Phil Green, AICP, on What Planners Can Learn from Improv

Phil Green: Active listening is one of the key skills that you'll learn from week one in improv. And to me it's shifting that mindset of “listening to respond” into “listening in an end of itself.” So a lot of the times we feel ourselves under an immense amount of pressure to respond. And so where our brain is writing the script before that person has even finished speaking. But in improv, that doesn't work because you're up there and you're co-creating something together. And I argue that that's the same in planning, too. So when we're actively listening, the only goal I have when we're having a conversation is: do I understand what you're saying? 

Meghan Stromberg: In planning, like in improv, sometimes you don't know what's coming next. A tough question from an elected official, a tense public hearing, a very passionate fence permit applicant. Sound familiar? That's where Phil Green, AICP says, "Planners can borrow a page from the improv playbook." In this episode, Phil, a planner and a comedian, shows how active listening, confidence, and a little “yes and…” can turn even the most challenging conversations into productive ones. I'm Megan Stromberg, editor in chief of APA. Welcome to People Behind the Plans. Phil, I have to ask, what was your first love, improv or planning?

Phil Green: I will tell you a story that I don't tell too many people, so don't share it around. I got into planning as a way to defer growing up and work on my comedy career. So I had been a teacher for a while, and for myriad reasons, I knew that wasn't the right fit. And I had been doing some standup, doing some improv, and I said, "You know what's a great way to look like I'm working on a career while not actually doing very much? I'm going to go to grad school." And while I'm at grad school, I'm going to work really hard at becoming a comedian. And I went to grad school for planning, and I fell in love, and I was like, oh, maybe I actually do want to do this. And it's not just a way to kick that can down the road. And I kept doing comedy alongside it. But yeah, I kind of realized very quickly during that program that that's what I wanted to do.

Meghan Stromberg: Have you ever had a moment where you're up in front of a community meeting, and your brain says, "Oh, I think this is a comedy show, that's what I should do right now"?

Phil Green: All the time. That's the downside of doing comedy alongside a real career like planning, is when I'm up presenting, I'm at a planning commission or whatever it is, and I'm not hearing that instant gratification of laughter coming back at me. I'm like, "I'm doing something wrong."

Meghan Stromberg: So we're actually talking today about your improv skills and your experience working in improv and in planning, and specifically how improvisational techniques can be really beneficial for planners to learn to help them in their career path. And one of the ones that we're focusing on is the skill of active listening. So, can you tell us what active listening means to you?

Phil Green: Active listening is one of the key skills that you'll learn from week one in improv. And to me, it's shifting that mindset of listening to respond into listening in an end of itself. A lot of the times, we feel ourselves under an immense amount of pressure to respond, to answer that question from an elected official, from a community member, from your boss. And so where our brain is writing the script before that person has even finished speaking, and we switch off because we think we know what we need to say. But in improv, that doesn't work because you're up there and you're co-creating something together. And I argue that that's the same in planning, too. So when we're actively listening, the only goal I have when we're having a conversation is, do I understand what you're saying? That's step one, and I divorce that from the step of, and now, how am I going to respond?

Meghan Stromberg: What does that look like on an improv stage, if we can continue that thought?

Phil Green: One of the top pieces of advice I give to new improvisers, and I think again it translates, is Can you summarize what your partner has just said? Can you paraphrase that? When we do an exercise call, so what you're saying is, and that's literally what we're trying to do. If someone says something to you, can you say, "So what you're saying is," and then paraphrase it right back to them. And sometimes, and people are surprised by this all the time, that in and of itself can get huge laughs because the audience is watching and paying attention to things that you're not always aware that's what they're paying attention to. And the fact that you were able to clearly repeat back in a slightly different way what someone just said, hilarious.

Meghan Stromberg: So what you're saying is it's sometimes surprising to the listener and the audience, and maybe even the person who is speaking, to hear back in a different set of words exactly what that person was saying.

Phil Green: I see what you did there.

Meghan Stromberg: Thank you. So what does that mean? So what's the impact that that has on both parties when that kind of thing happens?

Phil Green: There is such a validating feeling to having been heard, and there's such a validating feeling that someone is listening to you and putting value in what you say. And so we think a lot about the situations we find ourselves in. Sometimes tempers might be running high, it might be something controversial, it might be something that we weren't expecting to be so meaningful to a community, but suddenly it is. And just that ability to make people realize that, hey, I'm actually listening to you and maybe we're not going to end up where you want us to end up in this, but know that you've been heard. And the most simple way I can show that to you is I can repeat back to you the thing you've just said. And that proves...

