"Yes, And...Moving forward with improvisation" with guest Scotty Watson

Hi there and welcome to This Feels Right, TFR. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone. In these podcasts, you'll be hearing from leaders and experts on how you can get a better understanding of yourself and others' communication styles and skills to be able to influence behaviors shift ideas, and then put them into action. How? By speaking to the logic and connecting to the emotions so that it feels right for all. I'm also a speaker, trainer, and coach, and the founder of This Feels Right Effective Communication Skills Training and Coaching, helping leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs be more effective in their communication skills. If this podcast feels right, then please leave a rating, review, or subscribe. Enjoy the show. Yes, and moving forward with improv skills. How are you dealing with all this uncertainty day to day, hour by hour? We don't know what's going to happen next. You can't plan. What about if you were able to take some of the skills from improv to better adapt, be more present, and make more positive choices? Well, we've got the guest that feels right to help us with That's Scotty Watson. Scotty is the master improv teacher, coach, director. He's an alumnus of the Second City Canadian National Touring Company. He's taught at the Second City NYC and he's currently the master teacher and head of the NYC faculty for Improvisational Theatre Program at Theatre Company Artistic New Directions. Scotty is going to share with us today the 3 basic principles, really simple, on how we can use improv to better adapt and deal with the uncertainty. And we're going to do some improv together. Also, how did Scotty become the Chief Marketing Officer for a 125-year-old bank? And what did everybody learn from that? This episode is gonna feel right on dealing with uncertainty and moving forward. Enjoy! And welcome to This Feels Right. We've got with us Scotty Watson. Who has been named— Scotty, are you aware of this? You've been named top 10 improv actor in the world? In North America?

It was, it was, it was by an industry magazine in the, in the improv world. It was, uh, uh, top 10 teachers in North America for that year. Uh, I think that was a few years ago. I don't think that magazine's around anymore.

Okay, well, there we go. So it's, it's, it's in perpetuity.

But I feel pretty good about it. It felt nice. That felt nice.

Yeah.

Top 10 improv teachers in America. Yeah.

Well deserved. Well deserved. You've been doing this for a fair amount of time. You are, you are the master. You are the master of improv. I'm so excited to have you on the show and learn about how improv can really help us move forward, the skills from improv. So yes, and moving forward with improv, the skills that we're gonna learn from this. So the first thing, I guess, if we want to deal with uncertainty, Because that's where we're at, right? Things are changing by the hour.

I don't, I don't know what you're talking— what's, what's uncertain in today's world?

It's true.

I don't— wow, this is new information for me. Yeah, that's— it's so crazy right now.

It is crazy. It changes by the hour. And, you know, but the skills of improv can really help us deal with that. And you've been helping so many people deal with that. So let's start with what do you do as your sort of pre-ritual? Like, how, you know, you're about to go on stage, you're about to teach, you're about to lead a meeting. What, you know, what's the secret sauce? What's the magic that you do for yourself to get, to get ready for it?

It, uh, it requires the dropping of an F-bomb. Is that okay?

Yes, of course.

Permission?

Yes, of course.

Okay, okay. Just before, there's this thing from the Second City where I— that's my old alma mater. where we have something called the fuck it adjustment.

Okay.

You take a big deep breath, and if it's the whole cast, we all do it together. But if you're by yourself, you just have a nice quiet moment of fuck it, meaning you're gonna kind of— you're not kind of, you're gonna forgive yourself the mistakes, and you're gonna forgive other people the fuck-ups. And there are no fuck-ups. They're all going to be opportunities. It's kind of get into a Zen space using a little bit of bad language.

Yeah. Well, you know what? It's primal, right? So it just, it just gets to it. Like, why be polite about saying, oh, I'm just going to let it go. Or, you know, just, just say, no, I'm going to eff it.

Yeah. I think it was Buddha that first said, fuck it. I think he coined that phrase. Yeah. It does give you a nice calm Zen, fuck it, let it go. Just let's do this thing.

