More than a fun evening in a comedy club, improv is a discipline with valuable applications in business and leadership.
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Listening to understand
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Hearing what is being offered
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Reading non-verbal cues
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Building with “yes, and…”
These are the skills Dr. Candy Campbell has been teaching teams and corporate organizations since co-founding an improv comedy company over 20 years ago. An award-winning actress, author, and filmmaker, Candy uses improv skills to help her students build their integrity, insight, and innovation in whichever field they work.
Candy believes that when you approach interactions with humility and without ego, when you are a life-long learner, and when you seek to learn your purpose, you will become a more successful, innovative, and effective leader. She shares her improv lessons here. Don’t miss out!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Candy Campbell: Listening means focus on that other person. Give them your attention.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build of Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome to the Build of Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and I am absolutely delighted to have on the show today Dr. Candy Campbell. Dr. Candy Campbell is an award winning actress, author, filmmaker and portrait artist. She co founded an improv comedy company in the San Francisco area and began teaching applied improvisation to businesses in the 90s. Her third solo show is An Evening With Florence Nightingale: A Reluctant Celebrity. Her books include Channeling Florence Nightingale: Integrity, Insight and Innovation, Improv to Improve Healthcare: A System for Creative Problem Solving and Improv to Improve Your Leadership Team and several children’s books. I am absolutely delighted to have Candy on the show. How are you?
Candy: I’m well and thank you. It’s an honor to be here, Nicole.
Nicole: Yeah, we’re gonna have a great time. Well, first thing right out of the gate, I want to know your definition of leadership.
Candy: Hmm. You know, I’m gonna say in brief, three words, integrity, insight, innovation. And those are the that the words I used as a subtitle for the Channeling Florence Nightingale book, because when I did a qualitative study of her over 200 books and articles and over 10,000 letters that we have still, I did columns, you know, how you do when you’re doing research. And then of course, I looked for alliteration, but I figured when I had six columns, everything would fit into integrity, insight and innovation. She writes about that over and over and over. And one of the reasons I think if I could distill it down even further, she spoke the truth. And I think we as leaders need to speak the truth in love.
Nicole: I love that. Absolutely. I have a little phrase, I use Candy. Everywhere I go, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna practice this thing called truth telling, honesty and candor. And I think that that’s absolutely true. But you do have to do it with that that empathy, that nurses heart behind it. Absolutely. Well, let’s let’s dive into those three words, to kind of see what you mean. I mean, on the surface, we know what the three words mean, we can you can Google it. But when you say that there’s three things a leader needs to focus on. And we start with integrity. Tell me a little bit about how the leader displays that. I think sometimes people are a little delusional about whether or not you know, they’ve got it in spades or not. So tell me a little bit about integrity.
Candy: People ask me, how do you get integrity? Do you find it? Is it inborn? Do you learn it? And I think that, based on some of the stories I could tell you, it could be any of that. And I know for me, as a youngster, my father was a restauranteur, and a small business person. And I recall the discussions even when I was really small, about the way certain people acted. He, we were in the Portland, Oregon area. And he was, as they used to, say, a big frog and a small puddle in terms of the restaurant association there. And because he was a great sponsor, and very active in all, what we call the animal clubs, and so forth.
He was a magnet for when celebrities came into town. And I thought that was really interesting now that I’m older, and I look back on those times, and the sorts of conversations that I overheard. He telling about how certain celebrities were so easy to deal with, they were just they leveled the playing field. They didn’t lord it over anyone. And they they seem to be upright and not falling for the celebrity status that would, you know, gives you sort of a godlike presence. They they realized, you know, they weren’t a victim of their own press. And later on, I’m thinking some of the people that I’ve worked with somebody that I coached with, is a wonderful speaker, and he was incarcerated for a few years because of his early childhood experiences.
And as a teenager, he did some things that were against the law. And he would tell you that that was the best thing that ever happened, because it got him onto the straight and narrow. So it obviously can be learned, it really has to do with your core values. And his core value as a kid was that he didn’t matter. Other people didn’t matter. And whatever he did, he’d just laugh it off and go away. But you know, when you get down to it, when you realize that none of us is going to live forever, and that someday, we’re going to have to look back and think, golly, it’s about time to go, if we get the time, you know, some of us have to go in an eye blink. But if we have the time to look back on our life, and we ask ourselves, what did I do with the time that I had here? Those answers have to do with the underpinning of what we call integrity.
Nicole: I love that. Okay, so what she said everybody is that, really, there needs to be some humility, a big part of integrity is being humble. Because that’s the part about where you were talking about where these celebrities would come to dad’s place. And I guess I gotta tell you, I got that restaurant thing in my history, too. That is the best thing to have. I think everybody on planet Earth should do a certain amount of time waiting on people hand and foot. Really, really good training.
