How to Handle Anything - 6 Week Virtual, Live Course

Master the Highest Impact Skills Key to Thriving in Work and Life — Learn to Improvise

Everywhere in life we're asked to improvise. Delayed flights, lost jobs, stomach bugs, conversations that don't meet our expectations, all of these situations require us to adapt, problem solve, and improvise with creativity. During this 6-week course you'll learn and practice improvisation techniques specifically designed to improve your capacity for growth and change and ability to handle anything that comes your way, be it a power outage, job change, or labor strike.

Unlike reading a book or listening to a podcast, this course will give you actual training and experience handling anything. You'll get hands on experience and feedback on your specific ways of navigating uncontrollable circumstances with me and your fellow classmates in a live setting. You’ll walk away with practical skills and techniques you can use and with a big smile on your face! 

Who is this course for

• You’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or independent who is constantly navigating changing circumstances in your life and business.

• You’re working on a team (at a company, school, NGO, etc) and want to make sure you’re best prepared to handle all of the growth and change inevitable in an ever changing (and not in your control) company.

• You struggle when things don’t go as planned. You realize it’s a skill to be able to adapt and handle unpredictable and changing circumstances and now you want to get better.
  

What you’ll get out of this course

Transformational tools

Learn about your core strengths and build resilience and gain an expanded skillset, increasing your capacity to handle more situations without the added stress. Discover new ways of creatively solving problems and innovating with new ideas. Find out how to empower your own adaptability, creativity, and trust.

Real practice

We’ll directly practice various conversations to show you how to prep for them and how and what to do, and you’ll practice them enough that it will become much easier and less stressful to do in real life.

Learn and practice a framework and techniques for handling anything that comes your way

The aim is to know how to flexibly handle situations and conversations in your own words, instead of needing to memorize what to say for an infinite number of possible scenarios.

A community of support

Meet and connect with other people, building bonds, friendships, and collaborations to support one another’s growth even beyond the six weeks.

Course Syllabus

1. Session 1: Foundations - Learn and practice the 4 principles and foundational skills that will help you handle anything, and which we will build upon throughout the course.

2. Session 2: Increasing Your Personal Capacity (for Handling Anything) Get to know your Core Character and learn ways to tap into your (often less used) inner skills and character traits when you need them most.

3. Session 3: Having Conversations that Make You Cringe (ie difficult conversations). Learn and practice techniques that make difficult conversations a little, well, less difficult. Plus, practice having those conversations that make you cringe so that they become a bit less, well, cringeworthy.

4. Session 4: How to Give Feedback Without Making People Cry. Learn communication techniques proven to boost trust, connection, and productivity, for all the times you need to deliver a hard to deliver message in ways that hurt less.

5. Session 5: Creative Problem Solving (even when the problem seems insolvable). Discover new ways of creatively solving problems and innovating with new ideas. Learn and train your brain to look at things in new ways, so you can turn unexpected wrenches thrown at you into magic wands.

6. Session 6: Putting it All Together (especially when everything seems to be falling apart). Practice core techniques learned throughout the course, applied to specific life and work scenarios, training your mind and body to approach real life change and fearful situations with courage.

What people are saying

“Any leader who wants to build more collaboration and connectivity in their team should include improv in their toolkit. Working with Mary is a delight.” - Ellina S, CMO

“Mary and team walked us through fun exercises that allowed us to truly listen, exercise our creativity, and embrace the unexpected.” - Liz K, Brand Marketing Leader

“Not only did she make our nonprofit leaders feel welcomed and empowered, but they gained powerful skills of quick thinking, clear communication, trust, and flexibility. And they've raved about it!! Could not recommend Mary's programs more for companies, leaders, and entrepreneurs.” - Julia J, Senior UX/UI Designer

“All I can say is WOW! This session was full of humor, interactive and tips that you can implement immediately.” - Sarah K, Learning & Development Leader

“Through improv, we were able to improve communication, build trust, become better listeners, problem-solvers, gain confidence, and have fun while doing it! We laughed a lot, learned a lot and, when we walked away, many of us were no longer strangers. All of this in less than 2 hours. It was awesome!” - Ryan M, Agile Coach

“I NEEDED THIS!!” - Jennifer O, Consultant

Meet your instructor

Mary Lemmer is a creative impact-driven entrepreneur, consultant, and global speaker helping leaders, companies, and individuals innovate, navigate change and thrive in an unpredictable world. She is the founder of Improve, and designs and delivers engaging keynotes, offsites, trainings, and conference sessions. Mary has helped leaders navigate challenges from team conflicts, changes in company structure and team dynamics, problem solve, and thrive while achieving their goals. She brings over two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, author, humorist, and recovering venture capitalist and startup unicorn director. In addition to her lived and work experience she has a certification in neuro linguistic programming and has developed training methods combining NLP, and other research-supported methods, with improv techniques, for profound transformation and lasting impact. She gave the TED Talk “How improv can improve your leadership and life” and has spoken at The Social Innovation Summit, TED Women, TechCon, The Positive Business Conference, multiple years at the Agile Alliance conference, among speaking and leading interactive and empowering sessions for hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world. 

Mary is a graduate of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, completed The  Human Side of Entrepreneurship, Organizational Leadership, at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and studied improv comedy at The Second City, The Groundlings, and the Upright Citizens Brigade among other improv theatres. She wrote, directed, and performed in the award winning short film Dating Apps In Real Life, associate produced award winning documentary Act Social featuring Colin Mochrie. She created and hosted Startup Late Night, a late-night comedy show featuring business leader guests, and has performed improv and comedy all over the country, including at Gilda Radner’s Laughfest, The Punch Line in San Francisco, and the Lady Laughs Comedy Festival.

Learn more about Mary’s personal story of how improvising helped her better handle anything, here

Location:

Zoom

Once you register you’ll receive the Zoom link to join at least 24 hours before the start of the first session.

FAQs:

What happens if I can’t make a live session?

We hope you can make the live sessions, but just in case, we’ll recordings after class.

Teachers are also available for questions for 10 minutes after class.

I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?

As much or little as you want to put in. Each live class is an hour with the option to hang around for an extra 10 minutes. Students will have access to the recordings and bonus materials for optional self-study if you’d like. If you want to get the full benefit of the course we recommend attending all 6 hours worth of the 6 live sessions (or at least watching the recordings and practicing the techniques from each session).

What’s the refund policy?

If you need to cancel your registration, please email yes@chooseimprove.com

There are no refunds after the first class begins.