9 Lessons from Keith Johnstone’s Teachings on Improvisation.

Keith. This is a personal post based on a 10-day improvisation course I took with Keith Johnstone in Calgary last July. Keith Johnstone is the leading international thinker and practitioner on improvisation. He is a prolific author and an exceptional teacher.

Learning made to stick. It is the one year anniversary of the course and I think what is significant in learning is not what you do or take away immediately but what stays with you. It was never my intent to perform improvisation on a stage it was my hope to learn principles and practices that could be transferred to my work.

The 9 Lessons:

The pass. As leaders and manager we could learn a lot by structuring the workplace to please the people who work with us. Keith had us focus on our partners and their reactions to our requests and invitations. It is nice to score a goal but what a thrill to make a pass or offer something to someone else to make them look good. Can you focus on other and contribute to what Benjamin Zander calls shinning eyes?

Enjoy the process. Keith was always encouraging people to enjoy their improvisation. It is amazing how serious we can be about something that has the possibility for so much fun. How serious do we get about work and can you enjoy your work. I have always enjoyed teaching and presenting but after the course I make this much more evident to myself and my audiences.

Voice a positive no. This learning went against what I first heard about improvisation – we should build upon what the other improvisers offer. We should always say yes. Keith asked us why we would want to do that. You don’t always have to say yes. He had us practice giving cheery no’s. Of course when you say no it is beneficial if you have another alternative to offer. We are not looking for improvisers or employees who are a “bunch of yes-men.”

Modeling engaged teaching. I learned this not so much from Keith’s method’s but from who he was. Keith was a very engaged teacher even when he wasn’t certain what he was going to do or how things would unfold. I plan to work until I am at least 75 and he offered not just inspiration but a vibrant and engaged model of doing just that.  He might work with us up to 9 hours a day. Our course was being videotaped by 3 cameras and Keith was so engaged and engaged us so well that the cameras would disappear from consciousness.

Improvise all the time. I think there is so much potential transfer of learning from an improvisers mind set that goes well beyond the stage. Many of us will benefit by learning to move into what is, by paying very close attention to the people we work with, by letting go of some control, etc.

Get altered. Keith encouraged us to be altered. He wanted others to have an impact on us and for us to have an impact on others.  I left the course noticing how few of us want to be altered by other people and how reluctant I am to be altered. Keith helped us experience and learn about being in a trance, how often we are in a trance without even knowing it, and how work can be trance-formative.

Do the easy and the simple. Often improvisers are looking for crazy ideas or bizarre performances. Keith encouraged us to do the obvious and to be simple. Some of the best performance, on the stage or at work, are both easy and simple. Many times we just need to get out of our own way. Can we be simple or do we strive for complexity to look clever or smart? Believe it or not, one of the best improvisers was a small plush Ernie doll Keith brought to class one day. The small Ernie doll, from Sesame Street, had big eyes and just let things be!

Enjoy failure, it isn’t final. Often improvisers fail to achieve a masterful performance. Failure is not final and we should enjoy the mess and move on. We should strive for an open versus a fixed mindset. See this wonderful diagram based on Carol Dweck’s work: Open Versus Fixed Mindset Diagram. Strive to experience and live an open mindset.

What comes next? This was the key phrase I took away and our answer to this question should please us or the person we are working with. I love asking people what comes next when they talk about their career or a possible change in direction. If you want to see where a change may take you try answering the question what comes next 20 times in a row and keep being pleased by the answer. See where a relationship or project is headed by asking your partner or team to keep answering the question.

Click here to go to the Applied Improvisation Network if  you would like to read a series of blog posts I wrote about the course during the course.

Here is a bonus list from my notes during the course of a few things that also stood out for me:

• Remain happy in adversity
• Make a relationship
• Don’t be funny
• Work on operant conditioning
• Screw up and stay happy
• Promise interesting stuff and deliver more
• Offer the other person what you think they need
• Don’t be oblivious to the obvious
• A good improviser is a servant to others (at times)
• Start by cheering up the audience
• Observe the kinetic dance, make room for others.
• Don’t be blind to others
• Be transported by your trances
• If things start badly they hardly ever improve
• Change your face and open your eyes
• Really see the people you are with
• Real listening mean being altered by what is said to you.

Thanks Keith. I encourage you to click here to visit his website. Read his books or take one of his courses.

I can’t wait to see, what comes next.

