We’ve used a set of eight improv principles as part of our training for a number of years. You can read about the full set here.
This one – Relax Your Clever – is probably our favourite, possibly because it’s the one we feel we need to practice the most. Faced with challenging situations, it’s easy to think of quick solutions but it’s usually wiser to take more time, and see more of what’s going on. When we do that we often realise that the problem we’re trying to solve is more interesting than our initial solution supposed.
So we enjoyed Mark McGuiness’ post: Why Thinking is Over-rated. As Mark points out, “the literature on creativity is full of accounts of sudden insight or inspiration, often happening shortly after someone has given up trying to solve a problem through reasoning.” When meetings are getting intense, often the best move is counter-intuitive: leave the issue alone, take a break and go for a walk.
(Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash)