Yes, And: What improv taught our team about collaboration

Imaginary Cats

Close your eyes and imagine a workplace Professional Development day – maybe one you’ve sat through yourself in the course of your career. Do you see a panel of speakers, a powerpoint presentation, a training on refreshing your LinkedIn presence? 

You probably don’t envision your supervisor miming throwing an imaginary cat at you.

CCST holds quarterly Professional Development (PD) days, organized by alternating groups of CCST staff members on relevant topics like change management, fundraising, and conflict styles. A recent PD day used some unconventional methods to build everyday professional skills.

The program kicked off with a panel focused on networking. CCST Science & Technology Policy Fellows alums Andrew Dawson (CA Housing Partnership), Teresa Feo (MegaFire Action), and Sam Mahanes (CA State Assembly) visited our office to share their insights, tips, and lessons learned through years of honing their professional networking skills. This engaging discussion set the tone for the day – thoughtful and straightforward, with some playful humor thrown in. CCST staff listened and posed questions, safely within our comfort zone. 

Until the next activity of the day: an improv class. 

Learning Through Improv

Hosted by Nathan Little, Corporate Instructor with the Radical Agreement Project, the improv portion of the day began with an exercise called “One Word Story.” Standing in a circle, each participant shared a single word that (ideally) connected with the last person’s word, going one by one around the circle to build a story. The objective was to tell a complete story that actually made sense. 

We were not very good at this. 

But a warm-up exercise is meant to be just that: a warm-up. This activity is designed to help team members collaborate, communicate, stay in the moment, actively listen, and build confidence. For me, it established that it’s okay to be silly, not get frozen in perfectionism, and get comfortable speaking in front of a group. We started to see the cracks in the ice: everyone was indeed warming up, especially as Nathan reiterated that the purpose was to play, relax, and be less inhibited in our expression than we typically allow.

Next, we played two games that involved passing imaginary objects to team members around the circle, with more objects and complexity added in – including the aforementioned cat – until the pace and noise level reached a fever pitch. If you’ve ever had to focus on an important conversation while standing in an impossibly loud networking event, you can understand the corollary skills at play here.

Now that we were warmed up, it was finally time to really “improv.” You may have heard of “yes, and” – a fundamental principle in improvisational theater that encourages performers to accept what others say and build upon it. Practicing the “yes, and” technique with increasingly absurd scenarios revealed just how habitual it is for many of us to default to “No, but…”

To close out the day, we took turns acting out scenarios on a mock “Guest Panel,” which Nathan moderated. By this point, team members were genuinely excited to participate, even those who had started the day with trepidation. It was impressive to watch how convincingly this group of PhD scientists and science policy professionals discussed the energy systems of an alien planet or embodied the cutthroat mentality of reality TV producers. Everyone ran with one another’s ideas and added their own, honing their listening and collaboration skills. 

“Yes and,” to Partnership

A core value of CCST’s mission is partnership. As a nonpartisan boundary organization serving California policymakers, one of our greatest strengths is fostering collaboration across sectors, disciplines, and expertise. We convene leaders, connect decision-makers with subject matter experts, and help bridge the gap between research and action. As our day-to-day work focuses on bringing people together to address California’s most pressing challenges, this day of improvisation – while at times outrageously silly – was an opportunity for staff members to embody the very qualities CCST represents: communication, trust, creativity, adaptability, and teamwork. 

In the months since that Professional Development day,  I’ve heard staff refer to “yes, and” as they collaborate on CCST projects. Whether it’s networking at an event like our annual Science & Technology Week, speaking on a conference panel, seeking funding opportunities, working with partners on a new program, or problem-solving for an internal project, the CCST team is ready for whatever life throws at us – even an imaginary cat.

Bailey MkNelly is CCST Program Associate, supporting the Science Services and Communications team. Previously, she was a California Climate Action Corps Fellow at the California Natural Resources Agency.

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About CCST
The California Council on Science and Technology is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that serves as a trusted source of expert science and technology advice for California policymakers—powered by a world-class partner network. CCST was established via a unanimous vote of the California State Legislature in 1988 to make California’s policies stronger with science and technology.