These improv skills can supercharge your career | Bob Kulhan | Big Think Edge

More and more of us are going to struggle to out compete software artificial intelligence. We have to start evolving. If people want to stay ahead and gain the skills that they need to be on top of their game and their careers, they're going to need to keep learning soft skills, how to deal with human behavior, and how to adjust to things that are changing in real time. That's an area that's very, very difficult for computers, but humans have a huge advantage.

There's power in confidence. I'm on the other side of the table now. I produce and I direct and I write. I can really feel the difference when someone comes into a room with confidence. I'm such an advocate for everyone to think like an entrepreneur. Think about how you would be doing your job if nobody showed you how to do it. Through the study of analytics, I knew exactly what was going to win, what was going to lose.

Anybody can look at their craft, their profession, their passion, and become better. It's about finding that edge. Welcome everyone to Big Think Live. I'm Winston Brown. I'm a writer, actor, and director. Our topic today is "Improv Beyond Comedy: Level Up Your Professional Skills" with guest Bob Culhan.

Bob Culhan is an elite improviser, an adjunct professor at Duke Fuqua School of Business, the author of "Getting to Yes And," and the founder and CEO of Business Improv, a 21-year-old consultancy that links improvisation to business through behavioral sciences and ROI for blue-chip companies. If you'd like to ask Bob a question, please write it in the comments section of whatever platform you're watching. You can start writing your questions immediately.

Welcome, Bob.

Bob: I'm glad to be here, thanks for having me! It's great to be here with you.

Winston: Let's start with some myths about improv that you lay out in your book. It's improv comedy. Is it about making stuff up as a last resort?

Bob: It's comedy. Comedy is a form of improvisation, just like cooking competitions is a form of improvisation, or what you'd see on a sports field or with special forces or with great businesspeople and great minds. They're all forms of improvisation. The myth is that it's only comedy.

I'll come to the comedy, comedy, comedy because that's the most common association. Just like for some, improvisation is only about what happens when the excrement hits the oscillator. True, though it's based in training. It's based in reps. It's based in knowledge. It's based in understanding and comfort level and communication. So at its core, improv is about reacting, adapting, and communicating. That's what we all need to do every day.

Winston: That's wonderful. How about a definition? What does "yes, and" mean?

Bob: "Yes, and" is the cornerstone of improv around the world. You know this as an actress. "Yes" is the way that we use it in business improv. It's a little bit different than what you'd see on a comedy stage or in a theater setting. So to be clear, how we use it in business improv—"yes" is not "I agree with you." "Yes" is "I accept you're saying this to me."

"Yes" is "I'm open to hearing what you have to say." "Yes" is, in fact, "I want to hear what you have to say." And "and" is the bridge to how you react to it. It's the bridge to your mind, your background, your education, your past, your passion, you—your authentic voice. So more than anything, then "yes" becomes thoughtfulness. "Yes" is you have my undivided attention right now, and "and" is the bridge to how you're thoughtful, how you are present, how you are in the moment.

Winston: That's a very clear and wonderful definition, thank you. Can you talk about—you just said that improv involves reps and being prepared. Can you talk about the role of preparation and awareness in improv, and what does performing at the top of your intelligence mean?

Bob: Performing at the top of your intelligence, and I'll start in reverse order, is the ability to access your brain at the highest level humanly possible. It's your background; it is your education; it's your influences, your mentorship, who you mentor, the environment in which you are operating.

It's really trying to take in as much as humanly possible and then really close the book, close the thesaurus, get the hamster that powers your brain off the wheel, and then let your natural intelligence come to the surface so that you're really working on intuitive decision-making or instinctual decision-making. That's improv.

Now you're doing it with thoughtfulness inside of a strategy, and so there's really where improvisation thrives. Improvisation thrives at the critical moment when planning and strategy meets execution, right there in that area. So there's where the training comes in. That's where the knowledge comes in. That's where you getting those reps in is so important, because in times of risk and uncertainty and stress and crisis, we fall back on our most overused and overlearned behaviors.

If this isn't one of them, then you just have to practice it to make it one of them and operate at the top of your intelligence at a very high skill level and bring other people with you. And that's important as well.

Winston: Well, how we practice is something that I'd love to talk with you about a little bit later. But for right now, I'd like to go back to something you said a moment ago. You said that the three steps of improv are reacting, adapting, and communicating. What do they entail in a business context?

Bob: Well, you know, one of the big challenges we have right now, especially in this virtual reality in which we have to operate, that we're getting asked about all the time in business improv is presence and engagement.

Presence and engagement. In order to react, or reacting, to really focus on the ongoing definition of that verb, you have to be focused and present in the moment at a very, very high level. There's a big difference between reacting and a reaction. A reaction is that response—that potentially impulsive response as well. Reacting is ongoing, and if you're ongoing within parameters, you're adapting.

You're reacting and adapting to reach a specific outcome, like in a strategy session, for example, in a sales communication. You're reacting and adapting to what the other person is giving you. You're reacting and adapting to this crazy circumstance we're all in right now, this nutballs in which we live.

Winston: Well, we're reacting and adapting, and then that sub-route that you mentioned as our third point—communicating—is what we all have to do. We have to communicate with our team, we have to communicate up the chain and down the chain, we have to communicate to key stakeholders, we have to communicate to our clients who are struggling as well.

So all of this reacting, adapting, and communicating focuses then on relationship building and focuses on listening to somebody else, which leads to empathy as it links into and reaches into engagement. So those three core concepts—reacting, adapting, communicating—are the soft skills or the people skills that many people, one, take for granted—that they're just, we're born with.

And two, at this specific time, people aren't focusing on enough. A lot of people are focused on technology and focusing on, you know, what's going to happen next in the unknown, which is where reacting and adapting and communicating should live as well. What we should focus on as well is the people with us. How are we communicating with them? What relationships are we building with them? How are we engaging with them?

Winston: I see. You give many, many pieces of wonderful advice in your book. I'd like to share my favorite quote and then ask you a question. My favorite quote is, "It's time to think about how you can step by small step initiate positive change in your energy, your communication, your peers, and your workplace."