To me, it's a connection question. When I'm on an improv stage, the first thing I do in any scene I'm in is I make a quick piece of eye contact with the person I'm in that scene with, that tells me that that scene that we're entering into, that's about to be about each other as opposed to us both talking at cross ends about something else. And so the same thing I try and practice that every day in my planning as well is if I'm talking to a coworker, a community member, and a elected official, I'm just going to check in with you and we're going to make that connection and whatever we're talking about, hey, this is really about us as two people meeting together right now.

Meghan Stromberg: I love that idea of connecting as individuals in a one-on-one conversation. How do you do that in front of a group, whether you're working with a group of people or you are presenting in front of a group, or various planning situations that you might find yourself in?

Phil Green: Sometimes we have a planning toolbox and we have an improv toolbox too, and sometimes we're not going to be in a situation to make that one-to-one connection, but if I'm at a public hearing and I've just heard myriad public testimony, maybe I'll start what I'm about to say with a quick summation of, "Hey, this is everything we just heard, and maybe we're not really going to be able to address everything that we've just heard, but let's go on record and make it very clear that we've listened to that thing.” I liken that to when I'm on stage at an improv show, every improv show starts with us asking the audience for suggestions of something to base the scene off of, and that's just proving that we really are making this up in real time. And so people want to know that their suggestion, that input, had an impact on the thing that they're about to see.

I think the other thing where I think planners can really benefit from some of these improv skills and education is, it's stage confidence too. It's having that confidence to take up space sometimes. We talk about the concept of “yes and…” and that idea that that's the founding principle of improv. We're going to agree, and that doesn't mean that we're in complete agreement; it just means that we're agreeing on the reality that we're both occupying right now. But then we also talk about “and…,” and what that means is the willingness to make statements, to move things along, to bring something to the conversation.

And I think there's a huge, huge benefit to having that confidence to make statements. Sometimes I think as planners, we're either in this pressure to be the technocrat who knows everything, or sometimes I think that pressure goes in the opposite way where we're under this pressure to become a passive pass through for input, and I would argue that improv really helps me find that balance of, hey, I have as much of a purpose to be here and bring what I'm bringing to this, but I'm also looking to you, coworker, elected official, community member to create this with me and we're going to create this together.

Meghan Stromberg: That's a really cool point. I'm really glad that you brought up sort of the confidence-building that comes from practicing improv. You and I first met at the APA Illinois Chapter State Conference in 2022, and you led a workshop for attendees of the conference, and we played a couple of games, and I consider myself a pretty outgoing person, and I was nervous. I was kind of nervous. I didn't want to look silly or say the wrong thing or not be funny enough, and I found that it was surprisingly easy to go along with the game because all of us were in on it.

Phil Green: 100%. That idea of being nervous or that fear. When I teach improv, which is something I do, I find that 99% of, "it going wrong", it stems from fear, and fear is such a powerful motivator and a lot of times we're conditioned to respond to fear by trying to control, and that leads to us speaking too much and panicking and we dig a hole for ourselves. What I think I've learned over the 10-plus years that I've been improvising is that if I feel like I'm going too slow, slow down even more and just trust that I am not responsible for every single thing that happens, and get to that again, that co-creation. One of my favorite thinkers in the improv space, his name's Kelly Leonard at The Second City, I have on a post-it note at my desk, the phrase, "Bring a brick, not a building."

Meghan Stromberg: What does that mean?

Phil Green: It means that I just have to bring my piece and my piece can just be myself, and if I bring my brick and you bring your brick, by the end of it, we're going to have a building. I don't have this innate pressure on myself to have every answer. The best idea is going to win, and we're going to be so much more open to discovering new things, the more bricks we have from the more people.

Meghan Stromberg: Who's bringing the setback requirements?

Phil Green: That's going to be probably your Planner I, who's going to be so focused on that zoning code and that fence permit. And that's an important brick because I'm probably going to forget those.

Meghan Stromberg: You mentioned a planner who might be approving something like a fence permit. Planners do all sorts of jobs from being in the public sector to the private sector to a small jurisdiction, all sorts of things. And as we've been talking, probably listeners are hearing how in a community engagement situation, this kind of thinking and listening is really beneficial. Can you think of other examples, maybe some sort of everyday planner examples, where these skills really pay off?

