On Coaching and Asking Will Hines Questions

I've been fortunate in my short improv career to have taken—some would say too many—improv classes with Will Hines, both in person and via Zoom. I have emailed Will Hines. Will is free with email and actually responds, even if it's just with a "let me take some time to think about this." He will then respond within a reasonable time frame. Will Hines will, at times, demand that you email him with questions about improv. That last line is a joke, and, to be clear, none of this at all is meant as a flex, since Will is a person. He's a person who thinks about Improv the way I think I think about improv, but he's much further along in the process than I am. That's why I like him as a teacher. Your mileage may vary with any teacher, but that's why Will's experience is valuable for me. Also, while we are in a golden age of remote learning, the technology of Zoom has granted us access; I am also sensitive to the privilege my resources have given me.

There's no magic to coaches. They are not cheat codes. A few summers ago, before I began doing improv, I took a management training class with Jonathan and Melissa Nightengale of Raw Signal Group. It's the best training money I have ever spent. I have found the lessons I learned useful, even outside the corporate people-management context. One lesson was the difference between coaches and Mentors: mentors share their experience of discovering and developing their talents with you; coaches help you discover and develop your own talents. Both these things are valuable. One is outside in, and the other is inside you. Sometimes people offer both, sometimes people offer one more than the other.

I emailed Will a few months ago a really great question. I realize, in retrospect, that I was trying to get praise for writing "Will a question he hadn't heard before," because I wanted to win the email. I wanted a teacher to praise me and tell me I was good and smart. As I was writing the email, I kept saying throughout that I didn't want him to tell me it was a matter of process for getting reps in improv. And I realized after writing it that I said that simply because I was telling myself that. "You know he's going to say get more reps," But this was really me telling myself that. "Trust the process. You need more reps." And so, in short, that's what Will wrote back, "You need more reps."

I'll note that he prefaced this by saying it was good that I was at the point in improv where I was asking myself the questions I was asking. I minimized this at the time, kicking myself for being stupid and wasting his time, something not helpful and not true, since Will has in classes repeatedly offered his time via email, but really, this was a generous and encouraging response. "You're getting stronger, keep climbing." Is often all we need.