David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement. He is committed to creating authentic and sustained employee engagement for the benefit of all. Contact David at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca.

David Whyte wrote a wonderful book on The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship.

Here is a quotation from page 24 illustrating the fine content and style that David offers:

In work we have to find high ground safe from the arriving tsunami of expectation concerning what I am going to do. Work, like marriage, is a place you can lose yourself more easily perhaps than finding yourself. It is a place full of powerful undercurrents, a place to find our selves, but also, a place to drown, losing all sense of our voice, our own contribution and conversation.

Are you finding yourself or losing yourself in your work?

I encourage you to engage yourself with David Whyte’s The Three Marriages.

David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement. He is committed to creating authentic and sustained employee engagement for the benefit of all. Contact David at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca.

I love the title of this album and concert from David Byrne and Brian Eno:

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

Click here to listen to these tunes from their live concert.

Cartoons for Today At Work… created by John Junson.

As someone devoted to employee engagement for years, I was thrilled to see Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement a comprehensive report coming out of the UK.

It is so encouraging that a major national government is paying so much attention to employee engagement and encouraging business, government, and other organizations to also pay more attention and take action to build awareness and foster action.

Permissions. I was also so pleased to see the open access to the information of this report:

The text in this document may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium providing it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the title of the document specified.

What follows are 21 powerful points that stood out for me (The bold text statement at the start of each point is mine while the text that follows is from this comprehensive report). There was much more in the report and this is one individuals early assessment of the wealth of information offered.

Does engagement make a difference? Our answer is an unequivocal yes. In the course of the past eight months we have seen many examples of companies and organisations where performance and profitability have been transformed by employee engagement; we have met many employees who are only too keen to explain how their working lives have been transformed; and we have read many studies which show a clear correlation between engagement and performance – and most importantly between improving engagement and improving performance.

The heart of the workplace. Engagement, going to the heart of the workplace relationship between employee and employer, can be a key to unlocking productivity and to transforming the working lives of many people for whom Monday morning is an especially low point of the week.

Learn how good you can be. As Sir Alan Jones, Chairman Emeritus of Toyota UK told us: “Wherever you work, your job as a manager is to make your people be the best they can be – and usually they don’t know just how good they could be. It’s individuals that make the difference”.

No cookie cutters for employee engagement. The way employee engagement operates can take many forms – that is one of the most fascinating aspects of the topic – and the best models are those which have been custom-developed for the institution.

Get with it people. We hope this report will set out a compelling case to encourage more companies and organisations to adopt engagement approaches. We believe the evidence we cite of a positive correlation between an engaged workforce and improving performance is convincing.

A triple play. Engagement is about establishing mutual respect in the workplace for what people can do and be, given the right context, which serves us all, as individual employees, as companies and organisations and as consumers of public services. It is our firm belief that it can be a triple win: for the individual at work, the enterprise or service, and for the country as a whole.

The scent of engagement. “You sort of smell it, don’t you, that engagement of people as people. What goes on in meetings, how people talk to each other. You get the sense of energy, engagement, commitment, belief in what the organisation stands for,” is how Lord Currie, former Chair of the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and Dean of Cass Business School, puts it. As a number of business leaders told us, “You know it when you see it.”

1 of 50 definitions. “Engagement is about creating opportunities for employees to connect with their colleagues, managers and wider organisation. It is also about creating an environment where employees are motivated to want to connect with their work and really care about doing a good job…It is a concept that places flexibility, change and continuous improvement at the heart of what it means to be an employee and an employer in a twenty-first century workplace.” (Professor Katie Truss1)

Make it authentic. Although improved performance and productivity is at the heart of engagement, it cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort by manipulating employees’ commitment and emotions. Employees see through such attempts very quickly; they lead instead to cynicism and disillusionment. By contrast, engaged employees freely and willingly give discretionary effort, not as an ‘add on’, but as an integral part of their daily activity at work.

More than a survey. We have also been struck by the number of people who told us of the equal importance of using instinct and judgment. It is also clear that simply doing a survey and publishing the results is not the same as an engagement strategy. Measuring engagement is simply a tool to allow you to find out how engaged your people are.

Engagement = Performance. Levels of engagement matter because employee engagement can correlate with performance. Even more significantly, there is evidence that improving engagement correlates with improving performance – and this is at the heart of our argument why employee engagement matters to the UK.

