Team building is a popular practice in corporate America. But often the lessons learned are quickly forgotten as soon as people get back to their desks. Andrew McMasters has a unique approach. 

With his company, Improv Mindset, he uses improvisational acting techniques to foster better communication among teams. He makes clear that this isn’t about telling jokes or wearing funny costumes, as you might have seen with improv on TV.

His techniques make people more confident and able to trust their fellow employees… which makes for an effective team.

We talk about the exercises he walks through with his clients, as well as…

• The power of “yes and”
• How to get over your stage fright at work
• The worst way to do a sales call
• A strategy to ensure you always give constructive feedback
• And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

• www.improvmindset.com
• www.linkedin.com/in/improvmindset

Transcript

 

Doug Hall: Hi, everybody. This is Doug Hall, your host for Go for Growth Podcast. And I have a special guest today. Andrew McMasters who’s the founder of Improv Mindset here in Seattle, and very experienced in helping people get outside themselves. So I’m really eager to hear from Andrew about how that works. Some of his best practices, what he’s observed in people growing in the Improv Mindset, and growing their organization with team building and other techniques. So Andrew, welcome to the podcast. 

 

Andrew McMasters: Well thank you Doug. I’m really glad to be here. It’s wonderful to have a chance to talk to you. 

 

An Actor, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

 

Doug: Great. So the obvious first question is, how the heck did you get into this? And tell us what exactly you do? 

 

Andrew: Sure, that’ll take the entire podcast. Okay, so talking about how I got into this, my background is as an actor. I have my undergraduate degree in theater, I have my master’s degree in theater and drama. I’ve been working as an actor for about 35 years, 35 to 40 years. And part of what that kind of training gained for me more than anything else was a sort of series of rules of sort of how to operate. One of the things that I realized a lot with actor training is that they teach you to sort of sit and wait for the phone to ring. 

 

They wait for someone to say, Oh, you know, I had the perfect part for you. And so would it be great if I call you? And for me, I don’t like to do that. Because that’s a very passive way. And if you are going to take control of your own artistic future and your own financial future, you have to make your own work. So I started creating my own companies. And I started creating my own work. And that has sort of continued to lead on to all of the work that I’ve done. 

 

I started Jet City Improv in Seattle, 50123 Nonprofit Theater. About 150 seat theater, do five to seven shows a week, education programs, also outreach to underserved communities. I ran that nonprofit for 25 years stepped away in 2017. And then I have been working now on my own doing a lot of this corporate work that sort of started somewhere in that range. So that’s sort of the background of how I kind of ended up there.

 

Doug: So, let me ask you a question. I want to come back to the nonprofit experience and building that. But tell me, connect the dots for us on improv and acting and how that relates to team building and, sort of corporate culture, if you will. Smaller businesses, bigger teams, whatever. What, give me that first, so we get the right foundation here to understand what you do. 

 

Andrew: Sure. And this kind of started a number of years ago, actually, about 1999 2000, I started working for companies like Apple Computer, and Microsoft. And my job was to actually be the person who stood on stage in front of large trade shows said, Hi, my name is Andrew, I work at Microsoft, I wrote this software, let me demo it for you. And then afterwards, people would come up and say, well, could you tell me more and I go, let me hand you over to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, because I’m just an actor. 

 

And so what I realized was that these people were hiring me, because they were too afraid to stand on stage, and talk about something that hit spent five years of their lives creating. So what I started doing was taking the same exercises and games that I was using to train actors from my company, and I started adapting them and sort of changing them. And that has continued to lead into Okay, well, what do these exercises do? What could they do? How do they work? And it really is the basis of communication. How are we communicating with people? 

 

How am I fully listening? What am I hearing? How am I responding to what I’m hearing? And that has led to now me working with, how do you develop teams, most of my work has been walking in with a brand new team and going, let’s set a basis for how we all communicate together so that we can streamline this, that we don’t have to spend the first month, two months feeling at where everybody is and how we discuss things and how we communicate. 

 

Let’s streamline this, let’s make it now let’s give you three hours, four hours, and let’s give you the tools so that you can move forward immediately, without having to feel out different personalities. So that’s sort of the main part. And what I realized was that this work, when I was using it for actors was really growing an ensemble very quickly. And growing people’s communication skills very quickly. So taking those same ideas of growing an ensemble and growing their communication skills very quickly, and now adapting that for a corporate world.

