How to Use Improv Activities to Boost Your Self-Confidence & Engage Your Audiences with Izzy Gesell.

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How good would it be if you could add a tool to your speaker toolbox that helps you add more value to your clients—one that equips you to be more comfortable with unexpected situations, turns negative self-talk into positive action, and sharpens your listening skills? Today’s guest, Izzy Gesell, is going to tell you about this powerful tool and how you can use it to be a more connected, engaged speaker.

Izzy is an organizational alchemist who helps individuals and organizations transform their thinking from commonplace to extraordinary. He is one of the first practitioners to bring improv theater concepts into professional development and the author of Playing Along: Group Learning Activities Borrowed from Improvisation Theater. As a speaker, Izzy has earned the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association. Here’s my conversation with Izzy Gesell.

What Is Applied Improv?

Peter: Many listeners may be familiar with improv through shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Can you explain what applied improv is?

Izzy: Applied improv is the application of improv theater principles to real-life situations. Improvisers seem quicker, more creative, and less fearful. A lot of people, including myself many years ago, thought, “I can’t do that. I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t think that fast.” But what you’re seeing when you watch improv theater is a result of quite a bit of structured practice. Like any skill, the more you practice, the more effective you become.

Izzy: Improvisers practice not to predict outcomes but to practice being spontaneous, taking risks, and working together. In the applied improv world, it’s the application of those principles—staying in the moment, dealing with what you get rather than what you wish for, trusting a process, suspending judgment, working together to co-create an outcome where you don’t know the result. That’s innovative thinking. And that’s the training.

You Don’t Need to Be Funny—or an Extrovert

Peter: Some listeners might think they need to be funny or extremely extroverted. Do they need special skills, or can anyone do this?

Izzy: Anyone can do this. And I am an introvert—actually, an ambivert, a term I learned from Daniel Pink. It’s not a binary thing; many of us toggle back and forth depending on the situation. In improv, the funny is the result of the reactions and the situations, not the goal. If you try to be funny, you’ll very often miss the mark. Humor and laughter come from watching the outcome of an unexpected situation—the body’s recognition that there’s a different result than what you expected. A laugh is your body saying, “Oh, I see it from a different point of view now.” The key is a willingness to take a bit of a risk. I used to call my programs a ropes course for your mind.

The Key Benefit for Speakers: Engagement

Peter: What are the benefits of improv principles for keynote speakers or facilitators?

Izzy: A key benefit is engagement—and that’s what most clients are looking for in their meetings today. When you watch improv, whether on TV or in person, you’re playing along mentally from the safety of your seat. That’s exactly what happens when you’re a speaker or facilitator: I can have one person demonstrating a game and everybody in the audience is playing along. I’ve done this for two people and for a thousand people. I demo a game, ask for a volunteer, demonstrate it, then ask everybody to pick a partner and play. The energy created through those interactions is magic.

Izzy: After the volunteer comes up, I ask the audience, “How did you feel when you saw that?” Almost universally: relieved, grateful. That gives me the opportunity to say, “This is a leadership action.” Why? Because leadership is not so much about what you do as how what you do makes people feel. That volunteer raised their status in your eyes. And I just made a leadership point without lecturing—through play and a single question.

What to Do When Activities Don’t Go as Planned

Peter: What do you do if an activity doesn’t work the way you thought it would?

Izzy: The metaphor I use is a GPS. A GPS doesn’t go, “I told you to go left—why aren’t you going left?” It just says, “Rerouting.” What that teaches you is to let go of being in the future, projecting onto the outcome, and instead trust the process. That’s a life skill. And it’s one of the things these activities train you to do.

Izzy: Another advantage: when you present an activity that you’re as uncertain about as the audience, you’re exposing your vulnerability and your trust in the process—and you’re exemplifying exactly what you want them to experience. Time and again, when I’ve made mistakes and admitted it, my clients raised their respect for me. If I’m perfect, they’re not that interested in listening because they can’t see themselves in me. If I’m human, if I’m like them—more interest.

How to Choose Activities That Fit Your Audience

Peter: How do listeners know which activities are relevant to their topic and audience?

Izzy: It comes down to program design. You’re hired for a reason—there are specific objectives. What’s the storyboard of your keynote? What’s your start, your end, your main points, the action step you want people to take? For keynotes, I recommend three main points. For each point, you have an activity—and that activity leads to questions that highlight the point. Those questions can be rhetorical or interactive. The activities and questions are preloaded into the design—not improvised on the fly.

A Live Improv Game—and What It Reveals

Izzy: One game I use is called One Word at a Time Story. Two people tell a story that’s never been told before—one word each, alternating. Before we started, Peter admitted he was nervous about looking foolish. That’s the whole point: I merely announced the game and already the self-talk kicked in.

Peter: Once we started the process—once you said “desk lamp”—I just looked at my desk and imagined, and as soon as we went back and forth it was like, this is simple. Who cares? It was perfectly fine. And truthfully, very easy.

Izzy: Exactly. You took the risk, you stepped in—and once you felt comfortable enough to jump in, you didn’t even ask yourself if you could swim. You assumed you could. The only thing improvisers do that you may not is step up—because there’s a trust. Your self-talk is running 24/7. Applied improv lets you monitor it objectively and see how your thinking drives your behavior.

Peter: Izzy, where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Izzy: The easiest way is izzyg.com. Everything is there. I’m also active on LinkedIn and would love to connect there as well.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. 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.