So if you don’t have that done, you should give that a whirl. So humility, no ego. And I love the fact that you said it can be learned. Integrity can be learned and that it’s this whole thing about core values and an under that’s the underpinning of kind of how you show up in the world. Okay, so I love your definition of integrity. That’s beautiful. So talk a little bit about insight. I think insight is a really interesting thing, where leaders can kind of see into a situation and they can maybe ask great questions to gain further insight. Tell me a little bit what you’re thinking when you say insight.
Candy: I think it has to do with learning. Well, being a lifelong learner. And I’ll tell you a little bit of the of the way that I came into understanding this. When I was working for my dad, you know, as a youngster, as a teenager, and so forth. And I had a few other jobs. But when I was adult, and I got out of college, I had well even excuse me, during the summers, I was working for my dad. And then when I got out of college, I had some decisions to make, as we all do. My degree at the time that I got was a bachelor’s in theater and emphasis on acting. And I expected to continue to be a repertory actor. And something happened that derailed that dream for many years. And that was oh, now they call it a me too moment. I was cast in a play. And coincidentally, maybe maybe not.
The director and I were alone doing some blocking. And he acted, let’s just say very inappropriately. And this shocked me, because I am kind of a Pollyanna type person. I’m, I always try and look on the bright side. And I had known this fellow as my director in college, I babysat for their kids. I don’t know why I didn’t read the signs, you know, I wasn’t very emotionally intelligent, that he his his demeanor had changed. And he was going through a life crisis and separated from his wife and the whole thing. And when I shoved him across the room and said, you know, what are you doing? He said, hey, you’re going to New York. Don’t you know this the way the game is played? I said, no, no, no, not for me. Can you believe it?
I walked off that show, and I had the lead. And he said, you can’t do that. I said, watch me. The famous lines, like out of a movie, you’ll never work again, you know, this kind of thing. And I did not act again for over a decade. I was so torn up about that. And so sure that I wasn’t going to do it. But it was a lesson, there was some insight there. Right? Well as as fate would have it, I got called to be a nurse as we say. I had taken a job and I thought it was an interim job. It lasted five years. But I did want to travel I didn’t know what to do. And one day my mother showed me the ad and the paper. You remember papers?
Nicole: I do!
Candy: She said Pan Am is coming to town. Why don’t you, you like to travel. I had spent some time in Europe as a as a university student. Why don’t you try it? So I did. I became a flight attendant with Pam Am. And I had a personal mission. I thought, okay, I’m going to learn dialects. And that served me well. I was flying all over the world, I could tell you probably it’s easier to tell you a list of where I wasn’t than where I was. I’ve been many, many places. And it was a great experience. In fact, you know, speaking about the nightingale project, I lived in London for two years. So people ask, oh, how is it that you that you know, these, you sound just like, well, it’s because I’ve studied dialects. And then when I realized that nursing was something that was calling to me, as they say, I could make a difference. And I tell my students, this is like the theater of the real.
You know, as an actor, there’s preparation before you go on stage and, and try and be as improvisational as you can with a given script. But when we go into a patient room, as a nurse, you have to learn to be relational. And that comes back to the leadership quality of learning all the time. And in terms of the emotional intelligence and the improv training that I give, these are some of the basics that is, learn how to listen. Now we were told to listen, everybody will, any leader training will tell you you need to listen, you’re new to listen. But how to do that. We have exercises many, many exercises, those of us who teach applied improvisational training, that help people learn how to again, level the playing field, get down to some generally creating safe spaces for people to speak up.
Especially if you’re a leader, the importance of allowing the people around you to speak up to your authority. You don’t want to have sycophants. You want honesty, you want to give honesty, you want to get honesty. And so, again, using your insight, not only, do you learn how to create a safe space, so that people will speak to you, you learn how to honor those, we call it in improv and offer, a suggestion, and work with work with what you hear. You learn how to read people’s nonverbal communication. And here’s another another insight into insight. You learn to take yourself not so seriously and find joy in your work. Isn’t that important?
Nicole: It’s paramount. Yeah, I tell people all the time. I love business. I have a lot of I have a lot of friends who are like, you work so hard. You’re always going. Why are you doing that? I said, this is the best game ever. Business. It’s so fun. Didn’t y’all play Monopoly growing up? I mean, it’s fantastic. You know, and I think the world is just so many opportunities. I just think about when I was coming up, I didn’t know anything but the town I was in. I didn’t really realize there was this, you know, big huge oyster out there, which apparently you got to travel the oyster, I’m a little jealous. But I think I think the world I mean, if you want to do something fun you want to make money, you want to be in business, there’s no better time that that’s ever been on planet Earth for that.
