Improv Is the Resilience Skill Leaders Are Missing

What if the skill we need most in an AI-driven world isn't another technical skill? What if it's something deeply human, something AI can imitate but never truly own? Today on the Flourishing Edge podcast, I'm joined by Jordana, whose work sits at the intersection of improvisation, leadership, creativity, and human possibility. And her message is both timely and energizing. Humans are not just a resource in the age of AI, to be replaced. Humans are the source, the source of creativity, the source of relationships, the source of meaning, the source of everything AI up till date has learned from. In this conversation, we explore why uncertainty does not have to make us shrink, how improvisation can help us respond to the scene we are actually in, and why play may be one of the most underrated leadership capacity of our times. This episode is an invitation to stop trying to become more machine-like and start remembering and mastering the human capabilities that make you irreplaceable. Welcome to The Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host, and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, changemakers, and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science-based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live, work, and lead with more joy, health, love, and meaning. Jordana, I'm so excited to welcome you to the Flourishing Edge podcast, my dear friend.

Oh, thank you, Ashish. I'm so excited to be here and just the work that you do and everything that you bring to all of your listeners. I'm excited for our conversation today.

I watched your TEDx talk and the concept of improvisation is so key to help individuals, teams, organizations flourish. The world is changing. Faster than ever before. We are— the uncertainty, the volatility, the ambiguity of what shows up every day has never been higher. And so, you know, we can either take that uncertainty and go into a threat response of, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Or we can really, you know, hone into this core skill of improvisation that you talk about. And it's especially true in the world where, you know, AI has just You know, massively kind of everybody's talking about AI. No conversation anywhere is without AI. And so, you know, I love this thesis and I think that's why I wanted to have you actually as our guest. But I wanna start with a big, you know, a big idea, you know, and this idea that really struck to me that you just said is humans aren't the resource, we are the source. And so let's start with unpacking that. About what do you mean by that and why that really matters.

I've spent my career in various organizations. I've spent two-thirds of my career in talent development, all of my career in leadership. And one of the things that I'm continuously seeing, especially as the world is changing right now, we've seen it through layoffs, we've seen it through AI, is people feel more and more like a resource. At work.

Yes.

Like they're a number, like they are a cost center, and that we are no longer human beings. And it's, it's fascinating to see what's changed. Uh, you know, 20 years ago, layoffs were the last resort. They are the thing that happens because we had no other choice. It was about underperformance or, or really when teams or products were going away. And now it feels like it's the first thing that's being done, and there's no rhyme or reason as to who's being let go. It doesn't matter about loyalty, performance, et cetera. And I was thinking about, um, a lot of the recent articles that are coming out about companies seeing, oh, we've invested in AI, and oh, whoops, suddenly we have to hire back a lot of the people left, or oh, we are spending way too much on this and we can't actually measure outcomes, or it's not doing what we want it to do. And I reflected on why is that? And I realized, you know, humans and that idea of this source, where did AI come from? It came from us. It's literally scouring our knowledge, our creation, and identifying the patterns to push forward what it thinks makes sense based on all of the world's knowledge. It doesn't exist without us, but more deeply, certainly AI is a tool and it's a resource like any system, but when you actually look at what drives business outcomes, what drives world outcomes, none of that happens without people. Our people drive our business forward, drive our world forward. People are customers of our business, consumers of our business. And if we don't have people as the source of everything we design for, build with, then it all falls apart. And I think that's what we're seeing with some of these orgs. And what are people the source of, you know, the outcomes are the end result, but how do we get there? Through relationships, through creativity, through strategic thinking, through judgment, through intuition, through improvisation. And these are the things that AI can't do, at least right now.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's so true. I mean, look, we have covered this topic so much on this podcast. I mean, this is the reason why I, 3 years ago, left McKinsey after 17 years to really go all in on this topic because I was seeing that, you know, while over the last 100 years from kind of the Ford Model T days, we had really learned to optimize our physical assets, when it came to our people, we had absolutely not learned how to optimize that. And most people did think about people as resources. Rather than sources of innovation, sources of creativity. And we have, on this podcast, covered so many examples of companies that, despite the pressures, chose to do something different. You know, we have talked about Barry Wehmiller. We had our current energy secretary, he was the CEO of Liberty Energy, on our podcast. And we talked about how at Liberty, even when the demand fell by 70% on the business, He didn't lay off a single person.

Yeah.

