‘Yes, and…’ is a tool for helping clients develop active listening, creativity and collaborative behaviours. Julie Flower reports
Origins of the tool
The concept of ‘yes, and…’ comes from improvised comedy. It’s a way of thinking and interacting which focuses on accepting and building on ‘offers’ made by others (‘yes, and…’) rather than blocking suggestions (‘yes, but…’). It intends to heighten self-awareness of accepting and blocking behaviours and enable clients to practise and develop new skills in an unusual and often fun way. The coach can support the client to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, physiology and behaviours as part of the experiential learning cycle.
The principle of ‘yes, and…’ can be illustrated and explored through a range of exercises, either in a one-to-one, group or team coaching situation.
‘yes, and…’ can also be a powerful tool in coach development, supporting active listening and presence and offering principles to underpin creative partnership and co-creation.
There’s an increasing evidence base around the use of improvisation exercises for individual and team learning, and in coach and therapist development (Ratten & Hodge, 2016; Romanelli & Tishby, 2019; Felsman et al, 2020; Flower, 2022)
When does it work best?
‘yes, and…’ works well when clients feel that they’d like to be more spontaneous and creative with their thinking and more supportive of others’ ideas.
A ‘yes, and…’ approach can help leaders to create more collaborative climates and more powerful individual conversations. If a client tends to jump to the negative aspects of a new idea, ‘yes, and…’ can be a powerful way of encouraging flexibility of thinking.
Clients often find ‘yes, and…’ revelatory in its simplicity and breadth of application. A helpful homework activity is to ask the client to deliberately take a ‘yes, and…’ approach (saying it to themselves in their heads) with different types of interaction, including with family, friends and at work, and to note their reflections on the impact on themselves and others.
How is it used?
This simple example of a ‘yes, and…’ exercise can be used in a one-to-one, group or team situation. It’s described here in a group or team context but can easily be adapted for one-to-one coaching with the coach doing the exercise with the client, or the client even ‘yes, and…’-ing themselves and reflecting on the experience.
This takes the form of planning an imaginary day trip. A number of potential variations are listed at the end. It may also be helpful to follow an imaginary scenario with the application of ‘yes, and…’ principles to a ‘real’ client situation, such as a new project or business product or service idea.
- The coach asks the group or team members to imagine they are planning a day out together.
- The coach explains the only rules are that the clients will alternately make suggestions and each sentence must begin with the words ‘yes, and…’, trying to build specifically on the previous idea. It’s important to say that ideas don’t need to be considered ‘rational’ or ‘feasible’ in any traditional sense.
- If working face-to-face, it helps to stand or sit in a circle, to establish an order of speaking and to aid active listening. It also works very well as a virtual activity, with each person receiving a number, or an order of speaking being established via the chat function.
- One person begins with an ‘offer’, such as ‘let’s go to the beach’.
- The next responds with ‘yes, and…’ then adds something to the previous idea, such as ‘yes, and let’s build a sandcastle’.
- This should continue, following the established order for a couple of minutes (at least), trying to keep the energy up and avoiding too many delays thinking about responses
- Encourage the clients to genuinely seek to build on the last suggestion (such as ‘yes, and let’s make the sandcastle resemble the Eiffel Tower’; ‘yes, and let’s enter it into an international competition for the best sandcastle shaped like a landmark’, etc) rather than purely building on the general theme, such as each person making different general suggestions for things to do at the beach.
- In the debrief, encourage the group to reflect on:
– How it felt to have to respond in the moment
– When did they (feel they wanted to) block?
– What skills did they need?
– How might this be relevant to their current situation?
– What did they notice in terms of their thoughts, feelings, physiology and behavioural responses?
Potential variations
- Shared reminiscence: using ‘yes, and…’ for the group or team to tell the ‘story’ of an imaginary past success or shared experience.
- One sentence at a time storytelling: using the principles of ‘yes, and…’ as a way to build a narrative together for an imaginary protagonist.
- ‘I’m a tree’: a physical representation of ‘yes, and…’ principles where one person makes a physical and verbal ‘offer’, such as ‘I’m a tree’. Two more people then add complementary offers, such as ‘I’m a robin on a branch’ and ‘I’m morning bird song’. This could build to a ‘tableau’ with a larger number of people.
Client perspective
The leadership team of a rapidly growing charity
Exploring the concepts of ‘yes, and…’ and ‘yes, but…’ came at a pivotal point in our journey as a leadership team. As a rapidly growing charity we are keen to generate and implement new ideas, and this needs to be balanced with the time and resources we have available.
We took part in ‘yes, and…’ exercises as part of a series of team coaching sessions. The experience has made a huge impression on us as a leadership team. We all have much greater awareness of our own behaviours and their impact on others, including how they can both encourage and stifle creativity and innovation. It now just feels like part of our culture that we call ourselves and each other out by saying: “That felt like a ‘yes, but…’ or: “How can we make that into a ‘yes, and…’?”
This is a simple yet powerful intervention that is helping us innovate, constantly expanding and improving what we offer.
- Nav Mirza is chief executive of Dads Unlimited, a charity improving the lives of children of separated parents.
Conclusion
‘Yes, and…’ is a playful and powerful technique that is relatively simple to access and use as part of a coaching session, both as a practical and adaptable exercise, and as a concept or underpinning principle. It can offer a range of insights and learning for clients, particularly those who are seeking to work more spontaneously, creatively and collaboratively, in-the-moment, feeling more confident and at ease with uncertainty.
It can also be helpful as a coach development tool, and overall stance, enabling a coach to be curious, more comfortable with ambiguity, and to co-create in partnership with clients.
About the author
- Julie Flower is a leadership and team development practitioner and ICF-credentialled coach, with a specialism in improvisation and navigating complexity. She is also external tutor in coaching at Henley Business School and the co-editor of J Passmore et al. (eds.), (2021; 2022) Coaching Tools. Volumes 1, 2 and the forthcoming volume 3. She runs her own leadership practice, The Specialist Generalist, and works internationally as an associate with leading consultancies and flagship leadership development programmes. Julie is an experienced improv performer, including with award-winning Improbotics, a group which explores AI and human interaction.
Further info
This series showcases a range of coaching tools, drawing from the books, Coaching Tools: 101 coaching tools and techniques for executive coaches, team coaches, mentors and supervisors – volumes 1, 2 and 3 (volume 3 to be published later in 2023).
References
- C Day and J Flower, ‘yes, and…’, in J Passmore, C Day, J Flower, M Grieve, and J Jovanovic Moon (eds.), Coaching Tools: 101 coaching tools and techniques for executive coaches, team coaches, mentors and supervisors: WeCoach! Volume 3. Libri Publishing, 2023
- P Felsman, S Gunawardena, and C M Seifert, ‘Improv experience promotes divergent thinking, uncertainty tolerance, and affective well-being’, in Thinking Skills and Creativity, 35, 1-9, 2020
- J Flower, ‘Fifteen tools and techniques for coaches’, in J Passmore (ed.), The Coaches’ Handbook. Routledge, 427-442, 2021
- J Flower, ‘Acting on Instinct’, in Coaching at Work, 17(2), 40-43, 2022
- V Ratten and J Hodge, ‘So much theory, so little practice: a literature review of workplace improvisation training’, in Industrial and Commercial Training, 48(3), 149-155, 2016
A Romanelli and O Tishby, ‘Just what is there now, that is what there is’ – the effects of theater improvisation training on clinical social workers’ perceptions and interventions’, in Social Work Education, 38(6), 797-814, 2019