THE PROS AND CONS OF IMPROVISATION
Letting yourself go into the flow of improvisation and saying whatever is on your mind has many advantages and disadvantages. Let's start with the advantages, because they are easy to name.
For one thing, saying what you think solves the problem of remembering what to say. In the words of Mark Twain, “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” That's what some comedians do when they forget their routine. They just ad-lib, producing a stream of consciousness until the routine comes back to them. These can be the funniest moments of the show, when we see a genuine struggle of a comedian against his own memory.
The second advantage of telling the truth: it is liberating. As ancient Chinese philosopher Han Xiang wrote, “When you say what you don't mean and do what you don't want, you're not the one who's living.” In the 1998 movie Bulworth, an aging politician decided to end his career with a series of improvised and honest talks about the true state of the Union. He inconvenienced many people, but his popularity took a sudden spike. The voters liked a bit of honesty for a change. According to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, the authors of an evidence-based model of leadership (and the bestselling book The Leadership Challenge), honesty is the number one trait that people cherish in their leaders. Number one. This research included thousands of people from all over the world. What's even more surprising, according to Kouzes and Posner, is that leaders who are more honest also are more effective.
This leads to the third advantage of truth telling: honest speakers are more persuasive and more attractive. There's a clear scientific consensus on this matter. You cannot help but look good when you tell the truth. Scott Berkun, the author of the great book Confessions of a Public Speaker, beautifully put it: “The feedback most speakers need is ’Be more honest'. Stop hiding and posturing, and just tell the truth.”
Sadly, most contemporary public speaking is built on lies, pretense, and restraint that keeps you from being yourself. According to Kouzes and Posner, only 38 percent of business leaders are perceived as honest and just 13 percent of politicians are. I have to say that restraint and self-control aren't necessarily a bad thing. I know lots of people who could benefit from more restraint and self-control. As Russian archbishop Ambrosius, the author of a manual on improvised sermons, wrote in 1892, certain types of people are very willing to give improvised speeches, and they are precisely the ones who shouldn't be allowed to. Or, in the words of La Rochefoucauld, “Most young people think they are being natural when really they are just ill-mannered and crude.”
So I'm not advocating radical honesty. I'm advocating relaxation of control when certain circumstances are met. I know you can't let go of all control. This is not an on/off switch; it's more like a slider.
The Right Context for Improvisation
Honesty and improvisation are two different things. There's calculated honesty and there are improvised lies. I think that authenticity is somewhere at the intersection of the two (see Figure 10-1). I don't think there's any context in which honesty is inappropriate. Seriously, I don't. There are many ways to tell the truth, and it is always possible to find one. It all depends on your creativity and compassion. That doesn't mean that I always follow my own advice. But honesty is the best policy, always. Yes, there are certain dangers; I do realize that. You can hurt others and of course you can hurt yourself. But as Mother Theresa said, “Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.”
FIGURE 10-1: Authenticity and improvisation.
Let me give you one example. You might think that speaking the truth in a totalitarian state is not always the greatest idea. It's dangerous; you might lose your freedoms (although if you're living in a totalitarian state your freedom is already lost to a large extent), your family, or even your life. People who are not afraid to speak the truth are called dissidents. The Soviet Union was known for routinely jailing dissidents, so one of them by the name of Vladimir Albrekht wrote a little booklet called “How to be a witness.”
The cornerstone principle of this manual was “always tell the truth.” This wasn't only because lying under oath made you vulnerable from a legal standpoint. The dissidents took great pride in being honest and decent people, and many of them felt no obligation to abandon their principles under the scrutiny of the KGB. The goal of the manual was to allow the person to tell the truth and nothing but truth without incriminating either themselves or other people. According to many prominent figures in the dissident movement, it saved a lot of people from being jailed. The only move deemed more effective was to remain silent—which wasn't always an option.
Now, this method has nothing to do with free-flowing improvisation. On the contrary, the idea was to delay the answer as much as possible, buying the dissidents time to think. If you don't have enough time, if the stakes are high, or if you're under stress, don't improvise. Please don't improvise in court. This is generally a bad idea.