You know, there were companies in COVID like Hilton and Hyatt who chose to not lay off people. Panera, who did something very, very differently. You know, we've talked about Barry Wehmiller, we've talked about Costco. And this is, there are definitely so many companies out there that choose to do a different approach and they do it and show that consistently they drive, you know, 2 to 3.5% alphas because they take care of their people. And so I think this idea is really important. I think it is even more important today because the short-term play is to think about your people as cost or to say, hey, I need to invest in technology. How am I gonna keep my budget the same? So let me let go of a lot of people and the people who are left will figure it out. But I do think it's a huge, huge mistake. I just wrote about this earlier this week to say, You know, yes, you can use AI to drive productivity, but nobody cut their way to prosperity. The only way we actually get to prosperity is by growing and scaling our people. So companies are thinking about this, but I think there is the notion of also people are actually starting to think of themselves as, you know, we are replaceable. I don't know. They're approaching this world that we are moving into, where AI is here to stay, with so much uncertainty, with so much fear and friction. So talk to me a little bit about what are we getting wrong about uncertainty?

First off, that it's new.

Yes.

I think that's the biggest thing. And I mean, it's on the bingo card. How many times have you heard the word unprecedented? If I had a dollar for each one, I'd be retired right now. But every single day is uncertain. No two days are alike. No two conversations are alike. No two moments are alike. You can never predict what happens tomorrow. Even with weather forecasting, it, it doesn't happen exactly as we think. Uncertainty is actually the constant state. And I think that's one of the mistakes that we've been using. I mean, the VUCA language has been around in organizations for decades at this point, but we're talking about it like it's something that's net new when It is the constant state. I mean, the universe is evolving constantly. The universe is changing constantly. That actually is the core certainty of all of it. So I think that's the first thing that we get wrong. The second thing that I think we get wrong, and it's interesting because I'm going to bring it back to the AI conversation and what you just said, is we see— and look, it's that negativity bias of us as human beings. We go to the worst-case scenario. We don't actually see uncertainty for what it is, which is unlimited possibility. And we tend to focus on uncertainty with that fear, or we focus on it of like, what do I need? What do I need to fix? What do I need to hoard? What do I need to improve upon in order to be okay through it? And the truth is we're gonna be better through it when we focus on our strengths. And figure out ways to amplify that. So, even when I talk about human beings as the source, I think one of the misses that as people using AI or as companies using AI, we're thinking about it all wrong. We're thinking about it as a tool to replace tasks that we hate or, or to save us time, or we're thinking about it as a personal assistant. But when you think about it instead of how can we leverage AI to help amplify and sustain the unique strengths, the unique power I have, help me make those possibilities that I see real. All of a sudden, that's a completely different mindset, and that's completely different outcomes. And I think that's one of the things that we're just completely getting wrong with how we face it.

Yeah, I love it. You know, I think on the first one, when you said uncertainty, Every moment is different, right? It brings back to some of the core foundations of mindfulness, right? The only moment we have is this one. The past is just a memory, right? The past is history. The future is a mystery. Every moment is a mystery and all we have is, is this moment now. And that's why it's called a present. That is what we have. And, uh, you know, so many texts talk about you can walk through the river, but neither are you the same and nor is the river the same. And so yeah, this has been around for years and years. The pace is accelerating, but we have, as humans, constantly navigated through changing times, changing situations, et cetera, et cetera. And it's nothing to be, you know, we can say, oh my God, and go into this panic mode. So not true. And I love your second point, right? It's the same with stress. Like, so this nervous system response that we get when we're about to perform on a stage. We can use that to say, oh my God, I'm going to screw up and I'm just not ready. Or we can use that to say, my body is preparing me to kind of be at my sharpest and deliver what I'm asked to. So how we choose to see the world is differently. And if we really think about and hold on to that notion really deeply that I am the source, nothing is going to replace me because the ability to make sense and use AI as just another intelligence, another ally, as a replacement can, can unlock so much. I just listened to this book over the holidays. I don't know if you've listened to it, but it really spoke to me. It's a book called Co-Intelligence.

Mm, it's on my list.

I don't know if you've—

it's on my list.

It's amazing. So I just finished listening to it and it had a very simple example, right? Which is so powerful around this, what you're just talking about. So if I today say to you, hey, you have 1 minute, what are— and you're an improv, so this is a great experiment together. You have 1 minute. In how many different ways can you use a toothbrush other than brushing?

You want me to come up with some ways?

60 seconds.

You got it.

Let's go.

All right. 60 seconds. I can pet my nails, or I can, I can scrub my nails. I can use it to pet my dog. I can use it to make a drumbeat. I could use it to brush one strand of hair. I guess that's brushing, but not toothbrushing. I could use it to jab somebody away. I could use it to turn on a light switch. I can use it to throw it at somebody. I could use it to see how far apart my hands can go with, uh, while keeping it up. I could use it as, uh, if I don't want to touch my steering wheel or my pedal, I can use it as a mechanism for that. I could use it as a really ineffective fork. I could use it as a musical instrument where I put it in my teeth and, and blow on it. Uh, I could put it across my eyes so I could see the world from a very different type of perspective. I could wear it as a, as a nice little accessory in my hair. I could use it to scrape off dirt from the inside of wooden panels. I can use it to brush off a record.