Bob, talk about why you became an improv business coach and advocate.

Bob: Well, all right. My undergrad degree is in business, and what I've said quite often tongue-in-cheek is, appropriately enough, it's a BS in business. After I got my undergrad degree, I stepped away. I don't have any more formal education as such. The school of hard knocks has been the great educator for me. Mentors and people that take me under their wing to coach me and teach me.

I was great at business at a young age. At a young age, modesty aside, I won a Bank of America award for creative marketing. At the age of 24, I left it all to immerse myself in Chicago improv and really sink my whole life into it, really. And I love it. I mean, it's such a great, as an art form, it's so great. It's magical.

It's, you know, watching creation in real time on stage at a very high level and being part of it, either as an audience member or as a performer. It's just, you know, you're witnessing that moment of time that exists just for that moment of time, which is incredible.

And then, as I became broke as an improviser in Chicago in the '90s, there's no money in it, especially at that time. Nobody one either didn't know what improv was or two looked poorly on improvisation, as it wasn't even accepted in Hollywood in the mid-'90s.

That's what you were working with Tina Fey and Seth Meyers and all of the people whose names roll off the tip of our tongue right now. So we had a lot to learn. Sorry for interrupting, please.

Winston: Yeah, it's true. She was my coach and Seth was on teams, and, you know, we'd perform very often with a lot of who's who in comedy right now. If it was from Chicago improv from '94 to '09, when I left Chicago to move to New York, there's a good chance that we've done a dance here and there. And those are great, great people—great talented, smart, funny individuals.

And the skills that they use is still the same skill set that business people have to use. Talk about improvisation at its core—it's a communication and collaboration-based art form. Even as a solo improviser, you're reacting to what the audience—how the audience reacts to you, which then you react to how they're reacting to you. And it goes back and forth, so they act as your team.

So they're collaborating with you, albeit as a response mechanism, yet still, it's part of it. So communication, collaboration, and outputs of creativity is inherent in great improvisation and certainly should be inherent as it relates to how we are reacting and adapting in this environment right now.

So I'm not sure if I answered your question directly yet. I love improv inside out. I love business inside and out. For 21 years, I've been marrying the two of these two things together at a very high level, and it's needed now.

Winston: How can "yes, and" change corporate culture for the better?

Bob: The higher you rank in a company, the higher up on the ladder, the bigger your corner office, the more you're required to be critical in the way that you think. And that becomes a default for many individuals, and we rush to be critical. We rush to get to the final outcome, the answer right away.

And because of that, "no" becomes almost a default. We can't do this. You're constantly redirecting. And "yes, and" is a great way not to avoid "no". Not at all. No is appropriate. No is needed sometimes.

Though you could say, "Yes, I hear what you're saying, and walk me through why this is important to you," knowing in the back of your head the answer is "no." You're building a relationship because it's a basic human desire to be understood. You know, we want to feel valued with our input. We want to feel valued with our ideas.

And so rather than quickly dropping that guillotine of "no," you're saying, "All right, let's talk about this a little bit, and maybe we could do something different with this." And maybe we could take this element of what you want and put it over here.

What we're talking about with "yes, and" is, once again, not agreement. It's "yes, I hear you, and this is how I'm reacting to what you have to say." So it's communicating. "Yes, and" is a way to collaborate. "Yes, and" is a way to build relationships in which people feel like they're valuable and their ideas are valued.

Whether they're used or not, it's a collaborative process that creates intrinsic motivation in other people to want to talk to you. And I can't stress this enough—in this environment, it's incredibly effective because we're isolated. We're not next to each other. I can't, like, go to your house, Winston, or we can't, you know, bump into each other on the street right now or at the elevator.

Meaning to email you or talk to you—everything has to be structured and strategic through this medium. These relationship building techniques are super important because right now people are not only feeling more and more isolated, as this thing continues to close in on a lot of us. Morale is an issue, and trust is an issue. The weight of this gets hard.

So to have somebody just reach out and say, "Yes, I know this is hard, and I want to hear what's going on in your life," can be the difference maker in the long run of whether that great talented individual wants to stay part of your team or move.

Winston: Wow, wow. Yes, so it is about people and communication and empathy and something that we can perhaps even apply to our lives outside of a business context or an actual improv context.

Bob: Absolutely. Very helpful.

Winston: Bob, you write that many business improv programs are fun but ineffective—a day of zip-zop after which all the employees have to go back and catch up on their real work. What makes yours different?

Bob: My business improvisation has always endeavored to create strong differentiators from our competition around the world starting with high-end. I'm a high-end improviser and then had the opportunity to create the first program in any business school in the entire world at the Duke University School of Business. Fall in 1999, we put together and executed in early 2000, and I'm an adjunct professor there.

I'm an agile professor at other places. For 21 years we've been linking improvisation to business through behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology, social psychology, and org theory and behavioral economics—decision-making models. And because of this, and the fact that you mentioned before we go after return on investment—if you're spending your time with us, it's valuable time. It's valuable money.

Let's define what that return on investment is. We're gonna go knock your socks off because that's our goal. That's our mission, and it's a zero-sum policy for us. We succeed or we fail, and there's no gray area there because gray areas is fail. We don't go for that. We go toward the success.

All of this, then, especially with the pinning down of the behavioral sciences, means we're a behavior change company. We are a culture change company, and that's what we focus on in business improvisation. It's not a platoonist trust fall; it's not going through a program and walking out being like, "There's fun. We can't use anything."

When you walk out of business improv programs, you have tools and techniques that you can use. Now, whether it's this environment or on-site, and everything we're doing here, for the record, as it relates to people—relationship building and people skills is 100% applicable when we're back together face to face when that day comes.

Winston: That's great. Well, tell me about success that you've had with improv in the workplace.

Bob: So much successes. Yeah, I'll tell you one of the greatest, greatest successes that when we spend a period of time with people, you know, we're teaching foundational skills because if you don't have foundation, it starts with foundation. If you don't have a foundation on what you're going to build, who is your architecture for success?

