Posts Tagged ‘improv’
Introverts and Crowds
One of the most difficult aspects of being an introvert is finding a way to get ahead in a world dominated by extroverts. The unfortunate truth is that, especially in our early years, we overcompensate.
I was particularly guilty of this type of behavior in high school. I didn’t understand that other, more outgoing students weren’t just being loud and aggressive. Instead, they were simply acting the way their instincts told them to. Social awkwardness and much unintentional hilarity ensued.
I found my way out of this particular trap by joining and staying with a couple of improv groups, one in DC for three years and my second here in Portland for seventeen. I highly recommend improv, or theater in general, as a way to break out of one’s shell and learn how to cooperate with others in the business and in life. Don’t expect immediate results, but it’s like going to the gym — your friends will probably notice the change before you do.
Introverts: Review of Quiet
Title: Quiet
Author: Susan Cain
Publisher: Crown
Copyright: 2012
ISBN13:978-0-307-35214-9
Length: 312 pages
Price: $26
Rating: 95%
This review originally appeared on Technology and Society Book Reviews.
I am an introvert. I prefer my own company to that of others, though over the years I have found ways to manage social interactions with something approaching grace. In her new book Quiet, author Susan Cain describes my experiences with unerring accuracy.
Cain graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced corporate law for seven years. Early in the book, she described the fear she felt giving presentations, negotiating with her clients’ creditors when times were tough, and teaching negotiation techniques after she left the legal field. For an introvert, interacting with new people in a one-on-one or small group setting can be difficult. When you put the same individual in front of a large group or any group when new business or the well-being of your client is on the line, the pressure can become unbearable.
The pressure introverts feel is brought into sharper focus by what Cain calls the “extrovert ideal” prevalent in America. She starts by describing a Tony Robbins seminar she attended, where Tony’s seemingly boundless energy let him maintain his momentum throughout a 10-hour seminar with minimal breaks. Tony seemed to draw his energy from the audience, but introverts are exhausted by social interaction. The author describes one popular and dynamic speaker who is a profound introvert and must withdraw to his hotel room after he speaks to recharge. She also visited Harvard Business School, which might be characterized as Extrovert Central. Participation in classroom discussions contributes a significant amount to students grades, so it pays great dividends to speak up and make useful comments in class. Introverts, surrounded by Type A extroverts, often struggle in this environment.
Cain also analyzes the new emphasis on teamwork and consensus that permeates business and education as far down as the elementary school level. She refers to this emphasis on teamwork as the New Groupthink and declares that it “has the potential to stifle productivity work and to deprive schoolchildren of the skills they’ll need to achieve excellence in an increasingly competitive world.” She supports her argument by citing several studies performed by psychologist Anders Ericsson. His research found that the key to success in many fields depends on practicing in solitude. When you’re alone, you can engage in deliberate practice without interruption or distraction. Solitude also lets you concentrate on the elements of a skill that are bothering you the most. Mohammed Ali referred to this type of work as “the lonely work”— the work you have to do to be special is the work that no one else ever sees.
Cain provides a number of useful strategies and tactics for introverts and for organizations who hire substantial numbers of introverts to follow so they can succeed. In the computer realm, which draws introverts in huge numbers, teams can begin their collaboration virtually. Introverts perform better when given time to think on their own and without the expectation of immediate response. Also, because typing comes to them much more readily than speaking, introverts are more likely to share their ideas via a chat room or discussion forum. After your team of introverts generates their ideas, you can summarize what they’ve written and use it as the basis for a relatively brief in-person meeting to discuss the available options.
I found Quiet to be an exceptional book that speaks directly to my personal experiences. I highly recommend it to anyone who is an introvert or who lives or works with one. Much of what might mystify you about our approach to the world will become clear.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created over a dozen online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at www.curtisfrye.com.
Memories Change Over Time
Memories of dramatic events seem to be burned into our minds. It seems easy to recall where we were when we learned JFK was assassinated (before my time), Ronald Reagan was shot (middle school gym at the end of the day), Elvis died (in a car near the top of Massanutten Mountain on our way to my grandparents’ place), or on September 11, 2001 (checking email after sleeping late).
