How to Spark Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation

I'm sure that if you're watching this, you probably feel like you are a pretty darn good communicator. I mean, in all the time that you've been running your business, you've had to deal with employees. You've had to deal with customers and suppliers. And in all that time, have they made suggestions? Have you heard what they've been saying to you? Or has your response been, But we don't do it that way. And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to Marc Haine Live! This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert, and Master of Experiences, Thank you so much for joining me today. My guest today for this episode is speaker and change facilitator Chris Nielsen. And we will get to him in just a moment. In the meantime, feel free to give me a thumbs up. Give me a thumbs up if this works for you and hit the subscribe button to be able to get the notifications whenever I bring you some nice fresh content. Also, please do share and comment. this post. If you know somebody who can benefit from the information, if you're watching this and you go, wow, Peter needs to hear this, feel free to share it with them because that's how you can be of service to Peter. And if you don't know a Peter, maybe it's a Jim, a Bob, or Steve.

I don't know.

If you're like me, you grew up thinking that a leader should know everything. The leader's role was to tell everyone what to do. And in many cases, How to do it. If there were any new ideas, it came from the boss. In fact, I remember my boss once telling me, Marc, if I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is. So, I have to ask you our question of the day. So, what tools do you use to explore possibilities within your business? How do you explore the ideas of others to break out of their shell and help you break out of your shell? And how do you help them become participants in your innovation? Feel free to be part of the conversation and post your responses here. It'd be fantastic to start that conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is probably one of the most entertaining people I know, Chris Nielsen. Chris combines his 30 years of business and sales experience with his hidden talents entertaining, educating global audiences. In his incredibly engaging workshops, participants walk away with tools and systems to be able to improve cooperation and communication, They drill into creativity, collaboration, and leadership both in their businesses and in their lives. I love having Chris here because he and I had a heck of a good conversation a couple of weeks ago. And we couldn't stop giggling like 12-year-old girls. Chris, welcome! It's so nice to have you on the show.

I'm good. Thank you, Marc.

I know it's cold outside. But this whole thing about people freezing is really ridiculous.

Yeah, I don't like to freeze either. Sometimes, they go, what are you doing?

I know it's true. And it's so funny because the nice thing with freezing, the fact that it happens so often is that you can really mess with people's heads. Because in the middle of conversations, you can just go and people go, oh my goodness, is he frozen? Hey, so Chris, before we get into today's topic, could you tell me, tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients?

Well, I have a number of different types of clients, but one of my favorite clients is to work with anyone who wants to improve their speaking skills because I'm a professional speaker myself and I actually love what I get to do as a speaker. So in that, and it's not always speaking because I do a lot of facilitation, I do a lot of improv games, and that's a lot of my background. And if I bring that into my coaching, I bring that into my training, I bring that into my life. Because what I said is 2 words changed my life. And those 2 words are, yes, and.

Yes, and. And we're gonna dig deep into what that means. But we've talked about these podcasts that I've been doing now since, well, it's coming up close to a year now. We've talked a lot about the leaders need to have humility to be in charge but not necessarily to be in control. When you are dealing with your clients, how much of that is trying to shake them out of that control mindset?

I tend to not attempt to shake them out of control because I don't think anyone wants to be shaken out of control. What I tend to attempt to do is give them experiences, epiphanies, ahas, moments that they can then take and go, huh. Like one of the exercises, I call it a compass question, a question that actually points to what's most important in life. And for a leader, this simple, powerful question, and if you're in your family, you're a leader, you're— everyone's a leader in their own way. And it is simple. Are you connecting or are you disconnecting?

Oh.

And when you're connected to someone, they want to go the extra mile or 10 miles. But when you're disconnected, they may be actively sabotaging you. They may be looking for doing the bare minimum. They may be doing it only when you're watching. And so, are you connected to them? And get that epiphany, go, maybe my control is actually disconnecting me from the people and getting less of what I want. And I don't know about you, Marc, but I think I usually want more of what I want. And I think that's true for most people.

Yeah.

So, if you want more of what you want, connect.

Yeah, that's really great. I love that whole thing about being able then to evaluate. So, in your experiences, what kind of conditions are you seeing in businesses that cause the dysfunction to the point where they say, oh my goodness, now I need to call Chris?

