What to expect from a two-hour improv workshop for work

If you are searching for what to expect from an improv workshop for work, you are probably trying to answer somebody's question before they ask it. Yours, or a colleague's, or the person on your team who has already decided they are not doing it. The word "improv" carries a lot of baggage, and most of it is to do with stages.

This is the two-hour session in the order it runs, with the timings I use. The sessions page sets out the same sequence, and every other session is built on it. Nothing below is a surprise on the day.

What to expect in the first half hour

The session opens with ten minutes of framing. I say what the session is for, which comes from the pre-call you and I had, and I say the two rules: everyone takes part, and nobody performs alone. Those two rules are what make people willing to try what follows, so they get said before anything else happens.

At ten minutes the group is on its feet. The first exercise is physical and low stakes, and its whole job is to get everybody standing and using each other's names inside five minutes. Nobody has to be quick or inventive. It is built for a room where most people have never done anything like this, which is most rooms.

By half past, everyone has moved, spoken, and heard their own name used by a colleague from another floor. That is the warm-up done, and the real work can start.

Half an hour in, the listening work begins

From thirty minutes to fifty-five the session is on listening under load. The exercises in this block are built so that planning your next sentence is impossible. You cannot rehearse a reply while the other person is still talking, because the exercise will not let you, so you have to hear them finish.

This is the habit most teams say they already have and most meetings show they do not. Twenty-five minutes of practising it in pairs does more than an hour of being told about it, because within the first two minutes you find out how much of your attention normally goes on your own next line, and it is usually more than you thought.

At fifty-five minutes there is a ten-minute break.

After the break, a scene is played twice

An hour and five minutes in, the group comes back for accepting and building, which runs for twenty-five minutes. A short scene is played twice. In the first version one person blocks what the other offers. In the second, the same offers are accepted and built on. The group sees the difference for itself, and nobody needs telling which version worked, so the conversation afterwards is about where the first version happens at work and who does it to whom.

This is the block that gives a team its vocabulary. "That's a block" is a sentence that survives the session, and it tends to be the one that gets said in the next meeting.

The last half hour is about mistakes and Monday

From an hour and a half in, the session works on failing cheaply. The exercises are built so that mistakes happen, out loud, and the job is to recover from one and carry on. The first time is uncomfortable. It is repeated until it stops being frightening, and that is what makes people willing to use the rest of what they have practised once they are back at their desks.

The last ten minutes are the debrief, with two questions: what will you do differently on Monday, and what vocabulary will you keep using afterwards. Before they leave, participants fill in a paper feedback form, and the results come to you whatever they say.

What is not in the two hours

There are no slides at any point. Everything is played in pairs or small groups, so nobody is ever up on their own in front of the rest. Nobody is asked to be funny. There is nothing to prepare, nothing to read beforehand, and no prior experience needed. Anyone can sit a round out and rejoin when they are ready.

What you need to provide is a room with space for the group to stand in a circle, without a boardroom table in the middle. Stackable chairs are ideal. That, and up to 25 people who have been told the two rules in advance.

If that reads as less dramatic than the word "improv" suggested, good. It is two hours of practice in a set order, with the risk rising only as the group gets more comfortable. Send this to the colleague who has already decided they are not doing it, and the price for the two hours is on the rate card.