So those were like, those were like 30 ideas, right? Think about, and you know, almost like an idea every 2 seconds. And I think the only reason it's that is because you were speaking and so it takes time to speak rather than to think.

Yeah.

Great example, right? 30 in all these, all these different ways. Well, you could generate 200 of them in 20 or 30 seconds from AI, but that doesn't mean that the AI is better than Jordana because those ideas are more— many of those ideas might actually not be viable or kind of repeat of itself, et cetera. We all know that. And so again, as a human, if we just said, wow, One approach is, I can only generate 30, this can generate 200, so if I have to brainstorm, I should just use that. Or this idea that, hey, even if I'm not so creative, or if something exists that can actually do that for me, how do I actually do that quickly and then really use my things? It might show me something that I didn't even think about, a use case I didn't even think about. How cool is that?

Yeah.

And so I think that's what you talk about, which is this notion of the possibilities that exist today as us humans. We are more— I think we have been— we have the ability to amplify what we have ever been able to do. If you were not as creative, you can generate a lot of creativity ideas. If you could only, you know, look at 15 pieces of knowledge and hold it, now you can access 350, 400. And so you can either use that and say, Wow, I'm doomed. Or you can say, oh my God, isn't this amazing? If this is what this can do, how can I leverage that to become an even more version, more creative, more prolific, more analytical? I never know how to code, but I can code. And I think I love that idea that you have, which is uncertainty has never not been here. And second is possibility-based thinking, abundance-based thinking versus scarcity-based, this thing is, is what makes the difference in whether we thrive in it or not. Yeah.

And the piece that I'd add to that too, which I think you just so astutely showed, was get playful with it. Every experiment that we've ever done has an element of playfulness with it. Exploration and playfulness are, are close cousins. How you play, how I play, that looks very different, but it's this idea of building, trying, learning without the fear of what happens if it goes wrong, like being willing to experiment and try. And even that brainstorming exercise, like, yeah, there are times when I'm like, oh, that sounds like a duplicate of something. Who cares? Get it all out.

Exactly.

Who knows what will happen? And because we're approaching current state from fear, it's preventing us from being playful in the moments. And that's where the beauty lies. And that's where the humanity lies, because Playfulness is part of being alive.

Absolutely. So that was an improvisation because I never told you you're gonna be on the, you know, in the limelight. 60 seconds, generate ideas. So look, I think improvisation is a key part, as you highlight, right? That allows us, it's the core human skill we have. It's something that helps us navigate uncertainty. So tell us a vivid story. You know, you had so many that you've talked about, but tell us about a vivid story about how improvisation helped you, that skill of improvisation has helped you on the stage and off the stage.

So I performed for over a decade with a troupe called Comedy Sports. It's kind of like Whose Line Is It Anyway? For people who aren't familiar with it, there's different troupes all over the country. So just to kind of paint a picture of what improv looks like, you get up on stage, you're doing a 90-minute show. It's completely unscripted. Everything's made up on the spot. The audience is different. Who you're performing with is different. Different too. Sometimes you've just met them and you ask for a suggestion from the audience. So I might ask something like, what's something that's in your garage right now? And one show you can have somebody say a 1957 Chevy Corvette. Another show it might be my grandmother's dentures. I don't know why they've had all their grandmother's dentures in the garage, but they could. And from that you make up a scene. Now, I've been in a show where I get a really, really, really great idea for a scene. I tag somebody next to me, they jump up, I'm about to share something, and all of a sudden they speak and the idea I had is completely gone because they've changed the direction. And now in that moment, I have a choice. Do I go with what they've given me because they've, they've set up this new reality, or do I get frustrated and figure out a way to wedge my idea in any way or block their idea from happening? And when we do the second, The scene fails and the show fails because it feels disjointed. We're not working together, and that's actually creating friction moving forward. When I move with it, then I'm building on, I'm co-creating with the reality that's there, and that's literally every single improv scene. So how does that show up for me in the workplace? Well, it was interesting to hear your, your stories about COVID because I was running learning and development from, for an e-commerce and swag company. When COVID hit and overnight we lost 85% of our business. And our CEO made, um, the difficult choice not to lay people off, but to furlough the majority of the company for a 3-month period while we kind of figured out how we could survive with the goal to bring everybody back. I was one of the people that was impacted. So in that moment, I could be frustrated by the fact that I'm not gonna have a job for 3 months, or I could accept that this is really what's happening. I can't control where COVID's gonna go, what's gonna happen with this, but what can I control in the moment? Well, there's— I'm the learning and development person. I have expertise in positive psychology and wellbeing, and I know that this is one of those moments that is significantly going to impact people. So instead, how can I use my strengths? How could I co-create? How can I build something that's going to help people even when I'm struggling myself? And In that time, I wound up creating some resources, both for a wellbeing toolkit for people who were being furloughed like me, not only thinking about the basic needs resources, but how they could also find ways to create purpose, build relationships, learn new skills during this time. Kudos to you. Thank you. And that also helped me, like, you know, thinking about that for myself and what I needed in this time. And then for the 15% of the people who were remaining, I put together some resources for them and for their leaders about how do you support people who are navigating through this and who might have that survivor's guilt because they're, they're there while the people that they work with are furloughed or who might be fearful of what's going on. How can you create moments of connection in a time when we can't physically be as together, how can you create moments of purpose, moments of recognition, moments of high emotion and high stress environments, even when I'm not there to support you?

