I first watched Lee Smart perform at Big City Improv in 1995. His unique style had audiences rolling with laughter, and long after Big City disappeared, he continued to engage and win over new crowds.
After an acclaimed run on the Second City stage (including my all-time favourite show, Sordido Deluxo, and a Canadian Comedy Award) Lee was named their Creative Director, working closely with corporate clients to provide coaching and produce top-notch custom productions. And he managed to fit a TV series into his schedule, writing, producing and hosting The 5th Quadrant for national television.
Lee (along with partner Lindsay Leese) now helms Smartleese Creative. Their focus is on creative services for artistic, commercial and corporate productions. And of course, Lee's one of the country's top facilitators for improv workshops.
I've been behind the piano for your improv comedy shows, but not your workshops and training sessions. What goes on in there?
LS: That’s a great question! Workshops can take on a variety of forms – anything from improvisation fundamentals, all the way to leadership skills, creativity, adapting to change, innovation or learning improvisation as an art form for the fun of it!
The one thing that all these workshops have in common is that the tenets of improv are the guiding principles. Basically, that means that we all improvise all the time, without even knowing it. Our workshops provide people with the skills to improvise most effectively.
It turns out that the set of skills you need to be a successful improviser on stage is the same set of skills you need to succeed at business in all the areas I mentioned earlier – listening fully, building on ideas, reserving judgement, and the list goes on!
In a nutshell, we share our knowledge in improv with the workshop participants, and they learn to tap into and hone their most creative, collaborative and flexible selves.
There are surely folks who don't think they'll do well at improv, when they arrive for a workshop. How do you help them find their confidence?
That’s really true – we all start out as creative powerhouses when we are kids, and somehow along the way of growing up, some of us begin to think — or worse, are told — that our true strengths lie in other areas that don’t necessarily involve creativity.
We try to disabuse people of that idea right off the top, with some exercises that demonstrate that what holds people back from taking that creative leap is often the fear of being judged by others, or even more insidiously, our own self-judgement – the negative self-talk that says: that idea isn’t good enough, or no one will understand what I mean.
Creativity flourishes in a supportive environment. That’s one of the ground rules of all our workshops: no judgement. Everyone needs the freedom to fail, in order to learn from that experience and build on the valuable insights it can provide. Judgement takes us down a rabbit hole of self-consciousness or laying blame, instead of moving forward, together, to find that solution.
In what industries do you think your workshops would really benefit employees?
It’s not surprising that many people start off thinking that these workshops are best suited for industries where people are already engaged in some form of creative endeavour. And while that's definitely true, we find that our workshops can have a tremendous amount of value in industries not traditionally thought to be “creative”.
In delivering these workshops, we've seen that creative thinking plays a major role in every industry, whether it’s in terms of finding innovative solutions to seemingly intractable problems or refining a process that works but could be made to work more smoothly, or effective collaboration and communication... there’s an opportunity for individuals to employ put their, sometimes latent, creative talents to use in so many ways and areas.
So whether it’s IT or nursing or law or aviation, there's always room to use our principles to leverage your own creativity and that of those you work with.
When someone heads back to work after one of your workshops, what new approaches might they take with them?
One of our fundamental tenets is summed up by the two word phrase (some might say mantra!) of “Yes, and…” two simple words that have a great deal of resonance with those who have worked with us in our sessions.
What appears to be simple can have a lot of insight into what makes improvisation work. “Yes” means acceptance, not necessarily agreement – and that’s a key distinction. One person can (indeed must) accept another’s idea or point-of-view without necessarily agreeing with it.
Refusal of acceptance leads to non-productive conflict. The word “and” is the bridge to building on an idea or point-of-view, using your insight and acumen to extract what you see as the value of your partner’s contribution and embellish, elaborate and develop it. It’s through this process, that an idea which starts out as a hunch or a gut instinct can be developed and transformed into something everyone involved in the process endorses, believes in and wants to see succeed.
So the language of “Yes, and…” becomes a code or shorthand that people use when they return to work. It tends to invoke the session itself and help people set aside those things that can block their creative, collaborative selves and focus on what their partners need to move forward.
You frequently work alongside Lindsay Leese; how does your approach to a workshop change when working as a team?
Lindsay and I are a tremendous team – we've worked together for over a decade delivering workshops and working with clients as Smartleese Creative Inc.
Knowing each other as well as we do, we have a natural ease and flow when we work together that has the added benefit of literally showing the principles of improvisation in action. This happens two ways: as co-facilitators, we can demonstrate our exercises for the participants, so that they have a clear, unambiguous understanding of what we are asking them to do; in addition to that, session participants definitely enjoy the fun of watching us improvise on the spot and seeing first-hand what creative teamwork can look like.
Another great benefit to working as a team with Lindsay is that we both bring our work and training history to bear when debriefing the interactive exercises with the participants. In addition to being an alumnus of the famed Second City theatre, Lindsay’s background is founded on training she received as a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. She is a successful working actor, a presentation coach with www.pitchcraft.ca and keynote speaker on the topic of presenting in everyday life.
One of the benefits she brings is her insight into human behaviour and her keen skills of observation, both of which are invaluable in helping participants break through mental or behavioral blocks they may have around creativity.
For myself, I’m also an alumnus of the Second City, as well as having a background in marketing. We've found that this combination leads to a great tag-team approach when debriefing exercises that ultimately leads to lot of insightful aha! moments for our session participants.
Who are the people who've inspired you?
It may sound unusual, but some of my greatest inspirations are comedians and scientists! As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved comedy: people like Steve Martin, David Letterman, and the entire SCTV cast. Couple with that I’ve also had a passion for science – physics, chemistry, astronomy – some of the people I look to for inspiration in that field are giants like Carl Sagan, Linus Pauling and of course Albert Einstein.
What are you reading lately?
Right now I’m reading Margaret Atwood’s “In Other Worlds” a series of critical essays on science fiction, speculative fiction and the human imagination. It’s a really stimulating read. Another book I'd really like to recommend is one by Gary Marcus called “Kluge” that attempts to explain the human mind! One last recommend: Steve Jobs' biography.
You're pretty up-to-date on technology. What are your favourite apps and gadgets?
I do have to confess my affinity for Apple products, my iPhone is pretty indispensable. My new favourite app is one called “SeeClickFix”. It’s an app that you can use to identify non-emergency maintenance issues in your neighbourhood, snap a picture and upload it to the city. It’s a great way to feel involved, and rather than griping, do something proactive.
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Find Lee online:
WEBSITE: smartleesecreative.com
EMAIL: contact[at]smartleesecreative.com
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