Simon Brown (01:43.545) Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the co-authors of the book The Curious Advantage and today I'm here with my co-authors Paul Ashcroft and Garrett Jones.

Paul (01:54.606) Hello.

Garrick (01:57.747) Hello!

Simon Brown (02:00.677) and today we're delighted to be joined by Lisa Rowland and Dan Milton-Kline.

Lisa Rowland (02:06.001) Yeah, hi everybody.

Dan Klein (02:07.255) Hello!

Simon Brown (02:08.805) Thanks for joining us. So welcome to Curious Advantage podcast. Lisa, let's start with you. So you're a lecturer at Stanford University in the theater department. You're a member of the faculty of the Batts School of Improv and have taught America, Saudi Arabia, the King Abdul University of Science and Technology in New Zealand, in Mexico, and as a three-time guest instructor at the International Improv Festival in Würzburg, Germany.

So can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now? That's a fascinating background.

Lisa Rowland (02:43.927) Yes, I think that the best way to describe it is that I kept saying yes to things that came up. I kept saying yes to the offers. I know, it's really quite fitting, isn't it? I was always involved in theater. I loved theater and going through high school and college, I was like, I think this is what I want to do. And improv kept sort of improvisational theater kept finding me. So in high school, I had friends who said, hey, you should

Simon Brown (02:52.453) Good way to do it.

Lisa Rowland (03:12.199) You should join our improv team. We're starting an improv team. And I was like, yeah, okay, sure. So I did that. And then I graduated high school and figured I would sort of never do improvisation again and went to Stanford University and auditioned for a play. And the people who are running the play were also involved in improv and said, you know, you should take the improv class and do improv. And I said, okay. So I did that through university and then graduated and was ready to go be a scripted actor in Chicago. I was gonna move to Chicago. And...

I ended up staying in San Francisco. And at that point I thought, well, I'll do improv if it comes up, but I'm gonna go do scripted theater. So this is what I'm gonna do. And then I was looking for a job. I stayed in the Bay Area and I was looking for a job that would be flexible enough to allow me to audition and pursue that scripted theater route. And a job came up in an improvisational theater company in San Francisco called Bats Improv. And I was on staff at Bats. And then from there,

Simon Brown (04:05.833) This is the end of the day.

Lisa Rowland (04:12.295) the artistic director said, hey, why don't you audition for a show? And then people started inviting me into their classes. And then I started playing as a guest. And then I got invited into the main stage company. And from there, the whole world opened up. That's how I started doing international festivals and traveling the world doing improvisation and learning more about the art form from other people who had done it longer than I had. And because I had gone through the improv program at Stanford, I also have the great privilege

having come back to teach the class that I took that truly changed my life. But it was, you know, some people say, wow, you've managed to design a career in improv. And it's like, I did not design this. I didn't, this was not part of a great plan. I just kept sort of following where the energy was and saying yes, and then found myself doing the stuff that mostly gives me a lot of energy, you know? Like that really charges me up.

And so that's where I get to be today, storytelling, improvisation, teaching, performing, training, all of that stuff. And it sort of has taken me by great surprise. Like sometimes I look around and say, how could this have happened? It's like a beautiful thing.

Simon Brown (05:26.721) positive effect of saying yes to things. So, yep.

Lisa Rowland (05:29.749) 100%.

Simon Brown (05:32.089) Fantastic. And Dan, let's come to you. So you've also been teaching improv at Stanford University for more than 20 years now, and you're a lecturer of management at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, as well as at the Design School. You've also taught acting and improv at the American Conservatory Theater, Academy of Art University at IMD in Switzerland, and at the Kauffman Fellows Venture Capital Training Program in Silicon Valley. So...

take us a little bit through your background as well. And how did you say yes to everything? Or how did you end up?

Dan Klein (06:03.158) Kind of. My story is very similar to Lisa's, but for some really specific logistical points of intersection. I also took a class at Stanford. I hadn't done it in high school, but I was chasing a girl. She said, hey, we should do an improv class. And I said, OK. And I found the class and it was taught this 14 years before Lisa got there. But I was

Garrick (06:22.263) Yeah, always.

Simon Brown (06:22.381) Yeah.

Dan Klein (06:31.602) It was the same class. It was Patricia Ryan Madsen's beginning improv class. And once I started taking it, I thought, well, this is interesting. Let's keep working on this. And the more I did it, the more I realized, wow, I wanna get as good at this as I possibly can, which means I'm gonna have to stay humble, stay open. I'm gonna have to study lots of different fields and areas. I'm gonna have to expose myself to great stories. I'm gonna have to live more.

I've, you know, fallen in love and have my heart broken. I need more experiences so they can bring them on stage. And it became a great organizing principle to my life. When I graduated from Stanford, I also thought maybe I would be an actor, a scripted actor, but found myself at Bats Improv, like Lisa, first as an apprentice, and then as a main stage company player. Eventually I was the Dean of the School of Improv there, and it was an amazing.

It was an amazing experience exposed to incredible improvisers on the cutting edge of the art form. And then when Patricia retired, she invited me to apply to take over her position. And it's been an amazing gift. So for more than for just about 20 years now, I've been teaching at Stanford. And what's been really exciting is in the past couple of years, Lisa has been teaching, we've been teaching at Stanford for a long time.

teaching the same class in parallel. And we would trade off if one of us was missing, we would compare notes, what should I do with this student? What are you working on today? And then about a year and a half ago, we said, well, let's just teach all our classes together. And we combined all of our classes and it's such a joy. It's the most fun. So we get to do that at Stanford, as well as teach storytelling and communication skills for the.

for the Knight Hennessy Scholars, which is a great graduate leadership program.