I think that's one of the challenges with uncertainty is that we are hard on ourselves and we're trying to sort of read into the future when you can't. You can't read into the future. So give yourself permission to make mistakes.

Well, let me ask you this. Who's in a better position, the person who tries to plan for every contingency? And look, I believe in, especially in business, planning for a certain cone of uncertainty where I have a general plan for big buckets of what might happen. But then when the shit hits the fan, who's in a better position? The person who, this goes against my plan, and the person who, whatever happens, that's what happened.

Yeah.

That's living in the moment. Okay, this is the reality of the situation. There's a The ability to actually be in this moment and read the dials on the machine and say, oh, things are going very poorly, as opposed to things shouldn't be going poorly, my plan says we're in paradise.

Right, it's the it should be, why this should not be happening. We get stuck with the shoulds. So let's go, let's go to talk about that now, about this uncertainty. So how, how have you noticed, or how do you help others in using some of these improv skills to deal with uncertainties that happen?

What I teach is based on the work of Elaine May and Del Close. They worked together for a number of years, especially when they started noticing these rules-based teaching styles in some of the—

Okay, great, good.

And so they came up with 3 basic principles that are more active and positive, and they kind of encompass those, all the rules.

Great.

They are make active and positive choices. So wherever you start in a scene, start in a place of positivity and then follow the scene wherever it goes. That is a— that's a thematic trick. So if you and I are starting a scene and we hate each other, the audience doesn't buy in.

Right.

But if we're friends and something goes wrong, the audience cares about our relationship. So that's the positivity and activity. We love to see people's bodies in motion. as they move through space. You know, in business, I'm always telling people, walk in with a positive frame of mind. Let's do something today. And it is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. If I'm living in the moment and I see the situation that is currently around me and I take action, even if I don't take a huge action, if I take an immediate reaction, that course is always I can always change course if I'm taking, if I'm taking small positive actions. So make active and positive choices is one. The second is support and enjoy the physical and verbal and emotional reality of the scene. So if we're improvising, you create something, I create something, that is the reality of the scene, and we know what it's like when people deny reality. And it's happening, happens more and more lately. In a business context, I'm always just bringing it back to support, support not only the initiative, but the reality. Look at the dials and say, okay, I know it's not supposed to be going poorly, but it's going poorly. So that's, that's the reality of what's going on.

Right.

And then support not only the reality, but the initiative. whatever it is that we're doing, you know, have each other's backs. That's, that's pretty, that's pretty, pretty simple. And then the last one is, this is from an actor's point of view, is that it's an actor's point— it's an actor's job to justify. We're these justification machines where we're in the least realistic situation in the world and we try to create realism. You and I are in a scene, we're actually in a room with 3 walls and And, you know, in the old days, there were people watching us.

Yeah.

And we pretend there's this thing called the fourth wall. And that pretend is kind of the justification. In business, I'm always saying that justification is more like this plus this equals the new thing. So that if you make bowling balls and I make eggs, and we have been tasked some kind of merger, or that we are going to work together in some way, the justification comes in with, what is it that you do? What is it I do? How can we do that together? Right? That we make it fit.

Right. I'm already seeing a crack. You have like the boiled egg, and you put it into the bowling ball holes, and then you're cracking it. And now you can have 3 eggs at a time, 3 boiled eggs at a time cracked.

Perfect.

And scene. See, we justified it, we dealt with it, we were, we were reality, and I made an active and positive choice. Boom. Yep. I just put it into play. Yeah, switch.

You'll be able to buy this in our Etsy shop. Look for that in the, uh, in the, in the comments section below.

Um, how— so, you know, like, speaking of the fourth wall, how are you— you're doing, you're doing all these improv workshops now virtually. Yeah. And then when I heard you were doing this, I'm going, well, how, how is he doing that? So how are you doing it?

It's remarkably like this.

Okay.

