Backstory: How not to do this
My first corporate training gig scared me to death. While I had been improvising professionally for a few years and teaching improvisers, this was different. A corporate gig meant a lot of money for the theater where I worked, and a lot of the ensemble members wanted to do them. If I blew my chance to lead one, I would be going to the back of a very long line.
The training itself went “fine” or, as they say in corporate America, “3 - meets expectations.” But as I gained experience and read more about adult learning, I realized why I had only done “fine.” I hadn’t shifted my thinking from being an “improviser who happened to do training” to a “Talent Developer who happened to use improv.”
I had made the mistake of treating the training like an improv class where everyone shows up because they can’t wait to learn how to improvise. I hadn’t appreciated that corporate training is its own world, and I hadn’t taken the time to understand that world. If this sounds familiar, the following five mental shifts will help you make your clients and yourself more satisfied with your trainings. Future posts will go into depth on each of these shifts and more, so if any of these really throw you, more help is on the way.
“What’s Going to be Different on Monday?”
Improvisers tend not to just do improv, we fall in love with it… hard. In Talent Development, improv is only as good as its ability to Improve Performance. On your early calls with your prospective client, keep the focus on what they need their people to achieve that they’re not achieving already. You’re not trying to create new improvisers. Instead, you’re trying to deliver value to your client via a more equipped workforce. Identify that value by asking, “what are you looking to be different at work the next day?” rather than telling all about your favorite art form.
Mind the Gap: Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes
Once your client has explained how they want their people to perform differently at work, you must identify what needs to change in three specific areas. What information and understanding (knowledge) do those people need? What actions (skills) must they get better at doing? How should these people feel (attitudes) differently about their work? Listing out these Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes, or KSAs, can often involve some hair-splitting, but once you do, you have a much richer picture of what better looks like. Once you have that clear picture of what to improve, you get to face the three most annoying letters in Talent Development: “HOW?”
What’s Your Plan?
Every improviser has been in the class where the instructor led a 20-minute improv exercise that should only have taken five. Why? So the improv teacher could furiously scribble down their lesson plan for the rest of that class. Don’t be that person. Building and refining your own checklist for designing and delivering your improv-based trainings can really help. I recommend a framework I call ARDDIE, based loosely on a 2008 TD Magazine article by Benjamin Ruark and a longstanding Instructional Design approach called ADDIE. It’s not very specific, but this will give you enough to get started:
ANALYZE: What’s the need? Who are the learners? What are the gaps?
RESEARCH: What do you need to learn to successfully create this training?
DESIGN: What approach will meet the need identified?
DEVELOPMENT: What must be created to support the training?
IMPLEMENTATION: What does the on-site delivery look like?
EVALUATION: What do I have to check throughout the process to make sure the training is successful?
This kind of rigor should help you design more thoughtfully planned trainings. However, you may also realize that some learning needs benefit from other approaches. The true improv-based trainer has to bring more to the table than just improv.
Improv is an ingredient, not the meal
Consider these traditional training approaches to Yes And your favorite improv exercises. For example, when your learners begin with different ability levels, a facilitated discussion with a thoughtful prompt (discussion question) will allow them to teach each other. Or, once you’ve introduced an interpersonal skill with a fun improv game, have learners practice the skill in a scenario-based role-play that better resembles their work environment. A traditional training game might provide a more content-focused approach that is still interactive. For example, toward the end of a session, have everyone draw a mind-map together that recaps all the most important points you covered.
Finally, my most controversial suggestion: Don’t be afraid of lecture, and yes (gasp) PowerPoint® as a way to deliver foundational content. People don’t hate lecture as much as you think; they hate bad and boring lecture. We improvisers are naturally fun, warm, and engaging performers. So, put those theater chops to work and share necessary content with clarity and panache!
Address performance needs with a blend of compelling approaches, and your participants will thank you. But one question will remain: Did anybody learn anything?
Say Yes to the Test: Evaluate, Adjust, Evaluate
How do you know your trainings make a difference? At the very least, have your learners fill out a survey after training. If you use the same survey for every training you do, you might gain some valid and reliable findings you can share with prospective clients to demonstrate your track record.
There are a lot of sample evaluation forms you can find online, but unless you’re regularly working with 1000s of learners, I would suggest adding some open-ended text questions, or “qualitative data.” This feedback can help you deliver better trainings in the future. And yes, occasionally someone will say something really mean. That’s probably more about them than you. Still, it’s worth it for the gems of thoughtful feedback that can help you see a blind spot you didn’t know you had. A common trainer’s expression is, “wasn’t measured; didn’t happen.” If you applied yourself to the other four mental shifts, it means you’re doing the work that some of your competitors are blowing off. That work deserves to be measured.
Wrap-up
If after reading about the five shifts, you said, “but I do all of that already,” chances are your trainings are already helping the business world trust Applied Improvisation. Thank you; you’re Yes Anding us all. If however, your reaction to one of these was “huh, what?”, then please continue to read my blogs with the “train better” category listed under the title as they are published.
The more you keep these five shifts top-of-mind, the more likely you are to exemplify the kind of professionalism and value that clients reward with positive reviews, referrals, and repeat business. But the real win is that you have made a true marriage between improv and training; you are walking in both worlds, and both are better for it. Congratulations, Improviser, you’re a Talent Developer now.