Many people don’t know this, but I’m a Second City Toronto graduate. I have performed improv comedy in Canada, UK and Ireland. In fact, I had an improv troupe for about a year when I lived in Galway, Ireland. I attribute my love for public speaking with everything I learned from performing improv.

Have you ever been to an improv comedy show? The performers use a few chairs and an empty stage, combined with recommendations from the audience to create believable, entertaining scenes. In just a moment they can take the crowd to a bistro in Paris, a butcher shop in Brooklyn, or a honky tonk in Nashville.

THE ART OF IMPROV IS A COMBINATION OF ACCEPTANCE OF AN OFFER, THE ABILITY TO TELL A STORY, STRONG LISTENING SKILLS, KNOWING WHEN TO END A SCENE, AND BEING A TEAM PLAYER.

In business we use improv everyday, but we don’t realize we do. Here are five examples of how improv skills are like business skills.

1. ACCEPTANCE OF AN OFFER OR “YES, AND”

The golden rule of improv is called, “Yes, and”. In order to keep a scene believable and moving forward we must accept the offers our co-performers and the audience give us.

If an actor is performing a scene and gives his partner an (invisible) apple and says, “Here is the apple you ordered, mam.” The audience would believe that the object she was now holding was an apple. However, if she replied, “No, that’s not an apple”, it would confuse the audience (and frustrate the other actor). Instead improv actors always use the “Yes, and” rule.

Now picture the same scene, but instead the second actor replies “Yes, and… I am going to use the seeds to grow an apple orchard.” The scene moves forward and you have won your audience’s attention.

In business we need to focus on accepting the offers from our clients and colleagues. If a customer asks us to deliver something we are not prepared to do. Instead of saying no you can say, “Yes, and I will have this to you by Friday” or “Yes, and I know just the graphic designer who can help with this project.”

2. THE ABILITY TO TELL A STORY

We are all storytellers, only some of us are better at it than others. You have to know your brand’s story. What is the story of your products and services? How were they created? Why? Who created them? These all make your business human and the stories resonate with your customers.

In improv the story is crucial. Without an interesting and entertaining story you’re scene is dead in the water. Your audience will get bored and run to the exit.

3. STRONG LISTENING SKILLS

You can bet that the best sales people are incredible listeners. They ask the right questions and carefully focus on what their customers and potential customers say. The best sales people are the ones who listen and provide the “Yes, and” when they reply. Here’s how I recommend you listen better.

In performing improv you listen to your fellow performers and look for opportunities to bring twists, turns and laughs into your scene. You also listen to determine when it’s time to throw in the towel and call it quits.

4. KNOWING WHEN TO END A SCENE

Not all businesses flourish, in fact most don’t succeed. You need to be focused on your goals and determine what is and is not working.

In improv the audience can sense the awkwardness of the performers when a scene needs to conclude. Great improv actors can improvise the ending that fits the scene perfectly. Lights dark, curtain down.

5. BEING A TEAM PLAYER

Smart companies ensure they hire the right people. Hiring goes beyond talents and experience, it’s also about culture. Will this candidate work well with my team?

Your improv troupe becomes a family. If you aren’t working well with your team members, the audience will see it and your performance will fail.

Now consider your own business and career. I bet you’re performing improv without even knowing it. Henry Rollins nailed it when he said, “For the last 30-plus years, I have been doing one long, uninterrupted improv.”

Now please excuse me, I have a meeting at a bistro in Paris I must be off to, au revoir.

Do you perform improv? What lessons have you learned that apply to life off the stage? Leave a comment, don’t be shy!

UPDATE: Now look what I've done! 

I don’t care how big you (think you) are. Treat people the way you want to be treated.  

I wrote this and shared it on my social profiles the other day. It was retweeted, liked and commented on a fair amount. My message seemed to resonate with people.

What I didn’t share was the story that inspired it. As you probably know, I launched a new business a few weeks ago called Futureforth.com. 

I’ve been busy reaching out to my 1st Connections on LinkedIn who are CEOs of Nashville-area businesses. Most of these people are friends, some are people I’ve met at events or online.

Using LinkedIn’s advanced search is a powerful way to find the people you need to connect with. My message is brief. I’m asking for five minutes for a quick phone call, so I can tell them about Futureforth and ask how I can help with their businesses.

One person I contacted is a successful entrepreneur, let’s call him Bob. I won’t bore you with his accomplishments because they won’t seem that impressive when you hear what happened when I called him.

Bob’s reply to my message was curt. He wrote that I could call him. When I tried to set a time, he said setting a time was useless. Instead, I should call him mid-afternoon.

I called him at 1:40 pm.

Bob: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi, Bob. It’s Dave Delaney.”
Bob: “I told you mid-afternoon.”
CLICK.

He hung up on me. I was flabbergasted. What a jerk.

I called him back.

Bob: “Yes?”
Me: “Hi, Bob. I think we got cut off.”
Bob: “I told you mid-afternoon.”
Me: “Sorry, I thought 1:40 would be okay…”
CLICK.

He hung up on me again. Total jerk!

Thoughts raced through my head. I was tempted to share this and publicly shame him on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Who does that? Who hangs up on people? I realize he’s a successful guy who has done very well with his Nashville business, but that doesn’t give him the right.

I had to look back through emails and LinkedIn to see how we originally connected. He had asked me for my feedback on his business many years ago. We had met over coffee and I gave him plenty of free advice.

I decided I wanted nothing to do with Bob again and proceeded to remove him as a connection on LinkedIn. When you remove a connection you lose any private notes you made on the profile. So I decided to stay connected, because I never want to lose my note about Bob. My note is a little too colorful for me to reproduce for you here.

