Three Improv Games Coaches Can Play With Their Clients

(Learning Value: Attunement and Flow)

• Coach and client count one-to-three in an alternating, continuous manner. (Eg. Tom says one, Mary says two, Tom says three, Mary says one, and on it goes.) Participants will discover it’s harder than it seems.
• Do round two where three is replaced with a clap (or a random word), and round three where one becomes a double clap, a finger snap, another random word, or whatever you like.
• Call time-out and talk about what makes it hard and how to do better. (Insight: Good players cease trying to get their own parts right, and make a pact to keep the counting going. They tune in to the rhythm, and get into a flow with each other.)
• Do one final round, commit to collaborating and watch what happens!

(Learning Value: Creativity and Self-Belief)

• Coach or client starts off by suggesting a category of things. (Eg. car brands, famous movies, ways to cook an egg, the different uses of a paper clip, and so on.)
• The other person, then, proceeds as quickly as possible to name 10 things that belong to that category. The key here is speed, and it’s acceptable to offer creative answers thought up in the moment. (Don’t be too tough!)
• Increase pace and excitement by counting down the items your partner comes up with (one, two, three, four,… two more to go, just one more!).
• When done, swap roles and attempt a couple more rounds.
• Discuss how you both felt and what you discovered playing this together. (Insight: People often think they can’t do it at the start and surprise themselves in the end, especially with challenging categories! There’s a lot more within people that can be summoned as resources to meet a present challenge.)

(Learning Value: Innovation and Cognitive Agility)

• Open the dictionary to a random page, point at a random spot and slide your finger until you come to a noun. You could also use a stack of images.
• Write down 10-15 words associated with it.
• Ask your client to force-associate each of these words with a goal or challenge he is currently facing, and produce an idea per word that will facilitate an innovative solution to the challenge.

Edward de Bono devised Random Input to encourage new lines of thinking. Here’s a radical but true example – The word apartment led to the creation of Campbell Soup’s Chunky Soup product in a brainstorming session. Apartment led to building, build, tools, hammer, saw, drill, knife, eventually leading to fork. Someone then exclaimed, “You can’t eat soup with a fork. It would have to have chunks in it.”