EntreLeadership - #168: Kelly Leonard—Reversing “No, But" Thinking

Episode Date: October 10, 2016

Kelly Leonard, Executive Vice President of The Second City—the world’s premier comedy theater and school of improvisation—joins us to discuss how the skills used in improv can easily transfer to leadership and business. He shares techniques that can help any organization develop innovators, encourage adaptable leaders, and build transformational businesses. entreleadership.com/podcast E1D Book Deal Infusionsoft's Free Email Templates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature interview this episode is with Kelly Leonard. He is the co-author of a book called Yes and How Improvisation Reverses No But Thinking and improves creativity and collaboration.

This is great because this guy is the executive vice president. He's a hanscho up there in Chicago at the second city, which if you haven't heard of the second city, I can tell you this right now. This is one of the premier comedy clubs in all of the universe. I mean, just Google it and see the big-time comedy titans that have cut their teeth and learned the comedy game under their tutelage. And it's, again, these people have figured out the science of improv and sort of. storytelling to make you laugh. There's so much here. I was so excited to see this book, and you're going to love this conversation. We're also going to bring you some free resources

from our team here at Entree Leadership, and InfusionSoft has a new tool for this month, so excited to tell you about that. But first, another special offer. We're so excited. As I speak to you right now, we're about a week and a half from our Entree Leadership One Day live stream. Now, it is a live event in Kansas City. October the 19th, we've been telling you about this. But for the first time ever, we're offering this event via live stream. so that anyone with a screen can watch anywhere in the country. So we've got a really special deal. Here's what we're going to do.

You're going to get a free copy of the Entree Leadership e-book and audiobook. That's right, the e-book and audiobook, Entree Leadership from Dave. And you're going to get the ticket for $29. So, I mean, that's a special deal. That's a great price for what you're going to get. All you have to do is text book deal. We've got that smashed together there, one word, book deal. and you're going to text that to 33444. Book deal to 33444. And you're going to get a link to register for the event.

And you will get the e-book and audio book sent to you as well. It's going to be an awesome day. October the 19th, live in Kansas City and live via live stream all around the country. So we want you to jump in on this deal. If you haven't, I'm telling you this is a great opportunity to start a discussion, to take away some very practical things. are proven and it's going to be a fun day. I'm very excited to host that event. I'll be out there in Kansas City with Dave, Ramsey, Chris Hogan, and Christy Wright. Again, one more time for the special deal where you get the Entree Leadership e-book and audiobook and your ticket, all $29. You just text book deal to 3-344. Well, folks, I think creativity and collaboration are two see words that as business leaders, business owners, people who are leaders, people who are

teams in any former fashion in any setting need to get better at. You know, creativity is not just for your marketers. It's not just for designers. Leaders have to be creative. Leaders have to collaborate. And so I'm very excited about this conversation. Again, I told you at the top who Kelly Leonard is. But when you think about improvisation and you think about how a comedy team of writers, performers work together to then create a finished product that has to have to, to win an audience over? How is that not an unbelievable metaphor for what we're trying to do in business, in the nonprofit space, education, beyond? I mean, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to connect with the audience and win them over. And so this is a fantastic book.

I love it. I saw this on the desk of one of our video team members and started thumbing through it. And then said, Eric, the producer, we have got to get Kelly Leonard on. And so we did. It's really fun stuff. And by the way, after the interview, I'm going to tell you how you can win 10 free copies of this book. Yes, and they'll be signed by Kelly. So stay tuned. When we come back, I'll tell you how you can enter to win. Well, Kelly, I love the title of the book. And I want to start here because I think it'll set the context for our listeners when we break down and get deep into the book. Yes, and how improvisation reverses no but thinking and improves creativity and collaboration. We talk about creativity and collaboration a lot on this podcast because we're trying to get out of this mold of

if I'm not considered a creative person, I can't be creative. And then as leaders, we have to collaborate if we're going to win long term. And so I'm so thrilled about this, but I want you to juxtapose yes and thinking with no but thinking. Let's start there. Sure. You know, I have the benefit of having worked for the last essentially 30 years in a creativity laboratory at the second city. And not only are we a school that trains people through the art of improvisation to make comedy, but there's been all these byproducts around it as people have come and taking classes and then taking it back into their homes or their relationships or their workplaces and their businesses. And so our business has grown up around that.

And sort of ground zero for improvisation, the place where this all starts is when you come into that level A class, the very first class. And we tell you that improvisation is groups of people making. something out of nothing. That's what it is at its most basic. And rule number one is to make something out of nothing as a group. You can't start with no, because no ends everything. Some people say yes, but, which is kind of like no with a tuxedo. It's the passive aggressive way of saying no. That doesn't work. The only thing that works is to say yes and. And you can't just say yes. You can't just affirm. You have to affirm and contribute. And what we sort of say in a business context is if you are looking to have, let's just say, a brainstorm and you want to get the most out of your group, the way you shut that down in a group is by the boss saying no to ideas as they come up.

Conversely, when you say yes and and you build upon an idea, even if it seems a little crazy, amazing things happen. Not only is it true, and I think this is just true across the board, that our greatest inventions seemed insane when they started or unlikely. So that's one thing, just the idea itself. But the other aspect of this is just behavioral science. It is the idea that you say no to a person enough times, they ain't going to offer new ideas. So this is as much about getting to the good ideas as unlocking the person who has the ideas inside them. Now, I want to practically play this out for our audience.

