By Shannon O'Neill

Before shows, many improvisers look into their teammates eyes and say 'Got your back.' This is an expression of trust. Regardless of what happens on stage, the members of the improv team will support each other. Nobody will be left alone to struggle on stage, nobody's ideas will be ignored, nobody will feel left out.

When an improviser steps on stage and verbalizes an idea for a scene, their teammate joins and supports the idea. They continue to do this and create a successful scene. This is a result of trust.

Improv builds trust.

To successfully work as a team, whether the team is made up of two people or twenty people, the members have to trust each other. This goes for sports teams, improv teams and teams created in the workplace.

Nobody likes to be micromanaged. You want to know that an assignment was given to you because you can handle it. You want to give someone an assignment because you know they can handle it.  It feels good to be trusted and to trust. Studies show that employees who feel trusted will demonstrate higher levels of productivity, enhanced creativity and innovation.

When students are first learning how to improvise there is usually a lack of trust, both in themselves and their classmates. But through exercises in class, the students learn that in order to have successful scenes, they have to trust themselves and more importantly, each other. And when they finally allow this to happen, their scenes are better and they start to discover that they are capable of more than they realized.

This also translates into the workplace. When colleagues trust each other, they will have more confidence while completing their assigned tasks, which often leads to superior work and ultimately greater profits.