Something most coaches will not tell you: the skills that today’s leadership requires cannot be taught through frameworks, slides, or even informative one-on-one sessions. Traditional coaching often struggles to develop the human skills that organizations need today, such as emotional safety, trust, presence, and creative responsiveness. So what actually works?
One word: play. Specifically, improv. Erin Diehl has spent over a decade proving this through improve it!, her woman-owned professional development company that has transformed how more than 51,000 professionals show up at work. Her corporate improv training is not about making people funnier. It is about helping them find their highest selves through the science of play.
Why Soft Skills Training Fails (And How Erin Diehl Fixed It)
Think about it for a moment. When was the last time a PowerPoint presentation genuinely changed how someone communicates under pressure? When did a leadership manual teach someone to trust their instincts in an unexpected moment? Traditional communication skills training speaks to the head, but transformation requires engaging the heart, too. Research from the LEGO Foundation confirms that people learn best when both are activated, and that is exactly what play does.
Diehl understood this intuitively before the research caught up. After graduating from Clemson University and building a career in recruiting and experiential marketing in Chicago, she stumbled into improv comedy at The Second City, iO Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. What she discovered on those stages was not just entertainment. It was a methodology for helping people shed the professional armor that keeps them disconnected from themselves and each other.
In June 2014, she launched improve it! with a radical premise: use improv to teach the soft skills that traditional training cannot touch. The company won the Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award within months and has been nominated for the Chicago Innovation Awards between 2019 and 2021. Diehl is now a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program and a member of The Chicago Innovation Awards Women’s Cohort. The market was clearly hungry for what she was offering.
The Science Behind Play: Why Improv Workshops for Business Actually Work
Organizations may benefit from investing in experiential play for their employees instead of traditional corporate training. The science speaks to why. When adults engage in purposeful play, something neurological happens. Neuroscience research published in Cerebrum shows that play is critical for developing the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in self-control, decision-making, and social connection. Those who play not only have a little bit more fun, but they can be more self-aware, make sounder decisions, and collaborate more effectively.
Academic literature reviews further confirm that improvisational training improves trust, teamwork, communication, presentation skills, and creative problem-solving in measurable ways. Why? Because improv demands presence. On the improv stage, there’s no such thing as mentally rehearsing your next line when your scene partner can say anything. The improv stage applies at work when preparation isn’t an option, and the only thing you can do is respond authentically in real time. This is experiential learning for teams at its most potent.
Diehl’s approach starts with deep listening. Her team sends pre-questionnaires to understand an organization’s specific challenges before designing customized workshops. The sessions themselves teach participants to say “yes, and” instead of defaulting to reasons why something will not work. They practice listening to understand rather than listening to respond. And they experience what it feels like to be fully present without the weight of perfectionism. The learning continues through three-week e-learning courses that reinforce these principles with just five minutes of daily practice.
Emotional Safety First: How improve it! Builds Trust That Transforms Teams
Something that might shift how you think about collaboration training: safety must be established before skills are built. People often feel unsafe because the environment scolds failure rather than celebrating it. Employees cannot access their creativity, confidence, or authentic communication when they are afraid of looking foolish. Fear shuts down the very capacities we are trying to develop.
This is why Diehl lives by a mantra that shapes every workshop: “Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Each workshop creates a container where failure becomes data rather than disaster. When team members know they will be celebrated and supported regardless of the outcome, something remarkable happens. They show up as their truest selves, which often improves the quality and impact of the work itself. Research from Training Industry confirms that applied improvisation builds the trust, collaboration, and communication skills that are vital for teams to thrive. That is when real workplace culture improvement begins.
The client roster reflects this impact. United Airlines, PepsiCo, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, LinkedIn, Uber Freight, Adobe, Warby Parker, Caterpillar, Amazon, and The Obama Foundation have all invested in improve it!’s methodology. These organizations recognize that the confidence and communication skills their teams need cannot be lectured into existence. They have to be experienced.
Beyond the Workshop: Erin Diehl’s Vision for Human-Centered Development
What Diehl has built extends far beyond individual workshops. She hosts The Workday Playdate Podcast, a Top 1% global podcast exploring how play and connection fuel professional growth. Her book “I See You” dives into radical empathy and the transformative power of making others feel genuinely valued. Everything circles back to one central insight: play and improv are catalysts for individuals to access their highest selves. And as you know by now, it’s not because play is frivolous,, but because it strips away the barriers that keep people from accessing who they really are.
The science backs this up beautifully. Harvard’s Pedagogy of Play research demonstrates that playful learning environments support cognitive, emotional, and social development across ages. Studies on brain synchronization show that when people play together, their brains literally sync up, creating optimal conditions for learning and connection. Improve it! has grown from Diehl working solo to a dedicated team supported by seventeen trained improvisers from top theaters in Chicago, Charlotte, Los Angeles, and New York City. The expansion reflects a market that increasingly understands what coaches have sensed for years: presence, trust, and creative responsiveness are not nice-to-haves. They are the foundation that makes everything else possible.
What This Means for Coaches: An Invitation to Play Bigger
So, where does this leave those of us in the coaching world? improve it! offers a compelling case. What if the most valuable thing we can offer clients is not another strategy or framework, but the experience of being fully present and creatively responsive when it matters most? What if helping people reconnect with their inner child, that unguarded version of themselves, is the fastest path to the confidence and communication skills they are seeking?
Play matters because it works. It teaches presence, trust, and creative responsiveness in ways that traditional coaching methods simply cannot replicate. Diehl has spent a decade proving this, one transformed team at a time.
One question for you to chew on: What might become possible for my clients if I gave them permission to play?