If this is new to them, Kelly, I just want to play this out. So let's say you and I are in a meeting with a group of people, and I throw out an idea that might be a slight bit wacky. Sure. To you and you employ yes and. So I throw an idea out that again, on the surface, not sure it's even going to stick when this whole thing is over. And you know that. And yet you want to employ this yes and.

Play that sentence out. So it's yes and, but give me the rest of the sentence. Sure. You know, let's say you offer up, we're a bottled water company and you offer up that we should be creating meat flavored water. Right. Terrible idea. Yes. Uh, instead of just opening with, that is the worst idea I ever heard, you go, yes.

And what is interesting about that is it as an unlikely taste. What are other unlikely tastes? Meets one of them. Guys, we're making a list. Give me more. So right there, you have not shut down the person. I got to stop you. That's absolutely brilliant.

I knew you were going to do something like that. But I'm stopping you on purpose because I want to rest here. And that sentence was yes, and that's a very interesting, and you gave it the rest. and all of a sudden you created an action item for the rest of the group. You pulled everybody in and made everybody else activate alongside the person who threw out a truly horrific idea. There's a lot there. You just encompassed in that one sentence what you just shared with this about behavioral science and keeping the conversation going. I just wanted to break that down because that was beautiful.

No, and, you know, what's very interesting about this, because I think most people know about Second City from a comedy sentence, because obviously that's where we've made our mark. but across the board, comedy is not a yes-and adventure. No one got into comedy because they're well-adjusted. And I've been in the writer's room at The Onion, and the Onion is brilliant. These headlines are brilliant. But what they do is an exercise in No. They literally put up a hundred of these headlines and just start going, no, no, no.

And that's fine. But then you realize all these guys who were in that meeting, all these sort of bearded morose guys who look like they haven't seen Sun in years, go back, put their headphones on, and sit at their cubicle. These are not happy people. Whereas the sort of improv-based creation of comedy, it's more than just getting to the sort of fun comedy. It's also giving you a sort of a pathway for working in groups, working with other people. And really, that is not something that we are taught well. If you're in sports, I think you get a bit of that. But if you're not sports inclined, or if you're not like sort of musical theater inclined, you're probably not being given any sort of examples of what it's like to be part of a team or a group putting something together.

And improv does that. Yeah. All right. I want to ask you, because we talk about this a lot here on this podcast, that there are people who I think we all just see and we hear about them in the office or in life. And we go, oh, that's a creative. It's like a noun. Oh, that's a creative. I know where this is going.

You do. This is a bugaboo of mine. I know. And I love this. And I want you to address this. Is there that it factor that just only some people have and thus they're more creative than the rest? I want you to address that. No, it's bull.

And this is the thing. I hired Tina Fey. You know, I produced Seth Myers and Amy Poehler and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert and Keegan Michael Key and I can make that list even longer. These are remarkable talented people who certainly have gifts beyond measure. But none of them created this stuff alone. They have writers. They have fellow actors. they have producers, they have directors, all of whom are rowing the creative boat towards one goal.

So the big myth here is the idea that there are special creatives. And this is like advertising is the worst for this. These creative directors who make millions of dollars, do you really think one guy is going to have all the great ideas? Like in what world does that possibly exist? And do you also think that one guy invented all the way through any one of these things? Steve Jobs, brilliant visionary. did not do it alone. Spectacularly failed and had to come back, but always had a team behind him. And it doesn't mean that there's not a place for leadership visionaries or highly creative people,

but it is not a sole endeavor. And the people who are trying to tell you that are really trying to put money in their pocket and are trying to get bigger and greater status. It's such a myth. And we see it every day because at Second City, if you go over to the school in Chicago right now, the Second City Training Center, we have close to 4,000 students. Our conservatory program, the program that is about getting into the stages and the professional program, is only about 150 of those. So, you know, literally thousands of people are there not to get onto Saturday Night Live, but to learn these skills of unlocking their creativity so that they can bring it into, you know, their world. I mean, Oprah Winfrey took classes at Second City.

Willie Galt, the Olympian athlete who was the receiver for the Bears took classes at Second City. So there's lots of stories of people who just have applied this to other parts of their lives because, you know what, they're not getting it in other parts of their lives. Now, Kelly, you touched on this earlier, and I want to come back to it and let you teach us for a moment, especially on what you just said. With people coming in and taking these classes and improvisation is such a huge, huge tool, even a weapon, you know, really to where it can help us. So if we were to have a bunch of leaders from this podcast, folks that listen in here, and they were to come hang out, what would be the big takeaway as they begin to grasp improvisation and how it helps the team function better and helps them win?

Yeah. You know, the first lesson is usually it's experiential, first of all, which is the difference, right? Because, you know, we transfer knowledge in a lot of ways. But what we have found is that the quickest path to sort of truth or deeper knowledge is when one can experience it fully. So when we have leaders say improvise and do a listening exercise and it becomes very apparent within the first five minutes that they are terrible listeners and that everyone else around them is a terrible listener, that's eye opening because it means the orientation that they walked into the room with might be wrong or might be skewed. So the first thing is this unlearning, this idea of what you maybe think is right or what you maybe think is normal. It's not necessarily so because we are highly introspective creatures. We are not naturally others focused and we are not naturally empathetic.