Well, even if it's not a dysfunction, they should call Chris. Because what I actually— my favorite place to work has been in the past a number of times when I've got to work with a few Microsoft teams. And they are super intelligent, super motivated, high-energy people that are phenomenal to work with. I would rather take— it's more fun for me to take an already well-performing team up to a higher level. Now, in terms of working, it's fun to see someone that has these challenges of butting heads, to then see another path forward that can work for them. That's That's powerful as well. But personally, I'd rather work with the high-performing teams. But what I'd say to you is if you're having difficulty, if you have one of your top performers is difficult to deal with, there's many easy strategies to make it more easy to deal with them.

So, are we talking about like leadership issues within teams? Are we talking about employee interpersonal conflicts within teams?

Both of those or all those. And what I say is what One of the main things I share is 5 basically principles of improv, which I have an improv comedy background for about the last 10+ years. And that changes teams. That changes leaders. That changes families when they play with those ideas.

Oh, and I'd love to deal and dig into this a little bit. But I'd like to do that and really help present some tools to the audience that they can take to overcome some of their challenges. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with Master Change Facilitator and Coach Chris Nielsen. We highlighted some of the dysfunctions that we're seeing in organizations and this idea of being able to disconnect from people and connect with people and being able to analyze that. How much of the solutions that you use— I'm trying to remember what my question was— are embedded in being able to think differently? How much of the work they do with you is to shake them out of how they've been thinking about something and how they are now being able to change that mindset?

Well, I'll share. So for me, I say this. First, I give my audience power to give me feedback immediately. And if you agree, thumbs up. You know, if you don't, you know, so-so, sideways thumb down. Give me— you don't agree with it. So what I say is this, um, tell me, give me feedback immediately. And I said, you've all been programmed. And occasionally I got some people go, no, I have not been programmed. They go, let me give you a couple programs where I've been programmed. Um, and one really insidious one The, the one program is that, uh, choosy mothers choose Jif. And it's a powerful little program in that it's saying if you're not a choosy mother, you're not a good mother. So good mothers would choose Jif in that little program. The, the other program is from me: never let them see you Sweat. That's right. And I sweat a lot. So, I was programmed with that.

And so, all these times we— and you were mentioning this and the first thing, the first brand that came into my mind was Febreze. Because Febreze, when they first launched Febreze, it suffered horribly because nobody thought that their houses smelled. And they were saying, hey, we can give you Right? And so, this is where they came up with this whole nose blindness thing, which was amazing. But in businesses, we have these blinders on as well. We have certain things that happen within our environments that we don't even recognize. And in past episodes, we have talked about that if you're inside the jar, you can't see the label.

Absolutely!

In some of your workshops and some of the work that you do with your clients, what are you uncovering through Well, improv gets, again, people—

here's what I love to give people is an experience. Because I've read so many good books and go, oh my gosh, this is going to change me. And it didn't. And there was so much wisdom in there, so much wisdom. But what I really realized is we're getting— we're bombarded with information. It's just being thrown at us 24/7. And we're looking for ways to dodge most of it. And but if you get people to feel something, then they can choose to use it if they want. And like with the connection one, an exercise I do is this is actually I purposely disconnect from my audience. And I do it for a purpose. And it doesn't feel good because I do disconnect. And I said, like, if it's online training, I go, get ready. After you do this exercise, I want you to type in the chat immediately, how do you feel about me? Or come off mute and tell me how you feel about me.

And I ask them what you're talking about there, Chris. I really don't know what you're talking about.

I ask, stand up, please. This is what I say: stand up. Thank you for standing up. Now give us a big smile. Thank you for smiling. Now sit down. And then I usually get back in the chat, jerk. Much worse than that. Hey, da da da. And I go, yes, that's it. What else? What else? What else are you feeling about me? And then I go, now, how are you disconnecting from the people you care about? How are you disconnecting from the people you want to get energy output connection from? Well, how are you disconnecting? And just write that down because you're going to feel this in your body. That guy who made you call him an idiot or jerk or worse, and what are they calling you? And then how do you connect? And connection is— and here's one of the things that blows some CEO groups away. I go, how do you find out how the best way to connect? Ask them how to best connect. And that will give you answers if you really think— if they think you're listening.

Right. Yeah, what I always find a little shocking about this is to me, this is just basic human interaction. However, people look at this and they go, you mean I can just You ask people how to connect with them?

Yeah.