Paul (08:31.266) We'd be so excited to talk to you both this afternoon. Really pleased you're on the podcast because so many crossover points between curiosity and improvisation. But before we dive into those, could you give us a brief overview of what is the background of improvisation? Where's it come from? And how has it evolved into the form that, well, I guess you are teaching today? Dan, maybe, or Lisa, do you want to start us off?

Lisa Rowland (08:53.859) Yeah. Yeah, I'll dive in and then Dan take over, chime in whenever. Improvisation is centuries, century well, it's probably as old as humanity, right? Like we sort of play, play back and forth and give offers and receive offers and build things together. And improvisation shows up in a lot of different forms, of course. But the theatrical improvisation

in the way that it shows up today, sort of modern performance improvisation that Dan and I teach, really has its beginnings in three different, four founding parents, founding godparents of improvisation. And one of those is Viola Spolan. She was actually a, she was a theater practitioner who had a lot of experience using games.

and the power of play to connect people. She actually was working with a woman named Neva Boyd who was using play to integrate immigrant children into society and found that play opened them up to each other and integrated them faster than any amount of like language classes would. That if you play with people, then those connections are made. Vilous Poland worked with those theater games and...

worked with those games and then turned them into theater games and did a lot of that work and her son actually that was the Foundation for what became one of the strands of modern performance improv at the same time a guy named Keith Johnstone Who is English and did a lot of work starting in England? But then also came to Canada and was working in Calgary Developed a lot of theater games for his work as a scripted director

And his goal was to help free actors from fear, help them show up on stage more fearlessly, distract their censors so they weren't self-conscious. And the games that he created in order to pursue that ended up being some of the first performance games and the actress he was working with said, let's just do this. Like these rehearsal games are awesome. They started doing them for audiences. That's really the tradition that Dan and I most strongly teach in is following the work of Keith Johnstone.

Lisa Rowland (11:05.763) and the ways that he outlined his theories of creativity and spontaneity and openness, connection, narrative, all of that. And then there's a third strand that actually started in sort of Chicago and San Francisco, a group called the Committee, at the same time a group called the Compass Players. They all sort of turned into what became like the second city improv in Chicago. A guy named Del Close really took the...

took the lead on or became the guy, became the leader of that movement, created a format called The Herald, and it is also an enormous influence in at least American modern performance improvisation. So those are the three spools that come together that really did lay the foundation. And now there are so many theater innovators doing so much cool work around extended stories and involving other art forms.

Dan Klein (11:39.051) Yeah.

Dan Klein (11:45.89) Mm-hmm.

Lisa Rowland (12:03.283) visual arts and music and how that all can work together to create a theatrical piece. So it's a very still young and burgeoning and discovering itself theatrical field.

Paul (12:15.426) Yeah, Dan, what would you add to that?

Dan Klein (12:16.778) Yeah, that was pretty comprehensive. I was trying to figure out where I could jump in, but we're in a stage right now where these three strands have woven together and braided, and sometimes people still can draw, like, oh, that's a Spolan concept, or that's something that Johnstone brings in, but it's really, it's woven together, and we're taking it, the current artists are taking it to the next level, as you might imagine. It's pretty exciting to see.

Garrick (12:19.454) Yeah.

Dan Klein (12:46.266) And even just hearing Lisa's experience traveling the world and going to different improv festivals and seeing what people are doing all over the world and sharing together is really exciting.

Garrick (12:57.807) I loved your story about how you just followed, you followed the yellow brick road and it led you into improvisation. Reminds me about, I couldn't get away from statistics when I was at university. Every single course I took required another course in statistics. But anyway, I didn't end up in statistics, which is not a bad thing. But the thing, the other thing it reminds me of is you know the Chinese have that idea of the Chinese dragon and then the...

Dan Klein (13:11.658) Yeah.

Garrick (13:26.363) the energy ball of fire or the pearl you sometimes see, which kind of rushes around like a ball of lightning. And then they're always following the energy to find out where it's going. And I love that idea of the spontaneity, but you've got to follow and keep reinventing yourself in some ways to kind of keep it fresh. But what I really want to ask you about is now the connection with business and organizations, how did that come about? And obviously, I mean, it's about expression and individuals.

overcoming fear, which I also really a bell with me. But can you tell us a little bit more about how it's become so useful and valuable for leaders?

Dan Klein (14:09.61) Yeah. I'm not sure, Garrick, I lost your question a little bit. Did everyone else hear or is that just on my end?

Lisa Rowland (14:17.671) It was spotty on my end as well.