Good stuff being done already. These and many other examples suggest that when it comes to engagement, it is not a case of inventing something new; good practice is out there, transforming organisations and transforming lives.

The employee benefit of engagement. Engagement is not just about macro-economics. There is a measurable and significant win for the individual engaged employee. Studies in this field demonstrate beyond doubt that individuals maximise their psychological well-being when they are engaged in meaningful work that provides positive emotional experiences. As our working lives extend with growing longevity, people will want and demand a greater sense of well-being at work.

Happy@Work. Eighty-six per cent of engaged employees say they very often feel happy at work, as against 11 per cent of the disengaged. Forty-five per cent of the engaged say they get a great deal of their life happiness from work, against eight per cent of the disengaged. (Gallup 2006)

4 Major Drivers. 1. Leadership which ensures a strong, transparent and explicit organisational culture which gives employees a line of sight between their job and the vision and aims of the organisation. 2.  Engaging managers who offer clarity, appreciation of employees’ effort and contribution, who treat their people as individuals and who ensure that work is organised efficiently and effectively so that employees feel they are valued, and equipped and supported to do their job. 3. Employees feeling they are able to voice their ideas and be listened to, both about how they do their job and in decision-making in their own department, with joint sharing of problems and challenges and a commitment to arrive at joint solutions. 4. A belief among employees that the organisation lives its values, and that espoused behavioural norms are adhered to, resulting in trust and a sense of integrity.

The evidence is there. As John Purcell told us. “Despite the difficulties and weaknesses it is hard to ignore the volume of studies which show, to varying degrees, with varying sophistication, a positive relationship between high performance/involvement work practices and outcome measures.”

Disengagement is more than a bad day. Despite the compelling case for employee engagement, we know that a significant percentage of the workforce feel disconnected from the work they do and the people they work for. Whilst accepting that all of us are capable of having a ‘bad day at work’ we do not accept the inevitability of work being just one bad day after another.

Get planning and doing. Accor report that 75 per cent of leaders have no engagement plan or strategy even though 90 per cent say engagement impacts on business success.

Managing to Engage. An engaging manager is at the heart of success in engaging the workforce. Accenture’s internal research showed that 80 per cent of the variation in engagement levels was down to the line manager. As a result, employees’ most important relationship at work is with their line manager; people join organisations, but they leave managers.

Engaging Manager’s Actions. Firstly, engaging managers offer clarity for what is expected from individual members of staff, which involves some stretch, and much appreciation and feedback/coaching and training. The second key area is treating their people as individuals, with fairness and respect and with a concern for the employee’s well-being. Thirdly, managers have a very important role in ensuring that work is designed efficiently and effectively.

The voice of engagement. The ‘ Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work for’ found that feeling listened to was the most important factor in determining how much respondents valued their organisation. Being heard reinforces a sense of belonging within an organisation and a belief that ones actions can have an impact. Richard Baker, Non-executive Chairman of Virgin Active (and former CEO of Alliance Boots) told us: “Employee morale is the first step to productivity improvements. Give your people a damn good listening to, and act on what you learn.”

The MacLeod report. There is much more in this report and it will guide the UK’s employee engagement efforts for the coming year. I strong encourage you to study this report, regardless of what country you are from and join the powerful employee engagement movement.

Click here to download a PDF of the full report and get engaged!

Nita Clarke, a co-author, of the UK MacLeod Employee Engagement Report talks about Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement.

Her key points include:

• What employee engagement can add for you.
• The growing need and demand for employee engagement.
• Engagement means utilization of education/training
• Employee engagement a key people skill in the development of line managers.

Here is a description of the video from the site:

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke were commissioned by the Department for Business (BIS) to take an in-depth look at employee engagement and to report on its potential benefits for organisations and employees. The Secretary of State for Business, Lord Mandelson, encouraged the independent reviewers to examine whether a wider take up of engagement approaches could impact positively on UK competitiveness and performance, and meet the challenges of increased global competition.

Watch the video here:

Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement.

Here is a very important UK report on Employee Engagement. Watch this short video by David MacLeod:

MacLeod Employee Engagement Report Keys for Engagement = clarity, engaging managers, employee voice, fused values & behaviors.

Click here for a free copy of the 157 page PDF report. I will read this report and write a longer report in the near future.