It all seems so clear, but how reliable are our memories of the events and the circumstances surrounding them? Not very, especially as time passes and discussions of the events contain information not available at first. For example, a Smithsonian magazine article notes that Karim Nader, a neuroscientist, examined his own memories of September 11 and found he had made some mistakes.
Nader, now a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, says his memory of the World Trade Center attack has played a few tricks on him. He recalled seeing television footage on September 11 of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. But he was surprised to learn that such footage aired for the first time the following day. Apparently he wasn’t alone: a 2003 study of 569 college students found that 73 percent shared this misperception.
These changes are normal and expected. You store long-term memories by associating new information with things you already know. As you continue to receive information about an event, it becomes difficult to distinguish what occurred when. That’s why legal experts view eyewitness testimony as unreliable – humans are fallible, our memories especially so.
When you’re an improviser, this fallibility works to your advantage. Long-form shows can run for 45 minutes or more and, given the huge number of choices performers make, inconsistencies crop up all the time. The good news is that your audience wants you to succeed and, unless the error is too big to ignore, they’re almost always willing to go along with the new reality. Not doing so would undermine their enjoyment of the show, so they have an incentive to play along.
This forgiving atmosphere isn’t present in politics and business, at least not for your competitors. They want you to fail and will bring up every instance of you ignoring or, in their opinion, attempting to mischaracterize the past. It doesn’t help when a campaign adviser admits that’s what you plan to do. As reported in a CNN.com article on March 21, 2012:
Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s senior campaign adviser, was asked in a CNN interview Wednesday morning whether the former Massachusetts governor had been forced to adopt conservative positions in the rugged race that could hurt his standing with moderates in November’s general election.
“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes,” Fehrnstrom responded. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
Ouch. I anticipate the Etch A Sketch will be a theme in the 2014 and 2016 election cycle. Regardless, the lesson to draw from this incident is the same for both improv and business: Don’t abuse your audience’s goodwill.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html#ixzz2BfHlkdVx
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/21/politics/campaign-wrap/index.html
Semantic Memory: It (Can Be) a Trap!
In my previous post, I talked about the difference between episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memory, as the name implies, refers to memories of episodes in your life. These memories don’t always come back quickly, or at all in some cases, and they can change over time. Semantic memory, by contrast, refers to items you can recall instantaneously. Knowledge of simple arithmetic is a terrific example what’s contained in your semantic memory.
Episodic memory provides a nearly endless source of inspiration for improvisers and business people alike. Not only can you drawn your personal experiences to create scenes are presentations, you can use your knowledge to understand another person’s point of view. And, of course, if you don’t share another individual’s experiences, you can use your interactions as a tremendous learning opportunity.
Semantic memory can be a bit of a trap in both improv and business. The things that you know and feel that become ingrained enough to become part of your semantic memory can trap you into always reacting the same way to a particular stimulus. For example, you might give a presentation to a prospective client in an industry you’re not familiar with. If they ask a question you’ve answered many times before, you might give an answer that’s appropriate to your previous clients but not to the new client’s circumstances.
In improv, relying on semantic memory results and repetitive scenes and quick burnout. Audiences can be creative, but many times you’ll find that they tend to give the same suggestions. You have to find new ways to ask for input to avoid that repetition or, alternatively, constantly find new ways to build scenes around the suggestions of monkey, banana, and Jell-O. You and your audiences will be happier if you do, especially if you tend to have a lot of repeat audience members.
Episodic and Semantic Memory
If I ask you to tell me what 3+2 equals, you would probably do so instantly. On the other hand, if I ask you to name in the last movie you saw the theater, you might have to think about it for a second or two. Those two different types of recall illustrate the differences between semantic memory and episodic memory.
I’ll start with episodic memory first. As the name implies, episodic memory is a form of long-term memory that records events from your life. Such episodes might include your wedding, the birth of a child, or something as mundane as getting out of a cab and stepping directly into a puddle. These episodes make up your internal autobiography, which is your personal record of your experiences.
