want more productive dialogue?

I've facilitated a few improv workshops for classes in the Environmental Dispute Resolution program at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. The program recently hosted a conference on fostering productive dialogue. In reading an account of the conference, I noticed repeated themes around communicating and listening. Speakers mentioned a number of soft skills that support effective communication, including authenticity, clarity, vulnerability, empathy and curiosity.  These are all qualities that are developed in the practice of improv. Although it is fun to bring out interesting characters in a comedic improv performance, the core of the practice helps actors to access and express their whole, authentic selves.

through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves...the moment frees us from handed down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information, and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom… In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole." Viola Spolin, the mother of improvisation training