And it's like, well, yeah. You know, I'm challenged a lot of times when I'm dealing with business operators because as I mentioned in the opening of this show, people look at themselves as being the boss. This is my business. I've been— I invested all my money to do this. I've been running this business for 15 years. Nobody can tell me how to run my business. And I struggle with this idea of humility or the need for humility in order to turn around and say, you know what? I don't have all the answers. Is when it comes down to the exercises and stuff that you do, these epiphanies, what can leaders do to shake themselves out? Maybe assess where they are and be able to say, oh, you know what? Maybe I am disconnected.

Well, I think one of the great things in working with groups of CEOs is they hold each other accountable and they're not there, the people below them don't see it. But what I get is this, here's like one of the things I said is you are programmed. And if they challenge me on it, I will name some programs. And eventually, usually it goes from, you know, 10%, 15% of the audience saying, no, I'm not programmed, to everyone saying, yeah, I guess I have been programmed. And keep that program if it serves you.

Yeah.

Happy to keep that program. It's gotten you to where you are. I do though, just so you know, I do a keynote called Innovate or Die. And so, if you're not willing to make changes, you're going to end up being a dinosaur, uh, most likely in, in your world out there. But there's good things that got you where you are. What's some little tweak that will make your life better and more enjoyable? Because a lot of people got there with hard-charging controllers that pushed through obstacles and probably ran over some people on the way. Now, if that makes you happy, I don't want to be around you. But if you're willing to change that and see that you can actually enjoy this process, have fun doing it. I mean, I love speaking and training because I get playful and have fun while I'm doing it.

Right.

So, if you see those blind spots, like I was going to say with the The 2-word principle of improv is yes, and.

Yes.

And I was programmed in no, but. Meaning you'd share a great idea. And I've asked audiences over 500, how many of you like someone that says no, but to you when you share a great idea? And no one raises their hand. And I go, oh, so you thought I was a— and someone yells out, a jerk! And I thought I was actually serving the situation. when I was actually detracting from the situation? Was I disconnecting and more likely to get less of what I wanted? And I'd simply ask people, if you want to get more of what you want, connect. And one of the great ways to connect is yes and people. And then the second principle I play with in this way. This is the number one skill in leadership. And please disagree with me if you don't think so. The number one skill in leadership The number one skill in speaking, to throw you off, the number one skill in, I'd say, all communication, the number one skill in negotiation, sales, relationships, and that skill is listening.

Listening.

Yes. And some people go, what is that skill? And then I ask, how many of you have been trained in listening? What improv gave to me is also like a PhD in listening. Because to say yes and to your partner, to affirm and add something to it, you must listen if you're to make sense with it. So listening was a powerful thing. And then I take listening to a whole nother level and you go, how do you take listening to a whole nother level? And I get great answers. I love the answers, you know, active listening, all those things. And all those are true, but I think this takes it to an even bigger level. You're fully present in the moment. You're not thinking about what you're going to say next. You're not planning your vacation. You are there present with them. And then, I ask leaders if this would be a gift. If your employees said, yes, and, to you, they were listening and they were present while they were doing that. Would that be a gift? And that's just a gift by itself.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. You know, it's so funny that you mentioned this because one of the reasons why you and I connected was because This was actually a chapter in my book. This whole idea of yes, and versus no, but. And I challenge in the book and I tell people, I say, whenever you use the word but, you not only conquer what was said before but you start making excuses. So for instance, somebody would turn around and say— and it's such a disempowering statement because somebody would turn around and say, I'd love to get into shape but I don't have time. If they were to switch that and use the yes and philosophy and they say, I'd love to get into shape and I don't have time. One conquers it. One gives you an excuse why you're not going to do it. The other is more empowering because you're saying, this is what I need to overcome. I want to get in shape and I don't have time.

Yeah, yes and is incredibly powerful. And you're right. And you can use flip around and use but as an empowering way.

Yes.

I can't do that but I'm going to figure out how.

Yes. So, you can use your phraseology.

Yeah, use it to flip on yourself when you're doing something negative. Then, throw the but in there to negate all that negative stuff you just said and turning into something very positive.

Yeah, yeah. No, this is really cool. And we can do this in our interaction and being conscious of it as leaders. Like, is there a tool or a way that's somebody could become more conscious of their responses to the people that they're interacting with?