 

Doug: Awesome. So if people were, if somebody wanted to engage you for this, what does it look like? I mean,  how do you get a process started? What’s the midpoint? What’s the final point? Is there? Is it an ongoing relationship? A one-off? Is it event-oriented or mastery? Tell us about that.

 

Andrew: A little bit of both. A lot of the people who I talked to kind of wanted sort of a one-off piece. And then what happens is it sort of turns into a one-off that we start with and then we do ongoing pick up where are we what can we do to reinforce the tools, like any kind of new skill that we learn, you know, the goal is that we actually need to reinforce it. And we need to practice it so that we can become a sort of unconscious master of it eventually. 

 

The example that I use with people all the time is if you ever had the experience of getting in the car to drive home, and then suddenly you’re at home, and you don’t really remember driving. That’s because you know, none of us were born learning how to drive but you sort of started to do it and you practice it, you practice and you practice it and then it just becomes something that’s second nature. 

 

With any of these new skills that we’re working on about communication and about how we work together with groups, you have to keep practicing, and you got to keep it top of mind. And then eventually it gets to a point where it just happens naturally. So for a lot of companies yeah it is kind of a first thing to come in and sort of do an initial, here’s what we are. And here’s what we’ve got. And then there’s kind of the every once in awhile, let’s touch base again in about a month and see how you’re doing.

 

Let’s touch base again and see how these things are going. Let’s reinforce these tools, let’s reinforce the tools that’s reinforced the tools. And I will also give people tools to reinforce it for themselves. Because again, people have to find their own practice. So I give them little physical objects or ideas or feedback that then helps them to reinforce the skills on a day to day basis, but I’m not there right next to them. 

 

Advantages of Working in a Group

 

Doug: So is it normally in a group? Or is it normally one on one?

 

Andrew: Normally in a group, I prefer to work in a group because I think that there’s always a lot of learning that. And most companies that I walk into, I will say, you know, I’m not the expert, I don’t know what your processes is or how you work or the way you work. And so my goal is to sort of take the shared knowledge in the room and bring that out with these exercises so that you can help each other work better. 

 

And so in that way, it’s kind of easier for a group of people, rather than working with just one individual or one or two individuals. I really want to sort of how do you take the group mind, and pull that all out so that everybody can be sharing information with each other, even that person that you’re like, well, they annoy the hell out of me. Maybe there’s something that they know, that you could actually use in order to help your workflow be a little bit faster. 

 

Doug: Right. So tell me about how that works in terms of communications tools, and getting that comfort on stage or in front of a group versus the sort of team-building aspect of a group like that working with you. 

 

Andrew: Yeah, it is the way that it works more than anything else is kind of putting people into a situation where they stand up and play a fun exercise. The difficulty I think that a lot of people have is the minute they hear, I mean even the name of my company’s improv mindset, the minute they hear the word improv, they think, oh, you’re gonna make me stand up in front of people, you’re going to make me tell jokes, you’re gonna make me wear a wig, you know, all these kind of things, which aren’t true. 

 

That’s just sort of the inherent fear of what it’s like to actually stand on stage and do something. In my workshops, what I’m trying to do, and actually, the first 20 minutes or so are really building that sort of safety. And that feel in the room so that everyone can sort of take a step forward, maybe do something a little bit outside of their comfort zone, however, stretch and feel like they’re doing it in a safe and protective environment. And something that’s actually going to help them to stretch in some way. So we get on our feet. And to be perfectly honest, we play exercises. 

 

Simple things, like even practicing, how do we remember someone’s name when we first meet them? So let’s practice and exercises. Let’s do it in this fun and interesting way. And what happens is everyone starts laughing. And it’s great and there’s a lot of laughter and then we talk about wonderful, what are we practicing? What is the skill we’re working on? And then we debrief, and then we try it again practicing on what is that skill, and how do we further that? And then we talk about great now, what do we learn from that? 