So it’s great. Okay, but I want to I want to just shake down a little bit about what you said. Because I think insight is absolutely huge. One thing that that I think about insight, it’s like your ability to use your imagination. And one of the things, don’t miss this everybody that Candy can do. She can use her imagination in a great way because she’s a she’s an actor. And I think sometimes in leadership, you have to be a little bit of an actor, right? You have to you know, fake it till you make it a little bit here and there. You got to, you know, wing things a little bit. So using your imagination, but also she said, you know, using emotional intelligence, and then I also love the fact that she used this great word calling.
I’m a big believer that that’s the number one insight you need to get in this lifetime. It’s like, let’s figure out what our calling is. And that coaching part of me, me being the vibrant coach, I think that’s huge. And then I love what you said about listening, creating safe spaces, getting honesty by giving honesty and honoring people’s suggestions, reading nonverbals and having a good time. All right, I loved all that. That was beautiful. Okay, now we have our third, our third word that defines leadership for you and that is innovation. All right, so tell me a little bit about innovation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Candy: I’m gonna circle back to a lot of what you just said.
Nicole: Okay.
Candy: If you can free yourself up and listen to suggestions or, again, if about the calling, if you have a passion in your heart to do X thing. And many of us, especially in healthcare or other industries, you know, if we can get out of our head that it’s about us, it’s about the giving back. Boy, we’ve sure learned about that in these last two years haven’t we? So the imagination has also to do with getting quiet. Gosh, I’m saying this to you, but I’m hearing it myself. Really. I’ve been really pondering this about getting away from the the mobile and other tech devices. You know, it’s been a mainstay and a breath of fresh air to have some human interaction during all the lockdowns and the social distancing and everything else.
And like yourself, Nicole, Ms. Nightingale and I went underground here in my video production studio. These last couple of years, I did get up on the road again in mid mid November, which I was so pleased to do. But the the tyranny of the obvious oh, my goodness, I was listening, again, always learning to a podcast and one of the leaders that was on there, and I’m blanking on his name right now, I’m so sorry, talked about the importance of maybe even taking a Shabbat, you know, in, in Jewish tradition, Friday night, through Saturday. That’s family. And that’s worship time. Well, you know, if you’re not religious, okay, maybe this is a time to do some work on mindfulness.
And, you know, I’m a faithful person, I believe in God. And I believe that we all have a purpose in life. Yeah, and that people don’t cross our path just randomly. Now I mean, obviously, you’re walking down a street, and probably there’s a lot of people you’re not going to engage with. But the people that engage with you or that you choose to engage with, I think there may be lessons for self, and there may be lessons for them, that we can always see the good in other people, even when, and I will tell you, it’s we’re taping this during the holiday season. None of us have perfect families. None of us have relatives that we agree with 100% of the time. Some of my relatives are right now, a bit in a battle, if you will, with some ideas that some of the other relatives have around COVID and vaccinations.
And, you know, from my part, I don’t think being hard headed, and being mean spirited, has any place anywhere, certainly not in the family. And we just need to show kindness. And remember, it’s not about us, which brings us to innovation. How do we bring new ideas to the fore if we’re not being quiet with ourselves and listening? And reading? You know, that’s a lot of people. Oh, my goodness, recent survey came out. And I’m blanking on where it was. But I will tell you about a couple of one, said that the average millennial reads, maybe one book a year. Well, why is that? Because everything’s being fed to us by video. And that is pretty dangerous, don’t you think, Nicole?
Nicole: Yeah, well, I would say that maybe some of them too, are using Audible, you know, they’re on the road. They’re riding their bicycle, they’re on their treadmill they might be listening in.
Candy: I hope.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. But I’m a huge reader. And I think that there’s some definite magic in absorbing other people’s ideas. Because that, you know, they not only trigger ideas in your own mind, but you can see how you can make an application. I think a big part of innovation in my mind is also application. You may not, you know, again, I love business. I love doing this work. And you know, there’s an old saying, since you’re a faith based gal, I know you know, this one, there’s nothing new under the sun. And I think that’s true at some level in terms of you know, you take an idea, you get the innovation, you you grow it you make it better. And so the reason why you read books is so you can apply it to your business, which makes your big business bigger makes your business bigger, better, your leadership more effective, those kinds of things. Absolutely. I think reading is a huge key habit. Absolutely.
