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The comic improviser Robin Williams performing on stage. Improvisation is taught in certain business schools.
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- Improvisation is used to teach business students to key skills
- “Improvisation does not concern comedy, it is a question of reacting,” explains the instructor Robert Kulhan
- Practitioners say that improvisation teaches creativity, communication skills and leadership
- You can practice the basics of improvisation at home and at work
London, England (CNN) – In a commercial world more uncertain than ever, it is paying to be able to think about your feet. This is why some business schools use improvisation lessons to teach skills such as creativity and leadership.
Although many people can consider improvisation as an unicated comedy, it can apply to any form of spontaneous theater – and practitioners say that the use of “improvisation” to teach commercial skills is not a joke.
Robert Kulhan is deputy assistant professor at the Fuqua School of Business at the University of Duke, in North Carolina, and CEO of improvisations business. He has improvised on stage for years and now teaches improvisation to business students and leaders.
“Improvisation does not concern comedy, it is a question of reacting – being concentrated and present at the time at a very high level,” Kulhan told CNN.
In addition to teaching people to react and adapt, he said that improvisation can teach creativity, innovation, communication, teamwork and leadership.
Lakshmi Balachandra teaches improvisation leadership at MIT Sloan School of Management and is a guest lecturer for advanced students in negotiations at the Harvard Business School.
She was an improvisation comic book before working in venture capital and finance. She went to study an MBA in Sloan and said that it was there that she realized how much she used her improvisation training in her business career.
2) Avoid asking questions. In business, it means being aware of the way in which questions continually ask that others do all the work.
3) Listen. In conversation, people often predict in advance rather than listening to really, and at work, it is easy to be distracted by computers or blackberries. The targeted listening is a crucial competence.
4) Add information. You must contribute if you want things to where you want.
5) Read contact. In the workplace, it is important to pay attention to body language. Even on the phone, you can have signs about how the other person.
“Improvisation teaches you to think about your feet and react and to adapt very quickly to unexpected events and things that you may not have planned,” said Balachandra to CNN.
“This applies to leadership and it applies to negotiations, where you never have control of what's going on,” she said. “Negotiation is a dynamic process – you must be able to think about your feet and adapt.”
Kulhan and Balachandra both declared that the key to improvisation is the principle “yes and”, and it is an idea that they believe particularly relevant to business.
In the improvisation of performance, it means listening to what someone else says, accepting what he says, then relying on this. In commercial terms, this means accepting an idea that is brought to the table, then go further.
Kulhan said that this type of “suspension of judgment” is essential for brainstorming and creative thinking, but that unconditional acceptance does not always come easily to high -flying leaders. He said that it is not that critical thinking is not important – just that it can sometimes bother.
“There is a false idea in the business that you need to be 100% correct at 100% of the time, while the truth is that you have to be 100% correct about 10% of the time – the rest of the time, you have to make decisions,” said Kulhan.
“We get into the paralysis of the analysis, or simply the pressure of the property, and we have the impression that we must be correct all the time. But if you simply make a decision, you will have room to adapt and react and make it work in the parameters you need.”
Kulhan said that the principles of improvisation can help anyone who can perfect his business skills, and if you cannot go to an improvisation course, you can always apply the fundamental principles of improvisation to your own life.
“One way is self-audit-see what you do in real time and how you affect others in real time,” he told CNN.
“You can take this sentence ‘yes, and test it at home or during meetings, and try to exert a judgment – try the principles of real life.”
