In an improvisation show or a workshop, when a group tells a story, who is the leader?

Is it the person who speaks first? He or she sets the tone, perhaps names the characters or governs the setting. Or maybe not even that, if the story is word-at-a-time.

Is it the person who says the ‘big’ words, the decisive choices that commit the story to go in this or that direction? They clearly have a significant influence. Yet different players can come up with the significant words at different times during the story. And it’s often not apparent during the process – or even afterwards – which are the ‘significant’ words for that story.

Or does the question asking for one leader not quite make sense? Perhaps we are all leaders at times, and all followers at times, and telling stories in these improvisational ways offers examples of distributed leadership.

Distributed leadership requires distributed followership, which is the willingness of the team members to keep contributing what is needed to hold the project on track, to take responsibility for leading or supporting as necessary.

Then we can observe self-organisation. Nobody is designated as the leader. The team works collaboratively, with all involved, usually with some agreed process of short-turn-taking.

As a participant, you take your turns or make your contribution, as do the others, so that you are co-creating emergently, bit by bit; you can’t know what all the components are going to be – or exactly how everything will be positioned until it happens.

In a story, you may well have a sense of a run of a few words. You embark on a well-known phrase or saying, or a routinely necessary part of a generic story. There’s enjoyment in the recognition and ritual, but before it gets tedious or over-formulaic, someone spots the danger and adds novelty – which is a demonstration of leadership: knowing when to act and doing so decisively.

I used to think that entertainment (and perhaps life) had to be scripted, directed and rehearsed. All three of those conditions are switched to the opposite in these improvisational activities. There is no script, there is no leader and there is no practice.

There is no practice of the specific creation, even if you practice telling stories to enhance your skills: each one is different, in the same way that the script of a play remains the same however often it may be performed.

You are doing it on the fly, building the bridge while you cross it, flying the airplane while you build it. And it does take skill and talent to do something this extraordinary – and yet natural – together.

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