Candy: John Maxwell said, leaders are learners and learners read. And you know, for a lot of people, this may be a problem. And one of the things that I did during COVID was I enrolled in an online course, to up my reading speed, because that was the thing that was perplexing me. Gosh, I got I’m a bookaphile, you know, I have books everywhere. And right, and I’m always sort of reading 10 at once, but I was frustrated with myself that I wasn’t getting through them as fast or all these articles. You know, as an academic, I’m always reading articles that come through all the time, I’m on so many listservs and everything. Well, upping the reading speed really helped. And there are ways to do it, that and you think, oh, an old dog can’t learn new tricks some people say, but that’s not true. That’s really not true. And I, I only wish that I had done that sort of a course, during the time that I was in graduate school.
Nicole: Right, we got through all of that reading in there for sure. Yeah. And so I want to double back to something you were saying about, you know, getting quiet. You know, I think one of the main another key habit that Candy’s talking about everybody is this idea of having a time to be reflective. So, you know, as also as a faith based gal, you know, I’m gonna sit still my my quiet time every single morning. But inside of that quiet time, you know, I do God stuff. But then inside of that, I also like read an article or a chapter out of a book or whatever. It’s just my place to absorb what the world has to give me.
And I think that’s one way for you to think about reading is like, this author has written these things down as just pure gift, right for you to absorb and put to work in your life. And it’s the magic is where, you know, the application takes place. Now, you’ve written several books, and I looked at them on your website, and don’t miss this. Everybody you can go to, let’s see. Let me get it right. candycampbell.com. And you can see her books there. I want to own ask a little bit. I think people are curious about improv. I mean, we’ve all we have watched what’s your what’s your line? Is that right?
Candy: Whose Line is it Anyway.
Nicole: Whose Line is it Anyway. Yeah, that one. Okay. We all love that one. We’ve watched that, you know, in the reruns, it’s on our Netflix or wherever it is. So improv to improve your leadership team. Will you talk with me a little bit about what’s in the book, and maybe a couple of takeaways for folks? What are some ways we can do improv with our teams?
Candy: You bet? Well, let me just say that this is a second book in the series on improv. And one of the reasons I’m writing four books on improv is because when people first hear about it, just like what you were saying, they think, oh, it’s the TV stuff. And I’m not into that, or it’s all phony, or it must be faked. Whatever they think.
Nicole: No, there’s some serious skills going down with these improv folks. Oh my goodness.
Candy: And, you know, as an actor, what, let me just say, I’m a classically trained actor and I’m old. So when Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone, were writing their books about improv, that they were not in the curriculum just yet. You know, I graduated in the 70s, just before these books were put out. So I didn’t learn about improv. I mean, we did something that you might call that, but it really wasn’t with the principles that were developed later on. And all of these principles were developed based on some cognitive behavioral research on why people or how people learn what they learn, and how do they best learn.
So you can go back to Piaget and mid 1900s, he talked about he focused on children years five and below. And he realized, oh, children learn through story and play. And we all know this. We were all kids, right. And so his work was built upon by Bloom and his group that did a taxonomy that’s very familiar, you know, that pyramid. And I tell people when I’m giving the keynotes or the workshops, that the top of that pyramid is creativity. And right below that is analysis and evaluation. And for those of us in leadership, so often, boy, I’ll tell you, especially in healthcare, but we get in a little tight circle of analyzing and evaluating. And we’re so tight in our left brain, if you will, we don’t get to innovation or creativity. And you say, well, how does that happen? Well, the principles of improv that a lot of people don’t know about are what makes things like the TV show.
And if you go to an improv in person, a theatrical staging, it makes them happen. Whereas if you didn’t have the improv principles, you’d have the sorts of irritating conversations or boring conversations that you might have in everyday life. So my goal, and my workshops are called tear down walls, and build bridges. Because with the relational skills that you learn through the principles of improv, then you are freed up to do the sorts of things that I was mentioning, listen, well read, the physical, nonverbal communication that you’re getting honor, the way we call them offers or the things that other people are saying, and then take action on them build on them. And so the other underpinning principle of this is, it’s not about you. If you can focus, so here’s tip number one. Listening means focus on that other person. Give them you know, put blinders on, if you will. Give them your attention.
We have a lot of exercise to exercises that we work with people on how to do this. And we can do it in a group, or we can do it one on one. But the results are, as one student said to me, it’s so amazing that I know I can use this in my personal as well as my professional life. Because once you learn it, you can’t forget it. It’s like, oh, it’s like, you can’t unring a bell, you know? So the first one is listen, the second principle is instead of saying, oh, well, yes, but, say yes, and. And it may not always be the literal, yes, and. Sometimes it’s an okay, but it’s not okay, but. It’s okay, pause. Think about what that person just said, and how you can build on it. And that’s where the innovation comes.
