At a recent Central Region Evangelism offsite meeting, we did something fun. The first morning was setup as a skills training day. The skill? Improv! We hired Chris Miller from LifePlays to work with the group on improv as a communications and collaboration technique.

To set the context, the offsite meetings are the only time that all of us in Central Region Evangelism get together. This happens once or twice a year. These meetings typically consist of business readouts, planning sessions, cross team collaboration efforts, technical or soft skills training and some type of team building exercise. For example, at the last offsite we did a scavenger hunt all across Las Vegas as the team building exercise. The idea was that working together to find clues would help us get to know each other and get us collaborating.

I complained loudly enough about the scavenger hunt that I was told to fix it... Oops. Later that week I was catching up on podcasts and heard Chris on the Core77 Broadcast. It sounded like exactly what we needed. There are a couple of things that the training promised to do.

First of all, it was to teach some simple improv techniques and secondly team building.

Improv is all about being in the moment. It's about listening and responding to the person in front of you. In improv speak, that person is your partner.

One of these improv techniques is the Yes-And technique. The idea here is simple in theory and harder in practices. If you say "Yes, And" in response to an idea, you are supporting your team and are able to quickly able to collaborate on new ideas. However, if you say "No, But" in response to an idea, you are blocking that person and it immediately shuts down any collaboration. The worse one is if you say "Yes, But". The yes sounds like you're agreeing and collaborating but you're not. The But in that sentence is deadly as it's a sleeper.

Other goals and techniques are to stay connected to your improv partner. To do this, you have to listen to them and then react. Too often we are caught in the trap where we are actively thinking about what we are going to say next rather than listening fully. How do you know what you are saying Yes or No to without listening?

We did a number of different exercises but three in particular that I want to point out and talk about are Yellow Ball, Gift and Vacation.

In Yellow Ball, we gathered 10-15 people into a circle. One of the people had an imaginary yellow ball that they would pass around the circle. To pass it, the passer says, "Yellow Ball" and tosses the ball to a specific person. The passee says, "Yellow Ball, Thank you". This was pretty easy with one ball. It got a lot more complicated when we added a number of new balls to the group. Then it became even more complicated with the introduction of different colored balls. If you didn't have a ball, you had to constantly scan the circle for someone who was looking to pass off a ball and listen very carefully to make sure that you knew what color ball you were receiving.

At the end of the exercise, we would gather as a large group and share learnings. One of the insightful comments that was made was that it was easy to drop out of the game just by looking down. I realized that this is what happens in meetings anytime someone goes into the technology prayer (reading email on their phone) or opens a laptop. We, especially those in the tech field, do this all the time and it's a huge problem. We need to focus on the people in front of us.

For Gift, we paired up and exchanged imaginary gifts. The cool part was that as the giver, you had no idea what you were giving and as the givee, you had no idea what you were receiving. Instead, as the giver handed the item off, the body language of the giver would start assigning weight, size and those type of properties to the object. The job of the givee was to just adore the object and be completely thankful that they have received such a wonderful gift. The first thing was to love that object. Then as the givee took object and started to examine it, the properties of the object would become more defined and as the object took shape, the name of the object would just appear.

In the sharing after this exercise, one of the great comments was that we often judge an idea before we've figured out what that idea really is and have weighed it against the other options. We need to be more accepting of others ideas. This is harder to do than it sounds but it's something that we all need to practice.

Another exercise was Vacation. Again, we paired up in this exercise. The idea was that we were given a location and we had "remember" a vacation that the two of us took to that location. This was the quintessential "Yes, and" exercise. Every idea that our partner threw out, we were to answer "Yes, and" then add to the idea with our with our own ideas. We were not to change the idea - simply to add to it. This was a lot of fun. We went on some great vacations with amazing food, drink, dancing and more. The longer that the exercise went on, the crisper the vision became and the more energized we were about it. After we did this all in pairs, we got back together as a group and pulled a few pairs to do it live in front of the group. This was cool. One of the pairs started to doubt their vision and with doubt came floundering. It was actually a great lesson because Chris threw himself into the exercise as a third party to the vacation for just a moment to give credibility back to the vision. This put the exercise back on track and saved it.

In the sharing after this exercise, someone pointed out that although neither of the partners in their pair had ever been to Greece, they had a great vacation there and were really generating ideas. This is called co-creation. It's a powerful concept that you should try. It allows ideas to flow very quickly and greatly enhances brainstorming sessions. Try it by outlawing the words But, No, However, Maybe and other "blocking" words from one of your upcoming meetings. Focus in on Yes, And, Absolutely, Great and other "enabling" words.

The second learning was the one from Chris. When you see a partner, team mate or anyone struggling - just throw yourself in there and help out. Chris told me about a time that he was in Germany watching a German improv troupe. The scene started to die at one point and Chris, knowing no German whatsoever but understanding body language, jumped on stage and just started making stuff up. Immediately life was breathed back into the scene and order was restored.

I got a lot out of the improv exercises. The feedback that I got was overwhelmingly positive. More importantly than that, it was extremely gratifying to see, throughout the rest of the 3 day meeting, even those that had complained about the improv exercises using the "Yes, and" lingo, talking about staying connected to each other, brain storming together, co-creating and showing that they had gotten a lot out of it too.