In my last blog, Improv in the Office: Trust Your Instincts, I outlined how going with your gut can be useful not only on the improv stage, but also in the office; how fresh ideas and intuitive compasses can be a GOOD thing; how relying on fact and fact alone can sometimes fail you. In this blog, I want to focus on teamwork, and how its improvisational principles can be applied to your job.

At Bluewolf, my team has this tradition called “collaboration nation.” It is a weekly meeting where we go to one room and work together on solutions. We found that in problem solving, two heads are better than one—and ten heads are five times better than that! When we work together, share our ideas, have others jump in with their thoughts and expertise is when REAL progress happens. The epiphanies. The catalysts. The “clicks.”

My favorite improv game to demonstrate this principle is called “I Am A Tree.” It starts with one person entering the circle stating, “I am a tree,” and taking on the physical gesture of a tree. Another person then joins in and says, “I am a (blank),” filling in the blank with any physical object that compliments the tree, such as, “a chipmunk eating nuts on a branch.” Then, the person also becomes that thing. The last person brings a third object in, stating, “I am a (blank),” ideally something that nicely ties the last two objects together. In this case, we’ll go with, “nut shells falling on roots.” The result is a complete picture and story opening, created merely from three simple offers.

At work, such as in improv, we don’t get to choose our team members or our objectives. We are put in a group, and expected to succeed. What lies in the middle—a willingness to let go of our own egos and work together towards the greater good of a project, while bringing out the strengths of each individual—is up to us.

Many people have ideas they are passionate about. They offer these up to their colleagues and can be bluntly rejected or effortlessly embraced. We need to be willing to put our ideas on the line, but we also need to be willing to put the ideas of others before our own.

In improv, everyone’s idea is a brilliant idea. To every offer, you must be willing to say “yes,” no matter what. Imagine if we treated our co-workers this way! Instead of debating, we’d be co-creating, and instead of competing, we’d be collaborating. This is the type of environment my team sought to build during the formation of “collaboration nation” in 2012.

Perhaps it’s a utopian thought, but I think we could all benefit from this ideal. Imagine you are a project manager. The solution architect you are working with proposes a solution. It’s not your favorite. In fact, it seems entirely risky. Your first hunch is to tell him, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” But then you talk to your peers about it, get to the bottom of the risks, and discover your alternate solution comes with just as many cons. Your understanding of the problem deepens. You come up with a third possibility, something you hadn’t even thought of, but a colleague just happened to suggest.

It was this fresh perspective that helped you solve the problem. It was no singular idea of your own, or even the solution architect’s. It was the conversation amongst team members and a common goal of success that saved the day!

We never get to pick our business battles, or team members, our competitors, or the ideas of those around us. So we must be willing to accept what we are given and make the most of it through collaboration. Ideas are meant to be built upon, torn apart, re-constructed, and brought to life. It takes more than a single person (however passionate they are) to do that. Dynamic teams are composed of people striving towards the greater good—people who are willing to forget themselves and leave their egos at the door. These are the folks that excel in team-driven environments, the type of folks we look for when forming a “collaboration nation.”   

To learn more about how you can apply such principles to your team, read the first installment of my series, Improv in the Office: Listen & Respond or Improv in the Office: Trust Your Instincts, the second installment.

Are you looking for a collaborative work environment? Consider working at Bluewolf.