An age old battle in improv that I believe resonates well with challenges we experience in the busine world is the question of whether a team should have a coach or a director (in which case it should be called an e emble). In addition theres the third option of the self coached team, which I will call committee from here on forward.
Role
- Director: - Mold to vision.
- Coach: - Catalyst, bring out what is there.
- Committee: Rotation, everybody takes turn coaching the team.
Pros
- Director: Clear vision, outside per ective, result orientation
- Coach: Most common, improve individual skills, goal defined by team.
- Committee: Cost effective, everyone has skin in the game.
Co
- Director: More restrictive, more static, done when objective achieved.
- Coach: No stretch goal.
- Committee: Cements status quo, high frustration potential.
Well suited when
- Director: Production quality ("broadway material"), time of fundamental change.
- Coach: Always (even in parallel with director), experimenting with new ideas, time of continuous change.
- Committee: Familiar format with experienced cast.
I see strong parallels here with projects I have worked on. There are projects where the very detailed and methodology driven a roach is a ropriate. In other cases, the more laid back, catalyst type project manager will be more succe ful. (My experience suggests to co ider the self managed a roach only in cases of low complexity with an experienced team.)
Let me talk a little bit about one term I used u tairs, which I believe is i trumental: vision. This is a term that you will find in management literature on leadership, usually in combination with another term: voice. The leader has a vision and he has a voice to i ire others to follow his vision. This is what the director does. Often still in a collaborative way (remember we are still talking about improv, so when the ru er hits the road the team is on its own!). Take Second City, the famous Chicago Theater that gave us the likes of John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Gilda Radner, and many more. At Second City the director will come to rehearsals with a vision, but the cast comes up with the content. (It is still their show.)
A coach on the other hand is best defined as in Timothy Callways the i er game of te is he hel bring out what is already there, by helping others to find their voice. This is as noble as it is difficult, e ecially when dealing with an entire cast of actors (or profe ionals for that matter). While I believe I fall in the second category (dont most of us? Think that -I mean) I can fall back on methodology and proce when nece ary. I think that e ecially in times of great uncertainty people hunger for clear guidance. If it is not provided, then the most i ecure, the most risk averse, those that can worst handle uncertainty and change, will a ume leadership roles. Because they think they have to (compare dog training literature!)
So, the coach needs to provide enough guidance to keep the level of leadership at a comfortable level for the team (the composition of the team of course becomes important here too!). Not too much, but not too little.
One exception: In times of paradigm shifts for example a team moving from short form to long form improv or moving into more sketch like formats a director may be called for. If (s)he knows the territory! Beware of providing structure for its own sake! It is quite easy to fall into this trap. Huma love structure, the more uncertain, the more unfamiliar the situation the stronger that urge. Yet, as Peter Drucker, the great management thinker, correctly o erves we live in the day of the knowledge worker. The bo does in all likelihood not know better what needs to be done than the knowledge worker.
There is one more o ervation about coaching I want to talk about. In Improv, there is a mo ter called the rules of improvisation: dont ask questio , dont block, dont play children, dont play old people, dont make jokes. I could go on for pages. You get the idea. Anything you o erve about these? Right. They all begin with a dont. In my experience "dont's" are a bad i trument for coaching. A coach should help an individual or team discover what works. Help them find it out by themselves. (For extra credit: what would a director do? Right, the director should come prepared with a set of "dos".) Donts do not tell you what to do but that what you have been doing doe t work. Nice, so now youre paralyzed. You stand on stage thinking I should not talk about this, and shouldnt I be making stuff up i tead of thinking what not to do?. Or even did this other actor just ask me a question, man this scene sucks- From there on your scene will iral on downward because you are in your head and worrying i tead of acting in the scene.
In conclusion, there is no one a wer, but some o ervatio to be made:
- Provide the a ropriate level of leadership for your objective
- Provide a little more if you are going through great changes
- Make your advice actionable and positive
- Help team members (and the team) find their own voice
Henrik Kie ler is currently global Manager for CRM at a large Pharmaceutical firm. He lives in Vie a, Austria. He likes to improvise, currently with ImproX http://improx.fesch.at
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