Minisode 7: Using Improv to Team Build
Improve it! fam, are you looking for a tangible team building exercise that can help your team show up for each other in a more meaningful way?
We’ve got your back.
On today’s minisode, our improve it! Director of Talent, Cristy Mercier, is here to talk to us about how improv is a great teaching tool for team building and how she’s witnessed it transform teams time and time again.
Connect with Erin Diehl:
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Connect with Erin:
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!
Minisode 7 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to improve it! The podcast!
Erin (00:10):
Hello improve it! Family, it's me. This is our first ever improve it! Live. We are recording the improve it! Podcast live today. And I am so excited because I have our director of talent, Cristy Mercier who is joining us. And we got an audience popping on in here as she comes in. Hi!
Cristy (00:42):
Can you see me? Cause I can't see that I see me.
Erin (00:47):
I can see you. Can you see me ?
Cristy (00:49):
Now I can! Hi!
Erin (00:52):
Hi! This is our first ever improve it! Live.
Cristy (00:56):
It's true. It's true. Should we just start our meeting on here?
Erin (01:01):
That'd be great. Let's just do our meeting. Let's just, let's just pretend like no one's listening. Everyone's listening! So I'm so excited. First and foremost, tell us who you are at improve it. What is your role here?
Cristy (01:16):
Man okay. I am the director of talent. I'm Cristy Mercier and my role is to you know, do bookings and get all of our talent, all corralled together at some points. Put them in for workshops. I also facilitate myself and lots of other little things. Right? So some editing, some funny videos. I mean Erin, you have me do quite a little bit.
Erin (01:47):
Quite, quite a little, a little bit. A lot of it, all of it. Oh my God. So many fun people. Hi friends who just joined us. We're so excited to see you. So we're talking about team building as it applies to improv. So why do you think improv is such a great teaching tool for teaching people how to team build?
Cristy (02:13):
Yeah. Well, improv in general is such a, I mean it's when we talk about improvisation as being on stage with each other, it's all about collaboration and working together to like truly make a experience either for the audience or for each other. So without each other on stage, you know, you using the fundamentals of improv, we can't create something beautiful. So with improv being something for teams and in a corporate environment, it does exactly that same thing. It actually makes people be like, oh, I think we should learn to collaborate better together. And we've just watched improv really change change the rooms, change how everyone views each other, not as, you know, people who we have to work against and compete against, but rather something for the common goal.
Erin (02:55):
I want to ask you that, because if I've done, let's say 700 workshops, you've done 699 of them you've helped me build, create, perfect. These things. So what would you say is the coolest thing about watching a team transform? Especially because our team building workshop was really the first workshop we ever built. So what is one of the coolest things to witness when watching a team transform using improv as a teaching tool?
Cristy (03:28):
Yeah. honestly, there's been, it's like hard to not want to share a thousand stories because it truly, I've watched them pretty, pretty hard rooms turn into one of the, my favorite rooms to be in. So, you know, watching teams who at the beginning go, you know, we're really worried, you know, talking to like our point of contact saying we're really worried about our team. You know, everyone has to be getting along. There's different people from different areas and then watching them come into a room together or watching them just get together. And we're making them do exercises where they have to fight for a common goal. Right. and when you're thrown into something, you either, you know, sink or you learn to swim and I will say 99.9% of the time, I have only seen our teams swim together. So it's just truly incredible hearing someone at the top be so critical to be like, oh, I don't know. And then at the end going, oh my gosh, I didn't know this about this person, but now I want to work with them because of this.
Erin (04:24):
Yes. And our dear friend, Judi. So we're recording this for the improve it! Podcast and improve it! Podcast family, you cannot see these comments, but Judi, our dear friend and our improv connoisseur just said, I love that a hard room vibing into an open room. That's right. And Cristy, I'm going to the yes. And what you just said. I mean, it's like, not only do we get them to swim, but they're like doing synchronized swimming. Okay. It's literally 20 individual people coming into a pool and then they're synchronized swimming on the way out. Like it's insane to watch. And team building is really the heart of everything that we train on. So we say, you know, we train not on soft skills. We train on power skills. So we thought it'd be fun to, and why we're doing this live is to use our audience here to give us some suggestions today, to keep putting, giving us suggestions.