Phil Green: I've been that planner processing fence permits. We all have at some point, and I think again, when I am coaching improv, one of my rules of a good improv scene is that the characters we're about to see on stage, the comedy we're about to see, that should be the most important day in those characters' life because otherwise why, as a performer, you're choosing to show that to me? This should be the day that they fall in love. This should be the day that they finally drum up the courage to audition for America's Got Talent, whatever it might be in this fictional setting. I think that's true in planning, too. If I'm processing a fence permit, that might be the hundredth fence permit I've processed that day, but it's that homeowner's first fence permit, and only fence permit that they're working on. This is the most important fence permit in their lives, and I'm not saying that that means we have to treat every single fence permit like it's the single most important fence permit we'll have a process, but listen to that applicant.

Listen when they're calling you with questions, sometimes it's going to get so frustrating, but something I hear from people who go through improv training is it turns the most mundane conversation into the most interesting conversation because now I'm paying attention and now I'm listening to not just what you're saying but how you're saying it, and I'm paying attention to these mannerisms and that I think is such a valuable skill to bring to the table. It is almost a customer service skill, right? Like, “Hey, I'm going to have so many phone calls today, but I understand that this is your only one, and let's treat that with the importance it deserves.”

Meghan Stromberg: It sounds like some of what you're saying is about picking up on these cues, nonverbal cues, verbal cues, tone of voice, body language, things that, if you're really paying attention, you might pick up on, and otherwise you might not. We talk about the idea that you never know what else is going on in someone's life, and so their fence permit is maybe affected by the fact that a tree fell down on their previous fence and they're going through a lot of things. So I think that's a really good way to think about it. I've also been thinking about how many times you said fence permit in that last sentence, like 9 or 10 is what I would say. We'll have to re-listen and see. What was your guess?

Phil Green: Don't tell the ethics officer, but I'm actually sponsored by Big Fence to get the term fence permit into this as much as possible.

Meghan Stromberg: Yeah, Big Fence has been in the news not a lot lately. Something that improv does, I've never done improv before, but I've watched it, but I imagine you really got to think outside of the box. You don't really know what's coming at you, and you have to respond in the moment. One, you have to be entertaining; two, and you have to really pay attention. So how does both the active listening but also that immediate on-the-spot creativity help in doing planning work?

Phil Green: It's interesting that you use the term creativity because something that I'm really big on in the improv world is the difference between creation and discovery, and I think of creation as a very internal process of I'm thinking what could be funny right now. Discovery is I'm being a little bit more vulnerable and I'm open to whatever my partner brings, and if they are trying to make me look good and I'm trying to make them look good, we're going to have a much better scene 10 out of 10 times than if we're both in our own heads. And I think of that in the planning sphere, we're asked constantly, I think you said it during this conversation, to do so many different jobs and wear so many different hats and be the expert in things we might not be the expert in. I've been in situations where we're in crisis mode and we need to deliver a training that I've got an hour to prepare, and so what do I bring with the improv mindset?

I bring the idea that it's not all on me. We're going to discover this together because I'm going to turn up to this training with my brick, the knowledge I have about this thing, but I'm relying just as much on the attendees to bring me the questions and to respond to what I'm giving them so that in that moment I'm discovering, "Oh, this preconceived notion I had of what was important, it might not actually be as important as I thought it was. Let's discover this together and let's pull on this thread and see what comes of it."

Meghan Stromberg: So we talked about the “yes and…,” we talked about, which is you said this foundation of improv and really kind of the foundation for talking with someone that you want to connect with, right?

Phil Green: Yes, 100%.

Meghan Stromberg: Like you said, you're sharing the same reality. How does that come into play or how do other techniques come into play in a really kind of controversial situation or it's fraught with tension, whether that be particularly political tension or just general disagreement or say we have one of those communities and unfortunately we have a lot of them that have been sort of “planned on” for a number of years, right?

Phil Green: Yeah.

Meghan Stromberg: How do you approach situations like that, and how do some of your skills help?

Phil Green: I love this question. I've done trainings. I've partnered with other folks to provide trainings to planners in this space. One of the tools that is to me the most valuable in both improv and planning, the improv term for it is framing. I think planning it's akin to bridging, but sometimes people aren't actively listening to themselves when they speak, and I'm an immigrant to the US. I'm not originally from here.