So you have to have that firm foundation of what this is, which means that you start with changing yourself or thinking about yourself. You know, what are your barriers to communication, for example? What puts you in your head? How is this environment affecting you? What can you do for yourself? Very self-centered, first person. Because if you can help yourself, what do you do for one person or two people right next to you? If you can help yourself and one or two people, then what do you do for the larger team?

That group of people that you're working with. If you can help yourself and the one or two people and that larger group, now we're talking about putting culture in place—language from teams, rituals, beliefs, practices, accountability practices—because we will slip.

So these great changes that I see are when people really understand what this is and how effective something as simple as "yes, and" is—that two-word phrase—and then start using it at home. They use it with especially in this environment, using it with children who are part of our stay-at-home offices. Significant others who are working at the kitchen table.

The morale is not only on us; it's with everybody else and the young eyes who look at us. Instead of saying "but" too often or "no" too often, we're using a little bit of "yes, and," and next thing you know, people who have a lot of weight on our shoulders are playing with kids who want to play with us and less arguing with other people who are struggling with this challenge of ours as well.

That, to me, is where I'm seeing immediate gratification—just soul, soul gratification. It makes my heart sing and makes me feel like I'm here for the reason I've always thought I have—to help.

Winston: Well, that's great. What about a failure in your practice? Has there ever been a moment where you didn't achieve what you hoped you would, and what did you learn from it?

Bob: Oh my goodness, yes. Yes, absolutely. A lot of, a lot of failure. I mean, if you're really pushing the envelope and trying and innovating, then there's going to be tons of failure along that way, and most of it is strategic failure given that time and place and opportunity to fail so that you're not doing it in public.

Yet gosh, that early on in my career at the Duke University physical school of business, we were part of a five-day creative leadership program. We were going to take the afternoon of each day—I was co-teaching this with a colleague—and the first day, and it was two or three hours in the afternoon, the first day is all about postponing judgment—just pushing off judgment, push it off, push it off.

And this was our first foray into executive education, and I was 27 years old—a young pup at that time. When the program—the day one was done, we went to bed thinking we did a great job. The morning of day two, though, the dean of executive education calls for us to meet in the office, and he tells us we're released—we're fired.

There was a mutiny. They didn't like it; they didn't want it. They were using words like, you know, how much time was wasted and how much money I make an hour, and how much you should owe me for this executive education program.

Now, to this team's credit—as he didn't release us back to go home—he said, "I believe in what you're doing; it failed here, let's be clear. I'm gonna pay you in full, though, and I want you to stay on campus, and I want you to gut it, and I want you to put it back together again. At the end of these five days, I want to show you how you're going to make this work going forward."

In those five days, I'm going to say yes or no. So this is really where business improv came from—we changed the language, we changed our attire, we really started getting into the research and the behavioral psychology elements of this and looking at how to achieve that walk-away and that pull-through so that transferability is there and sustainability is there.

At the end of the five days, the dean listened to what we said, and we broke it down to detail. He asked very, very tough questions and he said, "You're not going to be part of this program anymore. You get your own program." Wow, we're on three day, eight, in the morning to ten o'clock at night—just intensive.

The way that we like to work—a program that ran for about 12 years at Fuqua. What I learned from that is heartbreak because I had never been fired before, and I kept walking by the people who fired me because I was staying in the same dorm area as them. A humility and how to pick myself up again, and the need to be in that growth mindset—learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.

Get better, get stronger, do it smarter, do it more efficiently. And once again, it created this company that we have right now. So that mindset still exists, and that humility I hope I carry over. That and the vulnerability that the dean showed us, I hope to exhibit this as a leader every day.

Winston: That's a wonderful quality to think about for a leader. Tell me, what are divergent and convergent thinking, and how does a group apply them? Do you need a leader or director?

Bob: Well, oh, that last one is the one that sinks your teeth into that one because a team without a leader could end up imploding without any direction. There has to be some kind of direction; there has to be some kind of vision of where you're going to go.

Even a distributed leadership style means that people have to, you know, own their own part of it to put the puzzle back together again correctly. So, I think there has to be—if there's not a leader, there has to be a very clear outline of how the group is going to lead itself.

I still think that's a little dangerous, so I'm—if I was going to say yes or no, that's like, "Yeah, have a leader." Now, divergent and convergent thinking—old school model, 1960s, J.P. Guilford created this thing, and it was primarily for brainstorming. We use this model as a great way just to show how and why the tenets of business improv work.

Divergent thinking is this: you have this problem, this challenge, an unexpected opportunity thrust in your lap, like say what's happening now—a big, big, big problem. And you have to do something with it; you cannot just sit by passively.

So in divergent thinking, you get away from the problem. It's creating a space where you fail early, fail often, deliberately, strategically, intentionally. It's make a mess, and it's just about if it's ideation, the sheer volume of ideas—you know, it's just what can we come up with? Look at this from all angles. Think about it in the weirdest way, break it apart, and put it back together again.

Divergent thinking convergent thinking is where you take this mess that you just created in divergent thinking and you clean it up. If you are postponing judgment or deferring judgment in diverging thinking, you put the critical thinking hat back on in convergent thinking and you say, "This is a good idea. That's a bad idea. This is a dumb idea."

Let's get this—if we do this dumb idea, we'll get arrested, so we can't do this idea. It's not the budget for this idea. So in these two processes, the way that we really highlight it is it's panning for gold. That's really what it is.

So if you get a chance to go to a river and pan for gold, and gold could be people, it could be process, it could be ideas, it could be culture—or gold. One chance, though? Would you rather win some, go to the river and pinch your fingers in it and pull out this much with your one chance, or take a pan, a saucer, and put that river, paw as much as humanly possible?

That's divergent thinking. Convergent thinking is where you sift and you sort; you get the weeds out, the muck out, the fool's gold out of the way until you finally have something that you can refine and process and develop like people, like talent, like ideas, like culture, like gold.

Winston: That's never even convergent thinking!

Bob: Wow. Somewhat related to that, you have an exercise called "Can You Take It?", in which one or two colleagues assess another colleague's responses to challenging questions during a presentation. You write that participants often think they're good at dishing out the cold hard truths to their colleagues. Are they?

