The Road to Improv

During my six plus years at Accenture I had the good fortune to be able to teach at their Corporate University on a great many occasions.  In fact I enjoyed teaching so much that at times my leadership were less than happy, by what they considered my overly close relationship and involvement with the team that supported our university…I guess they felt that I was not doing my job and clearly being distracted by non-value added activities.

Arguably passing on your knowledge and experience is critical to any corporate culture, and so I felt compelled to embrace this aspect of my role and actively participate.   I guess it also said a lot about my level of comfort in being in front of a class, which I found out, is not always that common for some people.  Go figure???

TW with some other faculty in Kuala Lumpur last year
with the Petronas Towers in the background
(Skybar)

The notion of teaching at our Corporate University is completely aligned with my earlier teaching career, where I lectured at the University of the Northern Territory (Darwin) for two years on a part time basis while at the same time I was teaching at one of the local High schools.   

It was a great opportunity to get in front of adults and build my confidence, no surprise that I actually like it.   

My teaching also had other side benefits – like teaching in London, Kuala Lumpur and in Chicago.   It was a pretty cool to go teach in Malaysia and the UK, not saying that the United States was boring or anything ☺ but come on – you can’t beat a little exotic locale to make it a tad more enticing, although really…I didn’t need much encouragement if you know what I mean.

In fact, prior to leaving Accenture I had the opportunity to be the school lead on two occasions.   The school lead role is pretty interesting and if you can imagine a cross between a talk show host, MC and school Principal you’ve got it nailed.   The school lead role is a one-week commitment in which you oversee the (hopefully) successful conduct of a school.  At any given time there may be up to 4 or 5 courses underway within the school.   Course sizes can be up to many as 400 participants (Analyst, Consultant or Manager schools in particular), plus additional specialty courses in some cases.   As school lead, I had the opportunity to manage a couple of concurrent schools, which gave me the opportunity to be up on stage for much of the week…

The absolute best part of my role was to be on-stage in front of a double ballroom full of people and talk for an hour or two (depending on the content).   Some of the people reading this blog have been part of one of these schools and have seen me on-stage…clearly I’m sorry for your pain! ☺

My first MC gig at Longview Solutions....

Although I know many of my peers were a little overwhelmed with the thought of going on-stage just to be introduced to the group, but the reverse was true for me – I never felt more at home and just plain loved it!   I’m not sure if it was the rush of adrenalin that accompanied me being introduced to such a large audience or the emotional connection I felt as soon as I stepped on stage.   All I can say is that it was electrifying!

So what has this got to do with Improv you ask????

Many of you will know that I changed jobs at the end of last summer and am now heading up the Global Sales & Marketing functions for Longview Solutions (software company) and that in my role I get to be the MC at this years User Conference which is scheduled for May in Atlanta.    

There was never a doubt (at least in my mind) that I would be the MC for the event, not that I pushed too hard on my peers in the management team but they all acquiesced graciously – even my colleague Gerard who was visibly ecstatic by my announcement (in that he didn’t have to do it again)…yes, I noticed the wave of relief break across your face mate!

In preparation for my upcoming MC role I had enquired about taking a course to hone my stage skills but all of the March courses were already full and so I went onto a waiting list for which I never got a call (no surprise there – its so popular!).   

I figured given my true enjoyment of being on stage I should explore this a little more, so earlier this week I followed up and enrolled in the Second City Training program for – Introduction to Improv.  

Got to start somewhere - right?

When I told Zach earlier tonight – his response was classic “like, so you’re going to be a stand-up comic?”   I explained that I wanted to feel even more comfortable (if indeed that’s possible on stage), and at first he was a little surprised and not sure that he wanted his dad going down this road…but I reassured him that it was going to useful for my career.   No really…(you can stop rolling your eyes – I can see you!)

However, what he told me next completely floored me –  “I could do that course, I do Improv all the time at school.”   Really? I asked – how so?   “Well earlier this week, for example we were in Health class and we had to identify different types of relationships and so we had to do skits to demonstrate”.    Apparently the teacher had to cut him off after 10 minutes…as he and his two school mates had completely taken over the class and had all of the other boys in stitches - Zach was the main event...well, no surprise there either I suppose.

I’m really excited about my first class on May 7th – it will be my Tuesday night for the subsequent 8 weeks, although my MC gig is May 14th, so not sure I'm going to get much to use for the following week but definitely looking forward to it.    

Who knows, I may get hooked and have to go all the way – now wouldn’t that be something?