Yes, if they're open to it. And that is really getting, you know, having someone show you their blind spot, hold up a mirror to you and say, you know, here's— because I couldn't see that no but was my blind spot until I watched other people in improv no butting people all the time and it not working. And when it didn't work, I go, oh, You know, I'm doing that too. And what— and so oftentimes— so here's one way to find out what annoys you about others. You may want to look in the mirror for yourself.

Yeah.

And that, that became a program for me to raise my awareness. So the question became, if I'm annoyed by someone with this, what is it about me that has this? And, and I remember an incredible powerful experience in the Awakening Coaching, um, training I did. My fellow coach was in this training and, uh, we're gonna have this meeting with this guy that just had upset me so many ways. And I listed, and we're gonna have this big meeting in my, in the town I lived in, and we're gonna be together for 3 days. And I said to her, I said, oh my gosh, these are all the things I don't like about him. And and I released on every single one of them, and then she flipped it on me. So how is that just like you? Oh my gosh! I'm a jerk. I'm selfish. I'm all about myself. My needs come before theirs. I don't think about other people's feelings. All these things came down. I don't keep track of time. All these things, and I could see not. I wasn't 100% those things. But I could see the little bit of truth in every one of those statements I'd made about him were true of me.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And the positive things as well. What you recognize that you really like in somebody are probably conditions that you yourself have as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, this is really great. I'd love to deal a little bit more into the use of improv and maybe the conditions of improv. But maybe you can let everybody know how they can get in touch with you. If what you're saying is resonating with them and they want to dig a little deeper, how can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, thank you, Marc. chris@chrissneilson.com. And I think you see it on the screen there. So, chris@chrissneilson.com. Just email me. I love to connect with people and I love bringing trainings into corporations, nonprofits. Just to play with you as well there. And the other thing I do, I think we're going to talk a little bit about it later, Marc, is that I help empower entrepreneurs, business owners by boosting their communication skills. And I say, if you boost your communication skills, you're going to get more of what you want in life.

So again, this is really interesting, this idea of boosting communication skills because it is very few and far between that I've had a client who turns around and says, geez, I've just realized that the majority of my issues happen because of my lack of communication skills. How can somebody be self-aware enough to realize that they have an issue here?

I think actually most people do have an issue. They just don't want to admit they have an issue publicly. And here, I'll give you a couple things. One here, I'm just gonna give you a mystery here. It's one of the things we do. I'm gonna show you how you can drop 200 pounds of dead weight off your back, and you won't have to carry it around for the rest of your life. So one of my programs was I needed to be right, and I didn't know why I needed to be right so bad, but I hated to be wrong. And it was like— but here's how I figured it out: if I was wrong about this thing here that I'm catching in my hand, I was wrong as a being. And that's why I couldn't handle being wrong about this thing out here. Because I related the two wrong about an idea or thing, me being wrong. Now I tell people in audiences and they go, this is, um, I, I say you can up, down, tell me what you think. I like to be wrong. And, and usually something, no way, that's not true. There's no way you like to be wrong. And, and I said, I would agree with you 7 years ago, but now being wrong about this, Or this doesn't make me wrong.

It actually—

so I'm not wrong about it. So tell me how— teach me something because I love to learn. And if I'm learning something new, I feel like I'm growing. So I've changed that program. Now, that didn't happen overnight. I worked on the program and one program went down while the other went up.

Yeah, it's the way it is, right? You have this self-awareness part of it. And you realize that it's almost like tipping the scales.

Yeah. And so, one of the—

This ability to turn around to you and go to people with humility and say, you know what? I don't have all the answers.

And it feels good because when you think you have to have all the answers, every moment becomes a test. of your beingness when you don't need the answers. This is— we, we human beings are here because we cooperated, we collaborated with each other, we created things together, and that's why we're here today doing what we did today. Otherwise, maybe lions would be ruling the world.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. You know, I'd love to deal— it's so compelling, and so I'd love to kind of go a little bit deeper into some strategies that maybe you could share with the audience on what they can do looking at their teams, look at their intact teams, looking at their own behavior, looking at what they want to accomplish, and see what are some of the steps, strategies they can do to at the end of this broadcast to maybe try out and see if it works. And I'd like to get to that right after this.

All right.

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So Chris, as part of the takeaway today, what can leaders do? I mean, we're talking about this idea of showing humility, realizing that you're not perfect, and then using this strategy of yes and. So, what can leaders do today as a takeaway that they can start exerting some of this yes and philosophy?

