Postponement
Suspending judgment and surrendering one’s own critical thinking to further the ideas of another person or a group is the key to what happens on the comedic improv stage. You do not attempt to forcefully assert leadership in the middle of a scene and you’re always in a position to follow someone else’s initiations. Forcing leadership or dominance creates something onstage that is jarring, unprofessional, and usually awkwardly unfunny.
“Suspension of judgment” is an important concept in almost all improv. When it comes to making “Yes, and. . . ” work in a business setting, though, I reframe the concept of “suspending judgment” to “postponing judgment.” In business a suspension seems to have a negative connotation (“My son was suspended from school for toilet-papering the gym”), whereas a postponement implies that the inevitable will eventually come.
Importantly the postponement of judgment is not the abandonment of judgment. Postponing judgment holds back our critical thinking skills for a time and allows for the freest flow of ideas and communication. This is crucial because in the business world “judgment” is often actually prejudgment—ideas are dismissed before they are fully presented or even fully understood. Great ideas will never be available if a culture has been created in which people have resigned themselves to having their ideas dismissed.
When used properly, postponing judgment is not simply a way of letting employees feel they’re being heard; it’s a period that allows for those great ideas and forward-thinking solutions to be freely communicated. To be clear, there are of course moments in any business when a postponement of judgment is not possible; there are times when decisions need to be made by somebody in charge. However, when open communication is the goal, it really is necessary for all of us to take off our critical thinking caps for a predetermined amount of time. Lord knows, there is plenty of time and opportunity for judgment in the workweek. If we can learn how to postpone judgment, we can make sure that the best ideas get heard and the best decisions get made.
