Ingrid Broussillon of The Wow Culture leads a session where she teaches improv skills to help participants better tackle issues related to diversity and inclusion.Supplied
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Ingrid Broussillon wants to shake up the workplace with play.
As a workshop facilitator for businesses and non-profit organizations, Ms. Broussillon helps teams tackle issues related to diversity and inclusion with a touch of humour.
In 2018, she founded a business in Vancouver that uses improv to build inclusion and understanding within diverse teams. She named it Griottes Polyglottes, inspired by African griots – traditional storytellers known for their grandiose tales – while the French word “polyglottes” reflects her focus on storytelling across cultures and language, with a touch of rhyme.
She recently split her business in two branches: Griottes Polyglottes, a non-profit serving schools and organizations supporting newcomers and individuals facing barriers to access, and The Wow Culture, a for-profit arm serving businesses. She chose the latter name to capture her goal of creating positive, memorable workplace experiences.
In workshops focused on anti-racism and unconscious bias, she helps participants address tough topics through unscripted scenes, turning conflicts into learning experiences.
Talking about diversity and inclusion at work can be uncomfortable but by creating a space to take risks and make mistakes, Ms. Broussillon aims to make it easier for teams to approach these issues with playfulness.
She believes improv helps participants be in the moment and actively engage in difficult conversations instead of retreating.
“Improv is powerful because it helps you be present and spontaneous,” she says. “And when you are present, you have to listen to others before speaking out to move the story forward.”
Teams that introduce improv into the workplace often see improved creativity and collaboration. In creating a low-pressure environment to freely share ideas, role-playing can help boost employee well-being and productivity.
Ms. Broussillon also draws on other improv techniques to help teams connect such as the “Yes, and …” rule, which encourages building on others’ ideas rather than blocking them. So, instead of calling out a co-worker’s mistake and putting them down, she emphasizes supporting and helping them grow.
For example, during one of her sessions, if a co-worker says, “You speak really good English for a foreigner, a typical response may be “Yes, but I’ve lived here for years” or “Yes, but that’s offensive.” A “Yes, and” response shifts the tone, such as: “Yes, and thank you for noticing. I’ve worked hard on my English. I also want to mention that comments like this can unintentionally hurt.”
This approach acknowledges the speaker’s point while gently addressing the microaggression, fostering dialogue instead of defensiveness.
The Wow Culture was inspired by Ms. Broussillon’s experience using play to build confidence. Born in Guadelupe, she later moved to France to study business management, where she turned to theatre to overcome her shyness.
In 2017, she moved to Vancouver to improve her English-language skills. Early on, she struggled to feel confident expressing herself at work. She took a page from her theatre days and hosted casual events where other immigrants could practice English through games such as pulling new words from a bowl to use in conversation or telling a story in gradually shorter intervals, starting from one minute and working down to seven seconds.
That eventually led her to launch Les Griottes Polyglottes, a business offering workshops where language students could practice their French skills through theatre and improv. In 2020, during one workshop, a teacher she was working with suggested she apply her approach to addressing topics such as anti-racism, bullying and discrimination.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, she started developing a workshop to explore how these themes play out in the workplace. Today, she offers this workshop in two-hour sessions for teams of varying sizes.
To tailor her workshops, she will often send out surveys ahead of each session, inviting participants to share relevant scenarios related to exclusion they’ve encountered within their workplace and with clients. This includes microaggressions such as being called a DEI hire, hearing managers say clients prefer to be served by “real” Canadian staff or being told “I love your costume” when wearing traditional dress.
Mona Benjamintz, member care coordinator at Modo, a British Columbia-based car-sharing co-operative, says the Wow Culture workshop helped her explore how bias can manifest in her work with diverse clients, including newcomers and international tourists.
“There may be cases in our work where we’re talking to people with non-North American accents or someone with a driving history from a country that we’re unfamiliar with. In that sense, there could be a place for bias,” says Ms. Benjamintz, who took the course in 2023.
Ms. Broussillon kicked off her workshop at Modo with ice-breaker games such as sharing the story behind their name to help participants loosen up. She then dove into role-playing exercises where participants took on staff roles in various customer scenarios. Using a dramatized approach, she acted out scenarios involving customers with diverse accents to see if the team’s responses – such as their smile, tone or voice – varied, to see what stereotypes they may trigger.
They also role-played a car accident scenario to assess how their responses may change depending on whether the person involved was an elderly woman or a man. Ms. Broussillon challenged the staff to reflect on potential assumptions, such as that the woman was at fault or “bad at driving.”
Another scenario involved a customer complaining about receiving a dirty car from a racialized customer – an exercise to prompt the team to consider how they would handle a racist comment from an angry customer.
Ms. Benjamintz has taken diversity and inclusion training before – but says using games and humour helped the team feel more connected and better prepared to engage.
“When we get warmed up, I feel it makes us more likely to speak up than we would have otherwise and come up with better ideas,” Ms. Benjamintz says.
Feedback like this keeps Ms. Broussillon motivated to use improv to create more inclusive workplaces, especially for people like her who have faced barriers to participation. Ms. Broussillon believes any team can bring improv into the workplace through simple activities. For example, she has a trove of games to enhance team meetings such as asking participants to tell a story one sentence at a time or inventing a scenario based on a photo on their co-worker’s phone.
At the end of her workshops, Ms. Broussillon hopes participants will have the confidence to speak up when faced with workplace aggressions, helping them address conflicts and understandings that may otherwise be ignored.
By creating a safe and non-judgmental space, she believes that improv can be a powerful tool in combatting exclusion.
“In workshops, there are some people who learn by listening and taking notes and some who learn by being in action,” she says. “When these are combined, it’s magic.”