5 Improv Techniques for Businesses

Use the secrets of improv to get your creative swagger back…

Improvisation is based on the premise that everyone is born creative. We all possess a vivid imagination but often we block our access to it with various unhelpful habits of thought. These habits of thought—sometimes known as our inner critic—mediate the gap between our imagination and our spontaneity. Fix these habits, and you’ll rediscover your innate creativity.

Here are 2 ways to reframe your inner critic, and 3 playful exercises to unlock your creativity and build your creative confidence.

Short on time? Head straight to our Key Takeaways at the bottom of the page.

Managing Your Inner Critic

We all have an inner critic. An internal censor in our heads that judges our ideas and our work as we create it. Although our inner critic may sound like us, in reality it’s the internalised voices of other people. Or, more accurately, it’s the internalised voice of what we imagine other people think. And it can be harsh. While our inner critic is useful at times—it stops us sending off any old crap, for example—it’s not conducive to creative confidence.

In that light, here are two classic recurring thoughts of the inner critic and some useful, improv-inspired reframes to manage it.

Inner Critic Thought 1: “Great ideas are good right away”

This is the classic myth of the inner critic. You beaver away, thinking of ideas as your inner critic sits on its high horse, petulantly smoking a cigarette and saying, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’. To get past this, you need to suspend judgement of yourself—at least for a while. This is easier said than done, of course.

In improv, our goal is to ‘create from abundance’. Rather than coming up with one idea that we pore over and try to perfect, instead we aim to produce lots and lots of options, knowing that we’ll cherry-pick the best ones later. This takes the pressure off. Because when volume is the goal, rather than quality, it gives you permission to explore more creatively.

Inner Critic Thought 2: “I must be original”

We get blocked creatively when we try too hard to be interesting and clever. To get around this, improvisers focus instead on the mantra ‘be obvious’. This might seem like a meek surrender—who wants to produce obvious work? But remember the goal here: we are trying to unblock ourselves. To paraphrase improv pioneer Keith Johnstone, imagination becomes as effortless as perception when we let ourselves be obvious. Will your obvious idea need development? Of course. But at least you’ll have something to work with.

More often than not you’ll find that, when you let yourself be obvious, you’ll become original. Because what is obvious to you will likely be surprising to someone else. Most of all, your ‘obvious,’ intuitive reaction to a brief is often where your talent lies—where your unique hinterland of experience, personality, and expertise finds its purest, unfiltered expression. Why make things harder than they need to be?

Let Yourself Play

Adults get a bit snooty about games. It’s as if they’re above all that now they’ve got responsibilities, a pension, and all the other accoutrements of age. Yet, rediscovering a sense of play is the secret to creative confidence. After all, a child has never said, ‘Do you know what? I’m just not feeling it today.’

As well as reframing the tedious voice of our inner critic, we can trick it too. If you can tune into the simple fun of creativity again, the self-doubt will lift, and the ideas will flow. This is why we teach our students improvisation through so many games. By giving our students some rules to focus on, games can distract their inner critic long enough for them to express their innate creativity.

We can employ the logic of games off-stage too. Here are three practical games you can play alone, and apply to any creative brief…

Exercise 1: 50 Ideas in 5 Minutes

This turbo-charged version of the Pomodoro productivity technique is exactly what it sounds like! Set your timer for five minutes and see if you can come up with 50 ideas before time’s up. The false deadline keeps your inner critic in its box, and the ambitious target forces you to think laterally. If great ideas are like panning for gold, you are unlikely to find them if you don’t let yourself pan.

Exercise 2: What’s the wrong answer?

Answering this question puts you in a fun, playful space as the need to be ‘good’ is totally lifted. Also, when we define what we don’t want, what we do want becomes a lot clearer.

Exercise 3: Identity Theft

This is a quirky way to look at a problem in a fresh way. First, write a list of your favourite creatives—this can be anybody: Lady Gaga, Jamie Oliver, even Dominic Cummings! Then ask yourself, ‘How would they solve this problem?’. By borrowing their perspective, you not only unearth new angles on the challenge at hand, but your inner critic has no rational reason to object. After all, it’s not you!

Conclusion

Building creative confidence is about silencing your inner critic and embracing a playful, abundant approach to creativity. By rethinking how you judge your ideas and adopting a mindset of curiosity and exploration, you can rediscover the innate creativity we all possess. Playful exercises, inspired by improv techniques, can help to unlock this potential, allowing you to generate and refine ideas more freely and effectively.

Key Takeaways

1. Reframe Inner Critic Thoughts:
   • Suspend Judgement: Allow yourself to create from abundance, producing many ideas without immediate self-criticism.
   • Be Obvious: Embrace the obvious to unblock creativity; what seems obvious to you may be unique and original to others.
2. Embrace Playfulness:
   • Rediscover a sense of play to lift self-doubt and encourage a free flow of ideas.
   • Use games and playful exercises to distract the inner critic and tap into innate creativity.
3. Exercise 1: 50 Ideas in 5 Minutes:
   • Set a timer for five minutes and aim to generate 50 ideas, using the tight deadline to bypass the inner critic.
4. Exercise 2: What’s the Wrong Answer?:
   • Define the wrong answers to clarify what you don’t want, making the right answers more apparent.
5. Exercise 3: Identity Theft:
   • Solve problems from the perspective of your favorite creatives to uncover new angles and mute the inner critic.

Want more tips like these? Check out Company Director and Co-Founder of Hoopla Business, Max Dickins’, book, ‘Improvise! Use the Secrets of Improv to Achieve Extraordinary Results at Work’.

Want to know more about how improv fits into the creative process of a workplace?

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