Yeah.

So I basically packaged myself rather than fighting back against the reality or hoarding my knowledge. And 3 months later, everybody got, came back because the team that was remaining had a rallying cry. To bring everybody back and pivot our business. They completely pivoted our business. Um, we had gone major, um, from the majority of kind of printing things like t-shirts and sweatshirts to, we were the first place that was selling masks that, that weren't, uh, the, I forget the name of it, but the, was it PVC or something like that?

Yeah.

That weren't needed in the medical community. We were the, we were the first ones kind of turning masks into, from like t-shirts and changing to that. We wound up creating customized masks and we're one of the first groups to do that. And that came from human innovation and improvisation. Like they were an incredible display of what we've been doing, we can't do. And either again, we can fight against that, or we can try and claw and survive, or we can say what's needed in the world right now. What do we uniquely bring and how can we band together to make that happen? So that we can not just save the business, but propel forward and bring everybody back in the process.

Yeah, I mean, that's so beautiful. Well, first of all, kudos. That's amazing, you know, in that moment. And I'm so glad for all of the positive psychology research and the studies that you did, because it's a positive psychology move, right? When we give, we receive so much more. So often when we face adversity, our natural response is take care of myself, go smaller, what can I do? And I think instead, if we can find the courage and the space to open up to others, I think what we find is a way that it actually comes back so much more. And even just, even if it doesn't come back, the act of giving kind of fuels us. Yeah.

And this was one of the core things about this community of this like organization. They even created a Facebook group where we stayed together while we were apart just to connect. Amazing.

Your story on the stage also kind of highlighted for me, you know, when you're in a group session, when you're meeting, right, in a meeting and you have an idea and somebody has another idea, you often see this play, which is, I'm gonna actually give a different idea rather than I'm gonna go with what the idea is, explore in the detail and go forward. So I think I can see so many of the applications of the— and this mindset of build rather than kind of push my idea. So I wanna kind of go into that a little bit. You have these 4 beautiful principles, how to briv improv into your Your first principle you highlighted, and I wanna get into that with you, is you say, "Play to the scene you're in, not the one you wanna be in." So, let's talk about how leaders and team can practice that right now, and what does that actually mean?

So, I mean, that is about identifying the reality that we're in. So, we focus so much when we're thinking about change, right? We're focusing on the outcomes or the end state that we're trying to go to. But The only thing that we can control is ourselves in the present moment and really anchoring to, okay, what's going on right now? What's possible right now? I see so many leaders and teams focus on the past or the future instead of the present. And when we are focusing on the past, we're rubbing up against something that is just a place of friction because we, it's in the everything else we can't control or we can't influence it. And when we're focusing so much on the future, especially when it's hazy, if we, if we don't see what we can control or influence in the moment, we're not going to get to that future, or that future is gonna come with more urgency and more reactivity. So I think that's something that leaders can do more often is actually calibrating and creating the context of what is the reality that we're in right now? What are things that are outside of our control? Control, what don't we know, and within that, what is in our control that we can meet that moment? So going back to that organization I worked for, we couldn't control that COVID was here. We couldn't control that people weren't going to be getting together. We couldn't control that our main source of revenue was going away. What could we control? We could look at how many staff that we still had remaining. Space to operate, what we had available in our facilities and our resources, and where there were needs in the world right now and how we might fulfill them. And I think some of what you described in kind of what happens with a lot of that brainstorming, and you're spot on, I see that in meetings all the time where people go in another direction. We don't set the context upfront of this is what we can influence, this is what we can't. This is what our reality is right now. This is what it isn't. So then when somebody's pushing against that, that's when we start to go, no, well, we can't do that. Or we try and defend because we haven't painted the picture of the reality we're in. Now, it doesn't mean you have to like it. So accepting your reality, playing to the scene you're in, just means that you're accepting what's there and you're moving forward with it instead of fighting against it. You don't have to like where your organization is investing money. You don't have to like that you're getting a bunch more change on you. You don't have to like that you're moving teams. You don't have to like that you're be being required to use one AI when you prefer another one. But if you just get frustrated by that and fight back against that, all that's gonna create is pain for you. Instead, if you go, okay, what is the reality in here? I'm being I'm being told I have to use that AI. Okay, with that in mind, how do I move forward? How do I build on that?

