How businesses use improv techniques to improve staff, bottom line

Jim Mecir stands in front of a group as he recalls the time he faced Seattle Mariners' slugger Alex Rodriguez during a run for the 2000 American League playoffs.

As a relief pitcher for the Oakland Athletics, Mecir was called in during the 7th inning to protect the A's lead after two Mariners reached base. Normally, Mecir said, he's very confident about his pitching game. But this day was different.

“I wanted no part of that game,” he said. “That day that voice was so loud in my head, all I was thinking about was the consequences if I failed. Usually I feel like 'I got this!' but not that day in Seattle.”

After struggling against Ricky Henderson and walking Mike Cameron, Rodriguez stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded. As the crowd of 50,000 in Seattle cheered for A-Rod, Mecir said the voice inside his head continued to focus on how poorly he pitched the last two batters and tried to convince him he'd never get the future Hall of Fame player out.

“I'm on the mound and I get the sign, then all of a sudden a new voice comes into my mind,” Mecir said. “What are you doing? Take that ball you've thrown for 25 years and throw it to the glove! You're beating yourself! You're being a baby!”

Mecir said that voice put him back in focus, so he stepped back onto the mound, and with a 2-ball, 2-strike count, fired a screwball that caught Rodriguez swinging for Strike 3. The A's eventually won that game and went on to clinch the AL title.

You'd think the former MLB athlete was recalling his glory days with a group of fans at a baseball convention. But on this day he's talking to a group of businesspeople. And there is a moral to his story.

“The whole team worked hard to get there ... and I could have blown the whole thing because of my five minutes of being selfish, only worrying about what was going to happen to me and not on the task at hand,” he said.

Mecir and business partner Ellen Schnur are part of a growing trend in business training that utilizes techniques from improvisational theater to help improve everything from team building to sales and communications.

Learning by doing

Improvisational theater — also called improv — is known for its unscripted, spontaneous performance by the artists and its collaborative interaction with the audience. Improv gained particular notoriety in the comedy club circuit, with its roots firmly planted in Chicago through the creation of The Compass Players in the 1930s and, later, The Second City.

Schnur, who with Mecir runs ImprovTalk Corporate Training, notes that while people associate improv with comedy, it actually began as a teaching tool for children in the early 1900s. Viola Spolin, who helped form the Compass Players, wrote a book that essentially became a training guide for improv theater, Schnur said.

Schnur, who trained in improv through The Second City, said the interactive nature of improv is what makes the technique popular for business. People are able to retain more when they participate in the exercises, as opposed to listening to a speaker and taking notes off PowerPoint slides.

“When they actually experience the lessons, they don't have to write them down because they'll remember it,” she said.

Mecir adds interactivity “is huge” to improv's success in business training.

“They're involved in their own learning,” he said “They're having conversations about what they individually feel. If they're constantly involved and doing things every five to 10 minutes, they are going to retain that information a lot more.”

And there's the “fun” factor, Schnur adds, as people from different departments and levels are brought together to interact and learn with one another. Group activities can pair people from sales and IT, or executives and customer service reps — a mix of all levels and all departments within the company, she said.

“When people get their hands dirty and do it, then they're having fun, they're laughing and getting to know each other and the lessons stay with them much longer,” she said.

Charting results

When Ben Niernberg became senior vice president of MNJ Technologies in Buffalo Grove a couple of years ago, he came into a company that had become stagnant after several years of steady growth. A major part of that stagnation had come from how the company's culture had evolved.

“We knew we needed to improve on the way we were communicating with each other and the way we were treating each other,” he said.

Niernberg knew Mecir through social circles and, at Mecir's suggestion, hired ImprovTalk to provide team building and communications training to the company's 120 employees. While staff members first met the program with skepticism, Niernberg said they eventually became engaged in the activities, opened up to each other, and especially enjoyed Mecir's baseball stories,

Since ImprovTalk began its program with MNJ Technologies, company revenue grew 10 percent in 2018 and is on track to grow 20 percent this year — and Niernberg says improv training was key to changing the business culture and fueling the new growth.

“We saw our people embrace what we learned and get back to communicating in a better way ... and that really kick-started the change in the way we treat each other and behave,” he said.

“Much of our growth is attached to the way customers — and our people — feel about each other and our ability to create a culture that engages with each other and looks for ways to help build each other up, not take each other down.”

Niernberg believes Schnur's and Mecir's uniquely different backgrounds helped connect with his employees, and the stories they gave to back up the exercises provided real-world examples, which resonated with his staff.

“You had two very different personalities up there, an ex-major league jock who is putting himself out there in an uncomfortable situation, and Ellen, who is a professional improv person,” he said. “It made (employees) feel more comfortable with them.”

Schnur said the different backgrounds she and Mecir bring to the table is one of the more unique features of ImprovTalk,

“Just great improv is great, but we bring a lot more meat to it,” she said. “I'm a researcher, and I'll always add in bits of information to the presentation that make it relevant. And sports people love Jim's stories.”

Mecir, who was a member of the World Series champion New York Yankees team in 1996, will often wear a Yankees jersey when he presents. He said that has helped him connect with many sports fans in the audience — except the occasional Boston Red Sox fan.

“They never tear me apart, but the team ... yes.”