 

And then how, how do we take this away and use this in our everyday work? How do we take it away and use it in our individual industry? How do we take it away and in our work that we’re doing tomorrow with each of the people who are in the room so that we can sort of take it from a higher level? And then bring it back to the actual ground basics? You know, what is it like when your boots are on the ground? So yeah, make people play games.

 

Doug: Cool. Yeah, it’s the, you know, that’s, it’s certainly needed. I mean, I’m big on team building events. And this is really a unique approach. So hone in on the team-building aspect of it, what’s going on, tell us some stories about you know, what you’ve seen in terms of it because you’re talking about Microsoft. And you know, that’s a bunch of quiet, introverted software engineers and like that, so what have you seen happen? 

 

Andrew: Oh, it’s, I think there’s an amazing sort of way that these exercises in games get people to actually communicate together and work as a team in different ways. And I actually was doing a workshop a little while ago, and someone had told me, they had a recent team-building event that was an escape room. And I was like, oh, how did that go? You know, one of those where you get in the room, and then there’s zombies are going to attack you and you have to answer a question and figure out how to get out. Right.  

 

Doug: Team problem-solving. 

 

Andrew: Right, right. And they said, Oh, they failed horribly. Because each person was trying to take control and go, I know what it is. I know what it is. I know what it is. I know what it is. And so no one was actually taking each other’s information and building on it and listening to what the other people were saying and saying, oh, that idea is great. And I have this idea. And I have this idea, and build on top of it so that they could work together to accomplish the goal. And so they all ended up dying. So before my. Exactly right. It’s that, which then makes like, Oh, yeah, great team-building we failed. 

 

For my workshops, I’m really teaching that lesson of yes and. How do I hear what someone says, how do I except on that? And then how do I build on it? So yes and is really one of the big lessons and using that in order to work together with your team. When someone says something, you don’t immediately go, alright, well, let me tell you what’s wrong with that. We start to look at Oh, okay, there’s some really cool stuff here. Even though it may not work, even though it may not be possible, even though I have some information that you may not know, that makes that sort of idea, not work. 

 

Let’s talk about what’s right with it before we start talking about what’s wrong with it. And that’s kind of the idea of yes, and. Let’s accept it first. Let’s talk about it. Now, let’s build on it with maybe more information or the next idea that I have. And using that tool of yes and you can continue to have teams start to work together in a way that’s positive, as opposed to saying, No, that’s never going to work. Let me tell you why. And when people start to hear no enough, then they stop bringing ideas up. They stopped coming to you with new ideas or with solutions to problems because why bother, it’s just going to get shut down. 

 

So we’re working in kind of basic communication skills. And we’re also working in how do these people work together and sort of interpersonal communication so that we can build that muscle up so that people feel comfortable bringing forward things, and then everyone’s going to go, Oh, you know what, let me tell you what I love about that. 

 

Here’s some really great ideas on it. And here’s some other things we need to think about as well to remember, because those may be things that you don’t know about. But we start to talk about it in a positive sense, as opposed to let’s shoot someone down because your idea is really bad. 

 

Doug: So you end up with a behavior modification and the pain. Yep. They start communicating differently as a team. 

 

Andrew: They start communicating differently as a team. And even with simple tools. I had a workshop I did a little while ago for a company that they said they don’t, they were finding their issue was is they don’t give each other feedback that is constructive. Or did they have a culture where people feel afraid to give feedback? 

 

And so we actually worked with a number of tools and sort of worked them up to the point where people were saying, let’s work on listening. How do we listen? How do we listen to each other? Can we listen? Rather than listening to solve? Can we listen to build relationships? And then we start to move into the now let’s start to ask some questions like, okay, what’s the endearing quirky thing that I do that annoys the hell out of you? Wonderful. I, this is what I heard from you. Let me tell you what I heard. Is that correct? 

 

Yes or no? Wonderful. Now, let’s go to the next thing, which is what is the conversation we should be having right now that we’re not? This is what I heard from you. Is that correct? Yes or no? So we start to get into how do these people start to actually work together with some small short communication tools so that they can get to the conversation they need to have so that they can both work together in an aligned way.

 

Doug: Interesting.

 

Andrew: And you know, we also do it in a way that’s going to be a lot of laughter and fun. So that’s the goal. 