So you have a breaking down, which is where things start. But then the sort of glory of this, and I'll just use the yes and example, when we run an exercise in the beginning classes, we actually have two people start a conversation and one person just says no to every idea. and then they switch places and the next person says yes but to every idea. And then the third time they have to say yes and to every idea. And every time we do this exercise, by the time it gets to that third module, the yes and module, the noise in the room is off the charts. And then you ask people like, where did you end up with yes and?

It was like if they were talking about going to dinner, they were suddenly now going to dinner on the moon. And we're like, yes, yes, that is what you want to get to. And then becomes very, it's not just that they are hearing it. They're feeling it, and they're feeling how good it feels to get to that yes and place. So you walk out with whole other appreciation. But, you know, this is no different than, you know, going to the gym. Like, you go to the gym for a workout and you feel real good.

You're not done. You know, that feeling does not last. And I think the biggest mistake that people make is thinking that these workshops are a one-off cure-all. No, it's like, you know, I often refer to this work as yoga for your social skills. It's a practice. You have to keep at it because, you know, I mean, I'm a dad. I say no all the time. I'm always, I'm a terrible parent half the time with regard to that. But then I have to remember and reapply myself. And then it gets good and then it gets bad again. But this life we're human beings. We're, you know, full of faults. I want to ask you about that. How do we take yes and to become better with our kids in communication? Because I've read a lot about this, about how many times and I can't recall it. But it's so staggering. It'll almost. put you on the brink of depression about how many times a kid hears no from their parents. Right.

And since you brought this up, we can talk parenting here. Yeah, sure. How do we use yes and when the kids are asking questions? Well, okay, I'll give you an example. So we had just dropped off our eldest at college. So my eighth grader is now alone in the house with us. And she did not come with us for the drop off because she had practiced for sports. So it's the last night before the first day of school.

And it's like 8.30. It's total wind down time at the Leonard household. And she's like, hey, could you take me to Walgreens? I want to go plug my phone in and get some pictures made out. And I would normally like, nope, not going to happen. It's an unimportant thing. You don't need it right away. And I don't know what made me check myself.

It might have been because I was re-plugging in and reading emails and, you know, being in touch with the work. But I sort of went, well, yes, and that's going to cost money. And she's like, you know, I've got the money. I think I already looked online. I'm like, okay, did you call over and see how long it's going to take? yep, and she had done all that. And I'm like, great, let's get in the car. So we went over the Walgreens. Turns out we had to wait for the photos. So we drove back. And when we went back to pick them up, all the lights were out at the Walgreens. I'm like, Walgreens isn't closed.

And I look and I'm like, oh, the lights are out on the street. And then we had this little adventure where she and I were driving around and we couldn't get the photos. But what I recognized is my daughter, Eleanor wasn't really asking for photos. She was asking for an end of summer experience with her dad because she didn't have that. And I never, I didn't hear that and I didn't hear it until I had sort of said yes and to it was in the middle of it and I'm like oh man I would have shut that thing down and she would have found a way to pick a fight with me and instead I kind of went with this minor sacrifice and it doesn't always work because you know you're not going to yes and you know getting a car right whatever but you can play

the game of yes and when you're old enough and when you have enough money and when you understand insurance and that's a really great way of teaching the kids I'll give you one other thing, and this is great because kids, like adults, are often bad listeners. Kids tend to be better, I think, than adults. But one of the games that my wife and I have played around in the car and around the dinner table is a thing called one-word story, where you as a family tell a story one word at a time. And what that requires is everyone has to not only listen to what came before and what came after, they have to offer something that makes sense.

and sometimes that's a the or an and, and sometimes it's a big, juicy verb or an adjective. And what we found, our son is a natural improviser. He could tell the stories. Our daughter is not. And she would always, she's like a very natural place where she was supposed to say, uh, and she would say hippopotamus,

and it would derail the story. We're like, all right, do you see, see what's happening there? And then you get, but through the practice, it becomes something that everyone, here's the nice thing, right? There's a point of concentration, so there's an area of focus for if there's a problem in the house or an argument that's being had, it gets you off that because everyone's focused on playing the game. And then there's lessons inside the game. And then the idea of building something together usually leads to something that's funny. And that idea of, and I think you know this as well, laughing with your family is like the greatest laughter of all time. It really is. That's good stuff. Thank you for sharing that. I think we're all going to be better parents for that. Folks, I want to tell you this. There are seven elements of improv. that Kelly and, again, his co-author, Tom, they lay out in this book. We don't have time to cover all of them.

But these seven elements, this is just an interview plug. It really does break this down for you. And I'm going to hit on a couple of these. I'm going to jump around, Kelly, not so much in order, but I want to talk about failure. I had the opportunity to interview Charles Eston, Chip Esten, you may know Chip, who was on whose line is it anyway, which was one of my favorite shows ever, the improv. And in the course of conversation, he told me that that show, you would watch it and you would just be blown away by how great these guys were and how they could pull all this off. And what he told me is something you probably know, that they would shoot a very, very long time.

