The First Rule of Improv

Earlier this month I had the undeserved privilege of getting to visit and tour Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, which meant that I ended up having lunch one day with a group of incredibly smart people, including Brenda Bakker Harger. Talking with her helped crystallize something that had been percolating in my head for a bit, and then I went and got distracted and am only just now blogging about it. Also, I’d encourage you to take the time to watch the video linked in Harger’s name above, as it’s eight minutes of some of the best advice about communicating with other people you’ll ever get.

I grew up doing a lot of musical theater, and part of that involved doing a lot of improvisation exercises. I was taught that the first rule of improv is called, “yes, and.” That means if someone else in the scene says something, your response is, “Yes, and…” You build on what the other person says. You do not say, “No, that’s not true.” Ever. If you do that, there is nothing else to do in the scene – you’ve ended it.

Example:
[Person A is already on stage]
[Person B enters]
A: Oh officer, thank goodness you’re here, someone just stole my wallet!
B: No they didn’t.

There’s nothing to say back to that – Person B just denied the stated reality of Person A. Note that this is different than a response like, “Are you sure you didn’t lose it?” or “M’am, you’re holding your wallet in your left hand,” or “Oh, I get this all the time – this is a janitor’s uniform, not a police officer’s!” It is possible to have conflict in an improvisation, but that still requires acknowledging and accepting what the other person said as true for that person.

As Harger says in her TEDx talk, improv is not a solo exercise. Neither is communication. I can write all the posts I want, but I’m not communicating anything until someone else reads them. Trying to communicate with another person can be extremely stressful; in fact, the people who I have an easier-than-average time communicating with tend to be the people I keep close to me as friends.

Example:
[My best friend and I are sitting in her car, stuck in traffic. She is driving and I am in the front passenger seat. The radio is not on, and we’ve been sitting in comfortable silence for several minutes.]
Suddenly, out of nowhere:
Me (with forceful arm gestures): It’s peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly time!
BFF joins in, both song and gestures:
In unison: It’s peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!
[Comfortable silence resumes]

To this day, I have no idea why that happened. Almost anyone else in the world would have looked at me and said, “You are so weird!” or “Where on earth did that come from?” They almost certainly would not have joined in. But then, almost anyone else in the world, I would not have felt comfortable enough to bust out an old Internet meme and car choreography, either. I know that just about anything I do, she is going to respond with, “yes, and”…which means that I feel comfortable doing just about anything.

Sure, it’s easy when it’s with someone you’ve known since you were both fourteen years old. But what about being spontaneous, being weird, being creative, with a team of coworkers? What about delivering feedback to someone else about their contributions? What about when someone is trying to deliver a hard message about your labor of love? (BTW, the phrase “hard message” is something Laura Fryer used in her keynote at last year’s IGDA Leadership Forum and it has become one of my favorite terms. It encompasses a lot more than just “bad news” and acknowledges that some things are very difficult both to say and to hear.)

This example is pretty much verbatim from a post-mortem I had last week with a client.

Example:
Client: You acted like you were in charge of [sub-set of project]
Me: Given that you expressly asked me to be in charge of that, yes, I did.
Client: We didn’t ask that.

If your employee isn’t doing what you want, and in fact thinks you asked them to do the thing you don’t want them doing, you’ve got a major communication problem. That problem won’t be solved by denying that the problem happened in the first place. If someone says, “you told me to do that,” and you don’t remember it that way, it’s time to examine your documentation process and/or your memory. It’s not time to flat-out deny the feedback you’re getting.

And yet people and companies do this all the time. I have done this, and I understand it can be tough to snap yourself out of your own ego. But that is what it is – ego. It is trying to take your ball and go home, except that doesn’t work because the “ball” is the illusion that you’re correct to the exclusion of any other person’s perspective. Communication means being mature enough to listen to another human being like what they think is valid and what they have to say is at least as important and intelligent as what you have to say. Does this apply to all people in all conversations you will ever have? Only if you want them to communicate with you again at some point in the future. (Hint: if someone is on your team, you will want them to talk to you again, possibly even later that day.)

As a final thought, here is a variant of failing to “yes, and” that I hear sometimes from start-up clients. It’s an abdication of or complaint about “real jobs.” Variants include, “oh man, now you’re making this into a job!” or “if this is the kind of shit I have to do, I’m just going to go get a real job,” or “I didn’t start this company to have to work like I’m at a job.” To me, that roughly translates to:

Me: I’m a professional person working with other professional people.
Client: No, we’re not.