Minisode 11: How Improv Can Improve Your Verbal and Written Tone in A Virtual Workforce with Mike Geraghty
Leaders, when’s the last time you’ve thought about your tone?
On today’s minisode, one of our improve it! facilitators, Mike Geraghty, is here to talk to us about how improv can help improve your verbal and written tone in your virtual or hybrid workplace.
Listen in on this fun and insightful conversation.
About the Guest: Mike Geraghty is an actor, improviser, and writer. Geraghty is from Reno, Nevada where he graduated from the University of Nevada with degrees in Spanish and Journalism. It is also where he got his start performing stand-up comedy and Hip Hop music.
He can be seen in feature films such as The Trial of the Chicago 7 and The Candyman; as well as in TV shows on FOX, NBC, CBS, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. He also performs weekly on stage at the iO Theater with his long running improv teams, Big Spoon and Dumb John; or with his all Spanish speaking Harold team, Heraldo.He has performed in theaters all over Chicago, including The Annoyance Theater, The Second City, CiC, iO, and The Public House Theater. You can find Mike co-facilitating any improve it! workshop or making teams giggle during our Laugh Breaks.
Connect with Erin Diehl:
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Minisode 11 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to improve it! The podcast! Michael Geraghty, welcome to the improve it! Podcast.
Mike (00:15):
Hello, Erin. I'm so honored to be here.
Erin (00:18):
I am so happy that you're here. You've already been on the show. You, you have a soundbite on the show from when we did the blooper reel and I introduced you as have you listened to that. It's okay. If not, I introduced you as a Teddy bear. I said Teddy's a very, a felt man, but he is like a giant Teddy bear. So you are you're on the show. I'm so happy to have you tell everybody a little bit about Michael Geraghty and then what you do at improve it.
Mike (00:46):
Sure. Hello world. My name is Mike Geraghty. I am an improviser, the located in Chicago, Illinois, where I play at such theaters as the IO theater when it was still open and the annoyance theater, and occasionally at the CIC theater and I've taught classes and performed all over the country and I am a co-facilitator at improve it.
Erin (01:14):
Yes he is. And he is a fun one. I'm so happy that you're here and it, I mean, truly Michael, I feel really lucky cuz we have so many talented people that perform with us during last breaks that facilitate our workshops. And I I'm glad that we're giving the improvement fam a chance to meet the Michael Geraghty. So let me ask you this, why you've been here with improve it! What, since 2016 we've been doing of for a lot longer than that. So why do you think improv is such a great teaching tool for communicating and communicating effectively?
Mike (01:55):
Okay. So I think improv as a tool and a way to teach these skills, I think works really well because it forces people to use a part of their brain that either a they're sometimes not used to using or more common, they're just not used to using it in this specific way. So we're pulling people out of their comfort zone and challenging them to use their brain in ways that they've never used it. And I think that makes people very open and receptive to new concepts or to understanding concepts that they have perhaps thought they had mastered and thought maybe they didn't need to work on when oftentimes that's not true. It's something that everyone could probably stay and to continually work on and sharpen. But yeah, I think, I think that's, I think the fact that it really rocks people back on their heels and puts them in a, it gets them out of their safe zone. Really opens people up to learn some new concepts.
Erin (03:00):
That's it? That's it. Well, and, I like what you said too, because it's not like we come in the things we teach. I think we have a lot of great tools that are gonna help transform teams. But I also think like you said, these are things people know, right? Like we're not coming in to teach you how to communicate. You know how to communicate. We're just taking a little bandaid and then we're take, we're putting a little bandaid on what's broken and then we're giving you a shiny new, beautiful cast to fix it. And that metaphor I went with, I dunno, but it is, it's truly an, a art form and the way that improv opens people up, the way that it helps people to communicate differently is why I love it so much. And you and I, we've done so many workshops together over the past year, four or five years now. That's crazy Mike, five years, five years. So how have you, in those five years seen teams transform using improv to help them communicate? What are some of the things that you've witnessed?
Mike (04:08):
This is actually a great segue I'll to piggyback off of what we were just talking about. When you say everyone knows how to communicate. And a lot of people think they don't need to relearn these concepts that we've been told since we were children, but the truth is people don't realize that there are lots of situations where these, these practices and these concepts should be practiced and they don't realize they're not doing it. Things like email communication or zoom communication, or even multitasking communicating while multitasking. These things are so inundated in our everyday life that people don't realize that they are not executing the basics of communication. And they don't realize that because that's the first thing we learn when we're children is make eye contact. Don't speak when someone else is speaking. So people don't that they don't do these things. And so when we come in with these, these workshops and remind people of, of some of these basics in ways that they have never thought about them or learned about them before and then applying them into different areas of professional life that they have never thought about applying them to, you can see light bulbs go off in real time.
