What Can Leaders Learn from Improv Comedy?

Premise It was a Sunday evening, and we had decided to go attend a theatre performance. It was not a typical performance, well rehearsed, with carefully scripted dialogues, choreographed movements or a strong background music. Instead, two people walked onto a bare stage and asked us, the audience, some simple questions to come up with a scene, a place, some characters and a situation. There was no script. No rehearsal. No safety net. They had to act out the scene and move the situation forward. An actor starts the show and says something absurd (since it is a comedy show). […]

Being a Leader is Like Being an Improv Actor

One of the skills that all of us need to develop as we want to be and behave like a leader is to develop the skills of an improv actor. The foundational aspect of any improv actor is the ability to be fully present in the moment and respond to their stimuli. As leaders, we need to be able to do that as well. So, if our stimuli requires us to be a coach, we need to be able to channel our inner coach. If our stimuli needs us to be a manager and give clear instruction to someone on […]

The Difficulty of Being in the Present Moment and Strategies to Overcome it

Premise: Earlier today, I came across a blog post on The School of Life blog about the difficulty of being in the present. You can read the entire post here. It so happens that I’ve been having a conversation with my wife and son recently about the same topic (which is a slightly better way of saying that both of them don’t think I am being present in the moment when I am with them). I do accept this as a fact as I am mostly in the midst of either looking at my past or looking forward to my […]

The Act of Leading Vs Being a Leader

Premise: I was talking to one of my friends about leadership and what it means to be a leader and is there a distinction between being a leader and the act of leading. What follows is my understanding of the difference. Would be a great to riff at this. Apart from the fact that one is a verb and the other is a noun, there are a few other important things that we need to understand. The Act of Leading: The act of leading implies two things It is an act (with a beginning, middle and an end) It is […]