Welcome to Educating to be Human, a podcast where we' ll explore what it means to be human in today's world at the intersection of education, technology, and culture. I'm your host, Lisa Petrides, founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. Each week, I'll speak with people who are supporting transformative change in education today. That is, ordinary people creating extraordinary impact. Thank you very much for listening.
In this episode of Educating to be Human, I'm joined by Chris Miller, co-founder of LifePlays, an organization that teaches how to integrate the skills of improv into our work as a way to foster leadership and innovation. Chris and I explore how the art of improv can be used to help us become collaborative problem solvers and drive meaningful change as we tap into our innate creativity to enhance our impact as humans.
We break down the core tenets of improv, such as yes and, let go of your agenda, listen in order to receive, build on what you receive, make your partner look brilliant, and one of my favorites, you can't be wrong. Together, we discuss how these ideas can be applied in work, and specifically in educational settings, as well as everyday life.
You' ll also hear us talk about Action Collabs, which is a design thinking approach that was first introduced as a key component of ISKME's Big Ideas Fest back in 2009, and we use it now in many of our professional trainings where we work with educators to learn how to tackle real-world challenges using this collaborative approach that blends human-centered design thinking with improvisation or improv to spark creativity and innovation.
Before we dive in, I'd like to share a clip from 2014 when Chris opened the Big Ideas Fest with an inspiring talk about the transformative power of improv.
Improv has given me the ability and the joy of being surprised and delighted by the unknown, the unexpected, right? There is to walk into that, to not be threatened by it, to walk into this with other people and be changed, right, to be flexible, to know who I am strongly enough that I can know that if I change, I' m still me, but to adjust and see what can be born from this new relationship in this moment, right, by being changed and open and saying yes to my partner. And that's what improv is.
We walk on stage with nothing, and we create something by agreeing with our partner and making stories, scenes, skits, whatever it is. So we' re going to start with- Lisa: So Chris, maybe you could start by just describing a bit what improv is. Hey, Lisa, sure. So improv, most people associate improv with comedy, which it is, it tends to be funny, but for our intents and purposes, it' s a communication skill set about listening and creating in the moment.
So if you've ever seen a great improv show, you saw people walk on stage, and with nothing except the suggestion of an audience, maybe it's like the word ' pencil', begin and create a whole story together seamlessly. And those skills of collaboration, what we really focus on bringing to workplaces, the core skill of improv is called yes, and. And the yes is where you accept what your partner says, and the and is where you build on it. So that's the core essence of what improv is with us.
Maybe you could even take us through some of the tenets of improv. I know yes and, as you said, is kind of the core of that. Can you talk a little bit more about yes and, and we'll go through a few of the other ones?
Yeah, actually, I'll start at the top of the list that kind of leads into the yes and. This is how I usually begin workshops, is dispelling the fear around the ' I' word, improv, because it' s kind of scary for people. They go, oh, I' ve got to be funny. I say, no, no, no. No, there' s nothing with being funny, clever, witty, or fast. There are some principles and practices. And so just sort of off the top of my head, the first thing we practice in improv is deferring judgment.
And by judgment, I also mean evaluation of any sort, just being open and present and receiving what the person gives you without evaluating it in any way, shape, or form. So deferred judgment might be number one. Number two might be staying present and open. So again, that's getting out of your head and present in the moment. And then listening in order to receive. This is the first half of the yes and.
There' s the let go of your agenda, right?
Oh, yeah. Letting go of your agenda.
I love that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, as somebody who runs an organization, you know, I can go in and think, you know, I've got a set of great ideas. Let' s get to it. And this idea of letting go of your agenda, especially when you're really in an environment where collaboration is key to what you do. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Let go of your agenda. What does that really mean?
Yeah, well, big agenda and little agenda. Little agendas live in the moment. Like my agenda is to get my idea across. Or my agenda is to make this person agree with me. Or my agenda might be, I want this business strategy to be accepted on a slightly larger scale.
And the challenge is in the moment, being flexible with that and saying, 'Okay, I do have this idea that I want, and I' m going to let go of it for right now in service of being more co-creative and collaborative .' Through the improv, you learn to trust the process that actually you will find with something more interesting and more creative if you do let go of your agenda. And also, everyone else around you feels more empowered and on board.
And like they're contributing and an empowered part of the team when you do this.