Dan Klein (14:19.19) Okay. I think I'd love to talk a little bit about improvisation in organizations, because I do think that's one of the exciting channels through which this the art form has been progressing. And it's, that's even more recent that theatrical forms seem to come first, people putting on putting on shows and many a big model of how an improv venture.

could survive would be to sell tickets to shows, but also to offer classes and to create a school of sorts. And in my experience, people who would sign up for classes early on were people who wanted to get up on stage. They were people who wanted to be performers. And there's still a really strong tradition of our most beloved actors and performers often have an improv background, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Steve Carell.

great improv chops. And so that's still there. But as we kept going, there became a new population, which was the personal development crowd, the people who just wanted to, they wanted to overcome fear themselves. They wanted to feel like they could do better in personal or professional settings when they were on the spot, when they felt like they weren't prepared and they didn't want to freeze up. Or they wanted to be more playful.

create, have more friends and connect in a different way. Cause it's an amazing tool for being able to do that. And I know that was a really strong thread because years ago when I was the Dean of the school at BATS, we noticed that every January our enrollment would triple, which was essentially the New Year's resolution crowd. They were saying, I'm going to go to the gym or I'm going to go take improv. It's a personal development tool. But I think we're in another

phase right now, which is that organizations are recognizing the value of having a team have this capacity. It's not just individuals. The team needs to have these skills and how we can collaborate, how we can work with each other, how we can adapt agilely to the current situations, in particular when things don't go well. There's so many of the things that Patricia taught me and Lisa when we were students that I've realized have been

Dan Klein (16:40.594) are now being shared with Amy Edmondson's concepts around psychological safety and Carol Dweck's concepts around the growth mindset. This is just what we were learning in our practice.

Garrick (16:49.468) Yeah.

Lisa Rowland (16:54.223) just add to this to say that so many of these skills, and I think when people think about improvisation, they consider it something that is, if you're good at it, it's because you have some innate talent for it. You are the funny one. You are the extrovert. You love being in front of people. It just sort of, you have this natural predisposition toward showing up in this way. But the thing that Dan is talking about, which I love, is that actually these are individual skills. We can name them and practice them and develop them and get better at them.

individually and collectively. And that's a super important thing to recognize because so often people will say, oh no, I'm not creative. Oh no, I'm not that kind of person. That's my worst nightmare. But what we really realize is that doing improvisation or using the skills of improvisation really does boil down to naming what they are and finding ways to practice them.

And if you do that, you get better at them. Even things like listening and being spontaneous and sharing control and collaborating and noticing the possibilities. All of those things are not innate personality traits. Those are skills, practicable skills.

Simon Brown (18:04.537) So maybe let's dive in a little bit there too. So if anyone's there sort of saying, well, I've heard of improv, but I've never seen it in action, or so what is improv? And feel free to give an example, or we can even give it a go now if that's helpful to explain what it is.

Dan Klein (18:26.442) Well, at some level, when we talk about theatrical improv, we're talking about a group of actors. It could actually be a single person or a pair, but usually it's a team of an ensemble. They get up on stage and they put on a play or maybe a musical or a series of skits, short stories or long stories, but it's entirely made up. It hasn't been rehearsed beforehand. There's no lines of dialogue. We don't know who the characters are and we discover it in the moment.

There are variations to what we do within those parameters, but that's really the idea. It's putting on a play that we're writing at the same time that we're performing it. Some of the examples, we found early on when I started practicing it some 30 years ago, an example popped up, which was a television program, came out of the UK. There's an American version. It was called Whose Line Is It Anyway?

And it was a really, it was a talented group of performers that were very funny and they were doing great comedic improv and it was a really nice, well it had two effects. It was really good because people could often go, what's improv? And you say, oh, it's who lives in anyway. They go, oh, okay, I get it. But then there was another effect, which was, it's very comic driven and it's a little intimidating. It draws the people who are like, who think they're funny, think, oh, I could do that. But it...

sorts the group into people who are trying to make jokes, which actually can get in the way of all of the other skills that Lisa's talking about, like listening and lifting your partner up and providing what's needed in the moment and responding to even negative things with grace and calm and even excitement. If you're just trying to make jokes, there's a lot of ego involved. So when it's really working, it is funny, but...

One of the most valuable things that I learned early on from Patricia Ryan Matson was trying to be funny is not your goal. It may be a side effect. It may be an emergent quality of this work. But in many ways, what we're really trying to do is craft stories. Keith Johnstone, he said that the great improviser should be one third comedian, one third actor, and one third storyteller.

Dan Klein (20:48.51) And I really like that model. I like thinking about it that way.

Paul (20:50.298) Hmm. Yeah. I really liked Lisa also to come back to something you said about it's a, it's a set of skills that you can learn. And we see this with the curiosity stuff that people say, I'm not curious, or I'm not very good at this. And this is what we've been exploring is the idea of curiosity being a set of skills that you can learn and practice and get better at. One of the things that we see time and again, come up

around curiosity and you just mentioned it Dan is around psychological safety. So I'd love to ask you both here about that role of psychological safety and improv. Because to some extent that must be terrifying, right? I'm going to stand up on stage. I'm going to perform in front of an audience. They are probably judging me. Um, and I don't know what's going to come next. So what does that role of, you know, how do you build psychological safety within the groups of the individuals and the team even want to go and do that?

Dan Klein (21:28.286) Yeah. Yes.

Paul (21:44.41) You know, what's that contract and, and what does that do for the people that are, that are then practicing improv to, to grow themselves and grow their skills.

Dan Klein (21:52.737) Mm-hmm.

Lisa Rowland (21:53.939) I would say that the most powerful thing to recognize or that I have recognized in improvisation is that it's not up to me and that I'm surrounded by partners who are there to support me. And so support is another one of the skills that we practice. What does it look like to support a partner? How do we support each other and lift each other up? Say yes to your offers. If I make an offer, it's only as good as how well it's supported actually. Like...