Mike (05:24):
And I remember this is might have been what my soundbite was, but I remember talking to a business professional who has been doing this for a long time, who makes a lot more money than me say the actual words of, you know, I never realized that I should stop working at my computer typing when one of my employees speaks to me to give them attention and talk to them. Now I realize that that's something I should do. Yep. And I was like, that is such a basic tool of communication that we all ignore. And you can see it click and, and he's gonna, he's gonna take that to his family, to his kids, to his coworkers. So it's interesting how you can see this stuff really take hold in real time. And I've seen it a bunch of times.
Erin (06:12):
Me too. And I've I've, that was your soundbite. And I love that soundbite. And that's why I was like, God can, it's so true that especially in this virtual space where everybody's working on zoom, everybody's working on slack and sending these quick little messages here and there, you can lose sight of how you make somebody feel over these types of platforms, right? Like for example, I'll never forget this Christy, our director of one time she was running late and she texted me like, you know, this whole big thing, and I'm standing in front of a client at a workshop. And the only thing I could text her back was capital K period, like K period. And she got to the workshop. She thought I was so mad at her and I was not mad at all, but I was like, that was all I could do in that moment.
Erin (06:59):
Right. But that's a prime example of how these things can be misconstrued and how, especially when we're lacking that face to face communication over zoom, over some type of chat or text message or email people start to take what is said and it differently. So I wanna take this to one of my favorite activities and you know this very well. It's called last letter word. Okay. Oh yeah. So we're just gonna play this. We're gonna play this for our improve it fam here today. So I'm gonna say a word, any word at all. And you're just gonna listen for the last letter of my word to start your word. Okay. So you're gonna say a word after me that starts with the last letter of my word. And then I'm gonna pause us halfway through, give us a new emotion. We're gonna add a new emotion to that word, and then we're gonna keep changing up emotions as we go. And then we'll talk about so real quick, this is a actual activity we do in our effective communication workshop. Michael, I'm gonna say a word. I'm gonna say cup, which ends with a letter P
Mike (08:08):
Panther
Erin (08:11):
Rhinoceros
Mike (08:13):
Superlative.
Erin (08:17):
Okay. I'm gonna change. Give us an emotion. I'm gonna say excited. Now we have to say words as it excited as we possibly can. Eggplant!
Mike (08:30):
Thailand.
Erin (08:39):
Dairy products!
Erin (08:42):
We're gonna change our emotion to sad. So like as sad as we possibly could be. Pickles
Mike (08:55):
Sandwich.
Erin (08:57):
Hell's mayonnaise. These are two words, but I just wanted to say Hells, mayonnaise
Mike (09:07):
Endometriosis.
Erin (09:17):
Now we're gonna change the emotion to angry. Okay. So word was endometriosis, right? Sleepy.
Mike (09:29):
Yellow.
Erin (09:29):
Whale.
Mike (09:29):
Endomorphic
Erin (09:43):
You know what? I'm gonna stop the game. Cause I'm not sure if it's an H or an F. It's an H, right? It's an H it's an H. It's an, H's an H. It's an, it's an H oh my God. Right? Give yourself round of applause right now. Everybody listening. You're welcome. You're welcome.
Mike (09:58):
We might have peaked the microphone on a couple of those excited words.
Erin (10:01):
Oh, I know. I really love that game though. And honestly it makes me love so hard, like saying endometriosis, sad is sad. You know, you're using these words and you're changing the tone, which then changes the tone of the, a word, right? So a lot of times we, well, we use this not a lot. We always use this workshop in our effective communication workshop to talk about tonality. And I know we were talking about this. It's just so important in today's world to show people that you want them to be there. This culture, this feeling of inclusivity is all about allowing people to feel seen and heard. Right? So when you're talking about verbal communication and we say something with a different tone than it should, it's allowing that other person to feel differently. What, what are some examples, Mike of ways that you've seen tone be negative verbally at work?
Mike (11:05):
Oh God. When so let's say you have to deliver something to a coworker or ask a favor of a coworker and they say something like, you know what, it's fine. Like those words should be like, oh great. It's fine. Yeah. But the way they say it is, is definitely like, oh, well, I guess I'm gonna maybe not ask this person for a favor next time, because they hate me.
