Book Recommendation: Improvise This

This week I signed up for a public speaking class. I have been a public speaker and group facilitator for 18 years, so I like to think of this as building on my strengths, but the idea of watching myself on video-tape still has me a bit timid to join a professional speakers group.

Another risky and therefore powerful speaker-development tool is improvisation. While practicing ‘improv’ is the best way to learn it, a great book on improvisation methods is “Improvise This”, by Bergen, Cox and Detmar. Improvisation is a valuable skill for building listening skills in contrast to what-I-want-to-say-next skills. Importantly improvisation builds in conversational segues that encouraging dialogue rather than shut it down. “Improvise This” provides a lot of great example as to how improv improves business communication.