In the Foreword to the first edition, Thiagi said, Bravo, Kat! What are you going to do for an encore?
Here is the encore! We need this second edition now more than ever. In a world beset by accelerating change, we must be able to think on our feet (and on our seat) in our organizations, in our families, and in our own personal lives. The art of improvisation is a vital set of attitudes and life skills for the 21st Century. Individuals who are not creative and organizations that are not innovative will be left behind.
This book gives you a chance to work and play with key improv principles of mental flexibility, trust, spontaneity, listening, accepting and building on others ideas, and performing with presence all of which will help to inspire your own personal spontaneous combustion creativity and jump-start your organizations ability to innovate.
The first edition mostly focused on training and trainers. This new text goes beyond trainers and recognizes that everyone can be (and needs to be) a performer who calls on improvisational skills and mindsets to promote productivity and pleasure at work (and in life outside of work).
In an age of instant messaging, Facebooking, and tweeting, we need more than ever to recapture the human touch and the magic of storytelling to communicate with charisma. How do you get your message across to your boss, colleagues, customers, students, clients, patients, family and friends? Chapter 6 will help you to: command focus, create compelling stories, hone your storytelling skills, match your message and style to your audience, and see how stories can magically capture attention and increase retention."
Joel Goodman, founder and director of The HUMOR Project, Inc.
is the author of 8 books, recipient of the International Lifetime of Laughter Achievement Award, and has done humor and creativity presentations in all 50 states and on all 7 continents.
In this revised edition of Training to Imagine, Kat no longer has to call from the fringes. Clearly we are all performing, all the time, and business requires surfing the waves of change. Why not get good at it? By outlining how the six core principles of improv apply to 21st century leadership challenges, Koppett shows how we can trust ourselves to create together, not just in the safety of a team activity but out on the frontiers of business performance. I have used over half the activities in this book with excellent results! The yes/and principle alone has the potential to reverse negative patterns and spark upward spirals of trust, collaboration and excellence on any team."
Elizabeth Doty, author of The Compromise Trap
Training to Imagine is useful and wise, entertaining and generous. Based on rich experience and a great deal of thought, it's a splendid second edition.
Paul Jackson, President
Applied Improv Network
"Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning appears in its second updated edition to revise information and goes beyond the first edition's focus on trainers to show how everyone can be a performer using improvisation techniques to promote productivity within and outside the theatre. From evolving new improvisation approaches to business survival to extending the theories and exercises inherent in improve to organizational structures, chapters draw close connections between management goals and theatre training, making this a strong dual pick for stage and business collections alike."
California Bookwatch