Yeah, it's really about accepting, truly about accepting, right? Play the scene you're in is truly accept the reality as it is right now.

Yes.

And from that place, start to think about what's your next step rather than spend so much of your energy trying to, you know, I don't like it, who's to blame, why did this happen? That doesn't get us anywhere. But instead, you know, we are all together. Let's improvise. Here's what's been done. How do we actually make something on it? And I think it's a beautiful principle. I think that's so needed today, especially as we are dealing with economic uncertainty, all of the different components and how fast even AI— it's not even technology adoption anymore. Technology is changing so fast that this notion of truly accepting and stop fighting reality can be a big unlock. Yeah. So I love that. The second idea that stayed with me in your framework, Jordana, is this notion of leading with our strengths and most importantly, learning from the mistakes without carrying the weight of them. So tell us a story where this key principle came to life for you in your, in your work or in your improv life?

So it's shown up for me in, in a lot of different places. Look, I mean, as humans, we play these bloopers in our head over and over again, right? Of, I should have said that, I should have done this. I've performed probably hundreds of improv shows in my life, and I have absolutely hit duds and actually talk about one that is this— I, I still have a visceral memory and a visceral response of it, of the strongest like flub I ever had at an improv show. We were closing out our theater, so we brought back anybody who had been a part of the troupe who wanted to perform.

Mm-hmm.

There, there were literally 50 of us on stage. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah. And we did a game where we tell clever puns. Now I'm not a clever person. But I was like, ooh, there's, you know, the 50 people. I'm thinking about something funny. I'm gonna jump out and tell a joke. And it completely fails. And I had to remain on stage as the people behind me continued and listen to their laughter while replaying over and over again how I just had silence. Now the challenge is in 2 minutes I'm getting up and we're starting a new scene. And if I'm carrying that moment, I can't be present anymore because I'm replaying it. I'm rewinding and replay, rewinding and replay, rewinding and replay. And the lesson that I learned from that, so I kind of parked it in that moment. I said, all right, I'm gonna shake that off because we have a next scene and that scene no longer matters. We're starting over again. And if this scene is successful, the audience isn't gonna remember what just happened. The learning from that though was I'm gonna be more effective as an improviser when I'm playing to my strengths, not trying to, you know, jump up and, and do something cuz there's a moment where I wanna spotlight or because I wanna just experiment with my weaknesses. And my strengths as an improviser are being expressive, being emotional, creating characters, being physical. They don't lend themselves to a game where there's a pun. They lend themselves to where there's scene work or where there's movement. And I really should have allowed that moment. To, instead of taking up airtime, provided a space to support and let others move forward and carry through whose strength that is and preserve my own for the moments that matter. And that, that shows up in teamwork all the time, you know, whether for whatever reason, whether it's you're trying to control the direction of, of X, Y, and Z, especially as a leader, we have this tendency, we have to be in the weeds and we have to take on all the parts. But no, actually the best leaders are those who create teams full of people with strengths that complement each other and know how to bring in the right person at the right time. And I mean, I'm, I've been a Gallup Strengths Coach for over a decade. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of the strengths-based psychology research, and it's always been fascinating to me how research again and again and again highlights that when we focus on our strengths more than our weaknesses, now it's not a 100 to 0, think of it more like an 80/20. We are 3 times more likely, if not more, some of the Galt research recently says it's even higher, to be, to report a higher, a, a high quality of life, high satisfaction in life, and 6 times more likely to be engaged in our jobs. Yet when you look at where we spend time in the workplace, It's on the weaknesses. It's feedback about what went wrong. It's performance reviews about what needs to be improved. Even the word development plan is focused on what needs to be improved, or growth is often about a fix versus an acceleration of what's working. Retrospectives, M&As, like, yes, there's, there's a little, or M&Ms, there's a little bit of Yeah, for sure. That, but I mean, it's mostly fix. And then who do we spend our most time on? Underperformers. As leaders, how do we manage underperformance to get them at baseline versus how do we enhance the strengths of the people that are doing really great work? How do we bring out more of our high performers? How do we create that innovation?

This conversation is brought to you by Happiness Squad, where we help leaders build new mindsets, new habits, and transform their ways of working to truly flourish. If you're ready to unleash the untapped human potential in your organization and operate at your best, come visit us at happinesssquad.com and start your journey today. This notion on learning from mistakes brings two things to life for me. I think one was Ted Lasso saying, be a goldfish.

