I recently had a phone conversation with Izzy Gessell about his work in bringing improv to meetings, and he just blew me away. Most people, like Betty, who wrote about Izzy's ASAE session here, say things like, "Izzey is one of the most popular presenters at IAF conferences, but his thing - Improv Theater - has always kinda scared me. Way out of my comfort zone!"
Then they experience it, and find that they absolutely love it. One of the exercizes they did in the session was replacing "yes, but" with "yes, and" in conversation. This idea was introduced to me a while back, and it made such an impact that I wrote an entire article without using the word "but." It was harder than I thought it would be, but really interesting. Give it a try one of these days and see how it changes the whole tone of a conversation. And if anyone's using Izzy for a program in the greater Boston area and wouldn't mind a journalist tagging along, please let me know. I'd love to see his ideas in action.