Yeah, uh, I'm actually enjoying it because I get to work with people from, from all over the world. I have— I've, I've timed out my, my workshops so that I can have, uh, workshops that are, that are, uh, 7 PM on Thursdays in Great Britain and Europe. which is, which is a blast. I really enjoy working with people from all over the world, but geez, Zoom is actually very conducive to improv, and I was, I was really worried that it was going to be talking heads, and it's not talking heads. In the old days, I'm not going to presume to, to think that maybe— I don't know how old you are, Joel, I really don't—

Yeah.

But when I first started acting, There was no video playback. It was just the camera and we couldn't— the actors couldn't see the shot. And so the question that we always asked is, what's the shot? What's the shot? Is it a close-up? Is it a medium? Is it a long shot? So that we would know how much movement we have, right? And if you look at the setup of your little rectangle, if you move in really close and you give yourself some antlers like a moose, So that you could— you use your hands to fill the sides of the rectangle. You'll notice that every inch you pull back, you gain 2 more inches on either side. And so you really get to play with that whole space.

Right.

The other thing is you're your own cameraman. So if you want to stand up, you stand up. And you just have a personal relationship with your camera.

So simple.

Yeah.

I love that. So play with your space and You are actually in control. You're the cameraman.

You're the cameraman.

You're controlling the angles. You're playing with it. If you wanna move here, move there, you don't have to wait for someone else to follow you. You're the director, the camera person, and the actor.

I'm so glad you said camera person, 'cause after I said cameraman, I went, oh geez, Scotty.

Don't, come on.

You know better. I do, I do, I know better, but the old habits die hard.

Scotty, we're gonna do an improv exercise in a couple minutes. And then afterwards, we're gonna talk about how a, 125-year-old bank said, let's hire an improv guy to be our chief marketing officer. So we're gonna find out how, how that happened, uh, and, and how actually that played. But now let's go into, um, you have an improv exercise that we could, we could do here?

Yes. Now I've tweaked this from, uh, from a really, from a classic. last word, first word exercise where you need to listen all the way to the end of somebody's sentence and you pick up the last word of their sentence and then you start your next sentence with the first— with that word, which is a great exercise. This is tweaked a little bit.

Good.

The concept of this is that you're going to make a nice simple I like statement. I really like pie because... And I'm going to grab not a word, but either a phrase or a concept out of there. I'm going to acknowledge that I've heard you, but then I'm going to yes, and the concept, not the specific words.

Okay.

And I might take it in a different direction. I might be, you know, I might have, you know, my business agenda is to sell paper. I might be steering the conversation a little bit, and you're going to do it, and you're going to do that. When, when I just goes back and forth.

Cool. Okay, I'm even more intrigued by someone who sells paper in this day and age.

Well, like everybody on the planet, I've been binge-watching The Office. Okay.

All right. All right. So do I need any kind of suggestion to start this off? Like, like I said, I really like pies example. Anything?

Oh, no, you're diving in with something. Make it, make it something that you really like though. Let's see. Okay, made up. Okay, let's share. Joel's gonna share now.

Okay, great. I really, really— I, I don't like— I really, really love butter. I mean, I, I don't need to have to put butter on anything. I could just have butter as is.

I could not agree with you more. Butter is amazing, especially when you're cooking. And it's so important right now to have the skills to cook your own food at home.

Oh yeah, cooking your own food is, is such a pleasure that you've accomplished something, especially if you're on a, on a tight budget.

Oh my goodness, yes, it does. It really helps your budget, and it's important, and a lot of people don't do it, to actually have a budget. If you can budget, you can plan for your future.

That's it. You know, planning for the future is probably the scariest term that I hear or that everyone hears. It's such a— it's so daunting because when we think of the future, we think of the Jetsons.

Yes, I wish I had the flying car from the Jetsons. They had all that cool stuff. And the only thing that we have from The Jetsons is Zoom.

Yeah, you know, and now we've become Zoomaholics.

I know that I'm completely addicted to Zoom at this point. I actually think in terms of Zoom. I was— some— I'm— there's something coming up next year, an improv conference, and I'm thinking, how are you gonna get all those people into one Zoom room? When in fact they're planning it live.

Oh, good. Add seed.

I didn't get it back to paper.