One of the things, I mean, I want to make a difference or impact. So oftentimes I share these great principles and maybe a few people take them on. And I've started actually doing this. It's really simple if you believe it. And I'll give you the 4th principle that I teach as well. Make your blank look blank. And improv is not about you looking good. It's actually setting up other people to succeed.

Yes.

So it's make your people look great is what I get to. And your people may be Your family, your significant other. It may be the people at work that you work with, your customers, your clients. How do you make them look great? So imagine, and I ask leaders this, how many of you want employees that say yes and to you? They listen, they're present, and they set up people to look great. And usually it's, oh, we want everyone to be like that. And OK. And I go, how many of your people do you think would like you to be like that? And I also say this, and I think going back, the key to it is being vulnerable. So I share some vulnerable stories, and I'm a work in progress as well. But what I say is put that in your phone. Put the yes and, listen, be present, make other people look great. Put it in your phone and put it as a daily reminder that just pops up once, kind of like an alarm, and go, how can I say yes and more today? How can I say a little bit of yes, and? And one of the things I do to demonstrate that in front of people is ask me a question you think I'd have to say no to, and I look for ways to say yes, at least yes to part of it. And, and so they see how, um, I get to say yes. So a yes might not be, you know, a full-on no— I mean, a full-on, um, yeah, here, take everything I have. It— I'm looking to say yes to at least part of it and stop some of the conflict. So, that's one of the ways they can take it home is this. The other is play some games. Bring me in. Let's play some improv games or go online and Google, how do I play improv games with my team? And play one little improv game at a meeting with your team and your culture will start to shift if you add those 4 philosophies onto it. And there's a 5th if you want to innovate.

Okay, Mr. Teaser. But we'll get to that maybe just before we wrap up just to keep everybody on the hook. How do you keep Marc Haine Live audience members in suspense? We'll tell you later.

That's right.

So Chris, a lot of what you're talking about is this idea that leaders starting with themselves to be of service to their teams. I can really see this reflect well in how team members handle customers. Can you talk a little bit about that reflection?

Yeah, it's so— you— I know an organization when I talk to their customer service people how well it's coming downhill. You know, and if they're, if they're rude, angry, it's coming downhill. If they have no ability to make decisions, like there's— I won't name the company I'm dealing with lately with a customer service issue myself. Very nice people, so they've got some really good training there. But they're not able to see what makes sense. They're, they're trying to get pennies from me while losing dollars, and not just a little bit of— they're fighting for pennies to lose hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And their system is set up for these really kind people not to deal with it. And that's the top-down that are doing that. And, and what I say is, if you want— like, I love the question, and when some CEOs— why isn't this younger generation loyal? And I laugh and I go, you really don't know? Do you really want to know? Because you do know. And they're going— some of them get upset at that point. And I go, because you're not loyal and you know it. You'll cut them in a second. You'll fire them. You'll lay them off just to boost your bottom line. You're not loyal to them. Why would anyone be loyal to you when you're not loyal to them?

Right.

Yeah. So, there's simple—

People see that within their teams and how you deal with other people as well.

Yeah.

Right?

So, that's a simple answer.

It's how you behave around yourself, not necessarily just that one-to-one on the person. But how you deal one-to-many and people figure you out pretty quick.

Absolutely. Like if you fire their best friend, they're going, when am I next? And if I'm really good, you've kept me now. But the next layoff, I might be on the next layoff. I better start looking for a job.

Yes.

So, if you want something from— if you want love, if you want love, give love. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really interesting because we talked about probably earlier on in my episodes. I was talking with Ronnie Pawar about adapting and adopting. And one of the things that he mentioned, he mentioned how operators do this thing. They do this thing with their customers. feeling like it's about the principle, right? And they have to fight for this. It's about the principle. And he talks about how he and his girlfriend had gone out for supper and the manager had made a decision about some way to make them happy. But then, the owner saw it and rescinded it all and created this whole big conflict that just boiled into something that was so unnecessary. And it was like you said, it was, I want to get these pennies and forego the thousands of dollars I'm going to get from the lifespan of this particular customer. And it's short-sighted. And so, how important do you think it is to build these strategies into our strategic plans? Like we have a business plan. We have a financial plan. We have a marketing plan. Should we have this as part of a people plan?