Yep. And so they would fail miserably on some sketches. And, of course, they'd cut those. So the viewing audience, we only see, you know, the brilliance. I set that story up because it really, it made me think in your line of work, failure is not. not something that you all try to avoid. Why is that? And how does that translate to us? Well, I think in general, our society has it wrong on the idea of failure, especially in business. We are trying to eliminate failure at all costs. We're constantly kind of looking out for failure. We shame failure.

And I always talk about it in this way. If I'm going in for a job appraisal, I've got a feedback session with my boss, and I come in and go, you know what, I failed 70% of the time. I'm just be honest with you. I'm probably getting fired. If I'm a major league baseball player and I'm in my manager's office and I said, you know what, I did not hit the ball 70% of the time. I'm a 300 hitter. I'm going to the all-star game. And you're going to make 100 million plus. And you're going to make 100 million plus. We all fail. We fail constantly. And the mistake we have is in building up this mystique and this terrible sort of aura around failure, we make people fearful of taking risks, of taking chances, of trying something new. So the improv process at Second

City sort of just recognizes this in that we know it's going to fail a bunch of the time, so we have rules around failure. One wants to fail fast. One wants to fail in context. One wants to fail together. And that can sometimes be the way you've set up your business. So in the case of Second City, we have a two-act scripted review that we know works, and we have a third act that's at late night, that's free, which is our improv set, which is a failure module. That's where we test out all this stuff. So in the same way that you're doing rapid, you know, prototyping of, you know, whether it's tech or machinery to make sure it works and get all the bugs out, we do that with our content. Well, hey, any business, if you're making something out

of nothing as a group, if your job is to invent things, test it out, have a place where people can fail. And again, this is to my earlier point, not just where the ideas can fail, but where the people can experience failure and get back up. And I'll go back to the parenting thing because it's completely the same in work. If we can instill resiliency in our kids and the people we work with, that is a game changer for people who want to be innovative and creative. Because it's the getting back up after being knocked down. That is the hardest thing. So true. Resiliency leads to grit. And grit may be the most underrated factor in anybody that's successful. Would you agree with that? I would completely agree with that. And I just actually spent two weeks ago, I got brought in

my wife and I by Martin Seligman, who's the positive psychologist and Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book Grit at the University of Pennsylvania to do a weekend talking just about this, talking about what can the positive psychology movement, which is very much about resilience, learn from comedy and improvisation. And we got to this point, which is we have a practice in resilience. We have a practice in getting knocked down in a group. And it's funny, one of the stories I often tell is we get hired by a company to do a social anxiety PSA. And so I had to send around a note to all the actors who were on stage at the time to say, hey, is anyone experienced social anxiety or maybe, you know, had a family member or a friend? 70% of the people who

were working on stage at the Second City themselves suffered from social anxiety. blew me away. And I was talking to one of the actresses who is now a writer for Saturday Night Live. And she was like, how could you, if you have this crippling social anxiety, why would you ever choose to be on stage, let alone on stage without a script? And she said, here's the difference. When I am on stage, that's the only time I don't feel anxious because I can't think of what came before. I can't think of what came after. I have to be mindfully in the moment. And I also know that the person across from me, who I'm performing with, their sole job is to save me. So that's where I don't have the anxiety. And that's a game changer. In fact, we actually started offering a improv for social anxiety class at the Second City Training Center that's kind of taken off for people to experience and practice their failure and their anxiety in public. Wow. You know, there's something you just said there in relating her story. This idea, this is the power of teamwork. You just illustrated it so beautifully in what she said. We as team members have got to be there to pick somebody up. and it's not just being there, it's letting them know I'm going to be there.

Boy, that takes care of a lot of anxiety in a team environment, when people know, hey, no matter what, I can give it my all and someone's there to pick me up, yes? Right. It is a different orientation and mindset than the one that we're walking into business with. And there's a great phrase, you know, we've all heard the term, you're only as good as your weakest member. And Sheldon Patinkin, who's the late great, sort of a director at Second City and teacher says at Second City it's different. It's you're only as good as your ability to compensate for your weakest member. So the onus is put back on the group, not on the individual, because at any given time, one of us is going to be the weakest member. And so do you want to be picked up or do you want to be ostracized?

Okay, say that again, because folks, this is your moment. Go back, pause it, write it down, go back to it later. This is shareable and it's huge. I want you to share that sentence one more time. It's the second city version. You're only as weak as share that. Yeah, you're only as good as you're deleted. It is. Thank you. Yeah, you're only as good as your ability to compensate for your weakest member.

Wow. So it's compensate being the difference in terms of you're only as good as your weakest member. It is a vastly important idea that a lot of us can agree with on the surface, but then it's much harder when to put into practice. Very hard. Which is what we do. That's why you bring us in. You know, we come in and make you practice it. that makes you believe it a little further and hopefully give you the impetus to keep putting it into action inside the office. All right. I'm going to stay here on failure because you said something earlier. You said that there were three, there were several rules and you just mentioned three. Are there only three? Oh, no. There's a bunch more. You know, failure is a tricky one, right? Because it's not like we're walking in the door going, hey, we're looking to fail. And at Second City, in particular, what's fascinating is 60-year-old organization that's never not had a hit show. on its resident stage. It's had shows that were not greatly reviewed, but were certainly well attended. It's had shows that were sort of great art and really highly reviewed. But we've always