I was waiting for the paper.

I was waiting for the paper. I was almost there. I, and I really wanted to cheat on The Jetsons. Yeah. And go, you know what they don't use anymore? Paper.

Okay, there we go. There we go. Boom.

But I got more interested in our conversation than the game, which is really what you're supposed to do.

Well, isn't that, isn't that lovely? And by the way, we're not sponsored by Zoom, just as— we have no affiliation with Zoom. Uh, that was, that was really, that was, that was really challenging to, um, um, yeah, to really, like, you know, uh, when you're really on the spot, to not just listen but to also participate. Kind of what you were saying before about it's not just listening, it's also, it's, it's being participation and active. I found myself really having to bring something to this, to offer something to you as well, to keep the conversation going.

I think that the key to that is to focus on what the person is saying just before you and actually get genuinely excited about it.

Yeah.

As opposed to, you know, while somebody else is talking, thinking about what you— how am I going to add to this? I just, I'm just looking for what in what Joel just said excites me.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's really good. I mean, that's such a good thing about listening. And, um, speaking of listening, and we're going to talk about the marketing in a second, sure. Um, you know, you said to me a little while ago, uh, something about, about listening and improv, and that, um, that was one of the things that sort of attracted you to, to improv. Was this sort of deep listening, and you had a word for it. Do you remember what that word was?

Uh, what? Uh, uh, I don't.

It was, it was you honored what people said.

Oh geez, yes! Honoring people's offers.

Yeah, honoring people's offers. Yeah.

You can't, you know, Joel, you can't just say you said something one time because I talk constantly.

Okay, that was gold. That was gold.

That was gold. Yeah, it's not enough just to hear an offer. You gotta honor it. You gotta take it in and go, oh, what a nice offer. Specifically because I didn't do that when I was young. I was— one of my first teachers and directors at the Second City was Sandra Bolkowski, who's a genius. And I noticed that other people didn't wanna play with me, even though I got lots of laughs. I was a very funny young improviser. I started there when I was 16. So I was steeped in improv. And then I noticed that when I came off that line, people didn't want to— people didn't join. And that is a— that's a major— if you notice people don't want to join you, take that as a cue that you're doing something wrong. So I go to my director and I go, what's wrong? And she said, oh, because you're a dick. And I said, okay, can I— because I listen. She goes, yeah, but you only listen to use other human beings as a setup for your punchline. You're not listening to them as humans. You're listening to them as, can I make that funny? And what you really have to do is listen to what they have to say, honor it, incorporate it. And man, I got so much funnier when she told me that the funniest thing you could do is listen.

Yeah, you know, the, the honor it is so good because, um, the, the biggest trap when people say improv is they think, oh, I have to be funny.

Right.

When in fact, and this is just like in anything, like you're talking about the paper salesperson, you know, it's like in anything you do, if you just go in and just go in with the effort, which is I'm just gonna listen, I'm really gonna listen to them and I won't try to steer it back to, you know, immediately to what I need to get done. I'm gonna go with the flow by honoring what they're saying. And then like the exercise we were doing, when the time is right, I will find a way to bring it back to our discussion.

I will tell you that I am not a funny person. I'm not even the funniest person in my family. I'm not a particularly funny person. I am a really weird person. My brain makes connections that other people just think is completely weird. So what happens in a comedy situation is something happens, something is said, I process it as best I can, and then I say what I honestly think and feel. About that thing. And because I'm a weirdo, the audience then laughs and I pretend that it was a joke. But I'm really just telling you what I honestly think and feel when I'm out on stage and relying on my own weird.

Well, you're, you're effing it. This goes back to what you said, which is just, just, you're just being yourself.

Yeah.

Um, and what comes out is not what you're controlling. It's you're being yourself and it's moving it forward and people are appreciating it. You know, and I remember you talking about how you actually got into this is that you started watching Saturday Night Live.