 

Approaches for Teams of Varying Sizes

 

Doug: Oh, yeah. Yes, it sounds like it’s fun. So yeah, talk about the sort of the range of sizes of team sizes of companies that you find most open to this and speak a little bit to the smaller companies who don’t often think about these kind of things. How do you make that accessible to a, you know, a company with 30 employees instead of 3000 employees? 

 

Andrew: Yeah, and that’s been a very interesting thing, especially as sound with a lot of smaller companies, where they just said, we need to set our culture up correctly, or we’re growing so fast, we need to set a baseline for how we communicate with each other. And those are interesting, because then usually, you can have everybody there in one room. I mean, I’ve worked with some companies recently where they had 12 people. And it’s like, great, we can reach everybody in one fell swoop, let’s start here. You know, in general, with groups, I try to stay with groups about under 20 people. 

 

For a workshop, unless we’re doing a large group event, like I’m doing a large group of that from Microsoft, and a couple weeks, that’s 175 people. And that’s where I’ll be on stage. And I’m sort of facilitating the exercises for them with a little bit of PowerPoint support. So it’s scalable based on the size of the companies. For me, what I love because I feel like I can actually get down and get dirty with it. And really kind of work on the nuts and bolts of it is when it is that smaller to mid-sized company. Companies I just finished with a little while ago, I have about 100 people. 

 

So I basically did about five workshops for them. And I’m currently working with another company right now doing some sales training on that work. And so I’m finishing up a fifth workshop for them here next week. So it’s very much like this is a small company, you know, about 100 people, maybe 120 people, and we can reach everybody in five workshops. And we can be individually with each one of those people. 

 

And everyone now has this shared piece. Which means now we can do one other large thing where it’s a large group effort where everybody practices one more time with each other. And then you’re pretty much set forward. At this point, I will give you a few other tools that you can self administer. Or you can have me come back in for a little refreshers here and there, but everyone’s done boots on the ground parts. And now we can actually just start going, let’s just reinforce let’s just reinforce let’s just reinforce. 

 

Doug: So you open the door to especially you mentioned sales training. So yeah, what kind of little side doors do you find in companies? Talk a little bit more about sales and other things that you’ve helped with at a functional level.

 

Andrew: Yes, sales has been the most interesting, I think, for me recently heading into that realm, finding that most of the people that they’re hiring for a lot of sales training is actually or a lot of sales is directly out of college. So these are people who maybe have their first or second jobs, they’re very young. And what they’ve been told is, here’s your script. Let’s get on the phone, you’re an SDR and let’s just you keep calling and you keep calling and you keep calling and people say no, and you hang up and you get back on the phone. 

 

And what they haven’t done is actually listen to what the customer or the prospect wants, or where they are. And they haven’t asked any questions they’ve just done here’s my machine gun of one of my messages, as opposed to will tell me what you’ve done recently. Oh, you know, we have some products that might be able to help you with that. It’s sort of listening to what a customer-centric message might be as opposed to I have my message and I’m just going to machine gun it out. 

 

Doug: Got it. Any other departments that other than sales or sales development reps that have popped up as being key for you? 

 

Andrew: Some of them, I have, actually, and this has been kind of being interesting thing. I’m doing one again, here in a couple of weeks for some more engineers. And what I love about that is the very sort of linear thinking that an engineer will do. I mean, I make them stand up. And okay, let’s play an exercise. Let’s play this game. And they’re immediately thinking, How do I solve this game? How do I fix this game? How do I do this? 

 

And it’s okay, and what the interesting part for me is getting them from that spot of you’re trying to solve the game, when maybe the game is just about how do you experience what’s happening for you. And then how do we take that experience, and put that into practical application. And that sort of shift from the Oh, I don’t have to solve everything is a fascinating sort of piece to watch happen. 

 

And I think it also helps them with, when you don’t have to solve everything, there’s a chance for some innovation to come out in a way that you may not have noticed before, where there might be a way to tie together, they’re two different ideas that you never noticed before, you can now create something brand new. So for me, I love working with engineers. It’s a challenge and it’s so much fun. 

 

Doug: Cool. So let me take you back to the Jet City Improv. And how you got that idea how you got started a little bit of a, you know, the life cycle of that. So tell us the story of why it ended. 

