What Improv Comedy Can Teach You About Making Agreements

The art of agreement also involves the art of disagreement. And knowing how to manage disagreements can make the difference between a happy relationship and, well, a miserable one.

I say cats are better, you say dogs are better. Neither of us is right, but we both have strong feelings about our beliefs. 

That’s a silly example. But what about when you’re making big decisions at work? Two teams are pitching two very different approaches to solving a problem. The boss is going to choose one. Then the teams need to work together.

How do you handle that? 

The world of comedy might not be the first place you look for an answer. But the people who run The Second City in Chicago, the improv theater founded in 1959, beg to differ. In fact, they’ve come up with a three-word phrase that helps people have difficult conversations: “Thank you, because.” 

Behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business have tested the effectiveness of the phrase with thousands of subjects, and demonstrated, with data, that it works, says Kelly Leonard, vice president of Creative Strategy, Innovation and Business Development at The Second City. 

“We developed this in a lab at Booth, and based it on existing research showing that people want to be seen by others the same way they see themselves.” 

“Yes, and”

The Second City is better known for a different phrase: “Yes, and.” That’s an improv technique that involves accepting whatever the other person says and then building from that. 

How it works: The idea behind “Yes, and” is that if you say no or contradict what the other actor says, you shut down the scene. But when you take what the other person says and run with it, magic happens. 

“Yes, and” is as effective in real life as it is on the stage. In 2015, Leonard published a massive bestseller, Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration.

Though The Second City is best known for launching the careers of actors like Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler, the company also operates a booming division, Second City Works, that provides training to Fortune 500 companies, teaching business people how to “Yes, and” their way up the corporate ladder.

“Thank you, because”

A decade or so ago, Leonard and others at The Second City started working with behavioral scientists at the Booth School of Business who believed improv techniques could be useful to people in professional fields, ranging from law enforcement to medicine.

“They said, we get the `Yes and’ thing. But what is the prompt or practice if you disagree with what someone just said, but you need to stay inside the conversation? Because this happens all the time,” Leonard says.

How it works: The exercise starts with “Thank you” (an expression of gratitude) and then Because (finding something you value in what they said) and then offering an opposite opinion. The order of these is important. It sets up reciprocity of gratitude and being seen as opposed to simply trying to convince someone they’re wrong and you’re right.

“Thank you, because” is an alternative to what people usually do, which Leonard calls “No, because.” You say dogs are better than cats, and my immediate response is to say no, you’re wrong, and then start trying to poke holes in your argument. 

You know how that usually works out.

It’s brain science

The behavioral scientists at Booth ran tens of thousands of people through conversational tests where they used “No, because,” and then “Thank you, because.” 

By a wide margin people who use “Thank you, because” stay in conversations longer, and perceive their conversations to be better. It feels good to be heard, and in turn, you tend to listen to the other person more.  

“When you thank the person for what they just said, you’re setting off the gratitude part of the brain,” Leonard says.

“Thank you, because” has become part of the training that Second City Works provides to corporate clients. 

Recently, Leonard ran a three-day engagement with a company that had merged two divisions and wanted to help them learn how to collaborate and work together. As anyone who has worked in a big company knows, that’s a tricky challenge. But “Thank you, because” helped them build bridges.

“People are starting to understand that these facades that we have created around business are fake. Business is just groups of people coming together to try to do a thing. And if you have insights about that from neuroscience, psychology, biology, all that stuff, let's use it,” Leonard says.