Yes.

The fact that goldfish is the happiest creature on earth because it has almost no memory. But you know, for even those who are not goldfish, you can say, yeah, great. It was funny. It was great. But that's not the reality. I'm not a goldfish. You know what, what stays with me is this talk that I listened to by Roger Federer. So Roger has won 80% of his matches. But he highlighted the fact, he said, but do you know that I actually only won 54% of the points? Wow. So even the greatest, one of the greatest tennis players, half of the time lost a point. And he said the difference between me, you know, between somebody who actually would not win that many matches versus me was I could with every point I lost, go back to center, and that was gone. And I could focus on what I could do better and where do I go now, right? So this notion again of what am I good at, what are my strengths, that happened. I'm not gonna carry that into the match, he said, because if I did that, then it would just be a downward spiral.

Yes.

And I think so this is a very real concept and I think it is something that we can keep front and center and we can take from impro— No improvisation, a 90-minute would happen, everything doesn't happen the way you want. And if you think everything is a failure, or if you don't let yourself express about what will people think, is this a good idea or not, I think we won't have as much fun in an improv as we would. And that's so true for work too, as you highlight, you know, allowing ourselves, not self-censoring ourselves, really recognizing the strengths. In fact, if we wanna innovate, we have to fail.

Yes.

And, and, and we have to think about and turn that failure into a learning. So I love this point as well. So your first one was play the scene you're in.

Mm-hmm.

The second is around learn from your mistakes, lean into your strengths. What's the third principle if we have to really leverage the power of improv?

Co-creation. It's— so improv isn't something that we do alone. Even in, I, and I've been on shows where I've been the only one on stage, but I'm still co-creating with the audience. So, so true. Everybody's bringing, yeah, you're getting a suggestion, they're bringing you an idea. You're also sometimes bringing audience members on stage. And the thing, the thing I really love the most about improv is you get real-time feedback and guess what? You can immediately apply that. In fact, you have to. Because if you don't, the audience is gonna feel like you're not paying attention to them.

Yes.

And you don't care, right? Because we're building it together. It's not a play where I've had a script. It's not a standup show where I've had rehearsed jokes. We're building this thing together. So improv is all about this idea of co-creation. We're not doing it alone. And that's true in our workplaces. We rarely, even, even if you work in a job where it's yourself behind a computer every single day, you are generally interacting with other people. You're thinking about customers you're serving, partnering with other teams. It doesn't matter. And we're gonna be way more effective when we come at it from an angle of co-creation. And that's true with the tools that we use. You know, you, the comment you brought up about brainstorming, I see brainstorming failing all the time. And there's so, like, the power when it works well of You bring an idea, somebody else brings an idea, and suddenly you riff off of that, and together you wind up creating something that would've never been possible on your own.

Yep.

That's what co-creation is, but it requires that mindset of building and accepting and using those strengths. These all kind of ladder together on what the other person provided. One of my favorite things, if, if anybody kind of wants to take this away as an exercise that you can bring into your team, that will also help with the last point about learning from mistakes. We, instead of starting a brainstorm from the lens of what ideas do we have to make X possible, start with what are some of the worst ideas that we could come up with to do this thing? Like, let's just literally go as bad as you can possibly think of. What are the worst ideas to solve for this? And when you do that, it actually takes the pressure off a little bit of coming up with really good ideas. It's fun to see what comes out of it.

Yeah.

And people are actually more likely to riff and build on and co-create by going, yeah, and what if you added this? And what if you added this? And what if you added this? Instead of saying, well, we can't do that because of X. That stops co-creation. And you're gonna learn from that. There's gonna be some real truth and real nuggets that come from that brainstorming session about what doesn't work. So that you can then go into, okay, if these are the things that we can't do, what are the things that we can? And how do we bring that same mindset of building off each other forward?

Yeah, I love that. Right. And, and co-creation is so critical. I can see how if you, if you just go, you can't co-create if I wanna force my idea on you. I have to be able to take your idea and build on top of that. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. And we have to do it from a place of where we are.

Mindfulness.

You have to be present. And I love this idea of like, if you tell somebody, hey, what are 3 ideas? Give me 3 of your best ideas. I think you can put people into like, oh my God, like, I don't know what's the best idea. My idea might be a stupid idea. And like, now I'm gonna think I, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. But I love this exercise of, hey, list 10 of the worst ways in which we can go solve this, or 10 of the worst ideas. And if you put that out there, maybe what you'll find is some of those ideas are actually not that bad. You might think, and it might push the envelope because they're not gonna be in the norm of ideas everybody's thinking. It's gonna be so out there. And maybe a part of this idea and part of this idea and a part of this idea then come together to create something magical that actually really, you know, achieves a 10x impact rather than a 30% better, 1.3. So I'm running a session with a team next week, and I will definitely I'll take this and implement, and I'll follow up and let you know how that goes. And you know what I love about your thing is like, hey, if you are by yourself and you're kind of working this, you know, you said like, I'm on a stage, I have nobody, I use the audience. Well, today, if you're working at your desk, the beauty is we actually also have all of these AI models that we can leverage as unbelievable sources and co-creation partners.