 

Andrew: Sure, yeah. And Jet City is still going strong. I mean, they are a 

 

Doug: Oh okay, you just took off.

 

Andrew: Yeah. As a 501 c three, you know, eventually, it was a time to hand it over to some younger people who want to take it in the next direction and have it continue. So I stepped off as leadership in 2017 and handed it over to the next generation of people to take it and move it wherever they’re going to move it. So yeah, for me, it was very much a sense of how do I continue to work on my craft, and my skills, without having to again, as I said before, wait for someone to call me and wait for someone to offer me work. 

 

So this was a tries to get on stage, and start doing some work and start practicing the skills and be in rehearsal and be in performance and sort of continue to do it. And that’s where it started. Where it ended up is the next step. Because again, I think like everything, you know, you sort of start something and then it evolves and you follow that thread and you keep pulling on it and it goes somewhere else. What we found was that it wasn’t just about us getting on stage. Us getting on stage was one thing, and that was fun. And it was great.

 

It really turned into this audience shows up here and what they want, and how do we serve them? And how do we help them? And that translates, actually to some of the workshops as well, because I talked about the main lesson that I taught my actors for improv was, if you are making your partner on stage look good, then you’re doing your job. It’s not about what you’re doing. It’s actually about how do you externally focus and how do you serve the other people around you. And that even goes so far as when I’m on stage, and I said something in the audience laughed. I know that’s not me, it’s the fact that my team set me up. 

 

So that I could say that so the audience could respond to it. It’s not about the individual, it’s about the group. So that same idea, really kind of morphed into then how do we serve an audience when we’re on stage? How do we serve the other performers? How do we serve the audience? Which then kind of morphed into well, then if we’re doing this, how do we serve the rest of the world and the community? So we started doing classes for homeless youth, where we just went out and did them for free. And we found that all of a sudden, you had kids who were afraid to talk to people who basically walked in and would not make eye contact. 

 

And after doing two hours of workshops with them, suddenly their faces were up and they were laughing. So that change then started us to work with incarcerated youth. We worked with children who actually were going to drug treatment programs during the summer, in fact, Jet City Improv still do those this they’re doing it right now. They go out to about 25 to 30 different camps for kids who are either going through cancer treatments, or severe burns, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, lots of different ailments, camps for kids, and they do workshops and performances for those kids. 

 

And that was the work that we made money doing ticket sales, and we made money doing fundraising as a 501 c three in order to do that outreach out in the community because we believe that it wasn’t just about us on stage, it’s about how do we serve a better world? How do we make a better world with the work that we do? So that was kind of the main part of Jet City Improv. That outreach work, I think kind of fed, who we were and why we do what we do. \

 

Lessons Learned From Growing a Team and a Business

 

Doug: Cool. So think about starting that organization, Jet City Improv, and then tell us a little bit about how it grew and the challenges you saw as you added people added structure, whatever you needed to do to get Jet City Improv from off the ground to a viable organization. What growth lessons did you learn? 

 

Andrew: Oh, boy, a million. And in a lot of ways, being very young, sort of, you know, and I think my experience to was, you know, well, I’m an actor, and then suddenly, well, I’m in charge. So that kind of altered a little bit about what my own lessons in life about leadership and about how to run a company and how to move forward. That was very, very helpful. What I found more than anything else was even with improvisers, so these are people who step out on stage every single night, not having a script, not knowing what they’re going to do, to sort of step into that unknown and that fearful place every single night, and they love it. 

 

And yet, at the same time, in their everyday work, the minute you change something, there was a lot of like, oh, things changed. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. So that idea of sort of change management started to become very important for me as I was working, like how do we use these skills of improv, and help people through change management because I was watching professional improvisers be very unwilling to change something, or be very, you know, intolerant of risk, even though that’s what they do on stage every single day. 

 

So for me, this is where I kind of started with a lot of this work of how to work with other companies was I started seeing it and started practicing in the business itself. Well, how do you then work with people in the office in order to make them a little bit more risk-tolerant, in order to make them a little bit more, communicating with each other and dealing with change and embracing change as an opportunity and then using the that in order to propel the company forward. It was a constant battle. 

