Improv Leadership

In Improv Leadership, Stan L. Endicott and David A. Miller share five leadership competencies: story mining, precision praising, metaphor cementing, lobbing forward, and going north. IMPROV leaders apply these five competencies to initiate powerful conversations, create memorable moments, and craft personal coaching strategies that help people grow. Improv Leadership cultivates teams of people who love their work (and each other), who perform at a high level, and who stop the disruptive carousel of staff turnover.

Most of us remember the basics from science classes about how Earth came to be the only known planet that sustains complex life. But what most people don't know is that the more thoroughly researchers investigate the history of our planet, the more astonishing the story of our existence becomes. The number and complexity of the astronomical, geological, chemical, and biological features recognized as essential to human existence have expanded explosively within the past decade.

In an irresistible invitation to lighten up, look around, and live an unscripted life, a Stanford University professor and master of the art of improvisation explains how to adopt the attitudes and techniques used by generations of musicians and actors. These secrets are currently being taught to entrepreneurs, engineers, and first responders in a crisis as well as housewives and Alzheimer caregivers. Let's face it: Life is something we all make up as we go along.

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

What makes love stick? Is it the irresistible spark when you lock eyes across a piazza in Rome? Is it feeling the earth move under your feet? (Wait—that was an actual earthquake.) In these six serendipitous short stories, bestselling authors turn improbable first encounters into hopelessly romantic happy ever afters.

An Improbable Friendship is the dual biography of Israeli Ruth Dayan, now 98, who was Moshe Dayan's wife for 37 years, and Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, Yasser Arafat's mother-in-law, now 74. It reveals for the first time the two women's surprising and secret 40-year friendship and delivers the story of their extraordinary and turbulent lives growing up in a war-torn country.

Annie McDee, thirty-one, lives in a shabby London flat, works as a chef, and is struggling to get by. Reeling from a sudden breakup, she's taken on an unsuitable new lover and finds herself rummaging through a secondhand shop to buy him a birthday gift. A dusty anonymous old painting catches her eye. After spending her meager savings on the artwork, Annie prepares an exquisite birthday dinner for two—only to be stood up.

Amidst the deluge of advice for businesspeople, there lies an overlooked tool, a key to thriving in today's fast-paced, unpredictable environment: improvisation. In Getting to "Yes And" veteran improv performer, university professor, CEO, and consultant Bob Kulhan unpacks a form of mental agility with powers far beyond the entertainment value of comedy troupes.

In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J. Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.

But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of "miracle" is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive.

"In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin's French mission, the most exacting, and momentous, eight years of his life.

When Hannah's caught watching her late husband's cousin debauch the maid in the library, she's mortified - but also intrigued. An unpaid companion to his aunt, she's used to being ignored. The black sheep of the family, Leo has nothing but his good looks and noble birth to recommend him. Hannah ought to be appalled at what she's witnessed, but there's something about Leo that draws her to him.

The Art of Making Sh!t Up combines the lessons learned from a personal journey with the teachings derived from years of honing valuable skills through performing and presenting to thousands of people to demonstrate how working together has helped others found and grow several multimillion-dollar companies. By focusing on topics that serve as pain points and detailing the tools and techniques of improv, this audiobook helps people and organizations utilize new skill sets to be more productive, more accepting, and more "all in" to create a stronger teammate and team.

Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos' insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

Improve your life, where everything’s not made up, and the points do matter. Drew Carey’s show Whose Line Is It Anyway? has turned improvisational comedy into a pop culture phenomenon. But improv is more than just laughs - it’s a valuable training tool that will make you a more effective business professional.

Looking for new ideas? Need your teams to perform at a higher level? Want a healthy corporate culture? Follow along with these two dynamic authors (and narrators) as they take you through The Improv Mindset, one of the most engaging and powerful methods to getting individuals, teams, and organizations to step up, engage, and solve problems. Steeped in the world of improv comedy, this no-nonsense guide provides a window into the neuroscience behind creativity and new ways of thinking. Filled with exercises and activities, you'll be able immediately apply the lessons in this book.

Improv is not about being funny, original, or chaotic. It's about embracing change. Human beings are improvising almost every minute of their lives it is more natural, and more filled with possibility, than you might imagine. This audiobook explores how those same simple rules and principles can help agile teams collaborate more effectively and how purposefully working within constraints can unlock creativity. In this audiobook, you ll find over 50 techniques and improv games tailored for agile teams, complete with step-by-step instructions.

Health-care organizations cry out for a tool to decrease untoward events and bridge the communication gap between professional clinician teams and clients. Discover how to guide your team to creatively problem-solve, build emotional and social intelligence, increase workplace safety and employee retention, and guarantee client satisfaction with the results-don’t-lie Improv to Improve Healthcare system.