Speaker: Marla Newman, Executive Vice President of Sales, Raptive
Marla Newman: Hi, my name is Marla Newman. I work for a company called Raptive. And, I am the EVP of Sales.
Why did you engage Second City?
Marla Newman: We chose to engage with Second City because I had actually worked with them at another company and had such a great experience. And, we brought them to Raptive because we were looking to try to get our team to develop their storytelling skills, to be able to ask better questions, and to be able to apply some of the improv techniques when you're in a meeting or going out with a client and things don't go the way you expect.
Tell us about the process leading up to your engagement.
Marla Newman: The entire team we worked with at Second City was fabulous. From the beginning when we talked about what we were looking to accomplish to when they put together the program and the components of it for our team. We had lots of meetings leading up to the actual day of our event, ensuring that we were aligned with our goals, and the outcomes that we were looking to achieve, and actually even had the opportunity to discuss the types of elements that would be used during the day of training. The team was great.
Tell us about the experience at your engagement.
Marla Newman: So on the day of the engagement, I was a little nervous, because I wasn't quite sure how my team would react. Would they be open and willing to play? But when Ryan and Rachel from Second City showed up, they immediately connected with the room, they got everybody so engaged. It was the highlight of our off site without a doubt. Every person had value coming out of that experience and everyone participated from the most shy to the biggest leaders of the group. That really democratized the team and really brought everyone around a certain way of communicating and engaging. It was just, overall, a huge success.
What impact has our work had on your organization?
Marla Newman: I would say overall, the impact of working with Second City has been really tremendous for our team. It's given everyone a common nomenclature around the 'Yes, and' so that when we're trying to support each other and solve for problems, we've got a great construct to do that, that helps bring out the best in everyone. We've got a way in which, not only do we work with our clients, in terms of listening and storytelling, but we can apply that internally to all of our other teams that we partner with across our organization. And it gave everyone a really great experience to share that memory as we navigate through the rest of the year. I would say overall, it was a huge success.
Why is a Second City engagement different from other professional development engagements?
Marla Newman: I think Second City has a training program that is better than anyone else out there. Partly because of the people. Again, our trainers were just best in class. I think also because their program is really authentic and that people really want to participate. It's not perceived as cheesy. It's not perceived as forced. And people immediately participating see that these are skills that can help them in their day to day career as well as their personal lives.
