“Why would I want to do that – this is work, not mucking about?”
“I’ll freeze & I won’t know what to say”
“I would rather die than expose myself in that way in front of my colleagues”
…may be some of the hindering thoughts you would have?
I’m curious…what is it that you think you are doing all day every day anyway?
Life at work is one big improvisation – a spontaneous, unscripted process of continuous creation & adaption rather than following any sort of fixed path.
Picking up the phone & not knowing who is calling or what will be said or required. Turning up to meetings where at best the agenda provides clues to what may be expected. 1:1’s with your team where discussions can range from the professional to the personal & everything in between. Unsolicited conversations in the corridor, whilst making a coffee or queuing for food. Pretty much everything we do is improvised.
…& how do I know all this? Well, I turned up to the start of the second year of my MSc last Monday to be told that I was going to be spending half a day with a highly skilled & engaging professional in an interactive & experiential session on the medium of improvisation with my fellow learners & I had all of the aforementioned thoughts & then some!
How was it? Brilliant. Julie Flower skilfully led us through both the theory & the practice to an outcome that was both physical (sore sides from more belly laughs than I have experienced in a long while) & mental (how much better my thinking & ideas are when I allow myself to loosen things up a little).
So, if you want greater agility, flexibility, creativity & a stronger tolerance for uncertainty then maybe it’s time you dispensed with over engineering life for you & your team at work, & let a little more spontaneity in.
#strongerimprovising #strongerideas #strongerhumans
