Part 2 of Different on Monday: Training for Business Performance, an 8-part series on why Improv-Based Trainers must focus on the workplace applications of their training so they can better set up their learners for success.
Improv is not an intrinsic good.
If, like me, you spent your twenties declaring loudly at parties, “improv can save the world,” the above sentence might have been hard to read. Improvisers tend not to just do improv, we fall in love with improv… hard. We believe improv is inherently good and just getting more people to do improv will make the world a better place. In Philosophy, this is called an “intrinsic good,” something good in and of itself.
I share that sentiment about improvisation, but it’s not useful when you’ve been hired to lead a Dealing with Difficult People workshop at the Radisson®. In Talent Development, improv is an instrumental good. That means something that is good because of some other good which it enables. Your project sponsor, the person who stuck their neck out to approve buying your training, is only interested in improv if it helps achieve their overall goal: performance.
If something else will achieve the needed performance improvement better, then the project sponsor would rather have that other solution, even if they don’t know what that solution is. Meeting performance goals should be instrumental to meeting the business goals, which should be instrumental to business success, which should be instrumental to achieving the organizational mission, which hopefully points somewhere in the direction of an actual intrinsic good. So the measure of improv training is not its ability to demonstrate the inherent good of improv, but to provide what the organization truly needs, and in training, that means improving performance.
What is Performance?
To fully appreciate what performance is, you have to sink further into your client’s business, and you usually do that at first with savvy questioning of the sponsor. Yes, if you get the job, you may be able to do a broader analysis by surveying employees, running focus groups, etc. For most small group engagements, however, your glimpse into what’s really going on in the client organization is going to come from the project sponsor, and the two or three other people they invite to the conference call. That’s why I recommend the question:
“Since you’re planning to invest in training, what do you want to be different on Monday for these learners?”
I always use Monday. Maybe it’s because so many of my trainings show up later in the week. Maybe it’s because I think learners need incubation time for the impacts of improv-based training to show up in their behavior. Phrase this question however you want; your goal is to get an answer that reveals the all-hallowed Desired Performance Outcome.
To paraphrase Geary Rummler and Alan Brache, who literally wrote the book on Improving Performance, a worker’s performance is a combination of what they do and how they do it (2013). Why yes, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
As an Improv-Based Trainer, the client usually wants your work to affect the how they do it part. As in, “we’d like our people to get along better.” “We need them to communicate more effectively.” “We’d need them to give more persuasive sales pitches.”
Worth remembering, though, is that our client may also be secretly—or not so secretly—betting that training encourages their learners to do something more frequently. So, if the client says, “we want our sales reps to get to know each other better and communicate more effectively,” what they may really want is more cross-selling and complex selling, where the reps are working together to build solutions that cross individual sales responsibilities.
This is why you need to ascertain the Desired Performance Outcome, because while training can give someone the knowledge, skills, and attitudes so they can do something, it is limited in its ability to motivate someone to do it more often of their own free own free will. In many ways, training does its best to prepare someone for work, but there must be other interventions in the work place that regularly remind them to build the habit of using their learning in the appropriate situations. (We’ll cover these kinds of Performance Support Tools more in Part 6 and Part 7 of this series.)
What does this look like in Improv-Based Training?
I’m skipping a lot of steps here because, most of the time, if the client has reached out to you as an external provider—especially one they found by searching the word “improv”—they have already decided that they need some kind soft-skills training or teambuilding. They believe they have already diagnosed their problem and decided your kind of work will solve it.
Unfortunately, we often just take the client at their word and fill their order like we were working at McDonald’s®. “You want teambuilding? You got it! Here’s a steaming hot plate of teambuilding with a side of fries! Will that complete your order?”
And so what? They’re the client, after all. And, they’re probably the one with the MBA, the years of industry and organizational experience, and we’re just a well-meaning improv teacher in a tasteful pantsuit. Shouldn’t they get to make the call of what their team needs without feeling questioned by us, their vendor? What’s the worst that could happen?
Here’s what: They could be wrong. And it will be all… your… fault.
Asking Your Way To “Trusted Advisor”
On your first call with your client, it might actually be best to forget you do improv. Keep the focus on what the client needs their people to achieve that they’re not achieving now. You probably aren’t going to solve the problem single-handedly, but you are on your way to providing far more value if you begin by asking, “what are you looking for your people to do differently,” rather than telling all about your favorite art form.
This can be scary for Improv-Based Trainers, because often what is truly needed is more than improv. Just like our students, we don’t necessarily like working outside our comfort zone. However, what you will learn will buttress your improv-based training in a way that makes it more effective, more welcome by clients and their learners, and ultimately, more legitimate as a Talent Development approach.
Coaching the client to define and articulate the performance need may be scary, but the alternative is far worse.
When the client misdiagnoses or, as happens more often, fails to thoroughly explain why they believe your training will solve for their performance need, you will likely create an insufficient training solution. Or, you may create the world’s most perfect training solution, but you will fail to impress upon the client what actions they must do to make that learning stick. (See Part 1 in this series for more on getting your client to “water their plants.”)
So, 30 days (or 60 or 90) after the training, when no one is Yes Anding each other, or doing whatever else you taught, it will look like training failed. It will look like you failed, and you will have, because you accepted the role of order-taker. And the order turned out to be incomplete.
Had you determined the larger performance need and the client’s rationale for selecting your training as a solution, you might have been able to advise them on ways to maximize the benefit of their investment in you. A service provider who can help a client “see around corners” and identify what they may not be considering can be a gold mine for them. If you want to be that valuable (and that likely to be rehired for future work) you have to move from an order-taker to a trusted advisor.
Google® “Learning and Development Trusted Advisor” and you will see just how pervasive these buzzwords are. At least once a year, a Talent Development trade publication will feature a “how to get a seat at the table” article, a.k.a. Five Steps to go from Order-taker to Trusted Advisor. This is something that Directors of Talent Development think about a lot: are they being involved in the “what is truly needed?” conversation, or not being called until that answer has already been decided by their internal clients?
Your client wants to be the trusted advisor to their internal client, and you, in turn, want to be a trusted advisor to them. What that requires of you is careful listening, coaching toward a definable, observable performance need, and then fearlessly building a learning plan, even if it means you have to go outside your improv expertise and engage outside partners for help.
Improv is not enough, but if you focus courageously on the Desired Performance Outcome, you can create the solution which is.
References:
Rummler, G.A. & Brache, A.P. (2013). Improving performance: How to manage the white space on the organization chart. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.