A few months ago I shadowed an acting class focused on scene work. And you might be wondering what the hell I was doing. I thought the same thing. I’m not an actor. I have zero natural talent. And the last acting experience I had was in the prestigious role of a truffula tree in a first-grade rendition of The Lorax. 

My intent, besides self-induced humiliation, was to discover a nontraditional approach to help improve my public speaking skills. I considered standard business speaking courses and groups like Toastmasters, but I felt like those were too formulaic and lacked room for individuality. What I needed practice with was being horribly uncomfortable in front of people and expressing myself. 

The scene-study acting class didn’t stick for me. It was more focused on developing the craft, getting comfortable in front of the camera, and immersion into different characters. I wanted to be more comfortable letting loose and being myself. But it led me to test another angle, improvisation. So I found a local comedy club and signed up for an eight-week beginner’s class.

When I walked into the class, I had no idea what I was getting into. I struggle with forced interaction and workshop-type events. I was expecting the three-hour class to drag by. But time flew by and it turned out to be one of the most important experiences I’ve had this year. 

The first class started with “dancing to yes.” It’s a warm-up exercise where one person starts dancing in the middle of a circle (don’t worry, there’s music) and the rest of the group mirrors their dance moves. Once the person in the middle is ready to move out, they make eye contact with someone else, dance over to them, and jump up at the same time to yell “YES!” before that person takes over. It’s just as traumatizing as it sounds. 

The rest of the class followed a series of exercises around active listening, mirroring body language, committing to your first idea, building on other people’s ideas, and getting comfortable on stage. Each offered important lessons in their own way. And as the weeks progressed we dug into more specifics of the craft. But the bulk of the benefit, for me, was during warmups – a point of emphasis in earlier classes. 

While I’m still improving two months later, I can say I’m a more confident, comfortable public speaker for having taken an introductory improv course. This experience provided an opportunity for accelerated growth that I would have been hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Here are the key lessons I uncovered along the way.

Lesson 1) Embrace your inner dumbass

The thing about improv is that it’s so uncomfortable it’s almost unbearable. But at that point you have to make a decision to either walk out or embrace the fact that you’re going to look like a dumbass and there’s no way around it. 

If you’re too worried about how you look on stage, you’ll freeze up and it’s impossible to cope. You might as well accept it and do your best. Besides, if you can get on stage and play make-believe with other adults, you can do anything on stage – whether a presentation at work or a TED Talk. The only thing more challenging is likely standup. 

Consider how much easier presentations or speeches become when you’re talking about something you actually know, as opposed to making up material on the spot.

But even if you’re a subject matter expert, improv will teach you to let go of your quest for perfection. It’s about trusting yourself and doing your best given the circumstances and the person you are at this moment in time. Besides, imperfection is the very thing that defines live performances.

Most of the time, attempts at perfection just end up fueling your nerves. And it’s impossible to perform your best or encourage yourself to take new risks if you’re a nervous wreck. A more effective, albeit counterintuitive, approach is to tell yourself “who cares” before taking the leap. Improv is a useful practice ground to immerse yourself in this mindset.

The “who-cares” mindset isn’t about apathy, it’s about a relaxed state of concentration. It’s a strangely empowering self-talk that helps navigate fears of judgment, failure, or general anxiety about drawing attention to yourself. It helps lower the stakes before taking a new risk.

Improv will teach you to let go and trust yourself. Once you’re on stage, there’s no other option. The same goes for presentations. Quiet your nerves by accepting the inevitable imperfections.

Lesson 2) Get out of your own head

If you want to be successful in improv, you have to focus the entirety of your attention outside of yourself. One of the best things about improv is that it forces you out of your own head. This is another powerful tool for navigating stage fright.

In everyday encounters, you can predict with relative accuracy which direction most conversations are heading. But this doesn’t work in improv. You can’t rely on cognitive patterns and only listen with part of your attention because you can’t possibly predict the crazy shit that someone is going to say next. 

The unpredictability inherent to improv demands that you listen with every ounce of energy you have. Otherwise you’ll fall on your face and make life miserable for the person next to you. If nothing else, improv will train you to be a better active listener. 

While it might sound counterintuitive, by projecting more attention outside of yourself, you’re able to avoid overthinking and settle in. If I fixate on my internal state (nerves), I only make matters worse. And this is one of the most important concepts that translates from improv to public speaking. 

When leading discussions, I channel more energy outside of myself to concentrate on really understanding what other people are saying. When giving presentations I focus on the expressions and non-verbals of individuals in the audience. These are the tactics I use to the avoid internal spirals that come from projecting too far ahead and becoming tangled in my own thoughts. 

Lesson 3) Create a bias towards action

In my day-to-day, whether writing a new article or building products, the behaviors that create the greatest ROI are reflection and calculated action. Due to the nature of the work I gravitate towards, I rarely get an opportunity to cut loose and do more impulsive activities that improv encourages. 

The discomfort you face in improv forces you to use new paths and explore new connections that have grown rusty or never been used. It rattles your routine and forces you into unfamiliar situations. It’s a far cry from the structured routine of everyday life. And that’s what makes it so beneficial for public speaking – both are unfamiliar environments that you don’t face on a regular basis. 

Improv won’t guarantee you’ll stop being nervous on stage. I doubt this ever goes away. But it does help build a greater familiarity with that feeling. It creates a bias towards immediate action so you’re able to overcome nerves and jump in anyway.

This also translates to the content of your presentation. Rather than sitting back and providing a backstory, improv teaches you to dive straight into the action. That means not just talking about the fire that started at the barn across town, but instead detailing what it was like to be in that barn or holding the firehose trying to put out the flames.

Start in the middle. People crave compelling stories. Don’t bore them with the trivial details that aren’t relevant to your core message. Improv helps train this muscle. But it also translates to how your approach speaking engagements – action first.

—

There’s a certain beauty in making yourself that vulnerable in extreme moments of discomfort. This mindset creates a shift in how you view presentations or public speaking. It’s about being authentic and embracing the imperfections in your delivery. It’s far more effective to give a presentation with a few stumbles that’s honest and real, rather than give something polished that never gets below surface level.

I recently fueled all these lessons into a presentation I gave at Georgia Tech to students in the College of Computing. And it was the best presentation I’ve ever given. It wasn’t perfect and I still have quite a few things to practice. But it was real. I let go, focused on the students, and jumped into stories to illustrate ideas that would resonate with that audience.

During improv a few weeks earlier, I was acting like a grizzly bear trying to track down a toucan than escaped from the zoo. I reminded myself of this experience before getting in front of the room. I knew if I could do that, I could talk about the products I’m building at work and the key lessons I’ve learned in my own career. These were things I actually knew and believed in. 

If you want to get better at crafting logical arguments, try Toastmasters or a public speaking course. But if you want practice facing uncomfortable situations on stage and channeling your individuality, improv is the way to go. It will help accelerate your own skills and provide an unconventional angle that few consider.