From better communication skills to the ability to think on one's feet, using improv in business has proved to help both individuals and the companies that hire improv groups. Fostering inovation, confidence, team building, and creativity, bringing an improv group like WIT to your organization can rejuvenate any workplace. Don't believe us? We're not the only ones who have noticed all the benefits that implementing improv in the workplace can bring. Check out these articles and links about other improv groups that are successfully changing the way people work in their work environment.
Companies Tap Improv To Teach Workers New Skills Video - The Wall Street Journal
"For 50 years, Chicago's Second City has been a training ground for some of the most recognizable comedic actors, but cranking out the funniest stars is only part of Second City's business. The other part? Helping Corporate America with its communication skills."
How to think faster, better on your feet - CNN
"Interestingly, all the improv actors I spoke to pretty much agreed that the following three principles are at the heart of their art. And, without exception, they use them to propel conversations forward in their real lives, too."
Corporate Improv Training: Just What the Economy Ordered - BNet
"Participants are taught to recognize that many of the qualities needed to create a good improv scene are equally effective in establishing a productive and innovative work environment, work team, and, most importantly, worker."
Improv-based training: it's not just fun and games - BNet
"More and more companies are embracing improv as a way to achieve important business and organizational goals. Even major league baseball is in on the act and uses improv-based training to help rookies assimilate into the Bigs."
Thinking On Your Feet: Staying Cool and Confident Under Pressure - MindTools.com
"Thinking on your feet is highly coveted skill and when you master it, your clever and astute responses will instill immediate confidence in what you are saying."
5 Improvisational Acting Techniques That Will Make You a Better Blogger - CopyBlogger.com
Let go of your inhibitions, value emotional integrity over audience response, saying "Yes, and...", be specific, and play from the tip of your intelligence
Trends: Improvisation
"Some of those clients include Kraft, Starbucks, GE, R.J. Reynolds, and Blockbuster, which hire [Creative Advantage] to work on projects ranging from reducing costs in a product category to training new managers in conducting difficult conversations."
Structure and Freedom: Incorporating improvisational beliefs into an improv-for-business, business
"It is a structure as the rules of an improv game are a structure. A structure where there is room for freedom, creativity, evolution, and for changing the structure itself."
Why Are You Wearing That Parachute?
"And the one thing above all others that made the difference between failure and success was the level of commitment. Understanding the value of real commitment, to the team and to the concept, can improve a team’s success rate and innovative potential dramatically."
Improvisation Lab: A Group Workout for Sustainability
"This paper will describe the first two skills of improvisation 1) Cultivate multiple ways of knowing and 2) Appreciate the context."
Teamwork Through Team Play: Strengthening Team Understanding and Relationships through Improv Theater Games
"Improvisation theater games are wonderful resources to help team members understand this energy flow and how it affects their relationships because the way we play games has a strong relationship to the way we interact with others and ourselves."
My Improv Odyssey: A Personal Journey
"The concept 'Yes And' was a godsend for a facilitator and trainer like me. I was used to business meetings in which parries, thrusts, volleys and other similar tactics were commonplace."
Responding to reluctant participants...
Community members share their experiences of dealing with particpants who are reluctant to take part.
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Improvise to Innovate
"We discovered that not only does improvisation provide a way to understand what it takes to be spontaneous and innovative, but exercises used by actors to develop their skill can be adopted by business as a means to experience and enhance individual and organizational capacity to be innovative and responsive."
Improv Culture: Using Practices from Improv Theater to Help Organizations Evolve Successfully Over Time
Having conversations, playing sports, running meetings,accessing markets—we’re all improvising all the time. The question is, do we do it consciously and well? What skills can we build to increase success and longevity in areas of our lives thatare important to us? How might we do this in the organizations we seek to build and evolve over time?
I Love Us
"I left grad school convinced that there was some "hard data" to back up the value of improv. Of course there was. How could I have doubted it? All sorts of studies on creativity, teamwork and motivation backed up what we knew intuitively."
Hear-Hear and Listen In
"Learn how to be just as attentive in every conversation you have. Reduce misunderstandings. Improve your communications. Enhance your understanding and comprehension of what's really being said. Learn more than you ever thought possible, simply by really, truly listening."
More Resources from Applied Improv: CLICK HERE