Meghan Stromberg: I didn't pick up on that.

Phil Green: Yeah, the accent, you can hear that I have the Us in my words, right? But I did a lot of work during the 2020 Census working with different population groups and sometimes people say something that maybe they don't quite realize is actually raising that tension and is actually kind of escalating that a little bit, and I think something that I love to go to in my toolbox for de-escalation is this idea of framing, and that's literally just verbally drawing a frame around that thing they've just said, "Hey, what I just heard you say was this, is that really what you wanted to say in this moment?"

And in improv, that gives us two paths to go down, either, “Yes, we're saying something really silly and that's the silly thing we want the scene to be about, “or, “No, actually I see that I don't want to play with that,” and I think that works in real life and planning too. I found that when I need to de-escalate a situation like that, and I just put it out there like, "Hey, when you say this, here is what I'm hearing." Yeah, sometimes you're going to find people who do just want to say the terrible thing, but when you hold that mirror up to folks and you say, "Hey, is this really what we want to talk about right now?" That gives them that exit ramp that will really help to de-escalate those situations.

Meghan Stromberg: Yeah, I can see how that would work. I'm going to write this down and use that one too. Another skill that I think is really important that's related to active listening is self-awareness. Some people have it, of course, it's a skill that you can grow, and when you do something like you've just described, you're actually also giving that person a chance to practice a little self-awareness, and it's somewhat not, hopefully you can check your tone when you frame it, but hopefully you're giving them a chance to sort of like, "Oh, whoa, did I just say that?" Or if I said it on purpose, is it really worth it right now? Is that the hill I'm going to die on when I'm trying to get a fence permit?

Phil Green: Right? It's dialing in instead of calling out, and I do it during improv shows too. When you've got the drunk bachelorette party that's just yelling obscenities during the whole show, that's obviously a very different situation, and at that point, I'm getting off the stage, I'm going into the audience, I'm sitting down with them. I might steal their drink because that's a very different situation, but it's the same effect of just reminding them that even though the lights are down and I'm on stage for your entertainment, I'm still a real human and I can still hear you and let's connect right now and realize that each other is a human, and I think that works just the same. Obviously, I'm not going to steal your glass of champagne at a public hearing, but I am going to take that opportunity to just come down from the dais and help us realize that, hey, we're all just trying to get through this. Let's think about how we want to treat people right now.

Meghan Stromberg: I just like to go on the record saying I apologized for that.

Phil Green: Yes, and you are still banned from the club, no matter how many times you apologize.

Meghan Stromberg: You just said something, step down from the dais, and that's another potential idea we could play with is Get on the same level. When you're on stage, you're both standing at the same level, and oftentimes when you're in a hearing room or something, right, there's that dais. So maybe there are also some physical cues or some physical things you can do to literally level the field that you're both on.

Phil Green: Meghan, you know this about me. I'm huge into wearing costumes. Am I going to go to a public hearing in costume? Probably not. But is the person who's dressed up as one of the Sanderson sisters from Hocus Pocus immediately more approachable than the person who's dressed to the nines in a suit and tie? Context is everything on this thing, but again, that self-awareness, I'm 6’3”, I'm a large man with a beard. I'm not always the most approachable person because of that, so what can I do to kind of lower my own status? That's something that's a two-week course in an improv class is learning to read the status that people enter a room with. Is someone walking in at a 10, looking down their nose at everyone, or is someone walking in at a one, can't make eye contact, eyes focused on the ground, and you learn to pay attention to that because there's opportunity for comedy in that kind of clash of cultures.

There's also an opportunity in the real world for connection, then that I'm paying attention to where you are coming at me from, and I can meet you. Hey, maybe I'm noticing that you are someone at a high status who talks a lot about your accomplishments, and that's the language you speak, so I'm going to talk about my accomplishments with you, and we're going to bond over that, and we'll respect each other. Maybe you're someone very anxious about coming into this space, so I'm going to lower myself. Maybe you're a child, and I'm going to physically get down to your eye level and make that eye contact with you.

Meghan Stromberg: Something we maybe have seen ourselves or we've heard about happening is when someone gets up on a stage and totally bombs, just fails, and you can kind of see it in their eyes, the panic, and you even feel for them. What can we learn from that experience?