Semantic memory, by contrast, refers to a subconscious knowledge that forms the basis for how we speak our native language, perform tasks we’ve done thousands of times, or interact in social settings. Semantic knowledge is often tacit, meaning that it is hard to quantify or describe. In many cases there is no need to write down the rules of behavior because everyone in the situation knows precisely what they are supposed to do. You’ll find this is true of families around the dinner table or groups of friends who go out for drinks after work.
Episodes from your life provide terrific fodder for scenes if you’re an improviser or for presentations in business. The trick is to find episodes that are directly relevant to your audience’s needs and to resist the temptation to stray too much from the truth. It’s one thing to tell your significant other a slightly exaggerated version of your exploits, but it’s quite another to tell an obviously untrue story in a business presentation. Conference goers have seen lots of presentations and they can smell a fake a mile away. Play it straight—don’t give in to the temptation to exaggerate too much.
Prisoner’s Dilemma, Part 5
This is the final post in my series on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Five blog posts might seem like a lot, but many doctoral dissertations have been written on the ramifications of this deceptively simple game.
Robert Axelrod was one of first researchers to study how competing strategies for playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma interacted in a tournament setting. One of Axelrod’s main conclusions is that you can maximize your payoff in a Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament by following a nice strategy. That is, not defecting first. He also noted that it was possible for other strategies to beat the winner, Tit for Tat, by defecting first to get the higher payoff and then defecting every turn thereafter to ensure that the other program could never retaliate effectively. Over time, this strategy does not yield a higher payoff than the nice Tit for Tat; the aggressive strategy did not win either tournament.
But what happens if you put the nice Tit for Tat in an environment with a lot of aggressive programs? The answer is that Tit for Tat will always give up the higher payoff to its opponent in the first round and get the minimum payoff in every subsequent round. Based on those rules, Tit for Tat is guaranteed to lose. If you were to put a set of strategies into a tournament and then eliminate the bottom half of the field, Tit for Tat would always be eliminated, and the other more successful strategies would continue on. Those strategies being the aggressive, not nice, strategy of always defecting first and continuing to do so on every subsequent turn.
This type of attack is called an invasion. If you run a tournament and eliminate the bottom half of the field at the end of each run you’ll find certain strategies win out. If you introduce even a small number of these dominant strategies into a tournament, they will eventually take over. The problem becomes even worse if you create a series of strategies that can recognize kindred spirits, enabling them to work together to maximize their payoff by cooperating.
You can find the same type of behavior in business. In many cases when the group or company starts, you’ll find that everyone cooperates. The problem comes in when someone who doesn’t cooperate starts to get some success in the company. As the aggression is rewarded, other individuals adopt the same strategy. In time, those players can squeeze out the players who play a nice, cooperative strategy within the business. It’s a true management headache, one that is extremely difficult to stamp out once it gets started. Plus, as the aggressive players get promoted higher and higher, the reward structure changes. Now individuals who are willing to work with the aggressive individuals are rewarded with their own promotions and higher responsibilities.
In most cases, the company can continue on with this type of environment, despite the fact that there is a lack of trust among the players. In fact, this type of environment can fuel creativity for those individuals who revel in interpersonal conflict and feel it helps their creativity. At the same time, though, an organization might begin to experience problems associated with a lack of cooperation. Always looking to put one over on the other guy makes it difficult to trust anyone else, especially when you’re looking over your shoulder to see who will get the next promotion. These behaviors can lead to stress, burnout, and high turnover. In a company that requires highly skilled personnel, losing a solid contributor because of a toxic work environment is extremely costly.
In improvisational comedy groups, you find the same thing happens especially at the beginning of the group’s life. As individuals jockey for position within the group and try to have an impact on how things will be run, you will often find that individuals who started in the group either drop out or get kicked out after they try to change the group through aggression or passive aggression by not following directions of the group’s leadership. Well-established organizations with a solid player roster and workshops from which to bring in new players are less susceptible to this sort of issue. The group’s culture is solid, and the workshop process allows management to decide which players will be promoted and included in the team.
Smaller groups, such as touring companies with only four or five players, can be susceptible to problems. The trick, as always, is to select your fellow performers wisely. In many cases, it’s better to join another group or start a new group of your own than it is to continue on in a bad situation. Sometimes leaving a bad job is the best thing you could possibly do.
Improspectives 
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