Yes.

So can you talk about an example of how AI— you've used AI in your work to complement your strength or actually surface something that might be a blind spot for you?

I use AI for this all the time. And, you know, so one of the things, like, you brought up before about how AI can access research and read through things so much more quickly than I could ever. I'm an avid reader. I love to connect the dots. These are things that I'm passionate about. So I actually created an AI agent that every single week surfaces 5 new research articles related to the themes that I'm most passionate about, pulls them for me, shares why it pulled them for me in relation to what I think about and what I'm passionate about, some of the key themes from it, and some of the questions that I could sit with and reflecting on my own work and what I do. That is amplifying a strength that I have because it's helping to bring things to the forefront that tie to my way of thinking, tie to my way of speaking so that I can then use that as a spark that I propel forward. Then on the flip, one of the things I struggle with, I struggle with organization, like a lot of creative folks, and I've tried to use a lot of different tools. Nothing has ever stuck. And I realized it's because I'm trying to mold my brain to an out-of-the-box tool instead of designing something that's going to work for me. So I actually built my own within an AI agent project management for myself, like my whole business management artifact and platform. But I didn't just give it a list of do this, do this, do this, do this. I actually engaged it in co-creation and conversation. I said, this is what I'm looking for help with. This is what I've tried in the past that hasn't worked. Here's where I'm strong. Here's where I need help. Here's some of the reasons why those things in the past didn't work. And, and here's some things that I know about my brain, but I recognize that there are things I might not know. One, tell me based on, you know, across my context, what you've seen from me so far that you might spot about me that I don't realize. 2, make recommendations and why, but most importantly, ask me questions. Ask me questions that's going to help strengthen the design of this so that we can then build. And it did. And then it wasn't just a set and forget. I iterated it. So, I tried, I tested it, talking about experimentation. I tested, ooh, I don't like this, this is better, went back and forth, and I shared the context why. But along the way, I saw this again, not just as a task distribution, as a partner, and as something that I'm not just creating for me, but I'm co-creating with to help me be as effective as possible, to amplify the source of my unique abilities, strengths, power, and to complement those places where I'm struggling so that power can continue to be strong. I've And I use it every single day in that regard, but it's never set and forget. It's constant iteration, tweaks, and learning. So I, I'd encourage people to think about like, what would change for you if the next thing that you went to AI with, you approached from a lens of co-creation? You said, okay, we're gonna build this together and we're gonna build this over time. And even asked, you know, your AI, what questions do you have for me? Or what do you need to know about me in order to make this as effective for me as possible?

Love that. Totally love that. And I'm gonna actually, I'm gonna build, I think you've inspired me to build, you know, I read a lot. I read almost a book a week, but implicit, you know, problem with books, right? Is they at least are writing about something that is at least 2 years or older.

Yes.

Given the time it takes to publish a book and at the pace at which the field of flourishing and AI is moving. You know, I would love to be able to have something that every week on Monday said, here are the 5 things, 5 talks, 5 research things that have come out that I could actually scan and be able to keep up to date. So I'm not only kind of reading the past, but I'm kind of really leaning into what's happening now. So thank you for inspiring that. I think Jordana, I think it's something I'm going to build this weekend and let Claude go to task. On an ongoing basis for us. I think it could also be a huge resource for our, you know, people who follow me because I think it's just, I mean, I have a huge set of folks who want to do flourishing work.

Yeah.

So thank you.

You're welcome.

We started with this when we improv'd, but your fourth principle is give yourself permission to play.

Yes.

And it's not, you know, so talk about why is play not a reward after hard work, but really it's a catalyst for doing hard things.

It's, it's because of, of what play does for us. So play forces presence, number one. Like, I don't, I don't know anybody who can play and not be present in, in whatever way that play is, whether you're playing a musical instrument, you're playing a sport, you're playing with your kids, you're imagining, you're writing, you're exploring. It's, it's an anchoring point. It grounds you to be present. It also fills you. I mean, there's, there's so much research on positive emotions, on connection. It fills you with not only the feel-good feelings, but the feel-good chemicals, and it winds up taking you out of that threat response into that mindset where you are more open, you are broadening, and you are able to build. Play is also one of the four pathways of high-quality connection. Some of my favorite research comes from Jane Dutton. And I think it's the one that's the unsung hero. And connections are kind of like the, the neural pathways of an organization, of, of human communities that make it run. So if you wait to play until after the work gets done, you're kind of, you're missing out on presence. You're missing out on higher energy, stronger emotion, better connections with the other people that you're going to be engaging with. You're missing out on that kind of broaden and build mindset, and you're also missing out on the experimentation piece. So I actually see it as the activator. When you're, when you're— imagine how much different hard work would be, a hard project would be, if you were able to enter it from a mindset of, I'm present, I'm energized, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling creative and alive. I can experiment and I feel connected to the people I'm with, I think the outcomes are gonna be better than if you do the reverse.