One day he’ll forget about this and ask me for a favor or an introduction. I’ll be sure to refer to my note and tell him to call me mid-afternoon NEVER. I'm all for forgiveness, but a jerk is a jerk. 

Instead of publicly shaming him, I shared a quick thought about what transpired. I have always tried to follow that one simple rule my mum taught me — Treat people the way you want to be treated.

When I was a kid, my mum (not a typo, she’s British) bought my brother and me tickets to go see Penn & Teller for my birthday. I was (am) a massive fan of the “bad boys of magic.” To see their live Refrigerator Tour in the prestigious Royal Alex Theatre in Toronto was a thrill.

The show was as entertaining as I had expected, but I didn’t expect to meet Penn and Teller after the show. The meeting wasn’t a chance encounter as they hurried into a car to whisk them away. It wasn’t a lucky moment as they departed the theater for the night. No, the bad boys were a class act with their fans. They stuck around to meet each person after their performance!

Penn and Teller stood in the lobby by the grand entrance doors, posed for photos, shook hands, and exchanged brief words with the hundreds of exiting theatergoers. I was flabbergasted! Like a crazed teenage girl at a boy band concert, I ripped my brother’s arm out of its socket as I dragged him closer in to meet my idols.

There I stood, looking up at Penn Jillette’s smiling face and down at Teller’s trademark smirk. I think I told them that I was their number one fan. They autographed our programs, thanked us, and the moment was over as quickly as it had begun.

Years later, I was working in Las Vegas at CES. We had a night to ourselves, so some colleagues and I bought tickets to see Penn and Teller’s show at the Rio Hotel. I felt just as excited as I was as a kid. They didn’t disappoint; their performance was just as entertaining as years before.

As we exited the theater back into the hotel lobby, Penn and Teller stood there! They were posing for photos, shaking hands, and chatting with their departing audience again. As it turns out, they have always done this — after each and every show. Always.

Penn and Teller are gracious with their fans. Their heads aren’t inflated, and they have kept their egos in check throughout their careers. We all start somewhere. Most of us have humble beginnings. They serve as good reminders that no matter how big our britches get, we’re still naked underneath. We should also never forget where we have come from.

Before sending this email to you (originally sent to my newsletter friends), I decided to reach out to Penn for a comment on Twitter. Like that boy-band buzzing teenage girl, I was ecstatic to hear back from him! I’m his number-one fan, after all. ☺

Penn’s reply didn’t totally surprise me. Penn and Teller prove that you can be a huge success and remain humble and thankful. What a class act!

Take a moment now to remember where you have come from…

Got it pictured in your head?

Don’t forget it.

I’m sitting in the Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia. I’m on my way to St. John’s, Newfoundland to speak at a conference. It’s exciting for me to finally be visiting a destination on my bucket list. It’s exhilarating to think that tomorrow I will be sharing my knowledge and experience in business networking with a group of one hundred amazing people. It’s also crazy to think that the last time I was in this airport was at the end of one of the most terrible couple of weeks of my life.

I’ve been back to Halifax several times since the incident back in 1995. I love the Gaelic charm of this beautiful city and it’s people. Every time I have returned it was by car, so here I am back at YHZ, nineteen years later.

No matter how bad it is at this moment in your life, it will get better.

The incident nearly twenty years ago wasn’t even that bad in retrospect. Some of you may even scoff to hear this story when you consider some of the terrible times you’ve had.

It’s 1995, Coolio is on top of the charts. O. J. Simpson is still on everyone’s minds. Timothy McVeigh is the only terrorist people can name.

My girlfriend had moved from Toronto to Halifax to attend college. It upset me that she moved, but she assured me that she would be back in the summer and we would remain together. College was only a two-year program, so it was a short time in what I had expected to be a long life together. Side note: Long-distance relationships seldom work.

I had visited her a couple of times leading up to my final trip that spring. I flew there because we were booked on the same flight home to Toronto for the summer. This time, I was spending two weeks with her as she wrapped up her semester, so I could help her pack up and move.

She was acting oddly the whole time I was visiting her. There were certainly some happy, normal moments that felt like it had always been, but something wasn’t right with her. We spent plenty of time out with her friends at pubs and checking out live bands together. Those parts were good, right up to the moment she introduced me to the guy she had been sleeping with.

It was my first heartbreak and it hurt — badly. My emotions were in a knot. I was stuck with her there for another week because I had no way to get home. The last night everything came to a standstill and I knew we were done.

I packed up my bags in the night and walked through the Halifax Commons park to a bar. I closed the bar at 3 am and was left with nowhere to go. I couldn’t afford a hotel and my flight home (the one with her seated next to me) would be later that evening.

I ended up grabbing a cab and stumbled into this airport where I fell asleep in a chair. When I awoke, the ticket agent stood behind the counter looking at me perplexed. I went over and asked him if there was any way I could be on the first flight back to Toronto. I was clearly distraught. Without missing a beat, he asked me if it was “woman trouble.”

To this day, I don’t know how he nailed it. In his charming, Nova Scotia way, he smiled knowingly and quietly said, I would be on the next flight home. And that, friend, was the last time I was here at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport.

It’s funny to think where life takes you. It wasn’t long after that terrible couple of weeks in Halifax that I moved to Ireland. Ireland is where I would meet my wife, Heather. It’s Heather who has encouraged me to do the things I’ve done and to shift my career the way I have. She’s my backbone and my best friend.

So if you’re going through something crummy right now, know that it does get better. Life moves in mysterious ways. My flight to St. John’s is boarding soon and I need to grab a cup of Tim’s. You can take the kid out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the kid.

No matter how bad it gets, it really will get better.