Got it. Got it. There's another one that I really have loved, which is actually quite controversial, I think, which is you can't be wrong. I love that. I know. I know. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, yeah. You can' t be wrong. In improv, anything you say, your partner's job is to use it and to yes and it. So you literally can' t be wrong. Everything is worth exploring. In the improv world, it's very fun. You know, in the actual stage, I remember going to see a show years ago, they' re improvising a story called The Army. At one point in The Army story, someone received a care package from their family and they said, ' Oh, look, it has sampoo; shamples.' They got the words wrong.
And it became this running... And it became this running thing of like everyone said, ' Oh, did you get any sampoo; shamples?' So in the world of improv, it' s very delightful when you get these misspoken things.
I wonder if, and I don' t know if there' s something we could do here together right now, but I would love to maybe make more apparent and less elusive this idea about yes and, and how do we work on that in improv?
Let' s demo something right here, right now.
Okay. I' m game.
Let' s do it. All right. Nice. So you and I are going to tell a story one word at a time. And we're going to start with once there was and we' ll see what happens from there. Once
there
was a frog who had very long legs. They always bounced wherever he jumped. One day he tried to. See If. He. Could. Fly. So. Then. He. Went. To. The. Market. Place. And. Bought. Some. Wings. Okay, we' ll stop there.
I like that frog. He went to the marketplace to buy some wings.
Buy some wings, yeah. In order to try to fly. So, embedded in this. This is on the granular level. What yes, and, is we each of us accepted with the other partner said. In terms of the word.
Yeah. And when we just were doing that, I realized like you have to be very present for it. Right. You can't be focused. You can' t be thinking about what the next thing is you want to say. No, this has to be present and open.
No, it totally keeps you in the moment. Absolutely. In the moment. Lisa: Chris: Which is something we could all be doing more, I think today. Yeah. We have another game called Vacations and Vacations this is about justifying and accepting what your partner says. And in this exercise, we reminisce about a vacation we took together and each one of us will give the other a little piece, just a small, smallest little nugget of a memory.
Like remember the cake or remember the dog or remember the elevator. And then together we, yes, and, and flesh it out. And then you give them, then you reciprocally give one back to me. We go back and forth that way. Do you want to try that?
Yeah, let' s try it.
Okay. So, uh, where, where are we going on vacation, Lisa?
We went to Sweden.
Oh, that was so amazing. Do you remember that boat?
I love that boat. Uh, remember we went out onto that lake and then there were some like ice flows there.
I know ice flows. That' s so weird. And it is in the middle of summer and we camped on one. Remember that we, oh, do you remember that tent that we had?
I know I was, I was worried about, uh, that tent because I think some of the water was coming in and I wasn't sure if it was going to actually stay afloat.
Yeah. Yeah. But it did. And you got that beautiful suntan from all the reflected light on the ice.
I love that. That was such a great time.
So yeah. So that's, that's generally how it works. Lisa: Maybe we could show some examples of how yes and doesn' t work, right? Like what are the components of yes, and. Chris: So one thing I love about the whole yes and thing is that it has different aspects. So let' s do another vacation. I' ll demo how this works. So, uh, let' s say we went on vacation. We went to Mexico. So you start.
Chris, do you remember that time we went to Mexico?
Oh, I do. I remember it really well. Yeah. Yeah. We went to Mexico. Yeah. Yeah.
And we, um, we got off the plane and I remember we weren' t sure whether we were supposed to, um, rent the car there right there at the airport or whether we were going to try to find a taxi or something.
I remember that. Yeah. We didn' t know. We didn' t know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that really clearly. Lisa. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And so we decided that we should actually.
Okay. We' ll stop there. So, what just happened? What did I do?
Well, you didn' t help me at all, dude.
No. I left you out to dry. Totally. Totally. And in improv we call it being a passenger. And so, in terms of being creative in the moment, being a passenger didn' t help the process at all. It put it all on you. And I did nothing to help. Let' s do another one this time. Let' s say we we went to a different place; we went on vacation.
We went to Mendocino, California.
Mendocino. Do you remember that trip we took to Mendocino?
I loved that.
When we first got there, we found that little cabin. That cabin had that wood stove. Do you remember that wood stove in there? That was so amazing.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember I went out.
And you brought all those clothes, those heavy clothes, those night clothes.
We didn' t even need those. It' s so warm in this cabin. But I wanted to take a hike at the- Chris: Remember the beach? We went down to the beach. Oh God. Do you remember that beach? You found all those shells. Yeah. Yeah.
You made that necklace.