sort of sold out and always done well. And that's in part because we've managed our failure throughout. And we've got this sort of, you know, process. But I'll say one other thing about, you know, this, which is one of the things I mentioned was the idea of failing fast. And that's absolutely true, which is you can't, here's the other thing with failure. You just can't keep going at it. What you've got to be able to do is figure out ways to fail quickly and move on. And one of the things that happens when I talk about yes and to business groups is there's almost always this dude and it's always a guy in the back of the auditorium who raises his hand and says, if I yes and had every terrible idea, I get no work done. And I'm like, you know, there's two

things I know about that guy. One, he's a horrible human being. And two, he is completely missing the point because yes and is at the front end of innovation. creativity. And it's about creating that failure space for 10 minutes, for 10 minutes at the beginning. Because it's a funnel at that point, right? You have all these incredible ideas. And yes and is actually a delightful way to get to a lot of nose. In comedy, we often refer to killing our babies, which is those great scenes or ideas or characters that we had that inevitably, you know, just fall by the wayside at the end of a process. That's really hard for people because it's their stuff. But when they've been in a yes-and mode, when they've had all their ideas listened to, when they're participating in other

people's ideas, you kind of let go. You kind of let go of that stuff. And so that need to be right, which is the thing that clogs up innovation and creativity for so many organizations. That goes away, because you are part of this thing that's bigger than you. And you're an integral part. You're not just, you know, a nameless, faceless cog. Right. All right. One more question on failure that we'll move forward. Sure. Because you just mentioned three, and that's fine, because I wanted to review those three, but I just want to ask the failure in context. That was one of the rules. You said fail fast in context and together, and you kept moving.

But just give us what that means by fail in context. Sure. Don't fail on Twitter. That's so true. There's just no context there. I mean, I remember Stephen Colbert is one of the people that I worked with at Second City right when I started. And some years ago, on the Colbert Report, he did a satiric piece, which was a satire

on sort of Asian stereotypes, and it got tweeted out. And then Asian right groups started sort of going after him. And it's like, well, wait, wait, no, no, no, he's on your side. And it was completely lacking in context. You could not have the Colbert rapport tone, the arched eyebrow, the understanding, all the stuff that goes into sort of making comedy. So when you are failing, which means you're doing, right, so you have a chance of failing, you got to kind of make sure that you know who the audience is in front of you. Because what you don't want to do is fail. prime time. You want to fail, not in prime time. And you also want to figure out what medium you're working in. And then who, again, who's the audience in front of you? Because you can say one kind of joke to your friends that you absolutely can't say to your coworker. And understanding the difference between those things is crucial and key, especially for people who have to make things up completely. Because, you know, we've seen these disasters play out all the various gaffs and what have you. And most of that is people just not understanding, you know, the audience they're in front of and who they're talking to.

Okay, folks, I want to focus in on another one of the seven elements. And this probably is one of my favorite because in some ways I'm a professional listener. You know, this is what I do. I interview folks and I'm listening and creating conversations that we hope empower folks. And this is how you described listening, one of the seven elements. And I'm just going to read it as it's described in the book and let you take off with this. Listening, in which you learn to stay in the moment and know the difference between listening to understand and listening merely to respond.

When I saw that last phrase, it jumped out off the page. I think this is something we all have got to get better at. I think there's incredible leadership and teamwork principles here. Listening to understand versus listening merely to respond. Yeah, well, people don't tell you the truth. So if you don't know this yet, and if you're a leader, you have missed something because people do not tell you the truth. They have a variety of ways they are communicating potentially the truth to you, but it's usually not a word for word. So what you need to pay attention to as a leader is, where are you having the conversation?

Are you behind your desk? Are you in a seat that's higher than someone else's? Are you standing in the room? Are other people in the room? Or are you in a safe place with this person? Who's this person who's in front of you? Where have they come from? Did they have a bad day?

Or are they in a very safe space to speak? There's all these factors that exist. in the way that we communicate that we just don't pay attention to if we're only pay attention to the verbal words. One of the projects that we worked on recently was with Hubbard Street Dance, this brilliant modern dance company. And at Second City, we're very verbally oriented, and we do some physical work, but that's not necessarily our strongest suit. And the people from Hubbard Street dance are all about the physical. And they were showing us different ways to take status with your body, whether it's sort of moving yourself forward or sometimes it's moving yourself

back or sometimes it's raising yourself up. And sometimes it's even, it can be, you know, sort of below you. There's all these different ways and these different sort of physical cues. And I think really effective communicators and leaders are aware of all the different things going on around them, environments, behaviors, status. My wife, who's a teacher of comedy and improvisation, does a game with her students where she says, okay, I want you guys to go downtown at noon and go into a busy restaurant and by standing at the door,

look around at the tables, and tell me who the boss is sitting at those tables. And they always can because that boss is holding him or herself in a completely different way. It doesn't matter what's being said. They can't hear the actual words being said. But sometimes that boss is on the phone.

