by Caroline Gabsewics
Staff Writer
My name is Caroline Gabsewics, I am from York, Penn. and I am a Penn State football fanatic. In 15 seconds, you just learned my name, hometown and something very few others around here know.
Imagine doing that in front of all of your coworkers and imagine some of the things you may hear. This was an example of one introductory game used by John Bryan and Scott Abrams during their Improv! Corporate Workshops.
The company integrates business skills like communication, creativity and leadership with improvisation. Yes, that means bringing laughter and fun to the workplace — at the right times, of course.
Bryan, CEO of Improv! Corporate Workshops, said things change constantly in the workplace and integrating improv comedy into these workshops helps people learn how to adapt to those changes.
“I took a workshop at ImprovJacksonville and after I did it, I knew I wasn’t going to be very good at improv. But I did see things that would work well with corporate team building workshops,” he said.
Abrams, Bryan’s partner and one of the founders of ImprovJacksonville, said he and Bryan began building a curriculum soon after for Improv! Corporate Workshops.
“We wanted to create something that would serve the needs that John saw in the workplace,” said Abrams.
The two of them, along with an organizational development consultant, wrote some of their own games for specific skills associated with specific professions and jobs within those professions.
“We have gone beyond the traditional team building workshops, because that has been overdone,” said Bryan. “It is very educational and we integrate improv into the different skills that can be used in the workplace.”
Some of their most popular workshops are customer service, communication skills, sales technique reinforcement, creativity and team problem-solving, trust and conflict resolution, change management, leadership skills and team building.
Bryan and Abrams have been doing this for about five years and have a long list of clients that have had more than just one workshop done by Improv! Corporate Workshops. Some of their clients include Marks Gray Attorneys, P.A., the City of Jacksonville and CSX.
Bryan said many of their clients come from referrals. If a company is interested in their services, Bryan and Abrams will send them an information packet. From there Bryan and the company will agree on a format, price and date. Once that has been complete Bryan and Abrams have a contact person at the company who will tell them about the workplace — the positives and negatives.
Companies go to Bryan and Abrams for the workshops for different reasons. Bryan said sometimes the company simply wants to reward its employees with an afternoon of stress-free entertainment that just happens to include a little team-building.
“They are having fun and at the same time they are learning new skills,” said Bryan. “There are companies out there that understand the value of rewarding their employees and having fun.”
Other companies see areas that may need some work. Maybe creativity and team problem solving could be better. Or, perhaps a company is looking for an innovative way to improve customer service or communication skills.
During the workshop Abrams and Bryan make sure everyone in the company works together by switching partners and groups for different games.
“By mixing everyone up, it makes everyone work with each other,” said Abrams. “We tear down the the barriers by using humor.
“You get to see different sides of each other and learn how to work with each other.”
Bryan added that there may be someone in the office that another employee has never spoken to except for a simple, “hello.”
“It’s about meeting new people and tearing down those barriers,” he said. “You have a chance to meet people for a second time.”
In the past five years they have seen three different types of people at these workshops — the 10 percent that can’t wait to get started, the 10 percent that would rather die and the other 80 percent who are curious and interested, said Abrams.
Depending on whether Abrams and Bryan are doing the workshop for two, three or four hours, there are a variety of games that can be played for each type of skill.
“We will tell them a little about the game, we’ll do an example and then we turn them loose,” said Bryan. “After we complete a game we ask them what they learned, how much fun they had and how can it be used back in the office — every game has a learning point.”
Abrams said most games purposefully take people outside of where the employees feel comfortable.
“These games are taking you outside of your comfort zone while practicing new skills, but you are laughing so darn hard you don’t even realize you are learning new skills,” he said.
The key to Bryan’s and Abrams’ success is that they keep the energy up and they can change what they are doing on the fly.
“People aren’t really sure who we are or what we are doing before the workshop starts,” said Abrams. “We play the stereotypes — he’s (Bryan) the business-looking guy and I look like the unglued theater guy — but we flip and tag team throughout the workshop.
“We watch each other. We can tell if the group is with us, or having too much fun, or not having enough fun.”
Improv! Corporate Workshops recently did a three-hour workshop for 40 employees for the Florida Small Business Development Center at their annual conference in Clearwater. The workshop focused on learning better problem solving techniques and to be more creative when working with customers.
Bryan recently received the ratings from Nancy Boyle of the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of North Florida. Her comments included: “Great, very good content and presenters,” “very interactive, great session, entertaining and yet very professional — outstanding seminar,” and “great presentation, presenter has a nice teaching style.”
Bryan said these comments are “fairly typical ratings for us.”
For more information about Improv! Corporate Workshops, please visit their Web site, www.improvbiz.com.