Yeah. And I walked down the beach and I- Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then we went to that dinner. Oh, that amazing dinner. Okay, good. We' ll stop there. So what happened there? Well, you didn' t let me get a word in edgewise and you kind of talked over me. Chris: I was being a driver and I probably call it being a driver. And there are wonderful times and definitely relevant times it' s great to be a passenger and great to be a driver.
But in terms of co-creating together and being collaborative together, it doesn't serve. Making those choices have probable outcomes. Probably if I' m going to be a passenger in a creative moment, my partner will dry up, probably. If I tend to be a driver in those moments, I' m not going to reap the benefits of my partner' s input. And again, like I said, there are wonderful places to be passenger.
If the person's on a total roll and they just need encouragement, then it' s great to go - yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome, awesome. I mean, a driver, if it dries up or you really have to get your point across, it' s totally relevant. Yeah. So one more aspect of this. Let' s say we went on vacation to Egypt. Okay. So you go. Great. I had always wanted to go to Egypt and I was so glad when we planned that trip and we went there.
What trip? Lisa: Do you remember when we went and we spent two days in Cairo and then we went out to the- I have no memory of that at all. Sorry.
Yeah. Then remember what we were- Chris: Hey, let' s go get lunch. Let' s go get lunch. That' s called blocking. And blocking just totally shuts down your partner. Got it. I wanted to just sort of kind of read through the tenets of improv as I understand them. "Yes, and" is sort of the core tenet of improv in this way. Let go of your agenda. Listen in order to receive. Build on what you receive. Make your partner look brilliant. And, you can' t be wrong.
It' s quite a list of statements in a way of how we could live our life, right? Of how we could live our life from day to day in a way to in fact bring our humanity back into the problem solving of today's greatest challenges, I would say.
It connects us with people, right? Because all of those are in relationship with someone else or some other people. So it' s all about connecting and being present with other people.
And so, tell me a bit how you came to use improv to actually help people in their work.
Well, it' s funny. The origin story of Life Plays, my partner Ann Swanberg was teaching classes and people were coming over saying, ' God, this class feels so good. It' s so warm and connective and supportive and creative together.' I wish my workplace could feel like this, my workplace teams.' And she went, well, they can. So we started working with teams that way within workplaces. But basically what it does is it starts giving you a culture of connection and co-creation.
Lisa: How does that change or what is the concept of how that actually changed how we interact in the workforce? Chris: One of the outcomes of creating this collaborative way is we got something that neither one of us would have thought, would have come up with on our own. And what we lost was control. There' s a trade-off there. There' s a trade-off between control and the reaping of the creative process or the creative outcome.
By trading off control, we come up with outcomes that would not be foreseeably found on our own. And that' s one of the big takeaways. And I think the improv really demonstrates that.
I like how you said this before. You talked about it' s kind of like flexing a muscle.
Yeah. It's like going to a yoga class. The exercises in yoga, in and of themselves, aren’t useful. You don’t want to stand in line at the bank and go into downward-facing dog. But standing in the bank, you might be using the muscles that you’ve loosened up and your back won’t tighten up from doing downward-facing dog. And same with the improv exercises. The exercises themselves aren’t terribly useful in life, except they are fun and you’re stuck in traffic.
But it changes your mindset and your outlook over time. Lisa: So is it a sense that if we practice that in some way, that we' re then able to do it not just to tell a story about our frog, but we' re able to do it in a way that helps us be more creative or maybe even find solutions to problems that we haven' t been thinking about before? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Because the interesting part is it' s one thing to do it in the realm of improv, but the real payoff is when you start applying it to the workplace scenarios. So we do a lot of work with brainstorming sessions.
Actually, maybe we could talk a little bit about Big Ideas Fest and how you used improv to be able to take a group of a couple of hundred educators and move them from sort of the solution that' s ordinary and right in front of you to something that's much more about provocation and to be able to kind of get out of that thinking about what can and can't be.
So with Big Ideas Fest, the challenge was to bring the concepts and put them into a practice. So we would begin with doing easy improv exercises that practiced the idea of shared control, creativity, and apply it to the problem that we were working on to solve with the Big Ideas Fest. What do they call it? The- Lisa: The action collabs? Action, yeah. The action collabs. Action collabs, yeah.
So we would encourage people to go for solutions that made no sense at all, but embedded in those solutions were ideas that were viable. The challenge, of course, with educators, and with engineers and people generally is the idea that you can go beyond the viable solutions and just trust the fact that embedded in these outlandish solutions, there are elements that are usable and viable and will actually help you reach a more creative solution than you would have found otherwise.