Erin (11:34):
Yeah.
Mike (11:35):
And now I just have to stew in my issue next time I have one.
Erin (11:39):
That's it? I mean, and it's so true too, because then like, you're like, yeah, it's fine. And in my mind, I'm like, is it really fine that I asked that it's is he really okay with this? Like in my mind now I'm having an inner dialogue wondering like, can I ask something else? Right. Like you just said. So it's so interesting too, to think about just how, the way that we say something really can affect the entire conversation or the entire relationship that you have with a, with a person on your team or human being on the flip side, what are some examples of positive that you've seen verbal tone, I should say.
Mike (12:18):
All right. So I recently had to, to tell my, the person that I work with, that I was gonna have to miss our, our standing team meeting because I was in route traveling from St. Louis to Chicago. And this is sort of a meeting that we, we have a very flex, right? So this was like the one time each week where make the call, you know, no matter where you are, get on the call, you're very flexible. The rest of the week, please be accountable on this day. And I had to meet it. I had to miss the meeting and I was very worried about it. And, and he didn't use the same words as, you know what, it's fine. But he told me he was okay. He was like, oh yeah, be safe. Do what you have to do. And, and he said it in a way that was warm, that made me think, oh, he does care about my safety. Mm. And he will catch me up later on this meeting. Mm. Whereas maybe the same kinda issue before with, you know what, it's fine. Would've made me feel horrible during that five hour drive.
Erin (13:12):
Yeah. Isn't that just funny though? How tone changed that whole, like you got the feeling and it's so true. People don't really remember necessarily what you say. It's how you made them feel in that moment. And he, he made you feel warm. Like you were okay. You're not coming back and probably driving in snow, thinking about, you know, oh my gosh, I'm missing this meeting and being worried. And otherwise, like it could have made for a really awful five hours, right. Had had the flip side happen. So I think one of the biggest lessons we try to teach in our workshop on effective communication is just being cognizant tone. And like what you said in the very beginning, this isn't rocket science, but these are reminders that we forget in our day to day. And it's so hard. Sometimes is things come up and stress keeps getting put on our plate.
Erin (14:01):
And we continuously have things in our lives, pinging at us from slack and you know, kids in the other room and plants that need watering all of those important things in life. But it's an important reminder and it's something I'm so proud out that we talk about. We teach Mike, I, I wanted you for this episode cuz I just adore you. And I think you're hilarious. And you're also just always make everybody around you. You're a Teddy bear. You make everybody feel that warm and fuzzy feeling and that you really are so happy that they're in the room. And that's because you use the tone, not only in the verbal communication, but in the written communication that you give. So thank you for always being that, that light for us here. And then thanks for coming on the show and telling this term improve it fam
Mike (14:53):
And thank you so much for having me and thank you for, for creating and harboring such a, a, a safe, warm, fuzzy environment with, with our business. It really makes it a pleasure to, to, to be a part of it
Erin (15:04):
And improve it. Fam if you have not yet seen Michael in a laugh break, or you could see him on stage. If you're in Chicago, he's all over those stages at, in Chicago at any improv theater he mentioned, but he's also in our laugh breaks. We just did one yesterday and it might have been one of my faves to date. Cause there was lots of fun moments. There's more to come. But I'm just so grateful you were here. And I wanna say thank you to the improve fam for listening. And if you need any more tips on how to communicate effectively with your team, reach out to us at info, learn to improve it. Mike Geraghty I'm giving you a hug.
Erin (15:53):
Yes. This is it. You can't see us, but we are hugging. We are hu. I am hugging my webcam. This is weird. Okay. And it's
Mike (16:01):
Professional because technically there's hundreds of miles between us. So this is very professional's
Erin (16:05):
It's professional. And also we are social distancing through, through time and space. All right, Michael adore you. Thank you so much. Improve it fam we'll see you next time. Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to improve it. I am so happy you were along for the ride. If you enjoyed this show, head on over to iTunes to leave us a five star review and subscribe to this show. So you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Now, if you're really feeling today's show and you've improved it even just a little bit, please take a screenshot and tag me at keeping it real deal on Instagram and share it in your stories. I'll see you next week, but I wanna leave you with this thought, what did you improve today and how will that help your future successful self? Think about it. I am rooting for you and the world needs that special. It that only you can bring see you next time.