Lead Story 主要故事

My introduction to the benefits of improvisational leadership was a very personal one. Back in 2001, in the very first year Business Improv became incorporated, my company was hired to run the afternoon sessions of a four-day intensive executive education program being presented by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Business Improv had already run many successful programs for MBA students and professors and had gotten great feedback from our participants. This particular program presented a new challenge in that it was the first time we were addressing a group of top-tier executives—sixteen VPs, presidents, and CEOs representing large, well-known companies from all around the country.

我对即兴领导的好处的介绍是非常个人化的。早在2001年，即Business Improv成立的第一年，我的公司就被聘请参加杜克大学Fuqua商学院举办的为期四天的强化高管教育课程的下午会议。Business Improv已经为MBA学生和教授运行了许多成功的计划，并获得了参与者的好评。这个特殊的计划提出了一个新的挑战，因为这是我们第一次与一群高层管理人员会面-代表来自全国各地的大型知名公司的16位副总裁，总裁和首席执行官。

We were riding high on the tremendous success of the MBA programs and went into this new one confidently. After our first three hours of workshops on the first of the four-day “Creative Leadership”program, the participants took a dinner break and over the course of their meal decided that Business Improv had failed utterly in providing them with anything useful in either creativity or leadership. These top executives felt that our attempt to blend improvisation techniques with corporate skills was a complete waste of time, and they were not interested in seeing any more of what we had to offer in the remaining three program days to follow.

我们对MBA课程的巨大成功充满信心，并充满信心地参加了这一新课程。在为期四天的“创意领导力”计划的第一个工作坊中，我们进行了前三个小时的培训后，与会人员共进晚餐，并在用餐过程中决定，Business Improv完全无法为他们提供任何对创造力有用的东西或领导力。这些高管认为，我们将即兴技巧与公司技巧相结合的尝试完全是浪费时间，并且他们对接下来的三个计划日中看到的我们所提供的更多内容不感兴趣。

Their decision was no doubt influenced by a number of factors,including what I would later deduce to be a bit of ageism and some culture clash. I was only 29 and considerably more fresh-faced than I am now. I dressed like a very business-casual improviser in khaki pants and a short-sleeve polo shirt and often played awkwardly with my name-tag lanyard when I talked. To a room of gray-haired corporate titans I may as well have been wearing rainbow suspenders and a propeller beanie. I speculate that to them I didn’t look like I had the experience to lead them to any insight. So at the end of day one—a day ironically themed “Suspension of Judgment”—they simply stopped listening and judged, harshly.

毫无疑问，他们的决定受到许多因素的影响，其中包括我后来推断为有点老龄化和某些文化冲突的因素。我当时只有29岁，比现在的面孔新鲜得多。我穿着卡其布裤子和一件短袖polo衫时非常随便的即兴演奏，当我讲话时，我经常用我的名牌挂绳打尴尬。在一个满头白发的企业巨人的房间里，我可能还穿着彩虹吊带和螺旋桨无檐小便帽。我推测对他们来说，我似乎没有丰富的经验来引导他们进行任何见解。因此，在第一天结束时（具有讽刺意味的主题是“审判中止”），他们只是简单地停止了倾听和判断。

 My age and demeanor did not explain the entirety of the failure though. The course was supposed to begin with an introduction to improv techniques (postponing judgment, loosening of inhibitions, and introducing “Yes, and”) and then gradually, over our four days of workshops, make clear how and why these techniques could be relevant in the workplace. That sort of approach worked perfectly well when I was leading a “team” of MBA students through a program. This audience was very different though,and in not letting them know exactly what we were doing, why we were doing it, and where we were going right from the start, I failed them as a leader.

我的年龄和举止并没有解释失败的全部原因。该课程本来应该从即兴技巧的介绍开始（推迟判断，放宽禁忌，并引入“是和”），然后在我们为期四天的研讨会中逐步弄清这些技巧如何以及为何与之相关。工作场所。当我带领MBA学生“团队”通过某个计划时，这种方法非常有效。但是，这些受众截然不同，他们没有让他们确切地知道我们在做什么，为什么这样做以及从一开始就在哪里发展，所以我没有使他们成为领导者。

The morning of the second day of the program my coteacher and  I were fired. Sort of. Rick Staelin, the wise, steady associate dean of executive education at Duke, informed us that Business Improv’s services would no longer be required in the four-day creative leadership program. This was a horrible professional gut punch—the first time I had ever been terminated from a real job. It was an awful feeling that something I had taken so seriously and had put so much effort into could result in rejection. However, I say I was “sort of ” fired because Rick Staelin engaged me in a way that I have come to recognize as a tremendous life-changing moment of leadership.

