As a developer with 12 years of experience and the founder of Alligator Improv and Self Expression, I take my experience in tech and my love of improv and organizational psychology and use them to make software teams a better place to work.

Harvard psychologists and business researchers have confirmed that psychological safety is not something that needs to come from the top down in an org. The amount of trust between teammates on a dev team often looks different than the trust across teams or in the rest of the org.

The work we do as developers can be rewarding, but it can also be isolating. And that isolation can hurt performance. Things like parallel programming and swarming on difficult issues can help, but there's nothing that helps a team help eachother more than psychological safety.

What is psychological safety?

Psychological safety in the workplace is the belief that you can speak up, ask a question, admit a mistake, or offer a different perspective, without fear of embarrassment or punishment.

Psychological safety does not require sharing personal information with your co-workers or "bringing your whole self to work". I will NEVER ask you to share personal information with colleagues in my workshops.

Improv has long been used to help teams work together, and has helped scientists better communicate with civilians about complex topics. Alan Alda's work in the space has shown that just one workshop can help with this. Improv can help developers communicate with non-technical staff and help support and lean on each other.

One thing improv is great for is getting us to stop overthinking or over-executive-functioning.

You don't have to make jokes at work in this workshop. Just turn down the part of you that over-thinks how others see you. And embrace the fact that you're a team full of weird humans, not machines. If you have 6 different bugs in your pull request, it helps to have that humility and compassion for yourself, and doubly so if your teammates have that too.

Improv doesn't just help us communicate more confidently. It teaches us, in moments that we all feel like afraid naked babies who don't know what we're doing or what to say, to listen and support each other.

I offer both virtual and in-person workshops. This is the virtual version of the workshop. All workshops require a full afternoon and are 4 hours long with periodic breaks. Mornings are not available for bookings.

When you purchase a workshop here, you will be sent a link to a calendar to schedule your virtual workshop. If you're having trouble booking through the link or have any other questions, reach out with your purchase information to admin@alligatorimprov.com

If you're not sure if this workshop is right for your team, reach out to admin@alligatorimprov.com to ask specific questions or to schedule a 15-minute consultation call.

Improv Team Building for Software Teams (online)