A Closer Look at Why Improvisation Helps Build Team Working Skills  

There are a lot of reasons why some people struggle with working closely with others to achieve a common goal, from dealing with social anxiety to just having a difficult time communicating with others. However, learning how to work with a team is one of the most important things you can do as you near adulthood and beyond. Team work is highly valued in the workforce, necessary in familial situations, and even useful in everyday life and activities. Believe it or not, improv, or improvisational acting, and comedy classes and exercises can actually help you build team skills. Here’s a look at why improv is often used in group therapy to help participants build skills when working with a team.

Improv teaches you that you don’t have to be the star of the show, just a part of it.

When you do an improv skit in front of an audience, they see the act as a whole. Therefore, when it works and the jokes get laughs or the scene provokes a reaction, it is because each individual worked together to pull it off. In real-life situations, it is often the same concept. Working with a team means that you are working together to achieve a common goal, so you are not accepting the brunt of the weight of a task on your own. Improv helps you learn how to share skills and efforts to create something, and even if what you create is a silly scene, the skills learned could easily be applied in everyday life situations.

Improve teaches you how to effectively communicate on the spot.

Part of working with a team means you have to learn how to effectively communicate with others, even when the other people on the team may know nothing about you. Improv is all about communication, and communication on the fly. You have to be able to take an idea and effectively communicate it with your fellow improv actors to make a scene or skit work out. This action can be uncomfortable in other situations, but in improv acting, the end goal is not such a serious thing, which makes it a little easier to step out of your comfort zone.

Improv teaches you that laughter can help with social anxiety.

Improv, especially in comedic form, can be a great deal of fun and definitely bring about bouts of laughter. Even in a group of strangers, laughing can be a secret tool to help you feel less anxious, and you could easily apply this to teamwork exercises in your everyday life. If you find yourself facing a task that requires you to work with people you hardly know, finding the humor in the situation or even cracking a few jokes can help you relax and feel less anxious about the whole ordeal.