And it's also such a powerful approach to shift people from below the line threat, you know, tight tension to a more of a joyful state, more of a kind of creative state, more of this and really create that environment for all the brainstorming, all the creativity, all the ideas, right? It is funny that as children, we just crave play and we play all the time. But as we kind of grow up, play in our worlds becomes something you do after everything else. Or sometimes, you know, ask— I was talking to somebody and I said, what do you do for fun? And they said, you know, duh, duh, duh, duh. And I said, What do you do for yourself? And it's like, I ask this question, what brings you joy? And many people are like, I have never thought about that. And I think no surprise that, you know, we live in such a gray world because I think we have forgotten that core element of play in our lives. And I think it can be such a transformative experience.

It is. And it doesn't have to be an event. Like we can choose to be playful in every single moment we're in. And the way I play is very different from the way you play. And it's, it's about recentering. And I actually think it can be very powerful to think about how did you naturally play when you were a kid? Were you a builder? Were you a storyteller? Were you the kid who was running around in circles in the yard? Were you, you know, picking up sticks and looking at them under the microscope? There's threads of that still in adulthood now. And yeah, it can be as simple as taking a movement break and, and putting your favorite song on and dancing for 5 minutes. It could be taking a meeting as a walk and talk and sharing some of the things that you're noticing as you're, as you're walking in the neighborhood or in nature. It could be just snuggling with your dog for 5 minutes. It doesn't have to be this big or wacky event. It's whatever way makes sense for you. And we can do it no matter how busy we are. It's a choice we make.

So, my friend, given that we are almost at the end of the hour, let's make all of this conversation practical. So if someone is listening, they feel overwhelmed with this uncertainty or AI, what are 3 things you recommend they try this week?

So first is actually just take a beat and ask yourself, What's going on in this moment? What's actually in my control? What am I— where is my thinking going to something that's outside of my control? Let's re-anchor it back to something that is. What's the smallest thing I can do right now? So in this moment, I can control whether or not I'm present or not with you in this conversation. I'm gonna— if I start getting distracted by the world, I'm gonna remember in this moment I can choose to be present and find that engagement. That's something I'm good at. So that's a choice. The second is I would encourage you to reflect on what your strengths are. Most people don't do that. Just like most people don't know what brings them joy, most people don't reflect on what they're good at. Pay attention to the feedback you get from people around you. Sometimes the things that we feel that, that are just so natural to us, we don't realize are strengths because they are so natural to us, but that is usually our special sauce. So see what, what compliments do people give you? How do they praise you? Or even if you are using AI, ask it to share what are some strengths that it notices in you that you don't notice in yourself. And identify where's one moment this week that I can bring in the strength more intentionally and make a, a strength plan. And then the third piece is how you gonna play in 5 minutes? Exactly. So just 5 minutes. Playtime. What are you gonna do? And I'd encourage anybody who's listening that all of these things take 5 minutes. If you do them, take a beat, how at the check in with yourself, how am I feeling? What's my energy level? What did I accomplish? Who was I with? And do I feel different than I did yesterday? And if the answer is yes, why and how do I build more onto this? If the answer is no, great. What did I learn from it that I can do differently?

Ashish Kothari: Jordana, this was such an amazing conversation. Thank you for really doing all the work that you're doing to bring beautiful lessons from the world of improv into the workplace and give a different way to navigate what people are going through, right? Give them the agency, give them the choices. There are so many ideas that I picked up that I'm going to go implement next week or even this weekend. So thank you. How can people discover more about your work and where can people find you?

So you can check me out at ignitedbyjordana.com. I'm also very active on LinkedIn, Jordana Cole. Thankfully, I have a unique name. So if you look me up, you're pretty much going to find me. Talk a lot about all things leadership. Um, flourishing improvisation AI. So check me out. And then I'd encourage you, if you wanna take me home with you, check out my TEDx Talk, What to Do When You Don't Know What's Next. And if there's somebody in your life who you feel like could really get their inner improviser boosted, please pass it along, share it with them.

I look forward to continuing to keep in touch, to following you and bringing the power of improv into everything we do. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you. Keep improvising.