One of the best ways you can train to become a better public speaker is to take a year of Improv. Most major cities have at least one great Improv troupe that takes on beginners. In Chicago, there’s Second City (http://www.secondcity.com/), in NYC there are a number of choices (try Peoples Improv Theatre: http://www.thepit-nyc.com/), and in Boston, I can recommend ImprovBoston highly (http://www.improvboston.com/).

Why Improv?

Because it helps you become more comfortable on your feet, trains you to react in the moment, and helps you learn not to take yourself too seriously. If that’s not enough, here are 3 lessons from Improv that will improve your public speaking.

1. Yes…And. In the business world, many of us spend a lifetime saying, “yes, but….” in response to every new idea that’s presented to us. Improv trains you to say “Yes, and…” – in other words, to embrace what someone else has offered and create something with it or on top of it. That helps enormously in responding to your audiences as a speaker. You learn to take whatever is thrown at you with a smile and do something positive with it.

2. There are no mistakes. In Improv, you learn that apparent mistakes are often your best opportunity for comedy. In public speaking, we often get in the trap of thinking that there’s only one way to do things. We have a script in mind, and we think something is wrong when we deviate from it. In Improv, you learn to embrace the apparent flub and do something fun with it. Mistakes like that often lead to new insights and understandings.

3. Always stay grounded in the emotional truth. In Improv, you learn not to try to be funny, but rather to tell the truth – the emotional truth. Real comedy comes from that – audiences delight in watching people struggle with true emotional quandaries. In speaking, it’s the same. If you stick to the emotional truth, you’ll never get too far wrong. If you try to fake it, the audience will soon catch on, and you’ll lose them.

Comments

[Nick Morgan]

Sheila --

Thanks for the good comment and giving me the opportunity to shout out to ImprovBoston once again. It's a great organization and worth supporting by taking part in a class, by joining a troupe, or by being a member of an audience.

[Sheila]

Hi Nick,
I appreciate your forum and have found a lot of your tips and strategies useful. I am a performer at ImprovBoston and also an educator, and I can say that these techniques really are effective! In the time that I have been learning and performing improv, my teaching has improved significantly, and I also experience a lot more fun on the job! Thanks for giving the arts some visibility here!