If you want to get more, again, of what you want. If you want to be happier doing it as well. And what I get is, I love this. I'm a very playful person and I love being around other playful people like you, Marc. So thanks for the play attitude and the laughter. I love when this CEO told me this and he trains other CEOs. He said, I wanted to make the workplace compete with the weekend. And I wanted to make it playful, positive, and productive. And I looked at ways to do that. I put someone in charge. She was amazing. And she made some of that happen. Now, it's how do you compete with the weekend? How do you make your place more playful? And what I get from innovation, if innovation is important to a company or a person, You got to be vulnerable. You got to create a safe place to play, a place where they're willing to risk. And if you're constantly attacking people, telling what they did wrong and making them saying no to them, they're less likely to do any innovation and have fun with you.

This is so amazing because these are actually sections in my book, right? I talk about this in my book. I'm not going to do the shameless plug. But this is what I talk about. This whole idea of giving permission for people to fail forward, right? To learn. I talked to one owner and she was upset. She runs a grocery store and she was upset because one of her younger staff didn't complete a transaction. And somebody walked out of her store with $78 worth of groceries. And she fired the employee. And I asked, why did you fire the employee? It's like, well, because I lost $78. I said, yeah, but you just You paid $78 for that employee to learn that lesson. Why would you throw that investment out the window? Do you really think that employee is going to repeat that mistake consciously? Right? And this whole idea of why are we so afraid to fail forward?

That is a wonderful story. And yeah, I think the employer was very short-sighted in that. She could have been compassionate with that person. And most likely, that person would never want to make that mistake again. They'd have learned. They would have experienced that and they would have never wanted to experience that again. So, you'd had $78 worth of training. And I would bet, again, throwing away a few dollars because how much training went into that employee already? Probably hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Maybe. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is one of those environments where they see that you have a pulse. You're standing upright. Here's your cash register.

Go! But even then, you can set an environment for them to succeed with that.

Absolutely.

You know, it's like, it's like what I— the principles of improv work all over the place. Even training grocery store clerks, who are amazing human beings, especially the ones that get you to smile and walk out. If you have them saying yes, and they're listening to you, they're present while they're doing it, they're setting you up as a customer to look great. If you're com— if there's a choice between this grocery store and the one who does that, which one are you going to?

Exactly.

Yeah, so that's how powerful it is. And, and you as the owner, if you're the owner of the business, how are you setting your people up to look great? You know, that the second part of the question was, yeah, you want all your employees to yes and listen, be present, make your people look great. Do you think they want that of you? And this works at home as well with your family. Do you think your family would love for you to be like that too? They would.

I know my wife is probably watching this going, gosh, would I ever. This has been really great, Chris. You mentioned 4 points and we kept everybody on the hook for point number 5.

Yeah, we did. And when my improv teacher Jackie Lowell shared the secret to success in improv with life to me, And I heard what she said. I said, no, thank you. That can't be it. But we've hit it. You hinted at it earlier, and that's when you reminded me of it. It is. And she said it this way: dare to suck. And and I said no. But other people in the class were going, yeah, I love that. And my hero in basketball is Michael Jordan, and he said, the reason I succeed is I failed over and over and over. again. And I realized this. I have a keynote called Dare to Suck as well. And I danced into the Justin Timberlake playing Can't Stop the Feeling. I asked my audience of, I think, about 75 CEOs, get up and dance with me. And no one did except for the host just right, you know, 20 seconds before the end of the song. And I said, what's in— and I had the big title of the speech behind me. What's the title of my speech again? And why didn't you get up and dance with me? We don't want to look bad because if we look bad about this thing, we are bad. And so many people came up to me afterwards. I was just about to get up. And I started because I knew intellectually that failure led to success. Like you said, fail forward. I knew intellectually that was true. I did not own it. I did not own it for myself. I didn't want to risk publicly. And now, I love doing presentations where I'm doing an exercise I've never done before to see kind of getting the tightrope a little bit higher up in the air and go, let's walk this baby and see how it goes. And I may fall off into the net.

And there is something human about failing. Now, we're not talking about life or death situations here. We're not talking about, oh, you know what? Let's Let's shortcut our girder system on this high-rise building. And right, we're not talking about— we're talking about when it comes time to innovate, to try something new, to be able to test out, put your toe in the water and see if it works.

Absolutely.

