The Best Improv Classes In San Jose

It might seem a little surprising, but my most recent trip to San Jose wasn't for a tech startup or technology company at all. Instead I was retained by a small financial advisement firm that was looking to address creativity.

That really surprised me. When I have worked with financial investment firms in the past creativity hasn't been on their minds. Instead it's typically been public speaking or communication skills or team building.

But the owner of the company explained to me that he was hoping to inspire his staff to think outside of the box when it comes to client service, retainment and earning new business. So I put together a curriculum. He was interested in reviewing and approving it, so I got it out to him.

Normally when I do that a process it's pretty fast and it was in this instance too. He seemed to naturally enjoy the exercises I chose, so there was a little back and forth but not much.

I flew out to San Jose, did the workshop, everything went great and then I got an email the next week hoping to gather some photographs from me. Now that's not common, a lot of times when people are holding work events and they want photographs or videos they'll take them themselves and for that reason I often feel uncomfortable taking photographs and videos myself.

But this time I did. I took a couple of photos because we played a game called ABC Bodies which gets everybody laughing and having a great time and some of the results were really hilarious, so I actually had about 15 to 17 photos in my phone. I shot them over to him which he then used to put together a review of the event.

Boy was I glad that he did that. Not only were was there a breakdown of how the workshop went and the photographs that I provided, but he also got some feedback from the participants and put them in as quotes throughout.

At the workshop there had been one participant who seemed resistant to the workshop and I thought his comments were particularly eye-opening. He actually had a wonderful time but he was terrified of improv immediately.

This was one of those unfortunate workshops where my client never informed his employees they would be doing improv. That was because it had a very fast turnaround time. The client had called me on a Thursday and he wanted the workshop to be that following Monday.

I was able to make that happen for him, but that isn't the typical turn around time. Typically you have at least two weeks and more typically four to six weeks to prepare for an event like this.

In any case, because of the tight turnaround the owner of the company never informed his employees what they would be doing that day. They knew they were going to a special retreat off site and they knew that it was going to be a day to think strategically about their business, but that was it.

That’s not great, especially for people who are a little scared of improv. For people like that you want to provide lots of warning so they can prepare.

Even so, he actually found the exercises to be really pertinent to the professional skills he was trying to develop and he enjoyed the workshop tremendously. It just goes to show that sometimes it's not the extroverts who will enjoy an improv workshop, but the introverts who will get the most out of it!