Can you be an improviser if you are not a gifted artist? Yes, you can. In fact, you are.
We are all improvisers, comparable to jazz musicians riffing on themes or actors making up impromptu scenes.
These people are each applying improvisation:
- Leaders responding to their teams during a project
- Sports players adapting to the opposition
- Coaches and therapists deeply engaged in conversation with their clients
- You – whenever you feel present and alert in the moment
All are improvising, even though they’re not playing music or acting. They’re deploying identifiable skills and can be better or worse at the improvisational elements of their respective crafts.
Many of us first grew aware of improvisation by watching ‘improv’ shows, such as Whose Line Is It Anyway and other TV panel entertainments which wear their made-up-in-the-moment credentials as part of their brand. Or we may have seen improvised comedy on stage or listened to jazz performers, recognising that part of the attraction was how they managed to depart from the score.
If we dive deeper, perhaps by reading about improvisation or attending workshops, we discover various exercises and techniques common to all improvisers – methods for accessing creativity, better listening and collaborating with others. And, if we join in ourselves, we’ll likely enjoy the sense of fun that many of these activities reliably generate.
It turns out that the practices of improvisation are general skills, tools, mindsets or stances that you can use and apply in many life and work contexts.
This means that there are millions of wonderful natural improvisers who are completely unaware of improv exercises and who have never attended an improv performance or workshop, let alone gone onto a stage themselves. It’s an accident of history that ‘Improv’ has been popularized by certain shows and performers, and that the vocabulary of ‘improv’ has been articulated mainly by those from that background.
But whenever action critically hinges on peoples’ in-the-moment responses to an evolving situation, rather than by their ability to follow a predetermined plan, then we are in improvisational territory.