Nicole: All right, fantastic. So listening is number one. Number two is yes, and. Are there more principles?
Candy: Oh, yes, there are. I’ve outlined about 12 of them in my books. There are another one is make your partner or your friend or the person you’re talking to, make them look good. Now on stage, we say that because we don’t want when somebody comes in and and we call what somebody might say the dialogue, we call that an offer. When someone offers something like Marge, you look tired. And if I was Marge, I would sit if I said if I disavowed that and said what do you mean, I’ve never felt better in my life? That’s saying a yes, but or a no. That’s not honoring the offer that somebody gave me. But if I picked up on it and said, oh, yeah, gee whiz, that baby kept me up crying all night long, then you see, it can go somewhere. Suddenly, we have some sort of relationship. We don’t know yet what it is. My name is Marge, and I have a newborn baby.
And you might look at me and think, wow, she’s too old to have a newborn baby. But who knows why that would happen. And that would be the fun of the scene that we were going to create. Now in real life. If a leader hears something, whether it could be a note from a suggestion box, which I don’t recommend. Mostly people understand that that is just a swift away to the garbage. No, you need to touch, have touch points as one person called it. You need to find a way at least with your leadership team to check in with them on a one to one basis. Maybe it’s just a quick walk during a break, walk around the building or what have you, just to you know, find out how they are.
Now I know a lot of people in leadership and it was told to me when I had my first leadership position, you know, you can’t be friends anymore with XYZ people, because now they report to you. It’s like, oh, wow, I didn’t know what to do. And you know what? I listened to that and thought, okay, what am I going to take away with that. What I take away with that is that our relationship is going to be better, because now they have a boss they can trust. Because instead of transactionally, saying, you must do this, or you must do that now because I’m the boss, in a Lord of the Flies kind of a manner. You know, I got the stick, and you will behave. No, it’s more like, oh, my goodness, I’m so humbled that I’m into this position, I, it’s my goal.
Now, instead of serving the clients, the patients, whoever it is that we’re serving, our customers, if it were. I’m serving you so that the whole, if you think of it as a bus, or a spaceship, or whatever it is that we’re all sort of in in line together, I’m going to drive this ship, so that we all get there, wherever there is, safely. And that means I have to keep my eyes on the road, I have to keep focused. And I have to keep mindful that I’ve got precious cargo, as my dad used to say, in the back. So that’s not lording it over people. That’s a new kind of relationship built on respect, and relationship.
Nicole: I love what you’re saying. Yeah. So the leader can’t be transactional. It’s a relationship built on respect. I love it. Okay, everybody. So Candace’s book, when she talks about improv, there’s a lot going on. The skills about learning to listen, watching for non verbals, honoring the offers people give you, taking action on them, and then saying yes, and, and then make your partner look good. The best thing though, that I that you said that I think is so fantastic that I’m going to play with afterwards. Is you said, keep in mind when you’re working with somebody else, the scene we’re about to create. I love that. Because I mean, the behaviors that come out of what we’re doing right now are going to impact I mean, everything rolls forward, right?
You know, so I can create a fantastic scene with this partner. I’m doing work with my leader, my follower. I’m the follower, they’re the leader, I get to create the scene. And so why not make a scene where where it’s going to be fantastic, and we both look good. I love that. All right. So I would love everybody to go out to Candace’s website or to Candy’s. She told me I could call her Candy. So Candy’s website, CandyCampbell.com, right. And take a look at that. Alright. And so I’ve got one last question for you. We’ve kind of talked about the other questions I sent you previously. But I’m curious if you are mentoring a single special listener right now, what one piece of leadership advice would you give them?
Candy: I would say it’s not about you, that we need to understand our purpose. And when you can get yourself out of the way and figure out what it is that you’re trying to do. What is the purpose? Then we can make some inroads.
Nicole: Absolutely. That’s beautiful. All right. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed being with you today on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. It’s been an absolute delight. Will you share with everybody where they could find you if you work as a leader inside of health care. You’ve got to have Dr. Candy Campbell come and bring with her her sidekick Florence Nightingale so they can talk to you about how to let me get my words right have integrity, insight and innovation. So will you share it with everybody where they can find you?
Candy: Indeed. Ms Nightingale’s website is solely dedicated to the presenters out there, whether they’re theaters or education or healthcare organizations or whoever you are. It’s florencenightingalelive.com. And then the other one candycampbell.com for the improv.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right. Well, it’s been an absolute delight to have you on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. Thank you so much Candy. Goodbye, everybody.
Candy: My pleasure.
Nicole: We’ll see you on the next podcast.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