Bob: [Laughter] Well, I think we're generalizing now. At the same time, a lot of people think they're really good at giving critical feedback. For anybody who has to operate, once again, in this reality, this virtual environment of all ours, initiating difficult conversations is a different skill set than what it is face to face, when you can read non-verbal communication.

When somebody's image is not this big on the computer screen that you're looking at, you're cheating up and down to try to make eye contact and still gauge what they're doing. So it's something that if you feel you're really good at giving critical feedback, I would encourage everyone to step back, shine a hot light, a Microsoft on a microscope on themselves, hit record on a Zoom chat, and practice giving it to no one out there.

Then pull it back and look at what you've just done because if you're really outward-focused on the person with whom you're engaging and doing this in an empathetic way, they're going to be a great teacher to you in real time, and you could learn how to adapt your difficult conversation/conflict management skills through this medium with, again, a little humility, a little vulnerability, a growth mindset.

That's helpful. So you talk about language in your book. "Yes, but" is often contrasted with "yes, and." Is "yes, but" a nicer way of saying "no"?

Bob: I've heard this all the time. People say, like, "Yes, but" is a "no" with a bow tie—it's a tuxedo. It's like, "What? No, no, it's not." "Yes, I am" is a soft "no." "Yes, but" is a polite "no." It's not—it's a condescending, though—that's what "yes, but" is.

"Yes, but" is, "I'm going to try to fool you with 'yes, and.' I'm not going to actually agree with you, though." It's "Yeah, but, you know, Winston, that's a great idea, but we're not going to use your idea. Come on, give me another one." But, you know, we're teammates, we're teammates, but we're not really because I think I'm better than you because I'm not even listening to it.

It took me that long to judge your idea. That's what "yes, but" is. The act of "but" eliminates everything said before restrictions, denials, contradictions, steerings. Now the thing with "yes, but," because it's not a "no". I'd much rather hear people say, "No, I disagree with you," than "yes, but," because it's smoke and mirrors.

The smoke will dissipate; the mirrors will become very clear, and people will get it. They may not get it up here; they'll get it in here, heart and gut, that I want to come and talk to or don't want to talk to you. That's a very, very dangerous gamble to play, especially right now, because when this closes, you don't know how people are going to behave.

You don't know what entrepreneurial environment they're in, what kind of stress—dogs barking, children melting down, what the heck is happening at an even day? So when thinking about "yes, but," I would put a little asterisk on it that you could qualify it with relationships and context and situation because it's true.

You know, if you're hanging out with your best buddies, having a beer or wine and, you know, watching whatever sport or movie that you're watching, the language you're using, the clothes you're wearing, the beverages you're consuming—wildly different than in front of key stakeholders, internally or externally.

And so this little asterisk on relationship has to be underscored because the question then is—did you build the relationship correctly enough that you can eliminate everything that was said before the word "yes," you know, with the word "but"? Because it feels this way to a lot of people—it's a trigger word for a lot of people.

So my question for you, Winston, is this: Have you ever been in a heated conversation with somebody—an argument with somebody—and it's gone on for a while, and you're beginning to get to that sort of negotiating or really listening standpoint? It's simmering down, and all of a sudden—like, "Yeah, but then you did this." You're like BAM! Right off the charts again.

Winston: Yeah, most of us have. It's because that word—the trigger word—you know, "but" does that for a lot of people. So I would shine a hot light on those two words because what do you say with "yes, but" that you just can't replace with "yes, and"? Is there anything out there?

Bob: Well, see, how about—well, how about you walk me through my own personal "yes, and"? When I read your book, there was one particular suggestion that I bumped up against, and this was when you said to lower the office temperature to 68 degrees— is it better to stimulate thought and energy?

Now, I remember my days working in corporate office buildings where women, myself included, were uncomfortable in the highly air-conditioned spaces, and many of us had space heaters under our desks. So I wonder how do I "yes, and" something that I personally disagree with?

Bob: Of course! So why don't we do this? All right, so we'll take this as our debate, and all I want you to do is say, "Start everything that you say with 'yes,' and you'll be anti 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius, and I'll be pro."

All right, I'm going to do is "yes, and" each other back and forth. All right? I'll start us off. Yes, and we should set the temperature of the rooms to 68 degrees.

Winston: Yes, and when some of us are cold, we can provide coats.

Bob: Yes, and if it's still chilly, we can get up and move around.

Winston: Yes, and when we move around, we could perhaps choreograph a dance.

Bob: Yes, and we'll call the 68-degree shuffle.

Winston: Yes, and when we've all warmed ourselves up and gotten our energy up, we can maybe turn down the air conditioning to save the environment because we'll have our energy.

Bob: Yes, and by that time, with our energy, we will have created momentum, and we can move forward together as a team.

Winston: Yes, and I'm getting to like this idea!

Bob: Okay, all right, good! So see, even with this, it's difficult to really argue with somebody because what we start focusing on is what we have in common as opposed to what we don't have in common. This is actually a really great joint problem-solving technique.

It won't necessarily resolve the problem, yet it opens up communication, and that's super important, especially right now. There are certainly times that "no" is appropriate; you've got to draw the line in the sand. I disagree with what's happening right now, and there are times that you should open up the dialogue, and at the very least say, "We're going to disagree without being disagreeable," because we've taken time to listen to each other and talk to each other.

And maybe we set the temperature to 70 degrees instead of 68 from this type of conversation.

Winston: That's very helpful. Your book has many great exercises for team building, energy stimulation, and concentration, and they often involve, as our exercise just did, the kind of spirit of improv—everyone on your feet, or let's tell a story one word at a time. How can people maintain the lessons they learned or, even more, the feelings of connection and productivity they experienced in your workshop after you are gone?

Bob: So what we do is simplify things down, and I'll once again go back to this environment because we're teaching an awful lot here in the virtual world—virtual or virtual programs—and reducing it down does not mean dummy it up in any way whatsoever.

Look at this in the spirit of a liquid to a sauce—what's the sticky stuff? What's the really tasty things? What's the stuff that's going to stay in your mouth once you leave? So once you drive these points home, and once again pin it down the behavioral sciences of why this makes a difference, putting challenges in place that are very, very simple and easy to do.