Lisa: I know you've talked about improv as really like an embodied learning. Can you say a little bit more about that? What does it mean to have embodied learning? Yeah. So embodied learning, because it's a practice and not a subject, you can read the words like, oh, improv is blank and blank and blank, but doing the actual improv itself, it's a practice and you don't get better from reading it more about it. You get better from doing it and it lives in your body.
Often, I'll notice in workshops, I'll ask people after they' re done with exercise, notice how you were standing, notice what your body was like, and they'll sort of look down and go, oh yeah, it was open and breathing and laughing and smiling and making eye contact. This stuff lives in your body. One of the exercises I do in the beginning of a workshop sometimes is I'll ask participants and say, as I'm talking, everyone cross your arms and just gently shake your head no as I'm talking.
And I'll talk and talk and talk. Okay, now, uncross your legs, uncross your arms, lean forward, put your hands on your thighs and just gently nod your head yes. And I'll keep talking, talking. And I'll say, okay, how do you perceive me? With those two different body shapes? And invariably, they'll say, well, I didn' t really care what you were saying when my arms were crossed. And I' ll say, how many of you actually kind of didn' t like me?
And then I had a couple of hands, honest hands will go up. So this stuff really does live in your body. And the learning of it, again, it' s a practice. It' s not a subject you read about, though you can get great ideas, but it comes down to actually doing a practice and running the exercises over and over. And letting it move through you.
Lisa: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about when you go into a room, when you' re maybe going to start a training, say, like you're walking into a room of educational leaders. Do you as sort of the improv coach or the improv teacher, how do you read the room? Like, what is it that you see? And how does that impact your practice? What a great question. Yeah. Because walking in. Especially the educators, educators and engineers.
The room often looks a little tense because again, they have this preconceived notion of what improv is. So my whole job in the first five minutes is to dispel any preconceived notions of what that is. And I'll often ask people, when you hear the word improv, what words come to mind? Just say, yeah, it can' t be wrong. You know, spontaneous, comedy, funny, fear, nervousness, you know, whatever it is. They go, yeah, all those are right.
So it's basically, my first job is to let people open up in their room and be truly where they are. It's basically dispelling all the fear in the room because it can be; people have this idea they have to show up and be funny and act like a toaster. It's like, no, it's not that at all. Lisa: What have you heard people say after they've done some of your improv training? Chris: We actually never know where the big impact is going to come. I remember I was working with a company.
It was a leadership workshop. And one of the people came up and I saw him months later. And he goes, ' You know, the biggest thing, make your partner look brilliant,' changed my life. And that one just absolutely changed him, the idea that you could focus out on someone and try to make them look brilliant. Lisa: Did he say something in particular about how that helped him change the way he made his partner look brilliant?
Chris: He just said that it changed how he saw people and how he treated them. I think he was always focused on being right and being smart. Because he was very smart. And it connected him with other people more. He said it just changed his focus completely. Lisa: Are there any other standouts that you remember in terms of how people have talked about what they've learned or how their practice or behavior changed as leaders within their organization?
Yeah, I' ve heard more than one time about looking for the 'yes' in leadership roles, just when people are brainstorming and coming up with new strategies and business models, just looking for the yes, as opposed to being sitting back and being the all-powerful leader evaluating the diet ideas as they come in and discarding and winnowing out. That's the other main one that comes to mind. It's just that focus of like, where' s the ' yes' here? Where is the 'yes'?
Lisa: Imagine what we could be doing differently today in the world if we really came with that mindset. Like, where's the ' yes'? Where's the ' yes'? That is so simple and so powerful. It is. It's fundamentally simple and it' s powerful and more. Let' s do it more. Lisa: Thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your art and your practice and the training that you do.
I have to say, from what you've described and how you've talked about improv, it really does seem like a way that we can stay true to our collective humanity. What would it really mean if we yes, and each other and made our partner look brilliant in the work that we do? So again, thank you so much, Chris. It was just a pleasure to talk with you. Oh, you' re so welcome, Lisa. Thank you for having me.
Thank you, everybody, for listening to the show this week. This has been Lisa Petridis with Educating to be Human. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can access our show notes for links and information on our guests. And don' t forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Edu2BeHuman. That is E-D-U to be human. This podcast was created by Lisa Petridis and produced by Helene Theros.
Educating to be Human is recorded by Nathan Sherman and edited by Ty Mayer.