Does somebody else reinforce it and move it forward or do they ignore it and step over it and make a different offer and invite us to go in another direction? So the skills that we practice as a group and the ways that we develop that psychological safety is that we develop a parlance and a practice, a discipline of support. But I know that my partners are there not to judge me and not to evaluate my calls, but to support me to move them forward, whatever they are.

that we know that whatever's on stage is worth playing with and that they are gonna help build something with whatever I throw out there. And my job is the same to do with them. And so sometimes I show up at the theater and I think, oh man, I got nothing today. Like I've had a long day, like you were saying, Simon, it's like, man, it's kind of been a hectic day, so I'm just showing up and I don't know if I'm really prepared for this. And they all will say, we got you, we got you. Like you just show up, show up and we'll see what comes out and we'll play with it.

Simon Brown (23:06.181) I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Lisa Rowland (23:21.019) And it's incredibly liberating and it's incredibly bonding. I mean, it's like, I feel so grateful to be surrounded by people who I feel supported by over and over and over again. And the more of the times you have those experiences, the more you trust like, oh, there's actually nothing to be afraid of here because I'll be fine. We're all in this together. It's not about whether I can come up with something good out there. It's like, what are we gonna do together?

And usually it's beyond anything any one of us could anticipate.

Paul (23:47.313) I love the language around it.

Paul (23:51.338) I love the language around this. When you talk about giving an offer, which is a nice thought if you're collaborating with somebody, that your ideas are an offer. You can move them on, you can reject them, you can kick them into touch or you can build on them. Could you give us an example? What would be an offer? How would it play out if you were actually doing this?

Dan Klein (23:51.532) I-I-

Dan Klein (23:59.374) Thanks for watching!

Dan Klein (24:05.708) me.

Lisa Rowland (24:07.071) Yeah. Yeah, so let's see. An offer could be, well, should we play a game? Let's play Oh Good, because this feels like a perfect game for accepting offers. We'll play Oh Good. So Dan and I will play this game. This is all about, yes, you've got it down. You make offers and then accept them. The anatomy of this game are, I will give, we'll give each other gifts. We'll say what it is.

Dan Klein (24:13.974) Let's play a game.

Simon Brown (24:14.649) absolutely.

Garrick (24:16.431) Yes.

Garrick (24:21.479) good.

Dan Klein (24:24.066) Okay.

You're an expert.

Lisa Rowland (24:36.647) Dan, I got you this, whatever it is. Dan will respond with, oh good, I needed that. And here's why. And he'll explain the offer and then he'll give me one. So we'll demonstrate that maybe we can kind of play together.

Dan Klein (24:48.654) and we'll bring you guys in.

Paul (24:48.97) Yeah, we'll watch the people who've done this for 20 years first, and then we'll see what we can learn from this.

Simon Brown (24:53.267) That's a low bar for us, isn't it?

Lisa Rowland (24:54.825) That sounds good. But I did this yesterday at a workshop with people who had never improvised in their lives. They were all engineers and physicists. And I taught this game. It's like, this is a perfect example of exactly what you're asking about. So Dan, I got you this handmade quilt.

Paul (25:08.31) Let's go.

Dan Klein (25:16.206) Good, the temperature has started to drop surprisingly and I need something cozy to wrap up in. Thank you so much, Lisa. Lisa, I got you some brand new dental floss.

Lisa Rowland (25:23.207) You're so welcome.

Lisa Rowland (25:29.883) Oh good! I just ran out of my old stuff and I'm going to the dentist in a month and this is always the time when I gotta ramp up my flossing. So that's perfect. Thank you. Paul, I got you. Are you down to play?

Paul (25:47.213) Yes. I'm ready. I'm really ready, I think.

Lisa Rowland (25:48.563) Great, great. Paul, I got you this potted plant.

Simon Brown (25:49.846) I'm going to go to bed.

Paul (25:54.61) Oh, good. I really need, as you can see, some more plants here behind me because my office is starting to look a little plantless actually, and I think it's gonna bring some life into what is really a bit of a dreary space. So can I offer Simon? All right, Simon. Simon, I got you a new bicycle.

Dan Klein (26:10.85) Yeah.

Simon Brown (26:11.545) Peace.

Simon Brown (26:20.981) Ah, perfect. I'm a big scheme cyclist, Paul, and I've been trying to persuade my wife to get me a new bicycle, and I've lost that argument. So you getting me one is fantastic, so thank you. And Garrick, I've actually got you this special extra loud alarm clock, as well as a gift.

Garrick (26:30.483) I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Garrick (26:42.187) Oh good, Simon, you know I desperately need one of those to make sure I get onto things on time. I'm very grateful. It does go to the point though, doesn't it?

Lisa Rowland (26:54.083) So that's the...

Lisa Rowland (26:58.143) That's the game. The thing, it's so simple, right? The rules are so simple, but the skills that you're practicing and playing that game are, we're listening, we're ready for whatever is thrown at us. We can't prepare for it. We've just got to hear it in the moment and then respond spontaneously. And we are also training ourselves to find value in what is there. And Dan created this game, the structure of this game, to practice exactly that, that our job is not to evaluate the offer, our job is to find value in it. What is the value here?

Simon Brown (26:58.827) Exactly.

Lisa Rowland (27:26.223) And we often play another round where we invite people to give things that are that are harder to love, that are, uh, could be defined as a little bit more negative. And then the explanations have to get a little bit more creative.

Simon Brown (27:33.434) I'm sorry.

Simon Brown (27:39.926) Let's go there. Let's get ready to go.

Dan Klein (27:40.962) Let's do that, let's do that. I just wanna call out the structure, the reason you say oh and good first is to get you out of your critical, evaluative, judgmental brain, your cognitive, like let me figure out what this is. You're just oh good, and then you just run from there. If you need a little bit of time to figure out what's good about this thing, then we recommend that you just stretch out the oh and stretch out the good, you'll buy yourself some time, that's it.