Sometimes that boss is leaning back. Sometimes they're leaning forward. But it's pretty easy. to pick up the cues. So I think that, you know, there is so much more to listening than purely what's going on with our ears. And if you think about all the great comedy that you've experienced over the years, it's kind of usually about that. It's about a truth being revealed in the moment that's kind of there that someone's picking up on. Louis C.K. is really good at this, right? Kind of that Patton Oswald's really good at that. Amy Schumer is. Where they're kind of like, it's the

elephant in the room that's not the spoken elephant. but it's the unspoken thing, and that's what makes it funny. And as leaders, it's so important that we listen to make sure we understand the context, where people are coming from. This is in personal interactions as well. We have a whole lot less arguments in this world when we just understand. We don't have to agree with everybody, but it certainly helps us when we understand where they're coming from, why they think the way they think.

You know, all that. It is a huge process. I was talking to Adam McKay the other day, who's the Second City, who you guys might know as the director and writer of the Big Short, as well as the collaborator with Will Ferrell and Funny or Die and Anchorman and all those shows. And we were talking about a book that we both love, which is Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Connman. And I told Adam that we'd been doing some work at the University of Chicago

with a behavioral science group around a very specific idea, which is listening. And could we by teaching teachers listening exercises and games that they can bring into the class, room, can we affect better listening by one or two percent in that class? And let's say we did that across all the classes. What do we think is going to happen to the world? Do we think that if we can increase and make people listen better by two percent that there's going to be an impact? I think there's a seismic impact, if that's the case. And the fact is, if they're listening better, they're asking more questions and then hopefully asking better questions. I'm you to weigh in on this because I'm a Sir Ken Robinson junkie. I'm troubled by Western education.

Marcus Buckingham has spoken into this to me, and I think we're pounding curiosity out of our kids. Agreed. What would you say? What can we do there? Yes, we are. There was a, I read an article the other day. It was taking this point of view, and it was talking to a teacher, a physics teacher who said, I'm not teaching my kids physics. I'm teaching my kids how to learn physics. loved it. And I'm like, that's it indeed. And I think it's just, you know, we have these paradigm shifts that happen. And, you know, back in the, what is it, the 50s, when Peter Drucker came out with his sort of flat organizational structure stuff that was sort of saying these hierarchies don't work in business, it's taken us forever to sort of catch up to that. And we have very successful companies, Google, Apple, others that follow that, that don't have those sort of traditional sort of hierarchies. And yet in education, that often feels like the last. bastion where, and that's often where these ideas have come from. So the idea that we need to, well, this is it, right? We need to let our kids fail. Yes. We need to let our kids be knocked down. And we, you know, I get the participation trophy thing, but you know what, life ain't that. It ain't that there are, no one has ever handed me a participation trophy. And if we're going to teach them how to exist in the world, they got to get knocked down. And, you know,

This is the thing, you know, again, dropping my kid off at college, this was heartbreaking walking away from him. You know, he's on the verge of tears. We're on the verge of tears. But we walked away and we got in the car and we drove thousands of miles away. And guess what? He's doing okay. Right. And it's not that it's going to be easy.

Of course it's not easy, but life ain't easy. So you got, and this is the thing about improvisation that I love so much is that life is going to kick you no matter what. It just, you can have the most blessed life ever, but loved ones are going to die and there's going to be tragedies. And the thing about improvisation is it gives you a place to practice all that stuff. It gives you a place to practice being hurt and practice being someone who's lost someone and then get out of it and then practice another thing, practice joy, and practice communication, practice love.

And we're just not given that kind of practice. You know, we get a little bit of it in school, but then we're tossed into work and there There's not time and we forget and there's pressures. And I find so many people who come and take the classes at Second City, which are generally three hours once a week, that that's their holy time, that that is their magic time. They never forget it because that that's the place where they can go and work out this stuff. I used to really reject the sort of therapy idea around this. And I would never suggest that we are therapists, but we're certainly additive to that idea and that introspectiveness and that process of, you know, know, sometimes we just need practice in being unpractice, in being human, in being a failing

being. Kelly, it seems to me, just by observation reading, that certainly one of the essential factors that separates great leaders, great performers from the rest of the pack, is their ability to improvise? When moments of crisis, moments of pressure, come to them, they just seem to improvise better than the rest. If you agree with that and knowing improv actors and the whole business and the science of it as well as you do, what can we take away from the great improv performers and say, hey, as a leader, I need to have those disciplines? Yes. If you believe that agility is important to leadership, if you believe being oriented towards change is important. And if you believe that the ability to pivot is important,

and I think that's just what you said, and I think I agree that all those things are really important. Improvisation is one place where there are real skills-building applications towards doing that. That it is a mind-body orientation that allows you to be ready to change. And most people aren't. And by most people, I mean, I really mean like 80 to 90% of the planet is not. And before we went on the air, we were bemoaning the state of our political discourse in this country. And no one is going to disagree with this statement. The worst improvisers in the world is our government right now in the United States of America. I mean, these people do not communicate.

They do not say yes and. They are not building upon ideas. They are not pivoting. They are not being changed ready. And I mean all of them. Yes. I'd be left or right. It doesn't matter.

And so if we all. agree on that, then we need to put this stuff into action. And it's hard. That's the thing. It's not easy. So I think as a leader, it's not enough to sort of understand or know it. If you want to instill this in yourself, that's great, but you also need to instill it in others. And you have to make it so that they're as willing to have an uncomfortable conversation with you as you are with them. I ran second city for about 25 years, and I will tell you one thing I was not good at was having the difficult conversation. I just wasn't. It's not a thing that was in my toolkit. And I didn't at that point for most of my career recognize it enough to go in and practice on it.

