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The Art and Science of Relating: Use Improvising Techniques to Help Your Communication Partner, with Alan Alda, Actor & Author, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Take responsibility for engagement
Something I learned from improvising really helps in communication. There are basic improvising techniques and exercises, like the Mirror Exercise, where you become my mirror. And whatever I do, wherever I move, you have to do that at exactly the same time as if you were the mirror, with no lag time. Well, if I’m the person looking into the mirror, and you’re my mirror, how can you be my mirror unless I help you be my mirror? I’m responsible for your being with me and in sync at every moment. And it’s a wonderful image–a symbol–of what communication is, because it’s my job if you don’t understand…it’s my job to help you understand. And it’s your job to keep the other person with you. And the way you do that, the way you keep the other person with you, is keep reading the clues you’re getting from the person. The person’s face, the person’s eyes, the tone of voice, the body language, the way they occupy a chair. All of these things are clues to what’s going on in their head as you try to communicate with them.
Maintain connection with improv’s “yes, and”
In improvising, each improvisor has the job of making the other one look good. You share the experience. The principle of “yes, and” is an example of that. For instance, if we’re in a scene together and you look down and you say, “Whoa, look at all that water down there!” And I say, “That’s not water, that’s the floor.” Well, maybe I’ll get a laugh out of that from the audience, but I’ve just destroyed the scene and I’ve made you look foolish. You called it water, it’s obviously a floor. That’s not even “yes”, it’s just “no”. You could say, “yes, but” and cut it off with the “but”. But if you say “yes, and”…”Yeah, look at that water! Let’s jump in and swim out to that whale and catch on to the whale and swim away.” Now I’ve accepted what you’ve given me and I’ve added to it. This is a really valuable technique in communication, to not say to the person, “yes, but you know, that’s not true.” There’s something about it that may be true, but maybe it’s under the surface. The person is saying, “I wish I understood how the universe worked, and I think the universe works like this. We’re all connected psychically, and we’re telepathic…”, and it could go off into someplace where you don’t really agree at all. But the person is trying to figure out things. And you can agree about that, because nobody has the final answer on anything, I don’t think. So you can say “yes” to that part of it, and you can explore some part of it that you both can explore together. The idea is, if you cut off the connection, then communication stops. I think communication is a partnership. If you have to think about your partner, and help your partner. It’s not me pouring stuff into your empty brain.