Businesses, organizations, and other groups that depend on effective collaboration have found improv games to be a fun way to develop critical team skills. Although the best improvisers have turned improvised theatre into an art form of its own, the basic tenets of improv demand intense teamwork and communication, skills necessary for success. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal on September 4, 2008, improv comedy teachers were brought to European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to teach these skills to some of the brightest physicists in the world.
Improv is a form of theatre in which no scripts are used, and instead, all of the material is made up by the actors as the scenes go along. Typically presented as comedy, improv was made popular by theatres like Second City and later by the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway?
In developing team building exercises, many of the standard introductory improv games can be used to highlight everything a group should know to get along with each other. Here are three examples that most effectively develop teamwork:
Building Teamwork - "Red Ball, Sticky Ball, Scary Knife" (A Warm-up)
This fun warm-up stresses the importance of being aware of your surroundings and paying attention to the people around you.
Have the group stand in a circle to start. This game typically works best with at least six people. The leader mimes holding a red ball and announces, "Red ball!" This person pretends to toss the ball to another person in the circle. Whoever "catches" it announces "Red ball!" when he or she catches it and says "Red ball!" again when throwing it to a new person. This continues, as the group passes this invisible red ball around.
When everyone has the hang of it, another item is added to the mix: the sticky ball. While the red ball keeps getting passed around, the leader mimes holding a sticky ball, announcing "sticky ball!" This person passes it to another person, and the game continues as it did with the red ball. At this point, two invisible objects are passed around the group.
Finally, the leader introduces the "scary knife" as he or she did with the previous two items. Of course, the actions will be different for throwing and catching a knife. By the time the game is done, three invisible objects are being passed within the circle.
This game teaches the participants to constantly be aware of the people in the group and what they are doing. Not only are the group members paying attention to their peers, they are constantly passing the attention to everybody else, an important component of effective communication and cooperation.
Building Team Cooperation - "Sit/Stand/Lay"
This is another team building game that illustrates the importance of paying attention to other people in the group and adjusting to change.
Three people participate in the scene and a suggestion for a location is provided. The three participants act out a scene in that location, but at any given moment, one person must be standing up, one must be sitting down, and one must be lying down (some groups opt to change "lying down" to "leaning on something"). If the person who was sitting down decides to stand up, the others must adjust accordingly.
Even though each person is a distinct character in the scene, they must continue to be aware of their partners and quickly choose how to react when something changes. To make the game even more fun, be sure to encourage the participants to change their positions frequently.
Building Team Communication - "Conducted Story"
This game highlights the importance of listening to and accepting what everyone in the group says.
Line everybody up shoulder to shoulder and give one person the job of "conductor." A suggestion for the title of a story is obtained, and the conductor points to any of the participants in the line. This person begins making up a story related to the title. At any time, the conductor can point to another person, who must then continue the story from exactly where the previous person stopped. The conductor points to a new person as many times as he or she would like.
The conductor can choose to point to a new person in the middle of a sentence or even in the middle of a word. If the new person takes too long to come up with something or does not continue fluidly from the person before, he or she must sit down.
Each player needs to listen closely to everything said because they might be called on to continue the story at any moment. Likewise, the players cannot pass judgment on what has been said because they will have to continue fluidly from the person before, which requires that they accept what came before them.
All Improv Games Demand Teamwork
Although the above three games are great examples of simple improv exercises that work well as team building activities, there are many other games that are standards of improvisation comics that also depend of teamwork. Visit the Improv Encyclopedia for more than a hundred games, many of which would make good team building activities too. They even organize them into categories to easily find games that build particular skills.
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