Want Better Collaboration – Improvise

The earlier collaboration techniques post (Stop Asking Questions) was based a key to successful improvisation. This post digs further into the relationship between improv and collaboration.

Good improvisational comedy teams believe a group of individuals working together can start with nothing and quickly create something engaging, desireable, useful, and valuable. From this perspective, the keys for successful Improv apply to any collaborative effort.

As such, there are 7 keys to successful improvisational collaboration:

1. Acceptance of a new idea from the standpoint of exploring its possibilities; An attitude of “Yes, and” rather than the destructive “but” .
2. Attentive listening to all the partners on the team.
3. Temporary suspension of critical judgment.
4. An attitude of relaxed openness to new ideas. Exploring the far reaches of “What if ___?”
5. Reframing situations to explore creative possibilities.
6. A willingness to take chances, to risk appearing foolish, i.e. Stop Asking Questions.
7. An understanding that no choice is absolutely right or wrong, though each may turn out to be more or less productive in a given situation.

Thanks to the Applied Improvisational Network.