The world-renowned Second City Theater Company is best known for its improvisational comedy shows and roster of famous alumni who have gone on to mega-success as comedians and actors-Bill Murray, John Candy, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert, to name a few.
Increasingly, Second City is also becoming known in the world of corporate training and organizational transformation. Second City Communications is the consulting branch that was formed in 1997 to provide training, marketing services, and corporate entertainment to business clients. Since then, the group has helped hundreds of companies implement the concepts of improvisational comedy to form better teams-or ensembles, as Second City calls them.
"We're using comedy not just for entertainment, but to mirror organizations and reflect back to them what's really going on," said Tom Yorton, CEO. "We help managers and employees think differently about what works and what doesn't in a corporate environment. Comedy helps us get to the truth-things are more funny when they're true."
Soft skills aren't soft
Yorton came to Second City Communications in 2000 with a long résumé as a marketing and advertising executive. "Many skills required to be effective on stage are the same ones I wish I'd had when I was working in corporate America," he said.
"Listening, reading a room, building trust, resolving conflict, adapting to change-it turns out that soft skills aren't so soft after all. It's skills like these that separate the also-rans from the superstars both in the theater and the business world, so we set about creating a training curriculum to help companies build these essential skills in a fun and creative way."
Sarah Finch, the company's director of learning, says that improv-based comedy hinges on the idea that multiple people can work together to create something that's better than what just one or two people can create on their own.
"In improvisational comedy, we're trying to create a group that can work together in a positive way," she said. "The goal of the ensemble is to collaborate and build ideas that are stronger than they would be just coming from individuals. We stress that everyone needs to take the focus off themselves and put it on the team."
Getting a little crazy
Kristin Quinn, an associate with Amway Business Innovations, attended a week-long Second City camp last June with two coworkers. "The first morning, I was put on a team with no one I knew, but it's amazing how quickly you get to know people in a safe environment where you can be a little crazy."
Quinn's week started with refreshers on what she says are basic communication skills. "You have to practice these skills over and over," she said. She and her coworkers brought back what they learned to share with the rest of their office.
Her favorite exercise was one called 'Yes, And…' "This is a powerful tool that helps you not reject new ideas too soon but to explore possibilities instead," said Quinn. "Even if you don't like an idea, instead of shutting it down you say, 'Yes, and how do we built on this?' It has become one of our mottos."
Dop Troutman, the human resources manager for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Illinois, brought 41 employees to a full-day Second City Communications retreat last October. "I've never seen everyone so lively and active," he said. "The Second City facilitators were very engaging and funny. They could think very quickly on their feet."
He said while the focus of their retreat was creativity and innovation, the underlying theme of everything Second City does is communication. "Picking up signals and communicating them to others. Not necessarily being the star but being a team player who will help make things work in the long run," he explained.
"We took away themes from the retreat that we'll use all year long," he added. "Around the office, I'm hearing people say 'yes, and…' and 'could, would, should' a lot. They're becoming part of our vernacular."
Teams vs. ensembles
Yorton and the Second City folks draw a clear distinction between what are usually referred to as teams and what they prefer to call ensembles.
"'Teamwork' and 'team building' are loaded terms in big companies that are often met with lots of eye-rolling because they don't always square with what's promised," he said. "Ensemble is different. It revolves around loose and flexible structures, genuine connections (as opposed to forced), and taking care of your partners. It gets to the best parts of what team building should be but too often isn't."
One of the keys to a successful and cohesive ensemble is having members who want to make other team members look good, said Finch. "However, most business dynamics work against the nature of ensembles, as people tend to draw attention to their own efforts and achievements. Employees need to recognize that they can work effectively in an ensemble and still walk away with individual accolades."
Yorton said Second City has created many exercises it walks clients through to help in the areas of teamwork and collaboration, innovation and creativity, change and adaptability, and the like. One example is the word-at-a-time story, in which a new story must be created by a group of employees one word at a time.
"This is always raucous and funny, and there are five or six essential skills all rolled into this one exercise. It's a metaphor for how things work and don't work in business: how people can force their own agendas, enhance or kill creativity, increase the pace of work or bog it down."
Yorton stresses that while using improv-based comedy to build communication and team-building skills is fun, it's not about being funny. "This isn't theoretical, like some corporate training programs; it's practical. It's stickier than most other types of learning," he said.
"We're not just some Pollyanna actors blowing sunshine with no clue what business is about," he added. "This is practical training that can really help companies. The power of ensemble to create more and better ideas is tremendous."
Don Sadler is a freelance writer and editor specializing in subjects of interest to business owners and executives. Reach him at
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