Impro Learning: How to Make Your Training Creative, Flexible, and Spontaneous This training book treats creativity as the door to success, and aims to provide the keys to unlock it. Drawing on sources as diverse as theatre, accelerated learning, sports, co-operative games and psychology, the author reveals practical methods for enhancing all aspects of training, from joining instructions and bonding to detailed course design and evaluation. The emphasis throughout is on participation and results, and the text is packed with warm-ups, energizers, team exercises and innovative processes. The techniques in the book aim to help design and deliver training programmes that achieve demonstrable results and to improve skills as both a platform presenter and a group facilitator. It also helps to apply the principles of learning to broaden the range of training the reader can offer and enhance confidence and the ways to project it.

There’s No I in Improv: The Complete Guide to the GS Improv Technique with Over 50 Improv Games Fully Explained Improv is an essential skill for actors because it teaches them how to truly listen to one another. Actors know there is plenty of talent out there, just a shortage of opportunity. Improv gives you the chance to play the hero, the villain, the loser and the winner – all in the same night! Improv is also a superb way for busy professionals to enhance their communication, listening and teamwork skills. Learning to improvise may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it can be done. There are actually many different improv games, each with their own structure and rules. The GS IMPROV technique can be applied to any improv game; this book employs an engaging, light-hearted manner in presenting that technique. The book also gives detailed descriptions of over 50 improv games, along with tips on how to play them coming from the author’s many years of experience. Improv is also great for engaging young minds and for keeping senior minds sharp. Simply put, Improv is great fun and this book enables the reader to join in.

How often do you think, “I’m just not that good of a speaker”? Do you ever blame your bad listening on being overworked or stressed out? Perhaps you wish you could think and respond faster, or that you should be more yourself, and you just don’t know how? Improv(e) provides you with ideas and activities that will immediately bring out your best speaking, listening, and social skills, all while helping you become your best, authentic, and unapologetic self.

Improv For Writers: 10 Secrets to Help Novelists and Screenwriters Bypass Writer’s Block and Generate Infinite Ideas Free yourself from writer’s block and inner critics with the creative power of improv! “Jorjeana Marie’s generous, joyful, and oh-so-useful book shows writers—both seasoned and new—how to unleash their creativity and find their best story.”—Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and I Have Lost My Way Improv instructor and writer Jorjeana Marie reveals a new way to generate idea after brilliant idea. Applying the rules of improv to fiction writing, Marie presents fun games and exercises you can do from the comfort of your desk at home. Surprise yourself with new plots, infinite characters and settings, and a supreme confidence in your own process. Armed with the power of improv—and liberating exercises like Ad Agency, Raise the Stakes, and Family Portraits—you’ll soon be an idea machine. With Improv for Writers, your creative storytelling well will never run dry again.

“Natalie Nixon’s new book provides a fresh primer on how to cultivate creativity in the workplace.” —Nir Eyal, autor de bestsellers de Hooked and Indistractable Too many people associate creativity solely with the arts, even though to be an incredible scientist, engineer, or entrepreneur requires immense creativity. And it’s the key to developing breakthrough products and services. Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist with a background in cultural anthropology, fashion, and service design, says that in the fourth industrial revolution a creativity leap is needed to bridge the gap that exists between the churn of work and the highly sought-after prize called innovation. Nixon says that since humans are hardwired to be creative, it is a competency anyone can develop. She shows that it balances wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail), and that inquiry, improvisation, and intuition are the key practices that increase those capacities. Drawing on interviews with fifty-six people from diverse backgrounds—farming, law, plumbing, architecture, perfumery, medicine, education, technology, and more—she offers illuminating examples of how creativity manifests in every kind of work. Combining creativity tools and techniques with real-world stories of innovative people and businesses, this book is a provocation, an…

An improviser’s guide to embracing whatever life throws at you! PIPPA EVANS is an expert in saying Yes – and No. She’s a master of thinking on her feet, but has also had to learn how to go with the flow. In this book she’s passing on everything she’s learnt from her award winning improv career, as both a performer and teacher, so YOU can take centre stage in your own life. In telling her story, delving into the craft of improvisation, and sharing fun exercises and practice you can do at home, Pippa will help you become fully yourself – realising your potential and ability to adapt to the ever changing world around you. It’s dangerous, being yourself, but let’s just take it one step at a time. Open the book, take a breath and get ready to say YES. (If it’s a NO from you then perhaps consider buying for a friend, family member or enemy who you think needs some improv-ment)

Alan Alda has been on a decades-long journey to discover new ways to help people communicate and relate to one another more effectively. If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? is the warm, witty, and informative chronicle of how Alda found inspiration in everything from cutting-edge science to classic acting methods. His search began when he was host of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, where he interviewed thousands of scientists and developed a knack for helping them communicate complex ideas in ways a wide audience could understand—and Alda wondered if those techniques held a clue to better communication for the rest of us. In his wry and wise voice, Alda reflects on moments of miscommunication in his own life, when an absence of understanding resulted in problems both big and small. He guides us through his discoveries, showing how communication can be improved through learning to relate to the other person: listening with our eyes, looking for clues in another’s face, using the power of a compelling story, avoiding jargon, and reading another person so well that you become “in sync” with them, and know what they are thinking and feeling—especially when you’re talking about the…

Executives from The Second City-the world’s premier comedy theater and school of improvisation-reveal improvisational techniques that can help any organization develop innovators, encourage adaptable leaders, and build transformational businesses. For more than fifty years, The Second City comedy theater in Chicago has been a training ground for some of the best comic minds in the industry-including John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and Tina Fey. But it also provides one-of-a-kind leadership training to cutting-edge companies, nonprofits, and public sector organizations-all aimed at increasing creativity, collaboration, and teamwork. The rules for leadership and teamwork have changed, and the skills that got professionals ahead a generation ago don’t work anymore. Now The Second City provides a new toolkit individuals and organizations can use to thrive in a world increasingly shaped by speed, social communication, and decentralization. Based on eight principles of improvisation, Yes, And helps to develop these skills and foster them in high-potential leaders and their teams, including: * Mastering the ability to co-create in an ensemble * Fostering a “yes, and” approach to work * Embracing failure to accelerate high performance * Leading by listening and by learning to follow * Innovating by making…

Organizations depend on all employees to come up with fresh ideas. They depend on teams that can effectively collaborate. And our facility to stay productive in the face of change is vital. We can do all of this…by using the art and science of improvisation. Improvisation is an engaging learning tool that can help individuals and work groups be more adaptive and open to change, and create cohesive, trusting teams. An Improv State of Mind offers practical exercises -complete with debrief questions – for the improv novice and for coaches, trainers, facilitators, talent managers and OD professionals who are ready to embrace new ways to learn…and succeed.

Workplace “drama” that’s productive! The secret to business growth is right before your eyes―it’s the creativity and innovation percolating in each one of your employees every minute of every day. How do you harness it to make it work for your organization? Business Improv! Based on the science of experiential learning, Business Improv uses improvisation activities from the theater to transform each employee into a great leader. The 75 hands-on activities in this proactive guide help you create an organization filled with people who: * Engage with and “own” their work * Generate creative ideas that drive profit * Build innovative teams * Solve problems effectively * Make decisions with conviction * Respond and adapt to change With Business Improv, you have the one and only tool you need to facilitate real, lasting leadership skills in every employee.