Yes, yes, very, very, very early as a child. My mother, my mother didn't sleep very well. And so, and neither did I for some strange reason. And so we started watching Saturday Night Live right away, the very first season. And, and I really enjoyed that. And, and as I became older and I decided to make this, you know what, I'm going to do this for a living, I would like to do this for a living. I got first season episodes of Saturday Night Live with the Muppets removed, by the way, back in the old days when they released the VHS tapes. Thank God they took— if anybody is old enough to remember, the Saturday Night Live in the '70s had the most useless section of the Muppets. They were on Saturday Night Live. Horrible. So I would take that and I watched it with a stopwatch. And if you check out the first season of Saturday Night Live, nothing was longer than 3 minutes. And there are certain places in scenes where you see them establish a theme, explore and heighten the theme, reestablish the new theme, and then twist the theme. And how— I don't want to say formulaic because it doesn't follow a formula. It follows an ingrained human pattern. That's what, uh, that's what it follows, a pattern that is deeply satisfying to people.

Mm-hmm.

That's my— that's, that's my Saturday Night Live connection there.

But that— and that's, that's what got you hooked into— there's it interested you, you know, going back to sort of the, you know, the— I said your— the weirdness.

Yeah.

But the weirdness is that it is actually an appreciation for how a story unfolds and what's interesting about a story. And that allowed you to be yourself and go, hey, that is actually how I think, is that I take something in and I find a different perspective on it.

Yeah.

And then, so this— speaking of different perspectives, let's talk about how a 125-year-old bank says, ah, We need somebody here to do some marketing for our 125-year-old bank.

So here's my marketing story, and I bet a lot of the people that are in marketing have a similar tale. So I was teaching improv. I came to New York City to be with Second City NYC. and teach for them. And when the Second City Chicago said no more Second City NYC, they left, and I stayed with the theater company that's, that's here in New York. It's called Artistic New Directions, or AND Theater Company for short. And, and they use improv to develop new material. They're a production company, so they, they get to show up to the staged reading, uh, uh, you know, get it up to a stage reading and then usually pass it off to somebody else. Great, lovely company. So there I was in New York. Second City has left New York, so I hung my shingle. I started teaching classes, and I was teaching for Ant Theatre Company, and I do not like to teach empty classes. They're very depressing. So I went, okay, what do I do? I downloaded— I kid you not— on my phone, I downloaded Marketing for Dummies, and I did it. I just did the things that it said. And then, of course, on my own, I started doing some other reading and figuring out what doesn't work from that, what does work from that. And so I had full classes. So then when that theater company— and then I started working for some other theater companies, and then they— that theater company needed new members on their board, so I did some marketing campaign to get new board members. There's a couple of different tools you can use, and I'm meeting with people. And I met this fellow who was a banker. What's funny about the financial world is you can't say the names of any of the banks that you work at. So I can't say where he was working, but he was working at a major New York bank.

Yeah.

And he was a VP there. And he comes down to the board and I say, listen, you should do at least an improv class. He comes in, does an improv class. Guy's amazing right off the bat. It's crazy. He's, he's been improvising his entire life as a banker. Uh, so, uh, people started asking me, how are you filling these classes? And I'm saying, well, I, I downloaded this book, uh, Marketing for Dummies. Download it and do it. And then a lot of people, a lot of the theater companies, they go, can you just do it for us? So I started this side gig of doing marketing for theater companies, this not-for-profit marketing. So meanwhile, I get closer and closer friends to this guy with this bank. He moves to another bank that also happens to be a nonprofit, and they needed marketing. And so he just— all he wanted was a marketing plan. He just wanted a strategy. So I wrote him up a strategy, and I give it to him, and it's all cool. And his board says, the board wants you— and this is now, it's outside of his—

Right.

This is some serious people. The board wants you to implement the strategy. And so I worked as a contractor for a while, and then the board hired me. So the next thing I know, I'm in the C-suite. And then the more I tell this story of, you know, how did you get into marketing? I got into marketing out of necessity.

Mm-hmm.

