#64 How to Leverage Your Human Superpower with Improv ft. Jessia Hoffman (Founder, On Deck Workshops)

About this episode

The episode discusses how improvisation can enhance communication and creativity in teams, especially in an AI-driven environment.

What if the real competitive advantage in an AI-saturated workplace isn’t more tools, but how human it still feels to build things together? In a world where “vibe coding” and AI copilots can translate almost any instruction into code, the leverage shifts to how clearly people communicate, how bravely they improvise in uncertainty, and how much imagination they are willing to bring into the room.​Jessia Hoffman lives exactly at that intersection. As founder of On Deck Workshops and a Stanford instructor in applied improvisation, she’s spent years using improv, story, and play to help teams at companies like Google, Bloomberg, and Cisco become more connected, courageous, and creative. Her fully experiential sessions – connective games, shared rituals, and teachable moments – impactfully transform how people relate to risk, failure, creativity, and one another – which is exactly the humanness that AI can’t automate. We talk about: Why improv is actually a trainable skill, not a personality trait How teams that fail together build stronger bonds and better products than teams that just “win” Why brainstorming fails in most companies (and how improv fixes it) The real meaning of…

People in this episode

Host: Aishwarya Ashok

Guest: Jessia Hoffman

Topics covered

• improvisation
• team culture
• communication
• creativity
• psychological safety
• AI in the workplace

Keywords

• improv
• team bonding
• brainstorming
• psychological safety
• AI
• creativity
• communication
• risk
• failure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: On Deck Workshops, Google, Bloomberg, Cisco

Places: Stanford

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