 

I think anyone who runs a company will find, you know, it is a constant battle, especially the How do you keep people thinking forward? And as opposed to Well, we’re here now so we’re stopped.

 

Doug: Yeah. And how many people were in your orbit then as you grew it? I mean, obviously, there were volunteers, there might have been your staff. But how many folks did you end up coordinating when you want it grew up? 

 

Andrew: Probably about 50. So, which included actors, and some technicians, and then staff members? So about 50 people sort of in that area. 

 

Doug: Yeah. So that’s, you know, that’s sizable, because a lot of folks have a hard time getting beyond 12. You know, it’s been around that take care, you can be in charge of 12. People, it’s pretty hard to tell 50 people what to do. 

 

Andrew: Exactly. Right. Right. And, you know, and then make sure that everyone’s together on a clear and aligned message. You know, why did we do what we did?

 

Doug: Yeah. So what are some lessons you learned there, you know, as you grew that as I got to 10, 20,30, 40, 50? What tools came to your mind and what worked and what didn’t work? 

 

Andrew: I think back to basics almost every single time. An example was we did a great event every year called the Seattle Festival of Improv Theater. We brought people in from all over the world, they would perform for an entire weekend, we rented other theaters, we did multiple shows, workshops, people showed up, it was a wonderful, wonderful event. And every time the event was done, the first thing I would do is sit everybody down for debrief and I go, why do we do this? 

 

Talk to me about why we do it. And I’m not talking about you know, what, there’s money, or here’s this. I’m talking about, give me the big, overarching, 30,000-foot level why do we do this? It’s a lot of work. And it’s a pain in the ass. Why do we do it? And what would always happen is you get to that little nugget of this serves the community and it serves us and it does this. Wonderful. And now that we can distill that down to that little sentence, great. 

 

Let’s keep that in mind as we start our planning for the next time. And then, of course, I would save that sentence that then two months, three months before the next event, when we’re about to do it, I pulled that sentence out and be like, all right, so we identified this is why we do it. Is that still true? And it’s reminding people again, let’s get back to the real overarching idea.

 

Because you can get so stuck in the weeds of well hang on to get this paperwork done, and did we get the plane tickets for those people in other hotels? Okay, and what about the performance spaces? Oh, they need three chairs, not two chairs, you know? And that’s detail. That’s not why we do what we do. Right? I need you to focus on why we do what we do. 

 

Doug: What did you find about people when you were recruiting staff or volunteers? What are some of the people lessons you learned as you grew that thing?

 

Andrew: People lessons. The biggest piece, I guess, that I found on it was I want people who are willing to try. People who are willing to dive in and do something. I had people who work for me who I mean, here we are on a Sunday, and my phone would keep ringing and I would keep on doing it because there was a decision to be made, but they were afraid to make the decision. And eventually, what I would have to do is just ignore it, ignore it. 

 

And then I would see them on Monday and they’d be like, Well, I was trying to reach you. And I said, Okay, I wasn’t available. What happened? And they’ll be like, well, I made the decision. I’m like, great, wonderful, How’d that go? Perfect, good. Take ownership, you know, I don’t need everything to go through me and I don’t want everything to go through me. I want you to take ownership of it. And eventually what I want is that you’re reporting back what happened, and whether or not it was good or bad or whatever, great, then you’ll learn from that, and we learn from it. 

 

And then we all adapt and we move forward. So for me, the main person skill people skills that I was sort of looking for is how do you take initiative? How do you dive in and do this? I sort of had like a three-step process of you know, what I want you to do is sort of, let’s talk about what you might do. Great, let’s have you go ahead and do that. The next one is, is that I want you to sort of go ahead and do it. And then I want you to talk about what happened. 

 

And the next step is, is eventually you’re just going to get to a point where you’re reporting back, like, you know, every week or every two weeks or every month, whatever it is. I want to kind of work you up to the point where you’re making your own decisions based on the same aligned idea that we’ve all laid out. And I know that what you’re doing, you’re doing it in the best interest for the organization and for all of us here. And for our audience. So yeah, drive everybody. Just one. Yeah. 