Nothing reduces the quality of your improvisation more than high stress.
A good place to start improvising is during a more routine presentation, where small mistakes and imperfections are acceptable. Actually, small mistakes and imperfections are almost always acceptable. Even Steve Jobs' presentations are not perfect. In the end, it all boils down to your own willingness to accept mistakes.
British comedian Eddie Izzard and Russian guru Andrei Lapin probably had the greatest influence on me as a speaker. They are both known for their stream-of-consciousness style of delivery. I never really doubted that this was a good idea and I practiced it at every occasion. However, when I was giving my first seminar on this topic, one of the participants who was really struggling with the exercises finally uttered, “I cannot imagine Vladimir Putin answering questions at a press conference in this style!” I could only say touché. This style is hardly appropriate for presenters who are not willing to admit their mistakes. If you know anything about Putin, you know that he is very unwilling to admit his mistakes.
I would agree that both the standup comedian and the mad New Age guru have much more license than a business presenter or a politician. But as you read in Chapter 8 with the example of Swiss finance minister who laughed as his own incomprehensible language, admitting your faults isn't always a bad idea. Sadly, politicians for the most part don't seem to agree, but I hope this is slowly changing.
Admitting your faults demonstrates much more responsibility and courage than keeping a straight face
Perhaps the most serious mistake you can make while in free-flow is to offend people. This happens mostly when your opinion about them isn't the highest already. Then you stop holding, and it just slips out. You let the cat out of the bag. A Russian proverb says, “A word is not a sparrow; once released you cannot catch it back.” But can't we, really?
THE CASE OF THE NATIONAL THEATRE
In August 2010, there was some debate in London whether the Southbank Centre, one of the Britain's National Theatre sites, should be listed as a building of historical significance. The debate became particularly heated when Steve Norris, a London Mayoral advisor, gave this comment to the Evening Standard: “Not only do I not want the Southbank Centre to be listed—I think the National Theatre should have a Compulsory Demolition Order!”
Apparently some people at the National Theatre got upset. The theatre had a Twitter account set up for purely PR purposes. As with most accounts set up for PR purposes, it was rather boring and self-aggrandizing. I don't know what happened exactly, but their reply to the Standard commentary was surprisingly blunt: “Well, Steve Norris is clearly a giant ****” with asterisks representing one of the most offensive words in English language. Some 50 minutes later an apology was issued stating that the account has been compromised and that the tweet did not come from the Theatre staff.
We don't know whether the account was really hacked or not, but the point is that nobody believed it. The most popular hypothesis the public formed was that somebody from the PR staff forgot to log off from the official account before tweeting to their personal one. It's an understandable mistake. It's like sending a text message to the wrong person or mistakenly pressing the Reply All button. Everybody does that once or twice. And the reaction from most Twitter users was surprisingly positive:
@DisAgg – And to think I'd thought about unfollowing @NationalTheatre for them being bland. Best. Tweet. Ever.
@johnfoley – Have to say I found that errant @NationalTheatre tweet to be refreshingly human.
@jmc_fire – To be honest, I thought the @nationaltheatre c-word tweet was less offensive than their selective tweeting of good feedback on their shows.
@NJMiller – This is the only interesting thing @nationaltheatre has ever tweeted.
@LozKaye – For the first time ever I feel tempted to follow @NationalTheatre.
One blogger by the name of Megan Vaughn wrote later: “For a moment there, you were my hero. The previously lackluster self-promotion that littered your feed was briefly enlivened …. You, our National Theatre …, were human after all…. Hooray for the National Theatre! Hooray for passionate tweets about relevant issues!”
Hooray to passionate presentations about relevant issues!
The real mistake here wasn't the tweet. The real mistake was taking it back in such a manner. Instead of simply apologizing in a straightforward way and perhaps gaining more credibility, the National Theatre tried to deflect criticism with an excuse that almost no one believed (whether or not it was really true). The reaction of the various Twitter users shows how much more the public valued the reaction, the language that seemed authentic over that which seemed canned and constructed.