Like, for example, just going out, having a "yes and" conversation with someone who doesn't know you're having a "yes, and" conversation with them. Or what I'd say is—go…when we used to be able to do this—what I would encourage people to do is go to a bar or sit on an airplane for, like, five hours and start a conversation with the person next to you and just "yes, but" them for five straight minutes—yes, but, yes, but, yes—but just watch.

Use your powers of observation. Listen to the intonation. Catch the word choice they're using. If you can maintain for five minutes, then switch to a "yes, and" conversation for five minutes. And again, watch the body language, listen to the intonation, and you can still do that through this reality without even telling the other person what you're doing.

And just watch and learn what's happening. And this is super easy, it's an easy way to transfer it because what we're talking about again are people skills, human skills—how are we connecting each with each other when we do not have this opportunity to be face to face with each other? This is so important.

What it calls for is mindfulness. What it calls for is intentionality for us to say, "I can get better. I'm going to get better." I'm going to put reminders up on my wall—little Post-it notes that say, "I'm going to yes, and today!" So that every—this is what I used to do, actually. Every time when I first started doing this, in early 2000, I'd have a Post-it note on my computer because I had a desktop at that time, of course, with a tower.

So right over the power button. And I had another Post-it note on my phone, and both of them said "yes, and." So anytime I picked my landline to have a phone call, I'd have to remove "yes, and" and put it down. Anytime I turned on my computer or turned off my computer, it was "yes, and." "Yes, and." "Yes, and." And that constant reminder helped me go from being the person I was before to a person who can really use "yes, and" as a Swiss Army knife.

You can tell people too. I would say if you really want to transfer it, if you're going to lead change in any capacity, you have to take people with you. You know, telling people, "I want to really focus on using 'yes, and,' and I want you to call me out when I'm using 'yes, but,' even in just a casual tactical conversation. You know, if I'm washing dishes and I'm 'yes, but,' you call me out. Go ahead because I don't even know how much I'm doing it."

So you need that support team around you to make change take place as well. I'm going to turn to one of the questions from our live audience. Have you had terrifying improv experiences? How did you get through them?

Bob: Yes, on stage and with my company, of course! So how do you get through them? It's mindset—it's possibility, potential. So "yes, and" becomes a mindset. "Yes" is, "Okay, this—this is what's happening right now, and what is in my control? What can I do about this at this time?"

Now, on stage, it's a little different. You're with an ensemble, and the audience is watching you and watching you, and there's sometimes that—I mean, I've performed. A good buddy of mine, Joe Canal, and I five, six years ago estimated that we each performed more than 4,500 live improv shows at that time—between the various groups.

They're not all going to be successful. It's impossible. You're not going to bat a thousand, you can't, especially if you're trying at a high level. So it's then, you know, at those times shake it off when you're done with the show. Susan Messing used to say, "You're done with a great show—celebrate tonight. Tomorrow you have another show. You're only as good as the time that you're on stage right there."

And you had a bad show? Great; drink it off or do whatever you need to do, and then get back on stage tomorrow night. So that shake-it-off aspect certainly carried over into business improv, especially when, oh, there's a lot—like tech issues go on, or clients end up like changing the program, they're restructuring it in real time, and there's all sorts of juggling needs to be done to be that person in that moment of crap potential crisis, at least for a gig, to say, "We're gonna make this work."

We're gonna—we got a great team next to me, and we're all gonna make it work. You smile; everything's okay, and you turn around like, "We gotta make this work; everybody okay? What ideas do you have?"

So that ability to receive messages, give them in, communicate clearly, strategize in a collaborative way in real time, and then go divide and conquer is a powerful skill set. So I would say with that, to finalize on that question, is failure is going to come. It's going to come no matter what, and so it's not that failure took place—it's what do we learn from it, and what can we do differently or what can we replicate? That's what's positive as we move forward.

Winston: Great! Talk about how you calibrate your energy to the space and the room. How do you get physical? I notice sometimes, at least, you're standing up now—physical to improve and increase energy. And finally, what if it's not in your workplace culture to get up? How do you do it then?

Bob: Yes! So I'm going to counter that question. We had a conversation—we just met a half an hour, an hour ago at this point. What was I doing before the cameras came live? Do you remember?

Winston: You were standing; you were moving; you were saying hello to your kids.

Bob: Yeah, you were getting physical!

Winston: Yes!

Bob: So that's how I do it. That's like I get up; I move around. For anybody who's in sales out there, and it doesn't have to be on camera 100% of the time, we have earbuds in, so just walk and pace and use your hands and smile and do things that carry over the phone that become resonating impactful moments for the people on the receiving end of that.

I have reminders really of this—I don't even read this—it says "stay focused; never stop trying; stay positive," which are like crazy things. I'm really a fairly positive kind, have a fair weight on the shoulder of what's happening, and you have to do things. What can you control? What can you control?

And for me, I just try to focus on myself and helping the people around me, whether here or virtually. Now, if you can't move around your space for whatever reason right now—or when we go back to our offices, you're uncomfortable doing it—then little things, little things can make the biggest difference.

As, for example, sitting on the edge of your chair and leaning forward as opposed to sitting on the back of your chair or leaning back in your chair before your arms—as opposed to using your hands. If you're on the edge of your chair, you can just bounce. You can bounce.

So, you know, one knee, two knees bouncing a little bit just to get that energy pumping a little bit; most people won't mind if you have to do a lap around the office to get your heart pumped up. A lot of this, though, isn't—I’ll go back to intentionality—being deliberate saying, "Oh, this is not. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed," or "there's a lot of weight on my shoulders," or "this is such an important engagement that I'm nervous."

Prep, prep, prep, prep, train, train, train, train, knowledge base—it's all there. Then take a break, walk around, put some earphones in, listen to some music—you know, just try to get in the zone. So once you get into that engagement, you're at a different point.

Winston: Going back to listening—you mentioned in your book a listening experiment, a 45-second listening experiment. What does it teach?

Bob: Well, for most people, if you're pulling up the one that I'm thinking, it's just stop talking, close your eyes and listen. Yes. And what we found when people do that—the attention span of most people will drift within 40, 45 seconds—which means that we've disengaged within 40 or 45 seconds.