Simon Brown (28:07.394) I'm gonna go.

Dan Klein (28:09.414) But yeah, we can now give things that are positive, neutral, or potentially negative. But we have to, this is always important to remind the students, be careful not to go into the sarcastic mode. Oh, good. I really needed that. Try to be genuine in the imaginary world. It's pretend, but try to be real in the pretend world, rather than sarcastic in this pretend world. All right, well, I'll throw one to Lisa to start.

Simon Brown (28:21.988) Uh huh.

Garrick (28:33.954) Okay.

Simon Brown (28:35.106) So kick us off down and give us an example.

Garrick (28:36.817) Yeah.

Dan Klein (28:38.954) and you'll get you'll get a feel. How about this? Lisa, I got you a third degree sunburn.

Lisa Rowland (28:47.863) Good. You know, I have fair skin and sometimes I get a little bit lazy about putting sunscreen on and it is super helpful to me to have a really clear reminder every once in a while about why sun protection matters. So this is actually a great I think this won't keep me going for years now on really great sun protection. Thank you.

Lisa Rowland (29:17.715) Runny nose.

Three weeks of a runny nose.

Garrick (29:23.463) good, oh good, that's going to keep me indoors and also wearing a mask I think, and I've been looking for some downtime so I can do some writing and snuggle and have some duvet days, so I'm all for it, I'm grateful, thank you Lisa, thank you.

Lisa Rowland (29:46.964) You're so welcome!

Garrick (29:50.551) I'm going to give... Um... Paul! Um, I've got you a puppy.

Simon Brown (29:52.773) Thank you.

Paul (30:04.654) You've got me a puppy, was that, Garrett? Oh, good. No, well, I mean, I'm really pleased because I've needed more things around the house to stop me doing the things I want to do when I want them. I've also found there's become a real tendency for me to...

Simon Brown (30:10.712) No sarcasm.

Paul (30:26.29) I don't know, stay out late in the evenings and, um, and stay, you know, on longer holidays, but now I really have a reason to stay at home and to look after something that I didn't need to before. Thank you, Gary. Thank you. Um, uh, Simon, I've, I've got you a, um, I've got you a pair of really sore kneecaps actually.

Garrick (30:37.959) You're welcome, Paul.

Simon Brown (30:53.529) Oh good, because I actually did a lot of cycling last weekend and I need to have a rest so I need a really good reason to not go out even though the weather is really nice outside but I need to go and sit and relax and some really sore kneecaps will give me a really good motivation to not go and do anything and just chill this weekend. Fantastic. Yeah.

Lisa Rowland (31:14.962) You

Paul (31:15.43) I love the game. It's brilliant game. Thank you guys. Thanks for playing with us. It seems like there's a lot of very practical things like sometimes in the language I've heard before you can use yes and, and there are other just some of these verbal clues that I think is about, as you say, and I really love what you say, support. When you're hearing an idea, you support it and you move it forwards. I mean, can you tell us a little bit more about that and some of those techniques?

Garrick (31:15.567) Wow. It's fantastic.

Lisa Rowland (31:17.703) Yeah.

Garrick (31:36.183) Mm.

Dan Klein (31:39.434) Absolutely. You know, one of the things, oh good in a way is designed to highlight that mantra. Whatever comes your way, you say oh good. This is the improviser's mode. Whether it's positive or negative or whatever, you say oh good, that was what's meant to be here, let's work with it, let's play with it, let's build on it. We often have an urge to critique, to undermine, to change, to adapt, or even to ignore, and those are all what we would call blocks.

That's a way to block or say no to your partner or to what's happening on stage. And instead we wanna accept, oftentimes people know, it seems to be universal, they know the improv phrase yes and. Yes and is that building on your partner's ideas rather than saying yes but, which is actually a way to criticize or to block or to undermine or even just change to your own thing. Sometimes a yes but is a partial block.

but a partial block is still a block. And so one of the things that we practice when we first get improvisers together is practice accepting all, whatever comes your way, accept that and get into the habit of building on what your partners have said. And there's another great mindset, which is no matter how good your idea is, the idea in your head, whatever your partner just said is a thousand times better. So we let go of attachment.

Simon Brown (32:39.769) Hmm.

Dan Klein (33:06.146) to what we're thinking where it's gonna go, and instead we take it where our partners have taken it. And if everyone's in that mode, then it's amazing where things go. We don't actually have to try to be creative. If we're just saying yes to what our partner said and building on it, it's going to be in the wildly unknown territory right away.

Simon Brown (33:28.416) Mmm.

Lisa Rowland (33:28.743) I wanna just bring up this quote that Johnstone has from a book he wrote called Impro, which is, he says, "'There are people in the world who prefer to say yes "'and people who prefer to say no. "'And those who say yes are rewarded "'by the adventures they have. "'And those who say no are rewarded "'by the safety they attain.'" And it feels so powerful to me because it doesn't say yes is good and no is bad. It says the two are gonna get you different outcomes.

And if you say yes to what is in front of you and you let it take you where it will take you, you are more likely to be in uncharted territory, which is a little scary for people, which is why people say no, but it also may show you something new. And I think this is also key to this idea of why curiosity is powerful and difficult in a business setting is that you need to be willing to sort of shove off from your known territory.