Then, part of it works. It's like, okay, let's put the rest of the toes in the water. Let's put the foot in the water. Let's go up to her and, how's this looking? Right? And be able to have fun with it.

Yeah, I don't go to my airline pilot when I'm getting on a plane, which I haven't in a while. But hey, dare to suck today.

Yeah, exactly.

Don't fear failure. Try some new maneuvers. No, no. Get me there. Land safely.

But when you think about it, when you think about their training, their training is done in simulations. Where you do something, you fail. You do something, you adjust. You fail but maybe not as bad. You do it again, right? The simulations are their failure models. That's how they learn to fail before they go out in the real world and they do it again.

Yeah, they get hundreds if not thousands of hours of failure hours where they're put in really difficult situations where they get to fail in those situations.

Right. And I remember I tried a helicopter simulator and I was getting the hang of it. We were doing stuff and she says, okay, she says, I'm gonna throw some weather at you.

Right?

And the whole thing was about at what point will I crash.

Yeah.

Right? And it's like, okay, well, I learned this. So now, I need to learn how to adjust for it. And so, I can see business operators looking at this and saying, but my life-threatening thing could be, I'm going to lose a customer, or I'm going to lose profit, or I'm going to lose reputation. And those 3 things can be adapted and adjusted through the use of improv techniques as well.

Yeah, I would say if you bring more of it into your life, you're actually going to have more customers, more profits, Because you're looking, you get more— we have mental muscles that have atrophied in us, these creative mental muscles. Because in schools, most schools, there's one right answer. And they look at kindergartners, they're very divergent thinkers. By the time it's 4th grade, incredibly convergent thinkers. Yep. Yeah.

And then, by the time you get to university, I don't know about you, but when I went to college and I argued something with the professor. And I was chastised for it. It's like, how dare I question his theory or his assumption on something because he's the teacher.

Yeah, and the teacher's got an identity and hasn't like— look, it took me. I'm 54 years old. It took me till 47 to let go of being right about things.

Yeah.

And that felt like 200 pounds off my back. It's easier to be on stage as a speaker for me. It's easier to be a leader if you drop those things. It's easier to uplift the people around you and have a more productive business. So, I mean, if I could help, if I could share just letting that go, how powerful that is. One program, just work on for yourself. You will enjoy your life so much more.

Yeah, you know, I did a program called with Lauren Kelton who was talking about corporate culture. And I did another show with Michael Kerr who talks about how not to have a soul-sucking work environment. A lot of this is all here. But part of the challenge is, and again, I mentioned this in the book, that a lot of times the problem is that you have a leader who is in control. But that control is like putting the brake on for your driver and telling him to go places. What advice would you have for leaders who just can't let go of the reins? So, what do they need to do to shake them out of that?

That can be tough for some because some won't let go. And if they won't let go, if they're open, they can let go of anything. They can learn new things. And if you've played sports leader that won't let go, did you ever have someone tell you you weren't coachable? Being coachable, every one of the greats was coachable. So, if you want to get great at what you do, get coachable. I also, I haven't put the article out, but I'm gonna. How to be a jerk CEO or leader and still have a great organization. And I'll give you the key to that, jerks out there, if you're still watching, is hire someone that can put up with you that is awesome and then empower them to deal with everyone else.

That's it. That's it. Distance. And that's the disconnect, successive disconnecting.

There's times if you, if you know you're a jerk, maybe you should disconnect from your organization and let amazing human beings take, take it over. And then, then still everyone can grow. When someone says you can't change, of course you can change. You're changing every day. You just resist it. Your program, you're so attached to some program, you resist it. And, you know, just my— here's one of the things I say too. It's the reason why we can't attack politics for most people. Is you have taken this idea, and it's like it's attached to you. Yes. And if someone is messing with your idea, pulling it away, it feels like they're ripping at your skin. But I one of the things with listening is the question I ask myself. I think Alan Alda was the quote: Are you listening with the willingness to be changed? Are you listening with the willingness to be changed? And how you can counterprogram on that is just say, hey. For myself, Chris, did you listen to Marc with the willingness to be changed on that idea that you didn't fully agree with? I go, maybe I didn't. How can I be open to that? At least open to that and entertain the thought versus going, no way, that can't be true. Anyone can grow out of their jerkness.