And so what's happening right now is that we've become more and more short attention span. If you don't like something—swipe left, swipe right; get past it. If you don't want to watch a show, it's not like when I was a youth, and you know, potentially others out there—when we were used, you paid 12 bucks, 5 bucks, 15 to go to a movie; you're sitting there, you're going to watch the movie because you booked out that time, and you paid the money.

And whether you liked the movie or not, I'd been in any way, I didn't get up and leave because I'm like, "No, I paid for this, so I'm watching this." And I would watch movies sometimes I liked at the end of it; other times, it'd just continue to get worse, and I'd still watch it.

Now, though, we buy a subscription. So if you don't like a show, you don't like something—swipe; move, get to another, stop and go somewhere else. I want this YouTube video; I'll find something else. And so what we find in this exercise is that within 40, 45 seconds, people disengage.

It means that we're not even focusing on what we do with our engagement. We don't even pay attention to it, which is dangerous because when I wrote the book that you're mentioning that came out in 2017, there was a study from around 2015, 2016, that goldfish had the attention span, or humans rather had the attention span of 11 seconds. Early 2019, a study came out that humans have the attention span of around six seconds.

I pooched my joke. Goldfish have an attention span of around nine seconds. When I grow up, I want to be a goldfish! Yeah, you want to be a goldfish! Then you're like the average human, then I guess!

So what it means is that we have to just focus on—if you really want to be engaged, you have to catch when your brain drifts off and pull it back into place, because the question is not, "Are we going to disengage?" That's the answer.

The question is, "Who can catch it faster, and who can do something about it?" Which are two separate things.

Winston: You were talking about swiping left and swiping right. In your book, you say that for an effective brainstorming meeting, technology should be banned. You've just talked a little bit about the effect of 24/7 web access in corporate culture. I wonder, what's your policy about technology in your office?

Bob: If you would have asked me that six months ago, I would have said when it's time for us to get together, computers off, cell phones off, unless there's something important, of course. You know, if you have a child who needs you or you're expecting some big news, then yeah, of course, keep the phone on.

However, if you're doing this or doing this—where's your attention? What are you focusing on? It's not on each other, and that's what a collaboration should be. So now, six months later, we're forced to use some technology.

And the challenge that a lot of people are having, once again, is engagement, trust, and chemistry. So we have to use this technology in the same exact way. Put some simple rules of engagement—no cell phones unless it's needed, in which case you have to communicate that it's needed, no multitasking at all unless there's something you need, in which case tell me what it is.

And as a leader, that's what I would say. And then we'll decide together if you should be in this meeting because this meeting is a collaboration meeting, which means we have to be focused on each other.

In this environment, the focus needs to come in a different way, and it needs to become hotter than it does on-site with each other to connect and engage and build chemistry, cohesion, and trust with other people inside of it.

So this technology right here should be used as a way to pull people together and create unity and create gelling with each other, and anything else is a distraction from that. If that's what needs to be done, then this shouldn't be used. You should use email or text or something like that.

Winston: Wow, well you've answered a part of it, but I wonder are there any other ways that business improv has adapted to COVID-19 and to this sequestration that we're in right now?

Bob: Yes! We're in a constant state of adapting, without doubt. I mean, we've always relied on and harnessed the powers of improvisation to evolve. So for us, though, moving virtual started 10 years ago.

We started practicing our virtual training with those avatars that have come out, you know, 10 years ago. Avatars were going to replace on-site learning, and it didn't because nobody wanted to use those. Then cut a few years later, you had telepresence—those giant TV sets. And that was going to replace on-site learning, so as an entrepreneur, I'm like, "I don't want to be replaced!"

So let's learn how to operate within those giant television sets. So we did, and clients loved it, actually, because we always prototype with our clients; we do it internally, of course, and then we say, "Are we right? Let's bring our clients in to test."

Cut—didn't work though because you had to leave your office to go to a place with giant television sets, and the television sets were expensive as well. So cuts a few years later, technology catches up, and about three years ago, we pressed the gas pedal really hard on working with our blue-chip clients on virtual training in a number of different ways.

So when COVID hit, we were going to launch organically this year, about August—that was about the time that we were going to launch. It was going to be a soft launch, continue to build our clients and get testimonials, which we already had a bunch of, again, blue-chip because we were doing free programs for them two, two and a half years ago, prototyping this stuff.

We were just going to launch big in August. The biggest pivot we had, once that happened, was not going virtual; that was already in our strategy. The pivot, the biggest pivot we had was going from a soft launch in August to an immediate launch in March.

So within about 70 hours or so, we created websites, marketing material, stuck up testimonials and things like that. And then it's just been a constant state of hustle, hustle, hustle since then, because only now people are really beginning to see that you have to be a different type of leader when you're in this environment.

And everybody is a forced entrepreneur, and a lot of people aren't built to be entrepreneurs. So running on their own timelines and schedules with distractions is different. Chemistry is different. Communication styles are different. Everything's got to be adapted, and now people are—we're seeing some of that struggle.

And so for us, with that constant state of adapting, we're getting a few knocks on the door finally. We're, yeah, we want to teach people how to use this medium to stay together. So we're back on site—we don't have to rebuild relationships; we're doing it here.

Winston: Well, talking of this medium, let's take a question from the audience. What is happening during a mental freeze when you choke on the spot? Is there an improv skill that can help with that?

Bob: Oh yeah, getting in your head. So gosh, this happens to anybody who's done improv who really takes improv seriously—it happens. It happens because, you know, during the course of the day, you perform at night typically, and anything can happen over the course of the day. Bad news—you get bad news like right before a show—that could put you in your head.

A head spin—you could be in your head thinking, you know, where the scene is going to go, and you're just kind of too focused on that path. And somebody does something you didn't expect, and that could put you inside your head. You know, there's so many variables that put you inside your head.

Sometimes you can get out of it, and sometimes you can't get out of it. The times that I've—the way that I've figured out how to get out of it—this is personal, so I would say if you're an improviser asking this question, or even a business person, you have to figure it out for yourself.