Erin (05:17):
So we can show you what it's like to actually swim. And we can show you what it feels like to vibe in a room. So we're going to do an activity called, got your bath. And this is a tried and true here at good ole improve it. And it's really fun. It's super easy. So in the chat box right now, our improve it! Family on the podcast, you can't see this, but we're going to tell you what we see friends who are joining us here on this live today. Can we have a suggestion of a topic? Something that could be any topic at all, like unicorns. I don't know if that was the first thing that came to my mind. I had her flies clouds, you know, the inside of my brain. That's what my husband says. So give us a suggestion of a topic and then what's going to happen is Cristy.
Erin (06:01):
I'm gonna have you start. Okay. You're going to just start riffing on this topic. It could be true. Thank you, Judi. Judi gave us popsicles, we're going to take popsicles. Okay. Thank you for all these suggestions. Thank you. So we're gonna come in, we're gonna start with popsicles. You're going to start riffing on popsicles and she can make it up. It could be true facts about popsicles. It could be made up facts about popsicles or improvisers. That's what we do. But whenever I feel like Cristy, you need me, I'm going to say, got your back. I'm gonna tap you out. And then I'm going to start racing until I can't run anymore. And then you're going to say, got your back. And so we just feel like until we feel like it's a nice end. So thank you for all of your suggestions, Cristy.
Cristy (06:42):
Yes. Interesting facts about popsicles. They were created by a man named Freidrich heeds thing and so interesting. It's German. And what was, what happened was it became a very cold, cold, cold winter in Germany. And so basically food was scarce at this time. It was the 1914 and it was scarce. Okay. And basically he got so hungry. He decided, you know what I'm going to do. I have this flavored Coke because at that time it was pharmaceutical. So we had it on hand for stomachs. Okay. So he took his Coca-Cola and went outside in the freezing cold where there was snow on the ground and he compacted to a snowball and he poured the Coca-Cola. Now, granted, this was his only pharmaceutical stuff he had. So this was a chance he was taking. So he poured it in and he sat it there. And he created the world's first Popsicle. He was so hungry. He took his first bite and he knew he created something genius. And from there on, it became a, a amazing creation with, I don't even know how many flavors were created at.
Erin (07:56):
Got your back, got your back. So Friedrich, he drove us in 1914. I mean, he was like popping out to genius stuff in Germany and then came along, his friend Lou's house and Louis had popped in and said, you know what? You did Coke. I'm going to start throwing out some things like juice. Alright. So Lusa said I'm a pop in my friends. They did, they had fridges in 1914, pulled out some OJ. Okay. Threw some OJ into the freezer. Okay. Now at this time there weren't really cool little containers. So Lusa pumped in a PillPack. He had a PillPack and he put them tilt back in the freezer and you know, what happened? You don't happen.
Cristy (08:47):
I got your back basically. What happened was he, it created too many. He opened the freezer pack and realized that were about 15 created. And that's what then started. Oh my gosh. I could package this in a 15 set Popsicle box. So he happened to have this ludic. He had a friend who worked at the cardboard factory down the street. Now, granted again, it was a freezing cold time. So he sent a wire via a pigeon carrier, sent it over, said, I need cardboard. I would love a box, but something that can be cold and a pigeon flew back with this cardboard, really an incredible feature for not even, not even going to talk about that part. That's a whole nother story.
Erin (09:33):
Yeah. I got your back on that front. I got the back of them. And so he flew back with that cardboard in his mouth and he was like, oh man, you know what I'm about to create something cool. And so not only did this pigeon start creating shapes out of cardboard, but he started creating houses for pigeons and pants for pigeons and things with this, he created some clothing items. And so popsicles were not only made back in 1914, but so were pigeon pants and pigeons houses.
