After 17 years of teaching improv, I recently experienced one of those rare “aha” moments that forever changes how you approach your craft. It happened during a seemingly routine class teaching the classic improv game “Freeze Tag,” and it reminded me of a powerful lesson that applies far beyond the stage.
As a teenager in driving school, I developed a dangerous habit of relying solely on my rearview mirror. My exasperated instructor would repeatedly warn, “Check your blind spot!” After countless reminders fell on deaf ears, he finally took drastic action … he physically removed my rearview mirror during a lesson. That forced adaptation changed my driving forever. To this day, I instinctively check my blind spot before glancing at any mirror. While that determined instructor is no longer in my life, his lesson transcended driving. Throughout my career, exceptional mentors have coached me to identify my leadership blind spots with the same urgency, teaching me that the most critical insights often lie just beyond our comfortable field of vision. Yet despite this knowledge, I still occasionally catch myself relying too heavily on my professional “rearview mirror,” defaulting to established patterns rather than turning to check what might be approaching in my blind spot.
I was reminded of this lesson recently during a seemingly routine improv class teaching the game Freeze Tag, and what happened next reframed everything I thought I knew about leadership and listening.
The Challenge of Freeze Tag
For those unfamiliar with improv, Freeze Tag works like this: two performers begin a scene, and at any point, another improviser can yell “freeze.” The performers on stage immediately stop in their exact physical positions. The person who called “freeze” then takes the place of one performer, maintaining their exact physical position, and begins an entirely new scene inspired by that position.
This exercise presents a particular challenge for new improvisers. They tend to focus exclusively on watching the performers, waiting for an interesting or comedic physical position they can easily use. While they’re doing this, they’re completely in their heads, paying little attention to the scene itself. They’re thinking about what will work best for them when they enter, rather than what will serve the current scene and performers.
The Blind Freeze Tag Solution
Years ago, I developed a variation called “Blind Freeze Tag” to address this issue. In this version, all improvisers except the two actively performing turn their backs to the stage. This forces them to listen rather than watch, which is truly the essence of great improv.
Recently, while training a new teacher, he mentioned that students struggled with Blind Freeze Tag because they couldn’t see the physical positions they needed to mirror. They also found it difficult to know when to yell “freeze” without visual cues.
That’s when it hit me.
The Simple Tweak
“Listen for the laugh,” I told him. “When the audience is laughing hardest, that’s your high mark. That’s when you yell ‘freeze.'”
This tiny change, this simple instruction, transformed everything. When we ran the exercise with the class using this new guidance, the results were nothing short of remarkable. Every student had an epiphany moment. It was the best series of Blind Freeze Tag scenes I’ve ever witnessed in my teaching career. The students felt it too. When they weren’t on stage, they couldn’t stop laughing at how brilliant their peers had become in an instant.
The Leadership Lesson: Finding My Own Blind Spot
The irony wasn’t lost on me that while teaching “Blind Freeze Tag,” I had my own leadership blind spot all along. For 17 years, I had been teaching the same exercise without recognizing what was missing. Despite my experience and expertise, there was something fundamental I couldn’t see about my own teaching approach.
Just as my students turned their backs to force themselves to listen differently, I needed to “turn my back” on my established teaching methods to discover a new perspective. The solution was hiding in plain sight, but my familiarity with the exercise had created a blind spot.
This experience perfectly illustrates a crucial lesson about leadership. It took me 17 years of teaching the same exercise to discover this small but transformative tweak. And with that tiny adjustment, I unlocked brilliance from my students.
As leaders, teachers, and parents, we all have blind spots – areas where our experience actually works against us because we can’t see beyond our established patterns. We often explain processes or concepts the same way repeatedly, growing frustrated when others struggle to understand. “I’ve already explained this to you,” we think. But the magic happens when we acknowledge our blind spots and:
- Continue to learn and grow ourselves – My years of experience, including teaching advanced classes focused on finding comedy through listening to laughter, eventually led to this insight.
- Listen deeply to feedback – Understanding exactly what my students found difficult allowed me to address the specific issue.
- Make small, targeted adjustments – Sometimes the most powerful changes aren’t complete overhauls but tiny tweaks to existing approaches.
- Experiment willingly – Being open to trying something different, even after years of doing things a certain way, opened up new possibilities.
The next time your team comes to you struggling with something you’ve explained multiple times, resist the urge to repeat the same instructions louder. Instead, dig deeper to find what’s truly keeping them stuck. Listen for the places where your approach needs a small adjustment.
Sometimes, the smallest tweak can unlock extraordinary results. It might take years to discover what that tweak should be, but when you find it, the transformation can be immediate and profound.
That’s the power of combining experience with a willingness to keep learning, listening, and adapting. In improv, in leadership, and in life.
Embracing Our Blind Spots
The name “Blind Freeze Tag” has taken on new meaning for me now. It reminds me that sometimes we need to deliberately blind ourselves to our established ways of thinking to discover new perspectives. As leaders, our greatest growth often comes not from what we already know but from what we’ve been blind to.
I encourage you to consider: What’s your version of “Blind Freeze Tag”? Where might you have leadership blind spots that have persisted for years? What small tweak might transform how your team performs?
Sometimes the most powerful insight comes when we force ourselves to stop seeing things the way we always have and start listening for what we’ve been missing all along.
Just like my driving instructor who once removed my rearview mirror to force me to check my blind spot, this experience reminded me that growth often requires a disruption of what feels familiar. As leaders, sometimes we have to remove the mirrors we trust most: our go-to methods, habits, and perspectives to truly see what’s been right beside us all along.
Removing Your Blind Spots
Ready to uncover the blind spots holding your team back? Whether you’re leading in the boardroom, classroom, or rehearsal room, sometimes all it takes is a tiny pivot to spark big transformation. If you’re curious about how improv-based techniques can elevate your leadership, communication, and team engagement, I’d love to help.
Let’s talk about how we can bring this kind of breakthrough to your organization. Call or email at 843-597-6393 or at gina@carolinaimprov.com
