A Second In Second City

I did something new (some might say crazy)! I traveled to Chicago for a weekend of personal and professional development in a seemingly unconventional way—I attended an Improv Intensive at the legendary The Second City Chicago.

I went for the skills and left with so much more—a dozen new friends and a whole new perspective on building trust on teams. I watched as a group of strangers quickly got comfortable with making mistakes, being silly, and more importantly…being vulnerable. Over the course of three days, this assortment of strangers with wildly different backgrounds, skills, and motivations became an ensemble!

I spoke with another student about why this worked. This shouldn’t have worked. Is it because we all went there willingly? Paid for it out of our own pockets? I don’t think so. What I observed was this: in the first hour, we learned each other’s names by playing a memory game (and I’ve never been more stressed in my life). I’m not usually great at or focused on learning names when I attend training, plus it’s hard. So we failed. Over and over again until we didn’t. That set the stage for failure, supporting each other, and having each other’s backs.

There was no opportunity to sit back and let the louder voices contribute first. We all contributed right away. That allowed us to quickly learn about each other and identify each other’s strengths. And isn’t that what makes a great team? Not just hearing the loudest, most confident voices, but by digging into the skills and abilities of everyone on the team. Sure, sometimes we flopped. Sometimes we stood in front of everyone and not a single thought or idea would appear.  But because of the trust built, we let the crazy thoughts or suggestion flow, and sometimes we made magic.

How many great ideas never surface, simply because we don’t have trust on our teams? How can we quickly build that trust and create environments where it’s ok to be vulnerable? How can we celebrate failure as a path to getting that really GREAT idea out? I think there’s a lot to learn from our local improvisers! I don’t know where my improv journey will take me, but I’m so glad I had this experience.