And by saying no, by finding problems, by criticizing, by judging the idea before you actually entertain it, it keeps you right where you are in the comfort of your known ideas. And you can stay there. And if your ideas are great, you may be very happy there, but you're not gonna discover a lot of new stuff. So the idea of we say yes to our partner's idea and then it takes us somewhere a little bit off course, and then they say yes and it takes us further, and then we say yes and it takes us further, and now.

We are off and running and we are nowhere that either one of us could have predicted. And that is like super fun on a theatrical level.

Simon Brown (34:59.815) The super important thing is when everything is moving as fast as it is at the moment, that feeling of safety of not moving actually isn't safety because everything is moving around you and so it's a false feeling of safety.

Dan Klein (35:05.934) Yeah. I appreciate it. I'm proud of you moving. Exactly right. We, um, we, when we say no, we keep control. And the practice of improvisation is giving up control without giving up responsibility. Sometimes people, you know, say, okay, well, I'm going to give up control, whatever, go wherever. You have to stay present. You have to stay in it. You have to stay part of it. You just don't.

get to decide where it goes. You are letting go of control while still keeping, paying attention, being present and committed with each other.

Lisa Rowland (35:47.375) Yeah, a colleague of ours named Ted de Maison who also wrote a book called Playful Mindfulness. And he does a lot of exploration around the intersection of improvisation and mindfulness practice or contemplative practice. But he has this phrase that I really like which is contribution without control. It is imperative that you contribute. You must contribute. You must not control. It is not your job to control what happens, but you've got to participate. And I love that there's a difference there.

Like we have to sign up to be a part of this without being attached to where it goes or how it ends up.

Simon Brown (36:23.321) And so even from that exercise that we did a moment ago, that sort of creates this sense of safety and trust. Once you get through the first one, then you sort of laugh and you realize actually it wasn't so bad. When I had the pleasure of first meeting you both, as we were very quickly after that on the lawns at Stanford going through an exercise around failure and the role of, I guess, improv in...

helping us deal with failure and getting things wrong and being okay. So can you talk a little bit about, what's the connection between improv and failure and how can it help us get more comfortable with failure?

Dan Klein (36:53.531) Yeah.

Dan Klein (36:57.614) Absolutely. It's one of the ways that we, you know, our teacher, Patricia Ryan Madsen, when she handed this class over to us, she said, it's an almost sacred responsibility you have to make the room safe enough for people to take risks. And some of the techniques for doing that include creating a culture where we're supporting and building each other up, where we're making our partner look good.

but also where we, when we fail, we celebrate failure. And when other people fail, we celebrate failure for them as well. I mean, it's the first things that we have to do. So literally, our normal reaction to failure, Amy Edmondson's new book, The Right Kind of Wrong, has a great account of this. Our normal reaction to failure is to tense up, is to cringe, is to close off, hide, cover, defend ourselves, blame other people, and it's just not productive.

Garrick (37:51.507) Okay.

Dan Klein (37:55.53) It's not helpful, it's not useful. And so we do a thing where we create, a lot of improv training is creating very high pressure but low stakes situations where people have to think really quickly and they're gonna mess up. And it might even be something as simple as counting to three back and forth over and over again, and you just lose your place and you mess up counting to three, it just happens. And instead of cringing or flinching or wincing,

We ask people to throw their arms in the air triumphantly and celebrate with a, woohoo, I failed, ta-da, whatever you've got. And you celebrate that failure and it feels outrageous and it feels liberating. It's bizarre and freeing at the same time.

Garrick (38:32.851) I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Lisa Rowland (38:40.635) and transformational, it's like transformational for students. You know, we teach at Stanford where there is a high degree of perfectionism and drive for excellence. And when they come to our class and we say, please make more mistakes, look for opportunities to fail. Here's what we're here, be average, like shoot for average. Don't try to make yourself look good. They are blown open in a way. And I think it leaves an enormous impact on them for this very reason that they realize they're gonna be okay, even when they're not.

Dan Klein (38:58.421) Got it.

Lisa Rowland (39:10.623) perfect, that there's another way to be together.

Paul (39:14.486) I also love the fact that you celebrate failure in the moment, because we talk a lot about this. Oh, it's important. We should recognize failure with six weeks time. This was the project that failed well done everybody actually in the moment. And you made a very physical representation and a state change around that where you actively go, yeah, I failed. Um, that's quite, I could see that happening. I could see that happening, not just in a, in a teaching environment, but in a work environment as well.

Dan Klein (39:39.254) Yeah. What we find in a work environment, it's actually really, it can be really valuable, especially we work with leaders a lot and how to help someone be an improvisational leader, someone who is agile, someone who creates a culture where ideas can thrive. And one of the ways that they have to do that, we know a lot of leaders who say, we wanna encourage you to fail. I mean, Silicon Valley is all about, in many ways, it's all about failure and being able to pivot and learn quickly from our failures.

But even here, people say, well, you know, I wanna encourage you to make mistakes so we can try things and get more things out there. But the leader beats themselves up when they make a mistake or they hold themselves to a different standard because they think, well, everyone's watching. Yeah, everyone is watching. And if they see you also be able to fail, be vulnerable and celebrate, oh, I messed up and ta-da, it actually creates a much...

There's much more psychological safety in the environment because we recognize that we're not being punished for mistakes and we're not being punished for calling out mistakes, which is so critical. There's another principle. Oh yeah, Garrett, go ahead.

Garrick (40:45.412) You mentioned a-

Garrick (40:51.995) I was just going to say, you mentioned Amy.

Dan Klein (40:53.378) Well, I wanted to share. Yeah.

