Learning lessons through improv | Kelly Leonard| TEDxZumbroRiver

After decades of working with comedian greats such as Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers, Kelly Leonard shares lessons he learned through improv.

Kelly Leonard is the executive vice president of the Second City and the president of Second City Theatricals.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

So it's 2006, and I'm in my office
at the Second City, finishing up work -

it's a Friday.

And my son, Nick, is upstairs,

finishing his first week of improv classes
at the Second City Training Center.

And Nick is eight years old.

He's chubby.

He has weird theater parents,
so he's a weird theater kid.

(Laughter)

And he gets bullied at school.

But this week, he's thrilled;
he's having so much fun.

And he comes downstairs,
and we get in the car.

And as we're leaving
the garage at Second City,

Nick says to me,

"Dad, do you know why
I love improv classes?"

And I go, "No, buddy.
Why do you love improv classes?"

He said, "Because in improv,
if you're nice and you're funny,

you're popular."

That's the world I want to live in,

the world where if you're nice
and you're funny, you're popular.

So I started at Second City in 1988,
and my first job was as a dishwasher.

It is not as glamorous as it sounds.

(Laughter)

The back bar at the Second City

in those days was filled
with alcoholics and sociopaths,

but the work onstage was absolute magic.

Mike Myers, Bonnie Hunt, Jane Lynch -
they were all in the professional company.

Chris Farley had just been hired
in the touring company

and was constantly getting in trouble
for breaking things.

I don't know if you know
how Second City is set up,

but we do two acts of scripted content
and a third act that is improvised,

and that's where the actors
are writing the show

and they're making it up.

And it took me not too long to realize

that the work on stage at Second City
was not magic at all.

It was a practice.

And I'm not going
to bury the lead here, okay?

Improvisation is yoga
for your social skills.

(Laughter)

Improvisation is loud group mindfulness.

Improvisation is practice
in being a better human being.

Knowing that, it might
not surprise you, then,

to learn that improvisation
has its roots in children's games.

Viola Spolin was a social worker
in the '20s and '30s,

working at Jane Addams' Hull House
in the South Side,

and her job was to better assimilate

the immigrant children
who were coming into Chicago.

And so she created these theater games,

many of which were gibberish or silent

because the kids
didn't all share a language.

But all the games were about kids
coming together to play

and collaborate and listen and empathize.

And Viola's son, Paul Sills,
was studying at the University of Chicago,

and he loved these games.

He loved playing them,
and they were entertaining.

So he taught them to his friends,
Mike Nichols and Elaine May, among others,

and they formed, with a gentleman
named David Shepherd,

the first improvisational theater
in America, the Compass Players, in 1955.

And a few years later,
the Second City was founded in 1959.

So what is improvisation?

Improvisation is groups of people
making something out of nothing.

So think about that.

Groups of people
making something out of nothing.

And the founders of Second City realized

that if you have groups of people
making something out of nothing,

they need some rules of the road.

So, first rule of the road
with improvisation

is the concept of "yes, and" -

it's almost a bumper sticker now,
but it's very important -

which is when you
are improvising in a group,

making something out of nothing,

you can't start with no
and you can't just start with yes.

You have to say "yes, and."

You have to affirm and contribute
in order to explore and heighten.

So I give these talks,
a lot, to business groups.

And invariably,

when I talk about the importance
of "yes, and" in a business setting,

there's a dude, a guy in the back
with his arms crossed,

and at the end, he raises his hand.

He says, "If I had to 'yes, and'

every terrible idea
that came into my office,

I'd get nothing done."

So there's two things I know.

That guy is a nightmare to work with,

(Laughter)

and two, he's missing the point

because "yes, and"
is at the front end of innovation.

It's at the beginning.

Because when you say "no" to an idea,

you're actually saying "no" to a person.

And you say "no" enough to a person,
they're not going to give you more ideas.

And the irony of all of this
is that when you "yes, and" -

let's just say 10 minutes
at the beginning of a meeting -

it makes it so much easier
to say "no" later,

because everyone's had their ideas
listened to, vetted, explored.

Hugely important.

The other thing that's important
about improvisation is listening.