I just hired other people to have those conversations, which frankly is one way to get at that. But we do need to recognize, you know, our own capacity in these various areas, find ways to compensate or to go back to school, you know, and get better ourselves so that we can have the right conversation as opposed to the, you know, myriad wrong conversations, which is the bulk of our working day. So putting you on a spot here. Yeah. For our growth junkies, if they want to say, hey, you know what, I'm willing to go take a local improv class or something like that, what types of things should they be focusing on exercises or whatever you would call it, disciplines that will help them be better? at those kind of things we just outlined, pivoting, handling change, you know, all those things we were just, because I think that is what separates the great leaders, the ability to handle

what wasn't expected and move forward. So there's two levels to it. One, absolutely, seek out, you know, there's a local improv troupe probably in every city now, which is great. And the beginning exercises, which are the ones you're going to be taught early, are stuff that you find in psychology and behavioral science. They're mirroring exercises and their points of focus exercises. And those are good. Those are really good because they do get you out of your, you know, one term you can say out of your head or maybe even deeper into your head. But they allow you to kind of change your orientation. But that's not the place to stop. Then what you need to do is, you know, you want to go to the better college. And it's not, you know, Second City is great. There are other

terrific schools and teachers of improvisation who can start to take you on the journey a little bit farther, who start to teach you how to find nuance inside those exercises and start to tease out from you your own point of view, because here's a crucial thing. I often find it funny that we have an improv process that is so affirming of the ensemble and so much about having each other's back, and yet we do nothing but produce stars. That says something. So you want to be the next Tina Faye or Bill Murray or John Candy or Gilda Radner or Steve Corrette. you do need to work inside the ensemble, but what you're also doing by engaging in that process is figuring out what your point of view is inside that group.

And that's real powerful. Because then if you can assert your ideas and your positions and your empathy, and you can do that in a powerful way, man, you know, let's make a list of the greatest leaders in the world because that's it. That's what we're seeing. Kelly, you mentioned several stars there in making your point. Just curious. Yeah. Is there something that you see that is a common thread among these folks that you knew ahead

of time before they ever became household names? Is there a shared quality? Yeah, it actually is. And it's mostly a willingness to surrender their own issues, experiences, biases when they walk in the door. So that they are probably the funniest person in their house. They were probably the funniest person in their class. And yet, when they get in a room at Second City, they listen to everyone and treat everyone as an equal. And this is the thing that amazed me, because my first gig at Second City, 1988, was as a dishwasher.

Lowest rung. Wow. Absolutely lowest rung. And I remember vividly, because on stage on the main stage at that time, were both Bonnie Hunt and Mike Myers. And at the end of the day, at the end of the show, after the improv set, we'd often go to the front bar and everyone would sort of drink beers together. They talked to the dishwashers as much as they talked to the other actors, to the producers. And there was just a sense that we're sort of all in this together. And that has never changed at Second City.

And it's one of the things I love because that is not true among a lot of celebrities, a lot of actors or even a lot of comedians. But if you talk to people who exist in the improv community, whether it's Second City or Groundlings or UCB or. I.O. or any of these great annoyance, all these great places, they will tell you the same thing, that, oh, no, no, no, these people are really generous, and they gave me the time of day. And it doesn't supersede their power. I mean, Tina Faye has built an incredible production company based on these core values, and she's in charge, but it doesn't mean that she's not a good listener. And that's in part what I think has made her successful and made most Second City alum's so successful.

Boy, that's fascinating because essentially what you just did was paraphrased Jim Collins' definition. Excuse me, hold on, hold on. Hello. Talk about improv. Hillary Clinton. Yeah, I just pulled a Hillary. Get the country. Can somebody give me a lozenge?

A lozenge, please. Ricola. All right, sorry. Let me start that over because I really love that. Sorry about that. No, it's fine. What you just said there is really paraphrasing what Jim Collins defines as a level five leader in his book, Good to Great. And it's extreme drive balanced with extreme humility. And that's very

interesting to hear that they are the best. They know they're probably the funniest. And yet they come in and they see the organization or the sketch or whatever the production is as the supreme goal, not their needs, not their desires. That's a great takeaway. Well, and here's the cool thing. I mentioned Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Conneman earlier. And he talks about the system one system two brain, you know, we often talk about you're either left brain or right brain. And his contention is that's not the case. We are both. And really, really successful, talented people know how to operate in a dynamic, ramping up one, lowering the other. And when you improvise, you have to do that because you have to be doing this deep listening, right? Totally others focused.