Garrick (41:01.275) You mentioned... Here's the failure moment.

Lisa Rowland (41:01.448) haha

Dan Klein (41:02.152) Ta-da! Here's the point that I wanted to make.

Simon Brown (41:02.819) I'm sorry, Stan.

Dan Klein (41:05.762) You've got to put it to light. It's exactly this. This is the point I wanted to make. A lesson I learned early on is that there's a moment sometimes in improv that can't help but happen where you are on stage in front of a live audience and it doesn't work. You do something that is wrong. You feel bad, you feel terrible. It's boring, it's not interesting, it's going badly. It's the worst. We call that dying on stage because it feels like that. And if your partner...

is out on stage and they are dying, your job is first, see if you can come up with something that would save them, come up with something that would help fix that. You're thinking as hard as you can, but if you can't come up with a way to save them, then your job is to go out on stage and die with them. And the moment you know that everybody has that, you know you're not alone. And the risk of you going up and being left out to...

Simon Brown (41:53.445) I'm going to go to bed.

Dan Klein (42:02.654) left out high and dry goes down to zero. And we're all able to move forward. And actually the audience really appreciates seeing someone who's able to be in that moment to celebrate it and to move on. If they suffer, if you punish yourself, then the audience feels bad and they feel bad for you. But they're not gonna buy tickets and come back and see the show anymore.

Lisa Rowland (42:29.223) Yeah, I think a huge part of, I think, well, I'm sorry, Garrick, you had something you were trying to get in there. Let's go to that first.

Paul (42:29.314) Good truth.

Garrick (42:37.396) I was just responding to Amy Edmondson and you brought Amy's name up. The wonderful thing about her latest book is that she's made failing safe in some respects. She's created a psychological safe space around failure. At last the language is not binary. It's not like success and failure. She said there are great types of failure and there's some failure that you want and some failure that you obviously don't want. And this is, I think this is a phenomenal contribution, especially to

Dan Klein (42:46.422) Yeah, exactly.

Garrick (43:04.259) organizations who, as you say, you know, high performance and so on. The other thing I've been thinking about just talking is confidence and how what you're talking to us about is giving people the opportunity to gain confidence, a curious mindset, keeping open and looking and being prepared to take a step forward. You know, we say curiosity is an attitude of wonder, but a spirit of exploration. It's that idea of you know, what's over the hill.

Dan Klein (43:33.444) Thank you.

Garrick (43:34.415) let's go and have a look. And that thing that once you take the first step, you gain all this confidence. And the thing I'm really finding so valuable from this conversation is that here are tools that we can, we can all gain, we can all grow, we can all practice.

Dan Klein (43:41.964) Yeah.

Dan Klein (43:54.914) Yeah. I know Lisa has something brilliant to say about this, but I wanna slide this comment in because of how much I appreciate the curiosity mindset, especially in regards to this. One of the things that we find gets in the way of improvising is ego, is when you think it's about you, when you think it's about you and how you're doing. And even if you do well and you think, wow, I just did well.

that ends up undermining the work. And if you think, oh, I just did badly, that undermines the work. If it's about you, then it gets in the way. But curiosity is such a great mindset for taking it off of you and being interested in someone else or in something else to put it off of yourself and help you move forward, not as a way of like, look at me, but I wanna find out. And I think that that's beautiful.

Lisa Rowland (44:50.684) Yeah.

Paul (44:51.942) I think that's a very lovely thought. I want to ask you both this, and we often ask our guests, how would you personally define curiosity? Maybe Lisa, I'll give that gift to you first. See what you think. Oh, good.

Lisa Rowland (45:03.355) Oh good, I needed that. How would I personally define curiosity? I think it is a, ooh, how's this? A willingness to be changed by what you see.

Paul (45:18.146) Ooh, that's good.

Lisa Rowland (45:19.367) So that if you see something, there's like, you're willing to be sort of hooked by it and move toward it, even if it's just emotionally or in your thoughts.

Dan Klein (45:19.523) I'm gonna take-

Garrick (45:20.341) Nice.

Garrick (45:25.691) Yeah.

Lisa Rowland (45:33.095) But I think that idea of yes and no, and yes being a willingness for adventure, and no being an attachment to safety, or that no is gonna get you safety, it is based in the idea of a fear of the unknown. And I think the thing that keeps us from moving towards something when we don't know how it's gonna turn out is that this is gonna be, this is a threat to me. I don't know how that's gonna go. I don't know that I'm gonna be prepared for it. And so I don't wanna risk that. So I will stay right where I am knowing the things that I know.

A willingness to be changed takes bravery and openness and trust that when you get to the next step

you will have what you need to figure out what the step after that is. And so, right, and so a willingness to be changed by anything, and that means walking through the world in a state of openness to take in what is around you, to actually see things as they are, instead of as you hoped they would be, or as you are trying to make them be, and then a step deeper, which is to engage with, engage with that thing in appreciation. Oh, Patricia Ryan Madsen also talks about

Simon Brown (46:19.188) Okay.

Dan Klein (46:31.342) Hmm.

Lisa Rowland (46:44.903) The four steps are basically attention, appreciation, oh no, attention, acceptance, appreciation and action. So we see things, we accept that they are that way, we look for what is to value about them and then we take action on that. And I think a lot of that speaks to the idea of curiosity and openness to the world and a willingness to be changed by it.

Paul (47:09.086) Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Dan, what do you think you...

