Collaboration & Teamwork Training
An improv-based workshop that helps your team take more creative risks, speak up, and build something better together.
How does trust fuel collaboration?
If you have a culture where it feels risky to speak up and share ideas, you will lose out on the wisdom and energy that can take your company to the next level. At The Free Association, we say: “What isn’t said, isn’t known.”
Progress happens when you speak up. People speak up within supportive environments. And a supportive environment is built on foundations of honesty, empathy, and engagement.
To improve collaboration, you need to make people feel safe to contribute, heard when they do, and willing to back someone else’s idea over their own. That’s what this workshop is all about.
This workshop is valuable for any team that wants to work more effectively together. It is particularly suited to:
- Teams where a few voices dominate and others hold back
- Organisations where “collaboration” is a stated value … but doesn’t always happen
- New or recently restructured teams building trust from scratch
- Leaders who want to model openness and create psychological safety
“Using these techniques for team building and business skills is obvious. The whole of improv is based on the knowledge that someone has got your back. In fact not only are you supported, your contribution is celebrated and encouraged.”
What does the workshop cover?
Participants will experience what it feels like to have their contributions built on rather than blocked, and what it means to do the same for others. They’ll practise making offers and accepting them, and see what happens when a group stops competing and starts building.
The session also addresses failure directly. In improv, as in any creative environment, things go wrong. The workshop helps participants see that failure isn’t the end of an idea; it’s often the start of a better one, provided the team knows how to respond to it.
It’s active, energising, and practical. Nobody needs to be funny, and nobody will be put on the spot.
What will participants learn?
How do we deliver training?
We believe in learning through doing, not watching. The exercises in this workshop are rooted in the principles of long-form improvisation – the same techniques that professional performers use to create something from nothing, together, in real time.
In a workplace context, those principles become practical tools. The learning is actually felt in the room, meaning it tends to stick.
Central to everything we do is creating an Idea-Friendly Environment: a space where speaking up feels safe, creative risk-taking is encouraged, and ideas are built on rather than shut down.
Why choose the FA?
“Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the session and we’ve already started implementing tactics in brainstorms this week.”