The high level of interaction and trust essential to a successful improv performance on stage is also essential to building stronger organizations when applied to the workplace.
Ivey’s MBA students witnessed this firsthand during a special performance by Second City actors at the School on March 28. The actors demonstrated exercises geared to enhance communication skills and invited some students on stage to participate.
Nancy Marino Benn, the former Executive Producer of Second City Business Communications, which offers companies a variety of communications tools used by Second City actors, said improvisation helps people to improve listening skills, think on their feet, work better in teams and gain confidence.
“Improvisation is like a muscle that you can exercise. You can learn improvisation and then keep on honing it so you get better at it and can draw upon it,” she said. “People come away from it, not only learning something for themselves as business people, but a life skill that they can use in their daily lives.”
Marino Benn has been working with Ivey Professor Mary Crossan for about 20 years to teach Ivey students improvisation skills.
Paul Constable, an actor, writer and instructor with Second City in Toronto, stressed leadership skills are also honed through improvisation exercises.
“At times, you have to step up and be a leader. So, if I’m in a scene with someone else, I have to drive that scene by making the choices that drive that scene forward. At the same time, I have to step back and let the other people in,” he said. “It’s more of a shared leadership idea than letting one person be in charge.”
Constable also noted that teamwork is critical in improvisation, as in business, for success.
“The director, in a sense, is the leader – the one who is leading us through the process – but when you’re onstage, everyone is equal. Everyone is supporting the group and the idea,” he said.