So you want a cure for your indecisiveness…
There are decisive people who waste no time deliberating. ‘Just do it’ might be their motto. And then there are those who waver and debate every decision.
I know a man who embodies the indecisive style in his communication. He will start with a statement, such as ‘the weekend was fine’, and then undercut it with: ‘well, Saturday was fine, but Sunday was not so good…’ He will doubt any assertion he makes. With the result that his sentences go on and on, as if he is slow to use a full stop, and prefers a comma. He keeps qualifying, correcting himself, as his voice drops and he runs out of steam. Eventually he is interrupted, and he doesn’t mind that, maybe even prefers that, as a way of putting him out of his agony.
Of course, there are roles that do not suit such an indecisive person. He should not captain a ship, for example, or lead a rescue mission.
Are you indecisive? I recommend the following cure for indecision: do what I did and take a course in improvisation.
I signed up for a course in improvisation in 2017. Improv comes out of improv theatre, which many of us know from TV series like Saturday Night Live and Whose Line is it Anyway?
I was feeling stale. I wasn’t getting any new ideas. I knew I needed some kind of creative stimulus. So I found a company called Lower the Tone and rang them. A week later I was sitting in a drafty hall with 20 others, nervously wondering what I had let myself in for.
The first thing we did was a tug o’ war. We paired off, stood facing each other, and began. But the snag was that there was no rope: we had to imagine it. That one was all about body language and balancing the other person’s movements.
Then we did ‘Yes but’. This is a word game, where one of the pair suggests an idea and the other responds with ‘yes, but’ and criticises the idea. This is deflating, of course. But it was followed by ‘Yes and’, where the partner had to add to the original suggestion. We noticed how much more fun this was!
We spent the winter meeting weekly. They told us to leave our egos at the door, and be prepared to be humble, even humiliated. I noticed that most of the others were quick to volunteer when they were looking for people to play parts.
They mixed games with scenes on stage. One game was ‘pass the parcel’, where A passes an imaginary item to B, saying ‘here’s the baby, hold it for me’, and B takes it and passes it to C saying ‘it’s for you’ so it has now become a phone. C passes it to D as a hot potato… and so on.
The ad in the paper that drew me to Lower the Tone said that
‘We spend so much of our lives planning, but life comes at us point blank. No time to think. Like improv.’
I thought, that’s right, I have gone stale because I am planning everything. It’s time to loosen up.
The real benefit of the course was this: a cure for indecisiveness. Improv is decision-making on speed. Gradually you learn the wonderful fact that there are no wrong decisions. But there is huge urgency to respond, react, keep the ball moving. I imagine it’s torture for perfectionists.
Unexpectedly, it also taught me to be generous. On stage, you are utterly reliant on others, and they on you. Like the fall guy in the comedy duo, you have to be ready to set it up for your partner, to tee it up for them.
So, imagine that you are the fire chief, and want to find a way to train your firefighters. How do you train people to be resilient? Or, take the example of what happened to a barman I know. He was working behind the bar one evening when a woman took off all her clothes. The boss took one look at her, turned to my friend, and said: ‘Sort that out.’ If there is such a thing as the Bar Worker’s Manual, you can be sure that it doesn’t include a section on dealing with naked customers!
Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face! - Mike Tyson.
So remember the boxer’s advice. And that of General von Moltke: ‘No plan survives the first contact with the enemy.’
As we face up to global challenges ahead, we will have to throw out the manual. We will all be improvising.