COM 66 — Think on Your Feet: An Improviser’s Guide to Business and Communication
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
Date(s): Feb 22—Feb 23
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Saturday and Sunday
Class Meeting Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Tuition: $440
Refund Deadline: Feb 15
Unit(s): 1
Enrollment Limit: 26
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Winter
Day: Saturday and Sunday
Duration: 2 days
Time: 10:00 am—4:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Feb 22—Feb 23
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $440
Refund Deadline: Feb 15
Instructor(s): Debra Schifrin, Daniel Schifrin
Enrollment Limit: 26
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Dec 2, 8:30 am (PT)
The skill of thinking on your feet is no longer optional in the workplace; it is mandatory. In this interactive, improvisation-based communication course, you will learn and practice skills for handling the unexpected with calm, grace, inclusiveness, and humor. You will increase your agility, grow your confidence in unpredictable situations, and learn critical new skills and mindsets. These include being more present and open to surprising ideas; cultivating a mindset of curiosity; and engaging with your audience with energy, commitment, and delight. Whether you are in front of an audience of one or 800, you will learn how to prevent missteps and imperfections from derailing you. The course will reveal the ways spontaneity and thinking on your feet can be joyful and how play and humor can be game changers in creating an authentic and positive connection with your audience. The course will include a blend of interactive activities in pairs and small groups, targeted debriefs, group discussions, and mini-lectures. By taking time to practice these techniques in a supportive and encouraging environment, you will come out of this course a stronger and more intuitive communicator.
This course is not a theater-performance course; no theater or improv experience is necessary.
DEBRA SCHIFRIN
Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Debra Schifrin is a corporate consultant and lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She co-created the school’s first and only improv-based MBA management course, "Spontaneous Management." She is the founder of Debra Schifrin Consulting. As a consultant, she designs and leads innovative, improv-based training sessions for businesses on leadership, communications, collaboration, and storytelling. Her clients come from multiple sectors, including high tech, consulting, medicine, educational technology, consumer goods, and finance and include Bain & Company, Box, DoorDash, Yelp, and Kaiser Permanente. She is an experienced improv teacher and performer. Before Stanford, she spent a decade as a reporter, director, and producer for National Public Radio and Marketplace, where she reported her stories and commentaries on-air for millions of listeners nationwide. DANIEL SCHIFRIN
Founder, StoryForward
Daniel Schifrin, through his consulting firm StoryForward, has worked with numerous teams across the corporate and organizational landscape to sharpen and amplify their messages. He has taught creative writing at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, SF State’s Department of Creative Writing, and Stanford Continuing Studies, where he offers courses such as “Think on your Feet” and “Speakeasy: The Pleasure of Writing Good Dialogue.” Schifrin’s fiction and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, and other publications. He has received the Wilner Award in Short Fiction from SF State, an Anne and Robert Cowan Writers Prize for Jewish fiction, and the Flash Fiction Prize from Exposition Review. An award-winning fiction writer and playwright, he is the author of the play Sweet and Sour and the one-person show Marie Kondo and Martin Buber Walk into a Bar. Schifrin also co-hosts the podcast Art and Other People, and his collection of literary essays, Here You Are, is forthcoming. Textbooks for this course:
There are no required textbooks; however, some fee-based online readings may be assigned.