Here is the YouTube description of the short 3 minute video:

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke were commissioned by the Department for Business (BIS) to take an in-depth look at employee engagement and to report on its potential benefits for organisations and employees. The Secretary of State for Business, Lord Mandelson, encouraged the independent reviewers to examine whether a wider take up of engagement approaches could impact positively on UK competitiveness and performance, and meet the challenges of increased global competition.

The independent reviewers answer is an unequivocal yes. Since Autumn 2008 they have seen many examples of companies and organisations where performance and profitability have been transformed by employee engagement; they have met many employees who are only too keen to explain how their working lives have been transformed; and have read many studies which show a clear correlation between engagement and performance and most importantly between improving engagement and improving performance.

Click here for John Ingham’s review of the report.

Here is a 2 minute video of Caty Everett talking with Sumi Das about employee engagement during a recession. It is a little simple but a good reminder of a few employee engagement keys for managers or leaders.

The New Zeitgeist of Engagement and Employee Engagement.

Indications from different directions. Barak Obama’s approach and the principles of the Network Era in marketing have much to teach us about employee engagement.

Two well-written articles. Two articles caught my attention the past week. Michael Zubrow wrote an article on BBC News about Obama engages the world and Scott Davis wrote a blog post on Welcome to the Network Era – Shaping Brands and the Business.

Network Era shifts.  Let’s start with Scott Davis. Here is Scott’s summary of the Network Era shift:

The Network Era marks a decided shift for the marketer from control to influence. From communications to engagement and participation. From closed to open, transparent and authentic. And it’s not just customer relationships these dynamics apply to. It’s employees and peers outside of marketing. …Managing the network opportunity for your business is no longer optional. The challenge to those who aspire to become Visionary Marketers is to understand and embrace those dynamics and make them work for the business in driving growth. Other benefits will follow, from greater and stronger brand loyalty, to an enriched, invested pool to draw upon to spur innovation, to powerful internal alliances to keep the momentum going.

Key lessons. In relationship to employee engagement here are some of the key principles I derived from Scott’s blog:

• Fully make the shift from control to influence.
• Shift from communications to engagement and participation.
• Move away from closed to open, transparent, and authentic
• Managing for engagement is no longer optional.
• We must embrace the new engagement dynamics.

I encourage you to read Scott Davis’ full post by clicking here.

Obama’s Engagement Methods. Michael Zubrow wrote about Obama’s recent trip overseas and his shift from the Bush administration’s leadership-centric diplomacy to engaging directly with the poeple of the world. Here are a few snippes from Zubrow’s article:

Public diplomacy. Barack Obama’s weapon of choice is public diplomacy, speaking plainly and persuasively, directly to the people. While President George W Bush was well known for relying on close relationships with heads of state, President Obama’s rhetoric is aimed at the ruling elite and the common citizen alike.

In Prague he referred to the strength of the people of a different generation, exclaiming: “That’s why I’m speaking to you in the centre of a Europe that is peaceful, united and free – because ordinary people believed that divisions could be bridged, even when their leaders did not

In Accra, Mr Obama called for institutions that are transparent and reliable, noting that good governance is “about more than holding elections – it’s also about what happens between them

But President Obama has made one thing overwhelmingly clear – America’s participation in solving the most challenging issues of our day is not optional. These problems threaten the peace and stability of the world and we simply cannot pass them off to the next generation. The future President Obama describes is one where America leads through example, not intervention. His approach emphasises the emergence and importance of local organisations and institutions contributing to solving global problems.

Key lessons. In relationship to employee engagement here are some of the key principles I derived from Michael Zubrow’s article:

• Leaders must engage directly with employees.
• We must lead through example not by intervention.
• Leaders must share values, hopes, and dreams with employees.
• Leaders must help employees rally to take on the most challenging issues of the organization.
• Have faith in employees to create change that makes sense.
• Make use of new technologies and tools to communicate with employees.
• We must all pay attention to the times between strategies, results, and implementation – employee engagement is a process.

I encourage you to read Michael Zubrow’s full article by clicking here.

Don’t be left behind. From Marketing and the Network Era to the approach and connection of Barak Obama the world is changing to a model of engagement. Are you ensuring that you are engaging fully in an authentic, powerful, connected, and real approaches to employee engagement? The world is rapidly changing — are you changing with it?

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David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement. He is committed to creating authentic and sustained employee engagement for the benefit of all. Contact David at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca.

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