Something you might not expect to hear from a Fortune 500 executive: “My ability to learn is more important than what I already know.” Yet this is exactly the mindset that is gaining traction in boardrooms across the country. CEOs who built their careers on expertise and decisive action are quietly adding a new metric to their personal dashboards. They are tracking how well they learn.

The reasoning is straightforward. Markets shift faster than any strategic plan can anticipate. The playbook that worked three years ago might no longer be as effective today. The executives who thrive are not necessarily the smartest people in the room. They are the ones who can adapt, absorb new information quickly, and translate insights into action before competitors catch on.

This is where Erin Diehl and her company improve it! enter the conversation. What started as corporate improv training has evolved into something arguably more impactful: a structured approach to helping leaders rediscover who they are at their core so they can show up as their best selves.

How Erin Diehl Built improve it! Into a Leadership Learning Engine

Diehl did not set out to transform how executives think about professional development. Her journey started in recruiting and experiential marketing, where she found herself climbing the corporate ladder while feeling increasingly disconnected from her own voice. Then she walked into an improv class at The Second City in Chicago, and something clicked. For the first time in years, she felt fully present. The masks she had been wearing started to fall away.

What she realized is that play and improv can act as catalysts for transformation. When adults engage in play, the judgment that gets carried into meetings has the chance to dissolve, or may not exist in the first place. We reconnect with our inner child, that version of ourselves that was curious, creative, and unafraid to try new things before we learned to second-guess every move.

Today, improve it! delivers experiential learning workshops for employees at organizations including Amazon, LinkedIn, Uber Freight, Walgreens, Deloitte, and The Obama Foundation. Diehl has facilitated improv exercises for professionals with over 56,000 people, using play as the vehicle to teach essential power skills that traditional training often struggles to develop.

Why improve it! Works for Executives Who Measure Everything

Corporate training has the tendency to feel like something employees and leaders do to check a box. You sit through a workshop, nod along, and go back to doing exactly what you were doing before. The problem is that real learning does not happen in the mind alone. People learn with both mind and heart, and lasting change requires engaging both.

So why are executives turning to improv training for teams? Because the science seems to support what Diehl discovered on that stage years ago. Consider how improv improves workplace communication. The “yes, and” approach trains participants to listen fully, build on others’ ideas, and stay genuinely present. A study by MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory found that teams using affirmative language patterns were statistically more likely to successfully complete projects.

Diehl’s approach goes deeper than running a few exercises. Her team begins with a pre-assessment identifying specific communication gaps. From there, improve it! designs customized leadership communication training that addresses real problems, often including a three-week e-learning component where teams practice for just five minutes daily.

Erin Diehl’s Framework for Improv for Leadership Development

What makes Diehl’s methodology particularly relevant for senior executives is its emphasis on learning through doing. Improv for leadership development creates a space where participants can shed the professional armor that society has encouraged them to construct and instead simply be themselves.

“Get comfortable with the uncomfortable” has become Diehl’s signature mantra. When leaders allow themselves to play, something remarkable happens. They stop performing and start connecting. The judgment lifts. Presence replaces anxiety. People find their way back to who they were before titles and expectations started shaping every interaction.

Her book, I See You!: A Leader’s Guide to Energizing Your Team Through Radical Empathy, extends this philosophy into a curriculum called Energy U. Research from the University of Michigan has shown that leaders who cultivate positive relational energy tend to produce substantially higher engagement, lower turnover, and enhanced well-being among employees.

Making Continuous Learning a Leadership KPI Through improve it!

The CEOs getting the most from this approach treat learning the same way they treat any other strategic priority. They set specific goals, track progress, and hold themselves accountable. Rather than viewing professional development as an annual offsite, they build it into their regular rhythm.

improve it!’s experiential learning workshops for employees provide structure for this intentional growth. The programs often produce measurable shifts in how teams communicate and handle conflict. For executives who live by data, frameworks that connect learning to observable outcomes make the investment easier to sustain.

Diehl’s track record speaks for itself. She earned the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and received multiple nominations for the Chicago Innovation Award. She is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program and an Amazon best-selling author. Her Workday Playdate Podcast ranks in the Top 1% globally, reaching thousands of leaders weekly with research-backed strategies, and she has delivered keynote presentations to audiences around the world, inspiring leaders with actionable insights.

What This Means for Leaders Ready to Improve It

If you are a leader looking to sharpen your decision-making and build adaptability, the evidence appears to suggest that structured learning could be a legitimate competitive advantage. But the deeper invitation is to reconnect with the version of yourself that existed before the corner office, before you learned to lead with your guard up.

Erin Diehl and improve it! represent a practical path forward. Their combination of improv principles, experiential workshops, and research-backed frameworks offers something genuinely rare: professional development that helps you become more yourself, not less. The tools exist. The methodology is well-supported. The only question is whether you are ready to play.