Building Boldness with Improv
Let’s say your goal is to increase your team’s confidence, so you book them for some training. After the training, how do you know they’re now more confident? The obvious answer would be, well, are they acting more confident? So let’s define what that means.
It’s most likely not going to be a complete transformation. Like, if they never used to speak up in meetings at all, I doubt they’ll suddenly present their ideas through interpretive song and dance. Think of behavioural change more in terms of a sliding scale. And you can gauge an increase in confidence by having one simple measurement to compare against: Fear.
On one end of the scale, you have anxiety (stress, burnout, overwhelm) and on the other end we have confidence (with a couple stops along the way).
So, to measure the success of the workshop, you need to know where you’re starting from. How scared are they to do things right now, and how much less scared are they to do those things after the workshop? The goal being to slide up the scale.
When it comes to “acting” more confident, here’s an example of how their actions could look along The Confidence Scale™:
Again, it’s a sliding scale. Sometimes they might act courageous, but under pressure switch to panic and yell, or shut down completely. No judgement, we all feel it. Improv For Confidence™ workshops are just about sliding a little further on the scale (not judging people for where they are now).
Here’s an example of how to gauge their current confidence when it comes to a key leadership skill:
Unfortunately, many people get stuck at the insecurity stage, and make fear-based decisions (what they think the client would want, what they think would stay within budget, what would be safest, least likely to get them in trouble, etc.) but try to make themselves and others believe they’re confident.
This might not be the most scientific as far as a direct measuring tool, but you can often tell when decisions are made out of fear/insecurity and when they’re courageous/confident. And while fear can help motivate a decision, it’s not always the best one.
What to look for during the next brainstorming session:
You’ll know there’s an increase in confidence by the amount of “Yeses” versus “No’s.” The voice of reason, devil’s advocate, whatever you want to call it, is in reality, just fear talking. You want people with the courage to explore ideas, not shoot them down before they start.
In short, here’s how you measure success when training the “soft skill” of confidence.
Get a sense of where they are now on The Confidence Scale™.
Mark where they are after.
Our goal is to move them further along the scale. To change their belief in themselves, so they call the shots more than letting fear lead the way.
Improv will help you build a more confident team. Which, as you already suspect (enough to be looking into confidence training), and will soon see, is definitely a good thing.