You know, because I had a product that I needed to sell it myself, and that these are transferable skills. And as I've been going to marketing conferences and talking to other people in marketing, that's the, that's the biggie is is noticing that the need-to-know skills, and that doesn't mean— that means that I needed to know this, so I figured it out, I learned it, and then I applied it, and now I find out that it applies to all sorts of other things. So that is how I ended up doing marketing and finance, which was actually easier than not-for-profit marketing.

Right. What do you think was important In what you knew from the world of improv and your experiences that you brought a different perspective to the marketing for a bank, let's say?

I went to a conference one time and somebody was doing a speech and they said, everybody here who's in marketing, you have your personas, your customer profiles written up as actual humans, right? With names and pictures and you want to personify your customers and your segmentations. So he said, okay, so those are your personas. He said, we all know that we need to update our personas every 6 months, but who here has updated their personas? He started with, who knows that you have to update your personas every 6 months? Every hand goes up. Who's done it in the last year?

Yeah.

Let's go down. And what I found, the crossover in marketing and improv is those personas. It's— you have data, those are data-driven personas, but then you need to be able to actually play that character, even if it's in your own mind, sitting at your own desk, playing that person.

Yes.

What do they perceive when you walk into your branch? What are they seeing? Try, you know, it's not enough to look at the data, look at the pictures. Isn't that pretty? Isn't that pleasant? It is an acting exercise and personas, we often present it as a data-driven exercise. It's a data plus creative. That's why we're here.

Yeah.

That's why you have a marketing department, is— and rather than just the number crunchers from the, from the accounting department, like, we should be able to bridge that, to bridge the numbers and the creativity so that we can present something as As, as a, as a real walk around in your own self.

Yes, well, it's, it's, it's exactly going back to what you said earlier, which is you're— when you're just looking at someone as data and there's some sort of a character, but you're not honoring what they're actually saying because you're not really taking on the voice. So when you actually take the voice, you now start to honor how they think, what they see, what they hear, and that changes now It gets you out of your own perspective and gets you really to see it from someone else's perspective, these personas that you've created. So totally makes sense. So Scotty, thank you so much for your time today. This was really good, really, on how to deal with uncertainty. Eff it.

Exactly.

Make positive choices when you can. Be present, be in the reality, and really honor what people are offering to you. Honor it. and realize that it's from their perspective and what do they see and what do they hear. Some great lessons on how to deal with uncertainty and make us better communicators. Scotty, before we go, where can we find out more about Scotty Watson if we want to get in touch with you or maybe we want to sign up for these improv workshops?

It's scottywatsonimprov.com. Scotty Watson Improv, S-C-O-T-T-Y, Scotty with a Y Watson Improv.

Boom!

Easy.

Perfect. Scotty, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. This was a blast.

It was. We'll see you next week on This Feels Right. And scene! Thank you for listening to today's podcast. What questions, comments, or thoughts you may have, then connect with me, Joel Silverstone, on LinkedIn or come on over to thisfeelsright.ca. And again, if this show felt right, then please leave Leave a rating, review, or subscribe. We'll see you next week. Hi there and welcome to This Feels Right, TFR. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone. In these podcasts, you'll be hearing from leaders and experts on how you can get a better understanding of yourself and others' communication styles and skills to be able to influence behaviors, shift ideas and then put them into action. How? By speaking to the logic and connecting to the emotions so that it feels right for all. I'm also a speaker, trainer, and coach, and the founder of This Feels Right Effective Communication Skills Training and Coaching, helping leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs be more effective in their communication skills. If this podcast feels right, then please leave a rating, review, or subscribe. Enjoy the show! Hi there and welcome to This Feels Right, TFR. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone. In these podcasts, you'll be hearing from leaders and experts on how you can get a better understanding of yourself and others' communication styles and skills to be able to influence behaviors, shift ideas, and then put them into action. How? By speaking to the logic and connecting to the emotions so that it feels right for all. I'm also a speaker, trainer, and coach, and the founder of This Feels Right Effective Communication Skills Training and Coaching, helping leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs be more effective in their communication skills. If this podcast feels right, then please leave a rating, review, or subscribe. Enjoy the show!