Life (and Career) Lessons from Improv

By: Tony Carnevale

No matter what career you’re in, the experiences you’ve had can help you do your job better. As an advertising creative, nothing has helped me more than my time performing improvisational comedy. And I’ve had a lot of that experience — at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and Los Angeles, and more recently Station Theater and Coronation Theater in Houston. For a couple years, I was in a nationally touring improv show and actually got paid (some) money to perform at community theaters, colleges, and festivals all around the country.

While I've spent a lot of time in the improv trenches, you don’t need that much experience to gain a few skills and insights that might help you professionally and in your personal relationships. In fact, you don’t even need to set foot on a stage, because I’m about to share some of what I’ve learned right now. (Not everything, though. For that, you’ll need to register for my 12-week seminar… just kidding.)

Listen and react

When you perform in an improv scene, you start with nothing except the other humans in the scene (often just one other human). And now you have to create a whole universe. How are you going to do that?

You can take improv classes for years, but it all boils down to this: You have to listen to what your scene partner says and watch what they do, and react accordingly. If they do the same, you can build something together.

“Listen and react” (or, more generally, “pay attention and react”) also happens to be one of the easiest ways to be funny and engaging in any situation. On a first date and don’t know what to say? Maybe the bartender has a bizarre neck tattoo. Maybe there’s a table with a family that all looks a bit too much alike. Maybe they’re playing a Sade song that seems weirdly erotic for a sports bar. All of these start as just ordinary, boring things, but if you observe them and talk about them from your own point of view, they can easily become interesting and funny.

That tenet carries over into all aspects of work: brainstorming, an annual performance evaluation, a client pitch. Listening and reacting benefits all those situations in different ways. Maybe you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation and you feel everyone staring at you. Find something to react to: a weird-sounding sneeze from the audience, the pattern of the carpet. If you react to something like a normal human, most people in the room probably feel the same way, and now they instantly love you.

The most important part of “listen and react” is listen. So often, people approach communication by tuning out while they wait for their own chance to speak. If you actually listen, the person you’re engaging with will feel more respected and heard, and be more likely to collaborate with you. And that collaboration is more likely to produce valuable results if you’re actually working together – which is only going to happen if you listen. These tenets apply equally onstage and off.

Aside from making one funnier or more likable, I think some other important values of the "listen and react" approach to communication (as opposed to the "tee up what you want to say and check out while other people speak") are:

1. 1. The person you're speaking with will feel more respected and actually heard. They'll be more likely to collaborate with you on solutions.

2. 2. You'll sound smarter, because you're going to find better insights. When you build on what someone else is creating (whether thats a scene or a business concept), 1+1 often equals 3. If you're just waiting for your turn to speak, your 1+1 will always equal 2.

I'm sure there are other insights you may have to add here, and I know we want to keep this pretty short, but I wonder if we can work in more professionally-oriented takeaways rather than creating a more lovable persona.

Everything is a gift

The first thing someone says or does in an improv scene is called an “initiation.”

Maybe your scene partner starts with “Hey, I got you a latte from Starbucks.”

As a new improviser, nine times out of ten, you’re going to second-guess that initiation. Freakin’ Starbucks? The most generic, boring pull possible! That’s not good enough! Your mind races…

“Wow, you brought it all the way up to the International Space Station for me? Thanks!”

Now, actually, that’s not a bad response. I came up with a naturally interesting second line that might kick off a funny and interesting scene because I’m just that good.

But the truth is, I didn’t need to invent that wild second thing in order to have a good scene. Indeed, you might have a better scene without doing that. You have everything you need right now.

Look at your scene partner. What expression were they making when they brought you the Starbucks drink? Were they apprehensive? Is that because you’re about to break up with them and they had been sensing something was off? That could be the beginning of a very emotionally grounded, real, and, eventually, funny scene, without taking it to the outlandish premise of bringing Starbucks to someone in space.

This goes for everything that happens. Maybe the theater is practically on top of a railroad track and a train goes by every 30 minutes. Maybe an audience member’s phone goes off. When things like this happen, it’s often a good idea to incorporate them into the scene somehow. Now they’re not disruptions – they’re gifts.

It’s very helpful to take this philosophy to work with you, especially if you have a creative role that involves brainstorming in groups. Someone might say something that strikes you as a terrible idea. But the terrible ideas are the way to reach the good ones. Before dismissing it outright, think about what the “bad idea” might inspire, both in others and yourself.

Like people

New improv students are often up there feeling like nothing’s happening and their classmates aren’t laughing – what to do? The answer they frequently come up with is an urge to introduce conflict into a scene. That makes sense. Maybe they learned that “conflict is the heart of drama” in a college Shakespeare class. Or maybe they just feel like something has to happen, and picking a fight with your scene partner is an obvious way to make something happen.

They will soon be cautioned by the teacher not to do this. There will be scenes with conflict in them, and as students develop their skills, they will learn what scenes make sense for it. But as a general default choice, and especially as a beginner, it’s stronger if you start a scene from a baseline where your character likes the other character and cooperates with them somehow.

In a work environment, you should start from that baseline as well. While this might seem like an obvious principle, you can probably think of countless times you felt annoyed in a meeting, peeved at a client, or frustrated by a supervisor. You can feel those feelings and still choose to behave as if you like them in a given work scenario. If you have to, fake it. You’d be surprised not only by how much merely faking it can help you collaborate, but also how much it can evolve into genuine empathy and rapport. Of course, I never have to fake it… all my coworkers reading this, please understand that my affinity for you is sincere! Ahem.

That’s just the beginning of what improv has taught me, but like any good scene, I know to end things before they drag on too much. What do you think? If you find any of these tips helpful – or vehemently disagree – let me know in the comments.