Don Waisanen is Lecturer in Strategic Communication at Columbia and Professor at the Baruch College CUNY Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, where he received the Presidential Awards for Distinguished Teaching and Distinguished Scholarship. He teaches courses and workshops in public communication—including executive speech training, communication strategy, and seminars on storytelling, conflict and negotiation, and leadership and improvisation. The following excerpt is from his new book, "Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs".
The Upward Call
In a small city in the Netherlands, the tensions between police and Dutch-Moroccan youth had reached a crisis point. After a young man robbed a bus driver, officers and youth began clashing on the streets. One young person, Ilias, expressed his anger toward the cops for arresting him several times, beating him violently, and throwing him into some thorn trees. On the other hand, with so many kids standing on street corners engaging in suspicious behaviors or hurling insults, the police felt they were simply doing their jobs. Fueled by media stories about rising crime, the conflict spiraled out into the community when local restaurants began refusing service to the young people. Throughout the city, shouting, hatred, and distrust filled the air. Like so many places in the world, this had become a normal part of life. For close to a year facilitators tried to bring the two groups together.
As part of the intervention, they asked the police and youth to play improvisational games with one another. With much skepticism and little interest in the process, the young people told one another it would be useless to engage with the police. One participant even said that for the first few meetings he wouldn’t shake hands with anyone in law enforcement because of how violently he had been treated. From the opposite end, one officer shared how the idea of playing games with the young people originally sounded ridiculous to his squad.
But then something extraordinary happened. After engaging in these exercises, the officers and young people began to move beyond their rigid positions and see the humanity in one another. In one activity, the facilitators asked the police and youth to switch roles for a day, improvising what it might be like to step into the other’s shoes. The young people donned police uniforms and traveled through the city on bikes, while the cops acted out the youth standing on street corners and giving the officers a hard time. The shouting and anger turned into laughter and empathy. Both sides enjoyed the activity immensely, and the stage was set for real, solutions-focused conversations.
But then something extraordinary happened. After engaging in these exercises, the officers and young people began to move beyond their rigid positions and see the humanity in one another."
After these experiences, Marieke Borg, a police officer in the city, shared how she would now greet young men on the street, a previously unthinkable behavior. One young man related that “the two groups became one, and they understood each other better.” Another officer shared, “I have been released of my negativity. The negative feeling I had toward these boys.” In fact, the project’s first year was so successful that the youth and police continued into a second. Jaap Norda, a researcher analyzing the intervention, noted how such “changes begin at a small scale. . . . an atomic reaction starts between two molecules, but the explosion has an enormous effect.”
Over twenty years ago, I went to see a live, professional improv comedy performance for the first time. I was stunned by how the performers worked with and trusted one another. They exhibited a level of play and joy seldom seen in everyday life, constantly built on one another’s lines and actions rather than negating them, and overall, practiced fearless, seemingly superhuman communication skills. After, I decided to take an improv class, and I have never looked back. Little did I know that what basically started as a fun hobby would go on to have so much application to the rest of life. When I look back at what fields have most informed my thinking, improvisation remains at the core. Beyond its personal and professional benefits, however, the applications of improvisation hold the potential to transform our organizations and societies in ways previously unimagined. As the police and young people in the Netherlands discovered, improvising well matters.
Beyond its personal and professional benefits, however, the applications of improvisation hold the potential to transform our organizations and societies in ways previously unimagined."
As they also learned, the potential for change begins with us. Our lives mostly hang on the quality of what we say and how we interact with one another. Day by day and moment by moment, we spend our lives affecting one another for better or worse in every encounter. Sometimes strong friendships dissolve from a lack of conversations. Different communication styles or statements interpreted in different ways can create unproductive tensions in the workplace where there were none. These stakes are only raised in our neighborhoods, communities, and nations, with racial and ethnic divisions arising from the ways that people talk about one another. Leaders have collapsed economies with their words, while politicians have traded insults that have brought us to the brink of world wars.
In our increasingly partisan and polarized world, we need to find new ways to educate and train for democracy. Think about how people often approach one another on just about any major political issue, from immigration to the climate crisis, and you’ll mostly find monologues rather than dialogues, fixed talking points rather than open and honest inquiry, and entrenched tribal positions and group loyalties rather than listening and attempts to work across differences. As life increasingly goes online, it’s also clear that the architectures of social media and other platforms frequently compound these problems by fueling social distrust, informational enclaves, and other forms of isolation and anxiety. If there’s one point that even many public leaders agree on, it’s that “the partisan discord in our country followed very closely on the heels of schools stopping to teach civic education.”
If there’s one point that even many public leaders agree on, it’s that 'the partisan discord in our country followed very closely on the heels of schools stopping to teach civic education.'"
Traditional notions of civic education and training will remain important but inadequate for addressing this challenge, however. The US Department of Education published a report arguing that narrow conceptions of civic education are not enough to tackle these problems, with a call to “expand education for democracy so it reaches all . . . in ever more challenging ways.” A host of educators and analysts have pointed out that “requiring students to take civics classes and relying on their volunteerism may be insufficient to prepare them for the life of active citizenship,” so we “need to make a more systematic effort to create opportunities for teaching and learning democracy.” In essence, all of this “calls for a new movement to revive and reinvent civic education for the twenty-first century.” Such a movement would focus on training the high-level skills of bridging differences with others, learning to make important decisions in an engaged and collaborative manner, and ultimately creating the conditions for outstanding individual, organizational, and societal relationships—an education in the art and science of citizenship.
I found myself compelled to write this book in our current moment because there’s no other way of educating and training for citizenship that I, and so many others, have found as powerful and liberating in people’s lives. This project builds on many initiatives worldwide to reinvent civic education in new and surprising ways and, most importantly, converges with the best ideas and practices from across disciplines in doing so. I came to the point where keeping this story boxed up for much longer just wouldn’t do: there’s simply too much unrealized potential at stake for our educational systems, organizations, and societies writ large. It’s a story that reminds me of how, as William Gibson once said, “the future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
This project builds on many initiatives worldwide to reinvent civic education in new and surprising ways and, most importantly, converges with the best ideas and practices from across disciplines in doing so."
Before we begin this journey, a good starting point is to recognize how all of us face difficulties in our work with other people. To make this real, I want you to think for a moment about who you struggle with in your work. Educators often struggle to motivate and connect with their students. Scientists can find it difficult to translate complex ideas to potential funders. Doctors with unfriendly bedside manners may find themselves on the receiving end of patients’ tempers or lawsuits. Managers may hurt staff performance by providing infrequent or unhelpful feedback. Executive directors and CEOs can forget to collaborate with others up and down their chains of command. And, as the Netherlands case shows, police and young people may even fail to work
with one another, creating problems for their communities that threaten to spiral out of control. These examples all raise the question of what kind of teaching and training could help us most in these types of moments. From our everyday interpersonal interactions to the highest echelons of business and policymaking, we desperately need the skills that can help citizens and societies function more productively on our increasingly interconnected planet.
This article is an excerpt from Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any other person or entity.
