I’ve been on the road lately … facilitating lots and lots of conversations with lots of lots of people. Big groups and small groups, mixed and unmixed groups. The conversations have been about learning from our past and working out ways to ‘do it better’ in the future. When you accept the offer to facilitate day after day, there is such a great opportunity to practice the art of being present … to enter a space with purpose yet being able to ‘let-go’ of how/what/when and respond to the group’s needs. With each workshop I got better and better at …

What’s Tiger Woods’ win at the 2008 US Open got to with high performance under stress? Allow me to share a quick story first … Recently I facilitated a workshop when in the onset phase of ‘Gastro’. As participants arrived I suffered from weakness, nausea and waves of stomach cramps. If I was at home, I would have curled into bed, shut the door and placed a bucket by my side. I disclosed my discomfort to my client and we decided to press on … 50 people had given up their evening to contribute critical thinking. The stakes were high. …

I’m on a roll! My last few posts have been inspired by my reading and reflections on Impro. Like any parent, I want my kids to thrive, be passionate and happy. I’d also like my kids to learn to improvise … or maybe slow down the un-learning process that happens as kids start to fear failure, judgement and criticism. I was playing with my eldest son last weekend … we were building structures with shapes. I noticed that Griff wasn’t happy with the end result. We were building structures slowly and we were ‘judging’ the building process with each move. …

As I continue to read Everything’s An Offer by Rob Poynton, light bulbs keep going off for me. I’m quite new to Improvisation – although, like all of us we improvise all of the time without knowing it. In the 90’s I used to watch a street act known as The 3 Canadians and I would marvel at their genius. These 3 guys could work a crowd of a dozen and incite a movement of hundreds who felt like they were participating in the performance. I always wondered how these 3 comedians created ‘so much’ from ‘so little’. Few props, …

I am reading Robert Poynton‘s book Everything’s An Offer (How to do more with less) and some things happened on the weekend that I have to write about. By the way, even though this post refers to Improvisational Theatre … people working in the traditional domains of leadership, teamwork, strategy and business can learn a lot from Rob’s book (and this post). Part 2 of Rob’s book is titled ‘Let go, Notice More, Use Everything’ – which is also the heart of Improvisational Practice. I have some video of myself and 2 other musicians literally ‘improvising’ at the Aireys Inlet …