节目第二天的早晨，我和我的老师被解雇了。有点。杜克大学高管教育的明智，稳定的副院长里克·斯泰林（Rick Staelin）告诉我们，为期四天的创意领导力计划将不再需要Business Improv的服务。这真是糟糕透顶的职业直觉，这是我第一次被失业。令人感到可怕的是，我如此认真对待并付出大量努力可能会导致拒绝。但是，我说我之所以被“解雇”，是因为里克·斯泰林（Rick Staelin）以一种我已经认识到的巨大改变领导生命的方式与我互动。

Instead of instructing us to pack our bags and get the hell out of the lovely R. David Thomas Center on the Duke campus, Rick told my coteacher and me to stay. He informed us that we would be paid for our time at the rate we had agreed on in our contract with Fuqua,and instead of facing the C-levels again we were to spend the next three days rethinking and revamping and redesigning our program.

里克没有指示我们收拾行装，从杜克大学校园里可爱的R. David Thomas中心下地狱，而是​​告诉我的老师和我留下。他告诉我们，我们将按照与Fuqua签订的合同中约定的时间来支付我们的时间，我们不花钱再面对C级员工，而是要在接下来的三天中重新考虑，改进和重新设计我们的计划。

We were grateful for that chance to redeem ourselves and consequently worked our tails off over those next three days. We gutted the program,transforming every aspect of it—from preprogram communication to dress attire to our language to our exercises and course materials to our learning outcomes and business links to our wrap-up discussions—and ending up with an immensely improved program that is still the basis for all our multiday executive education intensives. Rick met with us on the final day to talk through the changes, and what resulted was a new program for Duke Exec Ed: a three-day, Business Improv intensive called “The Workshop in Managerial Improvisation.”

我们很高兴能有这个机会来赎回自己，因此在接下来的三天里竭尽全力。我们对程序进行了彻底的修改，从预程序沟通到着装，语言到练习，课程材料，学习成果以及与业务总结的业务联系，都进行了彻底的改进，最终改进了程序仍然是我们所有全日制高管教育密集型课程的基础。瑞克在最后一天与我们会面，讨论了这些变更，结果为Duke Exec Ed提供了一个新计划：为期三天的商业即兴培训密集课程，称为“管理即兴研讨会”。

More than just influencing the content of our program, this experience was a huge lesson to me in the power of positive failure—a lesson made possible by Rick’s improvisational approach to his own leadership role. On a strictly strategic level we had not delivered to his “customers” what we had promised, and he had every right to send us packing without pay. Rick was thoughtful though and saw enough potential in what we were doing to take a small risk and invest some time and money in us. He provided us an opportunity to fail and challenged us to learn from that failure. We answered that call to action.

不仅仅是影响我们计划的内容，这种经历对我来说是一次积极失败的巨大教训-里克（Rick）对他自己的领导角色的即兴方法使这一教训成为可能。在严格的战略层面上，我们没有将我们所承诺的交付给他的“客户”，他有权将无偿包装寄给我们。不过，瑞克（Rick）考虑周到，并在我们所做的事情中看到了足够的潜力，可以冒险并在我们身上投入一些时间和金钱。他为我们提供了失败的机会，并挑战我们从失败中学习。我们回答了号召性用语。

We created a much better program on every level and completely redefined my company’s (and my personal) mission. The real kicker came a year later when one of the executives who had watched us die our long, painful “Creative Leadership” death returned to Fuqua for one of our three-day, Managerial Improv intensives and ended up raving about how much he had learned in those three days.

我们在每个级别上创建了一个更好的程序，并完全重新定义了我公司（以及我的个人）的使命。真正的踢球发生在一年后，当时一位看着我们去世的高管死于我们痛苦而漫长的“创意领导力”之死，回到了富夸，这是我们为期三天的管理即兴知识密集型课程之一，并最终对他学到了多少东西赞不绝口在那三天内。

My point is that it took enlightened, improvisational leadership to turn a rough failure into an eventual success. Our terminated pro�gram was Business Improv’s very first step into executive education,and if we had been summarily dismissed by Rick I’d say the chances of my company’s going on to become what it has become would sit somewhere between nil and no way. Because of Rick’s leadership in that moment of crisis, not only has Business Improv had a chance to thrive; we’ve also been able to maintain one of our strongest, longest�lasting academic partnerships. Today, as a leader of my own business,I endeavor to create the same opportunities for the people I work with that Rick created for me.

我的观点是，开明的，即兴的领导才能将粗略的失败转化为最终的成功。我们终止的计划是Business Improv迈入高管教育的第一步，如果我们被Rick暂时解雇，我想说我公司继续发展的机会将介于零之间，绝不可能。由于在危机时刻里克（Rick）的领导下，Business Improv（商业改进）不仅有成长的机会，而且我们还能够维持我们最强大，最长久的学术合作伙伴关系之一。今天，作为我自己企业的领导者，我努力为与Rick为我创建的人一起创造同样的机会。