Yeah. And so, you're mentioning this and my next question was, what is the very next step somebody should do as soon as they get off this broadcast? What's the one thing that they need to take away from this to be successful? And I think you just mentioned it.

Well, I think there's a lot of things they can do. But I did say I would put it in the phone, the principles of improv, and take those on or go to an improv class or hire me to come in and work with you and your team.

Oh, Kris.

Yes, all those things work. And from a communication aspect, I also use improv in the play of boosting people's communication. And what I did there is create a group called Speaker Skills Plus, and I created an environment of inevitable success. But then I added one word to that to really rocket it up for certain people, and that is playful. I created a playful environment of inevitable success that I would love to go to and play at myself. And then if you're a playful person that wants to boost your speaking skills, Your communication skills. If you boost those, let's say 5%, what is that going to be worth year after year after year after year?

Yeah, what difference does it make?

Yeah, yeah.

Establishing this yes and culture, I could see that some leaders are going to watch this and go, oh, okay. So, they go online. They find some improv games. They bring their people together and say, okay guys, You know, we're going to do some improv games. Are there any cautionaries when people move forward with this kind of thinking that they should be aware of?

Well, I give them credit if they just go do that too. So, what I get is there's a lot of improv players out there that are great. And Second City is a phenomenal organization that actually takes this into corporate culture as well. I think what I have different is I've been an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur since 6th grade, or maybe even earlier, when I bought Bubble Yum gum and sold it at lunchtime for double the profit and did all kinds of other things as well. So I have that mindset of the entrepreneur, the business owner as well, that I bring into how improv can work for teams. The debrief of coming out of these games can be incredible. The insights and ahas that can happen are well worth their weight in gold. But even if you play the game and you have fun with it, if you take on the Yes, And principle in the game, you're going to grow just because of that. And you don't need me to do that. But if you want to grow faster with more insights, I'd say, bring me in. Check it out.

Yeah. And I think this idea that we don't do it alone and Sometimes, if you're coachable, you also need a coach. And so, that's where I know that we could be of service. Do you have any last thoughts about what we're talking about today?

I'm just thankful to you, Marc, for sharing this and being your playful self, playful positive self. I love that you— I love that your Lights, Camera— is it Lights! Camera! Action!?

Yes.

A beautiful book title. And I love that you talk about having yes and in that. Because I share when someone goes, oh my gosh, that's a great idea. Can I share it with my people? I go, yes, share with your people. Yes, and embodying that for myself made me a better human being. And I'm doing the speaking I'm doing and the speaking training and communication training I do with leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners. I do that because I want to uplift the world in a positive way.

Nice.

So, and just so you know, jerks out there, I've been called a jerk too. And we can change.

It's, yeah, it's the only thing that I can't honestly say is the beef jerky in my cupboard doesn't change. I think it'll outlast cockroaches. It's so jerked up. This has been really fun. It's been goofy. We've had some laughs. Could you remind everybody one more time how they could get a hold of you?

Yeah, absolutely. chrisnielsen.com. There's a website there. But also, Chris chrisnielsen.com. I love hearing from people, you know, you say, I saw you with Marc, and I love this idea, even just to say hi. Say hi. If you want to talk about what I do in terms of training, I give you a free golden ticket, anyone who wants it, to come play with me. And that is basically you get to go on a test drive or ride and see if Speaker Skills Plus is for you or Oh, I don't like this speaker skills plus. And that's fine too. So, connect with me. I love to connect with people.

Kris, you're amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Marc.

That is absolutely awesome. Thank you for being on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? You can do that very simply. Hit the thumbs up button and ring the bell. And that will let me know that I'm on the right track. It will also let you know whenever I bring you some fresh content. As always, my offer stands as well. If you would like 30 minutes of my time with your team to brainstorm your business with you, please feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that is marked meetme.so/MarcHaine. And I would be more than happy to give you 30 minutes where we can just brainstorm your biggest, deepest challenge with you and your team. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please go ahead, hit the subscribe button, ring the bell. I should do what Chris was just mentioning. Chris said this thing about that we're being programmed. So, you know, I've come to the conclusion that nice people hit the subscribe button and give thumbs up. Only nice people do it. Bad people don't do it. Which one are you? Anyway, if you go ahead and do that, it'll give you first dibs. And ultimately, my role here is to provide you some great content to help you work on your business, not just in your business. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe. Stay safe, stay healthy, and please dare to be the exception.