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January 8, 2013

Lessons from Bossypants: Saying 'YES AND...'

A few weeks ago, while browsing in an airport bookstore, I picked up Tina Fey’s bestselling autobiography Bossypants. As many will already know, Tina Fey is a popular comedian, former head writer of Saturday Night Live, and the executive producer of the NBC show 30 Rock. Her book seemed perfect for the beginning of my Christmas vacation: I expected it to be funny, highly irreverent, and I presumed that it’d have nothing to do with the Episcopal Church.

I ended up being wrong about that last part.

In the end, Tina Fey’s autobiography is largely about how she developed her own leadership style - or, as she puts it, how she became the bossypants. She describes the people who she’s tried to emulate, and also those who taught her what not to do and what not to be. There’s a lot of rich material here for anyone who has ever been part of or tried to lead a creative team.

For vestries and other leadership teams in the Church, I thought that one of the most helpful sections of the book was when she described her early work as part of the improv acting troupe, Second City. Tina Fey describes how improvisation appealed to her not only as a way of creating comedy, but as a worldview. She says that the rules of improvisation deeply influenced the way she leads a team, especially the first rule which is to learn how to say “YES AND...”

As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. ‘No, we can’t do that.’ ‘No, that’s not in the budget.’ ‘No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.’ What kind of way is that to live? … Now, obviously in real life you’re not always going to agree with everything everyone says. But the Rule of Agreement reminds you to ‘respect what your partner has created’ and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.

Most of us have been part of leadership teams where someone’s first answer is no. As someone who says ‘no’ quite often, I’d argue that there are many good reasons for not saying ‘yes’ to every new opportunity or need that comes up. And yet Tina Fey’s insight is more subtle than at first appears; she argues that creativity requires starting with a “yes” and then making a strong contribution to the idea that takes into account one's real concerns.

As odd as this may sound, I found myself thinking a lot about Tina Fey’s “yes, and” while celebrating Christmas with my family. There’s so much within Jesus’ birth and early life that depended on a few individuals saying “yes and” to God, and so I’m wondering how we might practice this openness in the New Year.