The way that I do it is twofold. One, I focus outward—100% of my energy outward—because when you're in your head, what you're thinking about is yourself. And the challenge is—oh, if you're like, "Oh no," can you catch yourself thinking you're too much about what's going on? Or you're in your head?

So stop thinking about what's going on. So you're trying not to think about thinking about being in your head. So then you realize you're trying not to think about thinking about being in your head, so you know you're thinking, and it turns into an alligator death roll.

So if you focus all of your energy out, now you're just trying to catch what everybody else is doing, and you don't have time to think about what's going on inside your head because all of your energy is outward—outward 100% of the time.

And that's really where it should be—make each other look good, support each other, do the best you can to get everybody else's back because if you're—if I'm doing the best I can with something to get your back and make your ideas work, and you're doing the best you can to get Greg—who's our producer right now—his ideas work, and I'm focusing on Greg, and you're focusing on me and Greg's focusing on us, then it's not Greg's idea and your idea and my idea—it’s our idea.

The idea that the team is more important than a person, the idea that the process is more important than a person, the idea that the product is more important than a person. And then what we find is that the collective consciousness of the team is better than any one individual inside of it, and that's really a great way to get out of your head.

And the other way I have as well is commit, commit, commit, commit. The harder I drive into a scene or a job—because there's been times in jobs too that sometimes I've been in my head, and other times I just get that bad news right before I'm about to go do a keynote or lead a class, that's a very important class.

And if I focus all my energy outward and really focus on committing to them for them to the best of my ability, that is a clear path for me to get out. But I really appreciated what you just said about teams is that by giving support to our team members, we in fact take support for ourselves, and so there's a kind of full circle of support which is very hopeful.

And also, especially in this time of being separated from each other, it again speaks to connection and empathic communication. That's powerful.

Winston: I was going to ask again about leaders. We began to talk about leaders a little while ago. You're right—if in the art of theatrical improv, I was forced to recognize a leader, I would have to say that the improvisational performance itself leads you also, right?

Of training leaders to be improvisational leaders, what is improvisational leadership?

Bob: Improvisational leadership is lowering the ability to know when to raise your status and lower your status, when to raise somebody else's status and lower their status, when to lead by example and when to lead from within.

There's a phrase in improv called "follow the follower," which is then an outward focus of a leader saying, if you're following me, then I'm going to pay a lot of attention to what you're doing to make sure—not micromanage, not at all. You have your freedom; I need your voice, I need your authenticity, I need you to bring your top of your intelligence to the table, and I need to thrive off that.

I need to understand it as well and be open to the fact that you could teach me. So it's a reverse mentorship type of philosophy. Improvisational leaders are open to learning and have that growth mindset. They're adaptable, flexible, nimble—they know where the strategy is, they know where the goal is, and they're not married to a single path to get there.

You know, planning is everything; plans are useless—that Eisenhower quote comes into play there of like, do your strategy, do the path, and do what you need to do, and then adapt, adapt, adapt, react, adapt, communicate, react to that to communicate.

So that improvisational leader is one that can take other people with them by leading from example. Can also lead from on high and has the ability to learn every step of the way.

Winston: Wow! What are silos in the workplace, and why should they be busted?

Bob: Silos could come in a lot of different ways from—and there's a lot of different reasons silos come up. It could be a global unit, so regionally or culturally there's differences all around the globe. Time zones can help put up silos.

Fractions inside of a team—let's say everybody's in one unit—could create silos. The way that people are communicating with each other in this reality, if it's not an open communication, they start forming teams inside of a team, and inside that team, inside a team can become very destructive.

It's possible that this is where rumors start, and I'm going to, "Did you hear what Winston said? Oh, I can't believe that she said this about you, you said about me." So, you know, the Twittering starts going back and forth, and that bar chat starts becoming more and more toxic inside of it, and then communication outward stops because now it's internally.

And that could exist for a lot of different reasons. It could even be project-based. If we're so focused on our own project that who cares what everybody else is doing? I've got my own deadlines. So, you know, it could come from a very innocuous place, and the communication stops.

And this is why silos become dangerous, because now we're not cross-pollinating, we're not sharing best practices, and there's a lot of reinventing the wheels if you're doing like parallel courses for different clients, for example, in consulting, and just not sharing pitfalls or holes in the road, potholes along the way that somebody else is gonna have to cross on their own.

So now we're doing double or triple work. So busting down those silos then creates an environment to say, "Yes, you have your own project; we're still part of the same company. We're one company, and we need to work together, and we need to share ideas, because if sales has something great that all the clients are clamoring for at a client-first focus, and marketing doesn't know that because marketing is research-driven over here and has been very effective in the past, sales needs to talk to marketing, and marketing needs to be open to talk to sales, and marketing to talk to sales, because they all should be working hand again for one company."

And so breaking down those silos opens up communication channels to share best practices, cross-pollin ideas, learn from each other, thrive from diversity, celebrate diverse perspectives to ultimately come up with, in the spirit of panning for gold, the real gold.

Winston: That leads nicely into another question from the audience—diverse perspectives. How do we improv with rigid co-workers or anxious colleagues?

Bob: Yes! So, the university settings in which I've worked—there are many more than 13 of the top 26 business schools I have associations with—there's a lot of people who are very rigid in academia, especially when you don't have any letters next to your last name. They look a little poorly upon you.

So what I do is start first—what am I doing? Am I controlling my own behavior when I know I'm going into these more hostile environments or no-driven environments, more rigid people? Am I taking care of myself? Am I sticking in the "yes, and"—it's my energy and attitude?

You mentioned before—am I being brought down by them or suffocated by them? Can I maintain my composure? Can I maintain my brand? Am I representing my brand the way that I want to? And then what I do as well is visualize who am I going in? Who are the key stakeholders? What are their stress behaviors?

How do they have a tendency to react to the way that I bring information or to each other as well? I mean, are they just batting heads with each other as well? And I do this in such a way to recognize behavior—not stereotype, not pigeonhole people, or put people in the corner and say, "I expect you to behave this way."

This is important because we can create self-fulfilling prophecies, and we have to be able to step back and look at it as objectively as possible, recognize the behavior that's happening, and make sure we're behaving properly as well inside of it.

