in my life when I’ve felt most creative and productive, most in tune with my environment, most alive, I would describe my feelings in such terms as expansiveness, openness, wholeness, and receptivity to new possibilities. By contrast, when negativity takes hold of my outlook, I feel constrained, limited, stuck in “this or that” thinking,

The Broaden-and-Build concept is also perfectly reflected in the primary rule of the improv stage: Total agreement at all times. Only by saying “Yes And” to the offers of her onstage partners can an improv performer open up the possibilities in a scene. As Charna Halpern writes in Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation:

“[By saying ‘Yes And’], one step at a time, each player provides a building block, until they have easily, painlessly constructed a scene. Answering ‘Yes , but …’ stops any continued growth, while a flat ‘No’ erases the block that has just been established.”

As a Daily Improviser, do you Broaden and Build by saying “Yes And” to whatever comes your way? Do you Accept the Possibilities in life’s offers and Advance with Positive Purpose, weaving supposed “mistakes” into the larger pattern by taking a widescreen view of life? Or do you stop continued growth – your own and that of others – by saying “Yes But” and “No”?

The Third Skill - Beyond Connecting and Creating

In the first two articles in this series, I described the way in which scientific research involves both “connecting” skills – seeing the relationships among disparate phenomema – and “creating” skills – pursuing and developing those insights so as to achieve scientific breakthroughs. I also observed that “connecting and creating” in tandem serve as the basis of any human accomplishment. Finally, I noted that a performance improviser must master both skills in order to be considered a success on the improv stage.

I left off last time (after a brief messy interlude) with the question: Does a Daily Improviser need to be similarly accomplished at both skills?

In a word: No. As I’ve pointed out, the Daily Improviser does not need to directly use the skills of the performance improviser in order to benefit from the improv “body of knowledge.” She can also adopt the improv attitudes as a means to create an atmosphere that supports those who do possess strengths in the improv skills.

To illustrate this point, we can look to the career of man named William Henry Welch, who lacked a critical scientific skill yet became perhaps the single most influential scientist in the world.

As John M. Barry recounts in his book The Great Influenza, Welch was probably more responsible than any other person for the development of medicine as a professional discipline grounded in the scientific method. Primarily in his role as first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Welch spearheaded the move to reform medical practice in the United States – a practice that was overrun with fakes and quacks whose “remedies” frequently did more harm than good.

Yet, as Barry notes:

“Welch had been no great pioneer even in his own field of medical research…. He had generated no brilliant insights, made no magnificent discoveries, asked no deep or original questions, and left no significant legacy in the laboratory or in scientific papers.”

Welch’s mind was clearly more drawn to “connecting” than “creating”:

“No question ever aroused a great passion in him, no question ever became a compulsion, no question ever forced him to pursue it until it was either exhausted or led him to new questions. Instead, he examined a problem, then moved on.”

Sounds like the classic surface-skipper – someone we might even today label “A.D.D.” I get the sense that Welch would have been an ace Da Doo Ron Ron player but would have been thoroughly outclassed by Einstein – the exemplary “connector-and-creator” – on the Harold stage.

So, if Welch’s skills lay primarily in connecting but not creating, how did he ever gain such influence? Barry provides an answer that points to a third skill required for any successful endeavor:

“Welch’s real genius lay in two areas. First, he had not only knowledge but judgment. He had an extraordinary ability to hear someone describe his or her experiments, or read a paper, and immediately define the crucial points still obscure, the crucial series of experiments needed to clarify them. It was as if, although he could not himself conjure [i.e., create], he knew the techniques of conjuring and could teach others conjury. He had an equally extraordinary ability to judge people, to identify those with the promise to do what he had not done.



“Second, Welch inspired. He inspired unconsciously, simply by being himself…. He seemed so centered and comfortable with himself that he gave comfort to those around him.


“Everything about him was positive. His intelligence and the depth and breadth of his knowledge stimulated his teaching as well. He walked into the classroom without notes or preparation, often not knowing what subject he was to lecture on, and in an instant began discoursing lucidly and logically in ways that provoked thought and excitement… Welch’s conversation [had the] ability to make students feel the richness of the world – the world of art and literature as well as science.


“The total effect … made for an atmosphere of achievement … The desire to be like Welch, the desire to win his approval.”

I can’t think of a better description of this third skill – catalyzing. The leadership development group Development Dimensions International defines a catalyst leader as one who “inspires others to act” – and in this area Welch was clearly a master. Welch himself did not possess all the skills needed to achieve world-changing scientific breakthroughs. Yet, through his ability to create an atmosphere where others with those skills could flourish, he played a critical role in the achievement of those breakthroughs.

In sum, connecting and creating are two key skills needed for any human achievement. Yet the catalyzing skill is also required in order to focus priorities, secure resources, navigate efforts through social and political minefields, and inspire the talents and energies of all participants in the enterprise.

Finally, back to William Henry Welch. How might we relate his “catalyzing” skills to the world of the stage performer? Barry makes this observation:

“He was personality and theater; he was impresario.”

In short, he was visionary, organizer, producer, fund-raiser, spokesman, tout – a Ziegfeld of the scientific world.

Interlude: The Benefits of Messiness

In the name of avoiding the perils of overorganization, I’m taking a brief detour from my series on “Connecting and Creating” to address an interesting connection I encountered today while browsing through the book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman

To set the context: In one of my first articles in The Daily Improviser, I wrote the following:

“If anyone were to ask me ‘How can I be a Daily Improviser in my organization?’ I would say, ‘Read Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management – and whatever he says, do the opposite.’”

Abrahamson and Freedman make a similar observation:

“[W]hile the wild enthusiasm for strict Taylorism faded, what never quite disappeared was a now-ingrained inclination to organize, schedule, arrange, and standardize at work, home, and everywhere else, as a means of squelching variation, improvisation, unpredictability, and anything that smacked of extraneousness.”

(Note, by the way, that by “messiness” they're referring to more than just strewing around stacks of paper and flinging clothes over the handlebars of the Exercycle. Reflecting perhaps some latent tendencies toward organization, the authors create a neat taxonomy of messiness that includes such entries as clutter, noise, inconsistency, distortion, time sprawl – and, yes, improvisation.)

The authors then elaborate on some of the major drawbacks of overorganized people and systems – inability to respond flexibly to change, an unhealthy insulation from one’s environment (shades of Hans Monderman, “the guy who hated signs”), rigid plans and processes that shatter when their underlying assumptions meet reality (shades of Commander’s Intent).

Abrahamson and Freedman hasten to point out that there is such a thing as dysfunctional mess. “We’re not saying that messier is always better,” they write. “Rather, we argue that there is an optimal level of mess for every aspect of every system…. [P]eople and organizations frequently err on the side of overorganization.”

An optimal level of mess? Could there actually be benefits in messiness? Yes indeed, say the authors - flexibility, diversity, resonance with the environment, serendipity, robustness ... and, um, even fun!

Well, sorry for the “mess” I created by breaking into the “Connecting and Creating” series – but I just wanted to get this out while it was fresh in mind (hmm, another benefit of messiness).