Dan Klein (47:12.779) Yeah. Whatever my answer was gonna be, when Lisa said the willingness to be changed, I switched to that. I really loved that. It's such an important mode in improvisation. It's one of the lessons that Keith Johnstone teaches. When we're crafting a story, the story is about, it's gotta be about a change. If there's no change, then it's not really a story. It's just an anecdote. But in order to be willing to be changed, you have to put yourself out there. You have to...

Lisa Rowland (47:18.783) ..

Dan Klein (47:40.522) You have to seek out the things that may change you. I think that's what curiosity is in many ways.

Simon Brown (47:50.669) Love that. So we're coming towards the end of our time now. We've had a fascinating discussion and a great chance to actually try some of these techniques ourselves. So if I do a little recap of some of the things that we've heard from you, so the power of keeping saying yes, and how that's driven your life, Lisa. Interesting, both of you wanted to be scripted actors and but somehow found your

your way into the improv world, that you ended up on taking over the Patricia Ryan Madsen improv class at Stanford, that you were then teaching class separately, you then decided you'd bring it all together and have what sounds like a whole load more fun doing that teaching together. The improv is as old as humanity and the dates.

stems from three areas. If I can get the pronunciation of these, right, Viola Spalen of using games and play, Keith Johnstone looking at free from fear and then there's Chicago, the committee and the compass players and bringing the herald pieces. Those are the right three. Yep. Then we looked at the connection between improv and businesses and so many ways that I think it can be valuable in a business context as well as in

Lisa Rowland (48:45.225) So, I'm going to go ahead and start with the first question.

Lisa Rowland (48:54.699) Yeah, you got it.

Simon Brown (49:10.681) then that it's not actually an innate talent, which I think goes against maybe what I thought that actually it is skill. It's a skill that can be learned and a skill that with a few techniques that actually can be easily applied into many contexts and can get through a lot of challenges that we may face on a day to day basis, that it's all around lifting your partner up, responding in grace and calm, and it's not about ego.

that we should be a third of comedian, third actor, and a third storytelling. What else did we have that... Some techniques, I guess, around coming back or giving someone a gift and saying, oh, good, and the power of sort of yes and. What else did we have in here? Creating safety, the links through to sort of psychological safety that we need to be building up our partners.

Lisa Rowland (50:00.051) Thank you.

Simon Brown (50:04.013) power of celebrating failure, and in particular, the piece around how do we create high pressure but low stakes mess ups with a view that actually we can celebrate when it's small so that actually it helps for dealing with failures when they're larger. And particularly, I took your point around leaders actually. If teams can see their leaders fail, then that creates that really strong environment where people may be prepared to take risks.

Lisa Rowland (50:09.843) That sucks.

Lisa Rowland (50:13.808) So, I think that we need to try to get as many people as we can from the community, particularly to the black community. The teens will see that it is hard, but it is hard. It's hard. And I think that we need to try to get as many people as we can from the community.

Simon Brown (50:30.181) prepared to try more things and that creates innovation, creates that much stronger piece. And then in terms of what would a curiosity mindset look like? Well, ego gets in the way of it, it can undermine it and actually curiosity is about looking outside yourself, not into yourself and a great sum up at the end there of curiosity being a willingness to be changed by something.

love that. So rich discussion. What would be the sort of one takeaway from all of that maybe a sort of quick sort of wonderliner from each of you as a takeaway for our listeners from all of that.

Dan Klein (51:09.819) My takeaway was I was really impressed at how closely you were listening, Simon. I didn't realize. Thank you.

Lisa Rowland (51:12.063) I'm not sure if you're listening to me. I know. Yeah, you covered it. So, so you're...

Simon Brown (51:14.642) I'm sorry.

Garrick (51:17.123) Simon is so good at these.

Lisa Rowland (51:23.303) I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it. Yeah, I think it's about two minutes. So I think it's important to try to get a sense of what the people are going to think about it.

Dan Klein (51:23.363) I think that a thing that I keep coming back to when we're training this and working on it is that, and I think it plays into this insight about curiosity, it's not about you. And that's liberating. It's not about you. You get to be a part of it and you get to be in the world with it.

But if you take it out, take your ego out of it and pay attention to others and lift them up and be willing to be changed and be curious and interested, it all goes way better.

Lisa Rowland (51:54.271) Yeah. I think the wish I would have for your listeners is to find opportunities to linger in the space of yes. To notice little offers that the world is giving you, that your own thoughts are giving you, that your partners are giving you, and see how, just extend the space in which you lift those up.

you linger there in that space of accepting those offers and see if it takes you anywhere.

Simon Brown (52:30.597) So maybe for our listeners when you're wondering and maybe erring towards no, maybe next time say yes and see where it takes you. Love it. Dan, Lisa, thank you so much. It's been a really enjoyable, fascinating conversation. Thank you.

Lisa Rowland (52:36.911) Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Rowland (52:45.824) Oh, for us as well. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Paul (52:45.966) Thank you.

Dan Klein (52:48.282) Thank you, Garret. We loved it.

Garrick (52:49.35) Thank you guys. So brilliant.

Simon Brown (52:51.501) So you've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. We're curious to hear from you. If you think there's something useful or valuable from this conversation, we encourage you to say yes and write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel, saying why it was so and what you've learned from it. We always appreciate hearing from our listeners' thoughts and having a curious conversation. So join us today using hashtag Curious Advantage. And the Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon, worldwide, audio, physical, digital, or audiobook copy now to further explore the seven seas model for being more curious.

Thank you very much and see you next time.