They Need Your Support

What do improvisational comedy sketches have in common with ensuring you have an effective team of employees at your campus store?

It’s all in how you show support, according to Main Stage speaker Joel Zeff at CAMEX24 in Savannah, GA.

Zeff, who has worked in improv comedy, brought three groups of audience volunteers on stage to illustrate. With a few prompts, he got them to improvise skits on the spot about a road trip to Santa Barbara, firefighters cleaning up, and a rocket blastoff involving belly dancing and a dolphin. For each sketch, the audience went crazy—lots of laughter, clapping, and hurrahs.

“Why were they successful?” Zeff asked. “I gave them something (the prompts) and you gave them something … You gave them energy. The more clapping and laughing, the more positive support.” The engagement from the audience boosted the confidence of the volunteers on stage and encouraged them to give their best effort to the sketch, even though none were professional comics, he said.

The same goes for your employees.

“Every person on your team, that’s what they want. That’s what you want,” Zeff noted. At the end of each workday, he suggested, think about all the individuals with whom you had contact. Did you provide each one with some level of positive support—even just a thank-you—or were you too busy?

There are many ways to support your staff and other stakeholders: finding out what fulfills them and offering opportunities or rewards that matter to them; being a good listener to their ideas and concerns; acknowledging a job well done (maybe let the boss know, too); lending a hand where needed.

“How do I help people around me be successful? Ask that question and act on it,” Zeff said.

But what if you feel you’re not getting sufficient support?

“Find a way to be successful,” Zeff suggested. “When something is happening that wasn’t expected or doesn’t work, we have a choice. As long as we stay in the game. It’s going to work.”

That means embracing change and disruption. “You might have to do something different, something you didn’t do five years ago,” he said.

You don’t have to tackle every challenge at the same time, however. “Pick one thing that really hits home” and focus your efforts on that,” Zeff said. When you have achieved success in that area, build on that success with another goal, and maintain the momentum. In that manner you can “keep that positive support alive” for yourself.