How Improv Comedy Can Help You Be a Better, More Engaging and Funnier Speaker with Avish Parashar.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. Do you want to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then stay tuned as Peter and his guests discuss public speaking tips, techniques, and tactics that help you increase your impact, influence, and income.

Improv comedy may strike fear into the hearts of many — perhaps even more than public speaking itself. But as Avish Parashar explains in this episode, that fear is worth overcoming. No matter how well you plan your presentations, things will go wrong, surprises will arise, and the unexpected will happen. Your success depends entirely on how you respond.

Anyone Can Do Improv

After 30 years of teaching and training, Avish is convinced that anyone can perform improv. It’s not a talent you’re born with — it’s a set of reflexes and mindsets that can be developed. People who seem like naturals simply developed those reflexes through their upbringing and environment. For everyone else, it’s a learnable process — and one worth starting.

Three Ways Improv Makes You a Better Speaker

Avish outlines three distinct benefits. First, improv builds adaptability — the ability to respond to the unexpected without getting derailed. Second, it sharpens creativity and communication, two skills useful in virtually every professional setting. Third, and perhaps most importantly for speakers, improv cultivates authenticity. When you get comfortable with improv, you stop performing and start expressing. And authenticity is what audiences crave most.

How to Access Your Creativity

Creativity isn’t a switch — it’s a muscle. Two practical ways to build it: practice meditation to quiet the critical inner voice that filters your best ideas, and practice generating ideas fast — faster than your filter can catch up. Avish recommends “morning pages,” a technique from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: fill three pages with unfiltered writing first thing in the morning, without stopping, regardless of what comes out. By the third page, you’ve exhausted your conscious mind and started accessing something richer.

Emotional Variance and “Yes, And”

Two of Avish’s most practical frameworks for speakers: emotional variance — taking your audience on an emotional journey, not just a content journey, by letting authentic emotion come through in your voice — and the “yes, and” principle, the foundational rule of improv. Instead of blocking others’ ideas with “yes, but,” accept their offer and build on it. In conversation, collaboration, and Q&A situations, “yes, and” is the difference between shutting people down and pulling them in.

You can find Avish, his books, and information about his keynotes and training at avishparashar.com.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let’s make it happen. I’ll see you next time.