So, folks, we are all terrible listeners.

Hated to break it to you -
terrible listeners.

If we're having a conversation
and you're speaking a sentence to me,

at what point on my arm
am I stopping to listen?

When am I ceasing to listen?

The elbow, mostly.

Because I get the gist of it;
I have the idea of what you're saying.

And you can't do that in improvisation,

because the actors
make up the script as they go along

and the last couple of words
might be crucial information.

But we don't do that in real life.

So one of the exercises we teach
at Second City is a listening exercise.

So two people get together;
they have a conversation.

But your job before you speak

is to say the last word
that the other person just said.

Try it at home.

It will drive you crazy.

(Laughter)

It breaks up the rhythm.

And you know what it's breaking up?

The rhythm of you not listening.

(Laughter)

Because we don't do it.

So what is it about people who say no
and people who don't listen?

It's about fear:

it's about fear of failure,

it's about fear of shame.

I'm turning 50 this year,
so I'm in that, you know, that mode,

and one thing I'm doing
is reflecting on what I know:

what do I know to be true?

So here's something
I really know to be true,

which is 99% of us think we're frauds.

We do.

We don't think we're smart enough
or pretty enough,

and we're not good friends
or good husbands or good coworkers,

and we're not smart enough.

I think that I don't deserve to be here,

and I have a body of work behind me
that maybe says I do, but I don't.

99% of us think we're frauds.

And the 1% who doesn't?

They're dangerous.

(Laughter)

And I think we know who I'm talking about.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Fear of failure is a creativity killer.

A few years back, a company
hired us to work on a PSA,

a public service announcement,

for people suffering
from social anxiety disorder.

And so I sent out an email
to all the actors onstage

to sort of say, "Hey, did anyone
have any experience with this?

Maybe a family member, maybe a friend?"

75% of the people working onstage
at Second City at that time

suffered from some level
of social anxiety.

Astounding to me.

Because if you had social anxiety,
why are you going up on a stage?

And then, why are you going
up on a stage with no script?

And then, an actress came to me and said,

"What you don't understand,
Kelly, is that when I'm improvising,

that's the only time I don't feel anxious.

Because I can't worry about before,
I can't worry about after:

I have to be fiercely in the moment,
in the now, fiercely present."

Loud group mindfulness.

"And beyond that,

I'm improvising with another person,
and their job is only to save me."

I wrote a book last year,

and when I was working on it,
I would come into the office from 8 to 11,

and I'd shut my door -
I never shut my door -

shut my door and work on the book,

and I would think about these principles.

And I'm not a teacher; I'm not an actor.

This is my relationship to the work -
is thinking about it, writing about it.

And after the book was published,
my staff came to me and said,

"We're going to tell you a secret,

which is when we had
a big problem to deal with,

we made an appointment to see you at 11:01

because for the next two hours,
you were a great boss.

You became mediocre
afterwards, like usual,

but in that moment, you listened to us.

And I've been thinking about
what I'm going to write about next,

and I was talking to my kids,

and my son, Nick, is now 18,
and my daughter, Nora, is 13 -

yes, my kids are Nick and Nora;
I'm a weird theater guy -

(Laughter)

I said, "You know what
I'm thinking about, guys,

is like what if I wrote
an improv parenting book?

Because you've played
all these games around the table,

and your mom and I
have taught you certain things,

and we use improvisation."

And both my kids just said to me,
go, "That's a terrible idea.

You are not the person
to write this book."

(Laughter)

So I have a favorite improv phrase,

and it's "Bring a brick, not a cathedral."

And what that means is

so many of us try
to solve these big problems

by coming in with one big idea,

and we enter rooms with our cathedrals

when we really should be
entering with a brick.

And so what's today been, right?

All these things that we've heard about:

you know, bees, tapping the unconscious,

prairie land, tech,

tales of addiction
that would break your heart.

So what's our job?

Our job is to listen
to these stories, these ideas.

To "yes, and" them
into our own communities.

And when we do that with kindness
and a little bit of humor,

it doesn't matter if we're popular

because we will change the world.

Thank you.

(Applause)