 

Doug: Right. Okay. What was the next thing you look for in people? When you’re adding staff, you look for drive. But what else were you looking for?

 

Andrew: For me? flexibility. I found that I wanted people who really like okay, yes, here’s these things, and then immediately was well, and have are there other ideas that someone else has great, you know what my idea is really wonderful. But yours is even better, let’s do that. I want you to still be moving forward in an aligned fashion, and to be flexible to other ideas that are coming in. And be clear about them as well, you know? 

 

That’s not something we’re going to try at this point, thank you so much for bringing that up, something I want to take a note on and then see what we can use that in the future. So really, it’s the ability to take initiative, that sort of drive, and then the flexibility of Let’s listen to who else is around us. And we’ll kind of go from there.

 

Doug: What else? Drive and flexibility, those are awesome, there’s gotta be a third big one. 

 

Andrew: The third, and I think this is kind of why I’ve sort of transitioned into doing the work that I’m doing right now is they have to have good communication skills. We have to be able to communicate, we have to be able to listen, and we have to be able to actually work together in a way that I feel is going to be constructive, as opposed to destructive. I don’t want you to start using your communication skills in order to push forward what your agenda is, or what your ideas are, as opposed to other people’s ideas. 

 

I need you to be able to listen, I need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely about what that piece is. And then I need to be flexible to understand that things may change. So for me, the biggest one, and I think this is why I’ve sort of transitioned in doing improv mindset is communication skills, and the importance of that, when working with any team, how they communicate the ways they communicate, what you can do as an individual to take over leadership over that, so that you’re helping the entire team grow. That’s really kind of the biggest skill. 

 

Doug: So if you think of drive, flexibility and communication skills, which of those are teachable?

 

Andrew: Communication without a question. That comes to my mind, immediately communication, I think is one of the biggest ones that we can work with. And the flexibility, I think there are with certain tools like in other words, when I get people to really understand the ideas of yes, and, and to accept and build on people’s offers, that tends to add to a certain amount of communication of flexibility. 

 

Sorry. So that really kind of builds in that direction. Drive, I think is something it’s just, you either have it. I’m not even sure how you keep working on it. When I was working, I was doing something at Nike a couple years ago. And what was great was, they just have such culture of drive, to the point where you know, we were like 45 minutes of my lunch break so I’m going to go take a run for 40 of it. And then I’m going to shove some food in my face. 

 

And I’m going to keep going, you know. They have that drive built into their culture. So as a result, every time I was doing work games with them, as it would get harder, and as the exercise would get harder they’d be like, come on, harder, harder. Come on, what do we do? One more step. Come on this can’t be difficult. And I loved that because that was just showing me that these people here, just want to go further. They want to go further. How can we do more? How can we do more? How can we do more? That was really fascinating for me.

 

Andrew’s Tips for Management and Leadership Practices

 

Doug: So the next step beyond those three essentials as you were looking for is share any tips you have for good leadership, good management practices. What did you find, when you were forced into that pretty young and you grew up and you built this organization? What leadership management tips do you have you learned along the way so maybe you can give people a hand here? 

 

Andrew: Yeah, one of the things that I had started to do, and it’s interesting because now I’ve heard about it from a lot of other people that they’ve said, you know, this is kind of the key. And I suppose it would be in terms of mentorship. However, I just started meeting with people, I just started asking, how did you do what you did? In a lot of ways. That’s why I kind of loved it when you contacted me about this podcast because it’s sort of that sense of now. 

 

I feel like back in 1992, you didn’t have podcasts to listen to in order to learn what someone did or how they did it. But having these conversations where I would just call people up who had larger organizations to me and say, Can I buy you a coffee? And can I talk to you about how you did what you did, and then start to find out. And all of those conversations just continued to build up my own, for lack of a better word, sort of wealth of tools in the toolbox, that then I could try out. 

 

And it also built up a network of people who when there was something new that came along, I could call them up and go oh just you know, do you mind if I bend your ear for five minutes? This is what’s going on. Could you tell me if you ever dealt with something similar? That was invaluable to me. There’s a book that I was given as I kind of handed over Jet City and was figuring out Well, now what am I going to do? You know, because now I don’t have a job called Designing Your Life. And it’s written by Stanford professors. Yeah. And it’s a great book on that. But they use design theory in order to figure out how to move forward with your next career. 