And then, through consistency, very often you can kind of like, in the spirit of tenderizing tough meat, you can kind of take that tough piece of meat and turn into something very soft. And if the relationship is built correctly or you're trying to build it correctly, I would always encourage communication transparency, saying, "When you—when this happens and you shoot me down so quickly, I don't feel like I want to bring more ideas to the table," and that's what's happening to Bill as well as Janet, you know, and Josh and Sam—the team is beginning to shut down.

Do you know that this is your behavior? Do you know that that's what's happening right now? And see if you can build a bridge together as a way to move forward. So there's a couple of ideas for you.

Winston: Those are good ones. You mentioned your personal brand. What is a personal brand? Why do we want it, and how can improv help us get one?

Bob: Well, your personal brand is how you want to represent yourself. You know what? What language, your clothes, your attire, how you—what energy, your attitude—all the stuff that you're putting together, and more accurately, it's how people perceive you.

Because that's really what your brand is. One is what you want to create; two is what you think you create; and three is what did you actually create. Okay? It's creating a character, right? It's those are the steps.

And so the only way to know what you actually created was ask. Ask the audience. Ask your peers. It's important because your brand is going to dictate—or at least largely influence—how people communicate with you, how often they communicate with you, what they communicate with you.

And I mean this both on-site and virtually as well—how we're coming across, our presence, our lighting, our background. You know, simple things if you go to the stage or film—you know, simple things that you need to set up your environment to complement the character; it's the same thing in setting your brand here in this reality right here and on site as well.

And as I mentioned, it's important because this is how people react to us. It's how—the lens through which they see us is theirs and theirs alone. Yet we can do the best we can through consistency of behavior create a brand that influences whether they want to talk to us or whether they want to talk to somebody else.

Winston: If we're auditing ourselves and taking stock of all of these things you mentioned, how can we avoid becoming self-conscious and getting in our heads?

Bob: A self-audit is the ability to recognize what you're doing in real time so you can make the real-time decision to continue that behavior or change that behavior based on how you perceive you're influencing the people around us.

Now, it can be a slippery slope to be super aware. I mean, this links to mindfulness in real time. The only difference between self-aware and mindfulness is that self-audit has an outward focus toward influence, and mindfulness is more centered in recognition of self and emotion, etc.

And it can be dangerous. You could get caught in your head thinking too much about what you're doing. And so part of what I would say to this is have like sort of like a journal or a growth chart of some kind. In the morning, I'm gonna try this; I'm gonna touch base in the afternoon to see where I am, and in the evening I'm going to touch base again to see what I did.

And if at any given time you're like, "We're thinking too much," it's because you're probably thinking too much. Abandon it! Go to it the next day. You know, change is not rapid—not right now.

We have a great opportunity right now in front of us—not only to build strong relationships with other people; we have the opportunity right now to grow as individuals.

And putting up these little self-audit points and saying, "Okay, I'm in my head; this is—I'm not doing well," step away from it, get to it tomorrow or the next day. You know, shake it off—you had a bad show, whatever! Get back into it the next day with a clean palette and an opportunity to learn and grow.

And there'll be times that we get caught in our head, sure, absolutely. And then there's gonna be other times we get out of our head and have that pop of growth and realize like, "Oh, I actually did it! That's awesome! I collaborated with somebody; communicated with somebody. I pushed back in a pushback situation; I maintained a sense of understanding and open communication, and I didn't try to push back; I just absorbed what somebody said."

So lots of opportunity to learn and grow.

Winston: We have time for a couple more questions. Bob, who is Gil Kagus, and what is his new book?

Bob: Gil Kagus is my alter ego, essentially. I'm still doing a lot of comedy on my own time—Gil Kagus, you know me. Gil Kagus, I'm the world's greatest virtual reality teacher—I teach people all sorts of things, and he's just everything that I say with "Getting to Yes And," and "Yes" and he wrote a book.

He wrote a book that's never been published; however, the book is "How to Get Your Butt Out and Have People Kiss It—Get Your Yes, You Can Kiss It."

What happened, I was shooting some videos for a client, and I was like, a buddy, Mark Stetson of mine, who's a fabulous videographer and editor, I said, "Mark, can you keep the camera rolling?" and I—there's a pair of prop glasses; I put them on, I just started, you know, doing a bit, and next thing I know, I have a small web series of this business leader who's done some keynote speeches that people are like, "What is he saying?" It's the worst nice that you could possibly get.

Winston: That's great! So people should obviously read your book "Getting to Yes And," and/or they could look at Gil Kagus and do the opposite of what he says, sure.

Bob: Yes!

Winston: Let's take one more question from the audience, which is appropriate as we're wrapping up our virtual interview. Any thoughts on business improv exercises that work in a virtual environment?

Bob: Absolutely, yes! So, as mentioned, we've been doing this for three years. So let me give you a couple of our gems. "Yes, and." "Yes, and, yes, and, yes, and."

You could do "yes, and" versus "yes, but." Winston, you mentioned before one-word story, so this is a simple one. Get a group of people together, and you will tell a story one word at a time. You could do that virtually.

Warm-ups, you mentioned as well, so just doing, whether it's, you know, any cutting type of power poses or anything that makes you laugh—put some of the dance music, put some dance dude to walk up, put some dance music on, and everybody has to do their walk up like they're gonna go up to the plate or, you know, enter the octagon or whatever it is.

What's that music? There's all sorts of fun things, and if you just like Google improv games online, you'll find a whole bunch. Adapt them, change them, make them your own, do something with them that is inside your comfort level and will affect the people around you.

And you can always contact us too, you know—business improv will help you.

Winston: Well, what a perfect end to a wonderful conversation! Thank you, Bob Culhan. And thanks to all of you at home for tuning in to Big Think Live. Please join us for our next Big Think Live with Malcolm Gladwell on Tuesday, August 4th at 12 PM Eastern.

We will be catching up with Malcolm and hearing about the latest season of his podcast "Revisionist History," as well as his latest book, "Talking to Strangers." Many thanks, everyone. Have a good day, and thanks, Bob!

Bob: Thank you! Be safe.