But then when it comes back to you, you have to make up the script. I mean, there couldn't be anything more scientific than that. So it's this idea of both, at play. And that is not, I mean, this is also the thing that's so funny about comedy. And everyone tries to reduce comedy to like, you know, this is what it is. It's this one thing. And it never is. But what one of the things that comedy absolutely is, is it's two things. So if you try to analyze a joke or what's funny to you, it's usually an expectation subverted. So just think about what you find funny and you come across in the day and you're going to look at yourself and go, oh, yeah, it's two things. That's what made it funny. I thought it was the one thing. I ended up

being the other thing. And I think we're starting to really, in a very positive way, our science and our ideas and leadership and our ideas in the arts are all starting to coalesce around this idea of, oh, we're understanding better how the brain works, and we're starting to understand how leadership works and creativity works, and they should all be speaking to each other because we're wrong when we try to do any one of these things in a vacuum. This is so rich. Folks, I just want to run through these real quick. These are the seven elements of improv. I only touched on a couple, yes and ensemble, co-creation, authenticity, failure, follow the follower, and listening. Kelly, before I let you go, because I could literally

talk to you for two or three hours. This is so, so fun. I want you to challenge our listeners. These are people who are leading others, who are leading themselves, who just want to be their best. Give us one or two things that we could do today or later this week, as we're listening to this, something we need to start improvising. How can we take improvisation and put it in place right now where we're at in our lives to make ourselves better? Sure. Okay, here's rule number one, and it's going to drive you crazy. I'm just warning you right now. I love it. Okay, pick one work day, like a Monday or a Tuesday, and don't say no. Okay. Don't do it at home. Don't do it at work. Just eliminate that word from your vocabulary. Many things will happen, including driving you

crazy. But also what will happen is you're then going to have to analyze, how many times did I reflex to say no? Oh my God. A hundred? And then what did you do instead? And what happened? That is a very simple way of recognizing the power of one word. It is the simplest thing, but simple is important. And these words are very important. Words have power. So that's one thing you should do. Another that I always love is, and it goes back to the idea of listening, is when you normally have conversations with people, whether you're a boss and it's behind your desk, move it, move the conversation, move it to the place of power of the person that you're talking to. Where are they most comfortable? How are they going to be able to have maybe

status in this conversation? So shift it. Shift physically. maybe it's even like going to a coffee shop. You know, where have you never had a conversation with this person? Because I will tell you that conversation will be different based on that. So I think it is, there's many things at play here and many ideas. But one of the most simple things is that we have behaviors that we become accustomed to, and they are traps. And they are traps in that they don't allow for change and growth and difference.

And often that's because they're uncomfortable. But I don't think you can point to me of any original idea that didn't arise out of a discomfort. Period. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. A powerful statement. And a great place to end. I got to tell you, folks, I think you need to run and go get this book.

It is called Yes, and How Improvisation reverses no but thinking and improves creativity and collaboration. I got to tell you, Kelly, if I ever get near the Windy City, I may have to. harass you and show up and just observe what's happening over there at the Second City. Do it. I think this is great stuff, and we're all better for it. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Great stuff from Kelly Leonard. Now, here's how you can win the book. And if you don't win, go buy this book. It's so good. It's dog-geared, highlighted all over the place on my desk right now from the preparation for the interview.

But here's how you get a chance to win. 10, we're giving away 10. So 10 of you will win a free copy of this book. you've got to do is go to this week's show notes. That's episode 168 at entreleadership.com slash podcast, episode 168. And in the show notes, we've got a link there and you just follow the directions and you are entered to win. Hey, we're always excited when InfusionSoft brings us a new resource to give away to you. So this month in October, they're giving away a great resource entitled free templates. Ten emails you need to close a sale. Now, here's why I love this. This stuff is tried and true. Like the resources they give you, Infusion Soft, that's all they do is test, create resources that the small business man and woman can use to win.

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And so if you can have 10 emails that would allow you to close a sale, why wouldn't you try that? So in this giveaway, you're going to learn what to say, how to approach. It's just so practical. And so we want you to take advantage of that. So all you've got to do is click the Infusion Soft link in the show notes. Again, that's episode 168 at entreleadership.com slash podcast. Takes you two seconds. click on the link. You're going to get that resource, and oh, my goodness, your emails are going to be better already.

So take advantage of that. We want to thank Infusion us off for that great resource. Hey, spring is just around the corner. I can't even believe that. I mean, my goodness, we're in October already, where did the year go? Spring will be here soon. That means we're already looking ahead at our spring event calendar. And the October this month's Master Series is already sold out. But our Master Series event, which, by the way, is the deep dive. This is really unpacking the playbook. applying it in a practical way that you can win on the ground. That event in the spring is going to be February 19 through 23 here in Nashville. February 19 through 23, limited to just 180 business owners and leaders. Now, we have a special discount only for you people who hear it. Now, you could spread the word, but this is the only place we're telling you about it. It's $200 off. It's good, this offer, through Friday, October the 14th. So look at your calendars here as you're listening to me. And if it's prior to October 14th or on October 14th, you can get in, get $200 off. Entreeleadership.com slash EMS.

Entreeleadership.com slash EMS is the destination. You got a call. You can get the number there, call one of our advisors for the discount. All you have to do is mention the podcast $200 off offer for our Entree Master series this spring. Remember, you have until October the 14th. Well, I hope you enjoyed Kelly Leonard as much as I did. Kelly for the book and more importantly for his time and wisdom that he shared with us. Also want to thank those of you who have just been so nice and you have rated and commented our

show on iTunes. Folks, that really matters. iTunes pays attention to that. So if you love what we're doing, you appreciate what we're doing and you haven't gone on and give us some comments on iTunes and give us a rating, we certainly would love that. We're about 900 right now. We'd like to see ourselves go over the thousand mark and continue to spread the word. So on behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening.

We'll talk with you again very soon.