 

And part of that design theory is that you just start meeting with people and start having conversations, you know? Tell me how you did this. Tell me how you started. What’s that? Oh, wonderful. And it’s really not about you. It’s about how do I learn from this person so that then I can take some of those ideas back and apply them in what I’m doing. So the biggest thing that I talked about before anyone who’s actually a new leader is gab. 

 

Who’s in your network who you think might have something there? Who’s in your network who could introduce you to someone who then you could buy coffee for and learn more about what they do? And continue to have those conversations with people. Continue to meet and talk to people and find out more about how they’ve done what they’ve done. That’s been the biggest part for me. That has been sort of you know how to get your teeth NBA. 

 

Doug: Sounds like a linchpin. Yeah. So think about this whole experience from you know, getting Jet City Improv going and getting your individual teaching and coaching practice going and think of sort of the top one or two things that you the advice you always give right? Like, always on this. So now you have an opportunity is talk to my podcast audience. Okay, here’s the one or two or three things that you got to think about this, you gotta keep this in mind, folks. It’s advice time from Andrew. So what’s the best advice? 

 

Andrew: Got it. Oh, man. Uh, for me, when I really understood that idea that we sort of talked about here a couple times about accepting and building on offers, being able to hear what someone says, accept it by saying yes, building on it by saying and that idea of yes and really helped me to understand, okay, well, what’s next? And it’s not about judging what happens, you may not like what happens, however, it’s reality. So you accept it. 

 

And then you build on it with the next thing. The main lesson that I sort of learned, that I feel was the biggest kind of linchpin for me, as I continue to go through my life and alter and change and grow was that once you understand the idea that accepting and building, the next thing is, is that every offer that happens, everything that happens is an offer and a gift. It’s just a matter of how you accept it. So even if it’s like, oh, okay, wow, this all failed, and I went bankrupt. Wonderful. Cool. What did I learn from that? And you take that, and then you use it, and you accept it as something that happened, and then you build on it. 

 

And you can either look at it and beat yourself up over it. However, if you look at it, and you beat yourself up over it, then you’re spending time and energy towards something that’s negative, as opposed to going, Hey, what did I learn from this that makes me not do that again? Right? Or how do I take this lesson? How do I take this extreme failure? Or how do I take this awful event that happened in my life, and use it in order to push myself to the next level and find something new and find something different? And maybe go beyond what I thought was going to be possible. So I guess that the main thing that the main piece of advice, everything that happens is an offer. Everything that happens is a gift. It’s just a matter of how you accept it.

 

Doug: It’s all mindset.

 

Andrew: Yeah, pretty much. Which is why I started to do the idea of Improv Mindset. We can just change our ideas to do that and kind of follow the Improv Mindset. That’s the direction that I think companies can go in and for success and individuals for their life. 

 

Doug: Perfect. So how can folks learn more about Improv Mindset and Andrew McMasters?

 

Andrew: Give me a call. Buy me coffee.

 

Doug: There you go. Have a conversation, right?

 

Andrew: Yeah really. Give me a call. That’s great. I have my website, improvmindset.com. Lots of information there. I also have a bunch of things on LinkedIn. So Andrew McMasters at LinkedIn Improv Mindset. So yeah, I think those are kind of the biggest pieces. Other than that, yeah. I love meeting with people. That’s kind of the best thing in the world. So if anybody wants to talk to me, give me a call. Great. Let’s meet let’s talk.

 

Doug: Okay, so we’re going to be on for coffee soon.

 

Andrew: Well, I have a great coffee mug that you sent me. So I’m going to use that. Right?

 

Doug: There you go. That’s great. That’s the benefit of being on the Go for Growth Podcast. Great, great stuff today Andrew. Thank you for sharing this with my audience.

 

Andrew: Thank you for having me. This has been wonderful.

 

Doug: Good. I do look forward to a coffee with you. And folks, check out Andrew. Check out the Improv Mindset. Again, think of it in terms of communication school, team building culture, building all this cool stuff we covered on this call. So thanks again, Andrew. Been awesome. 

 

Andrew: Thank you.