Cristy (10:06):
Yeah. Got your back. Especially, you know, that fun saying on a lot of popsicles, like if there's like a joke that comes out of it, when Luke Luke had got the stuff back, the cardboard back, he started coming up with jokes because it was so funny when he saw the pigeon pants, he's getting jokes on cardboard pieces and it truly became an amazing, amazing opportunity. And that is how pop Popsicle was
Erin (10:35):
That's created, created. Oh my God. All right. Yes. That's your bad. I love you. That was amazing. And everyone listening who just joined us, or if you've been listening for a bar Cristy really had a pigeon that she saved from Chicago from the streets of Chicago. And then she had pigeon pants created for this person. That was a real,
Cristy (10:56):
Yeah. I had to measure him with with, you know, fabric mesh.
Erin (11:01):
Yeah. It was beautiful. So anyway, why this game is so fun is we use this as the start of our workshop. All about team building is all about showing up. Right? So in those moments, I knew Cristy had my back. She said, that's her back. Cause what I was like Lusa did this. And she, I was flailing. She came in, she got me when I noticed our, I knew this, but I noticed that you are starting to lose your steam. I jumped in and had your bag. I got you on the pigeons. You got me on the popsicles with the jokes, with the cardboard. I mean, it's such a great tool. So I know, you know, this workshop as well as I do. Why do you think it's so important to use this activity, to show teams, how to show up for each other?
Cristy (11:45):
I think this one in particular, you know, we, we both have developed this one together, right? Because we were like, oh, this is just so an interesting of someone could be lying, right? And we're asking you to continue their lie, like to say, I got your back. And it's just a, it's such a metaphor for how we work with our, our actual clients. Right? So they're actually saying, Hey, I have a, a project deadline and I need this, but I can't complete it without you. And someone saying, Hey, I got your back. I'm going to give you this extra thing. I'm going to help you complete this. And that's truly why it's such an incredible little metaphor for, Hey, I actually got your back. Hey, I got your back. I'm going to help you complete something. I'm going to make sure that our company succeeds. And that's, what's truly incredible about this, this specific game, but about the team building and federal.
Erin (12:31):
Yeah. And I will say to add to that too. It's so fun to watch scenes, jump in, help each other. And it leads us to this great conversation about why asking for help, if you need help is okay. It does not mean you're bad at your job. And number two, it leads us to this conversation about number one, as leaders and as peers, as team members, why it's so important to ask others if they need help, because sometimes you can see somebody flailing and they're not going to be the one to ask for it. So how do you jump in? How do you show up? How do you support that person in a way that's authentic and guide your back is something improvisers. We all say, before we go on stage, we say it before. Anytime we're about to do some entertainment. Anytime we're about to do a workshop, anybody keynote, whatever we're about to do, we pat each other on the back, we're like, got your back, got your back.
Erin (13:22):
We even have participants do that in our workshops because it just makes people feel like, you know what? I'm not stepping on stage alone. I've got this army of people behind me. They are going to guide me. They're here if I need them. And that's what this team building notion is all about. So if you're listening today and you lead a team of people, take this, got your back, use it and apply it. And also think about how can you ask your team? Do they need help? How can you, if you feel like you are drowning in work, you need help. How can you ask for help and ask somebody to have your back? So Cristy nailed it. Thanks for joining me today.
Cristy (14:10):
Of course!
Erin (14:11):
So fun. And thank you everybody who joined us on the live and to our improve it. Family who is listening at home or wherever you may be listening to this later, keep failing, keep improving because the world needs that special. It that only you can bring, we'll see you next time. Cristy, friends. Thanks for joining us.
Erin (14:39):
Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to improve it. I am so happy. You're along for the ride. If you enjoyed this show, head on over to iTunes to leave us a five star review and subscribe to the 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 want to 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.