Phil Green: I can tell you as someone that has never bombed, I have killed 10 out of 10 shows that I've done. Holy, no, I'm kidding. I have died on stage so many times, and the reality is, you get up and you do it again, right? And there's something so liberating. You almost want to bomb horrifically as soon as you can because it's still there. And one of the things you learned, we've talked today about self-awareness and I think one of the things that I've really learned over the years is no one's paying as much attention to you as you are, and so you'll go away with all this internalized shame, regret, fear, whatever it might be from that experience of bombing, but you'll go up and you'll do it again next week and it'll be a completely different experience. And the thing that you learn, you do it enough times, hey, the same is true of success as well, so there's no resting on your laurels.

There's always going to be another show. There's always going to be another opportunity, and you're only as good as the next time you do it, and I think that's true in planning as well, right? You're going to make mistakes. Lord knows I've made plenty of them. What to me, as someone who coaches as well as performs, the difference between a good improviser and a great improviser, and I think this is true in planning as well. It's not about “can you avoid bombing?” It's, “Can you learn from that and do you have the tenacity to keep going anyway, and are you aware that it maybe didn't go so well, and do you have a plan for what you're going to do differently next time?”

Meghan Stromberg: What about recovering in the moment, if when you see it happening, which by the way always happens in slow motion for me.

Phil Green: Honestly, I'm at the point again, I've been improvising now for coming up on 12 years. I'm at the point where I kind of love it, and I'll bomb harder. There's a phrase, commit to the bit, and the theater I mostly perform at is called The Bit, partially in honor of that, and you commit harder to the thing that you're doing, and again, you're going to survive. Here's where I think it relates to planning. If you are having fun, that is 90% of what it takes to win over an audience. An audience can really, really see when you're not having fun. Meghan, you said yourself, you feel that fear in the eyes, that tension, the shoulders hunch, the teeth clench, and that's someone who's bombing and having a bad time with it. If you are having fun and you can relax and know and trust that you'll get through it, that's going to lower the temperature in the room and make it easier to recover from.

Meghan Stromberg: Do you have any go-to jokes that you like to open a community engagement meeting with?

Phil Green: Yes. It's become less effective over time as my accent has kind of eroded, but I do like to tell people that “I am not originally from here. I do have an accent, and subtitles are available on request.” Early on, when I first moved here, that killed every time. Now people are like, "Where are you from? Boston?" So I'm going to have to find a new one.

Meghan Stromberg: Where are you from?

Phil Green: I'm originally from Liverpool, England. I've been here in Chicagoland for coming up on eight years at this point.

Meghan Stromberg: And did you do grad school here or over there?

Phil Green: I did grad school over there, so I'm a University of Liverpool alum, undergrad sociology, grad school planning.

Meghan Stromberg: And killer comedian on both sides of the pond.

Phil Green: Yeah, my comedy transcends borders.

Meghan Stromberg: So, have you ever taught improv to planners? Well, I know you have because I was in one of your workshops.

Phil Green: Yes, I have. It's something that I've offered at state conferences. It's something that I've worked with a few groups. One of my favorites was a group, a women's interest group in engineering, where we really kind of dialed in that concept of making statements instead of asking questions and taking up some space with that confidence, right? One of my biggest takeaways is I get people come up to me after these sessions and these workshops I do. They thank me for giving them space to play.

And I think we talked about that planner reviewing permits and what have it be, right? That sometimes we feel trapped in this position of the critic, the reviewer, and I challenge that. I think planning is one of the most creative industries that's possible to be in. We're storytellers. We're telling the stories of our communities, we're telling the stories of individual properties, we're telling the stories when we apply for grants, and improv at its heart is a storytelling medium. I challenge all of my improv students who are learning improv to be improvisers: “Hey, can you tell me what was funny about that scene in five words or less?” And I think the same is true, that skill comes out of just play and being willing to take risks and fail early and often. It's never going to be as big of a deal as you think it is.

I am not advocating on this podcast that people should go out and make intentional errors in staff reports. Please don't tell your boss that Phil said that's okay, but it is okay to stumble over your words at a public hearing. It is okay to try one approach to solving a problem, and that doesn't work, so you pivot, right? Improv teaches us to celebrate those failures because they're opportunities. One of my favorite improv coaches told me, “Improv is like a river, and you can go with that current or you can try and swim against it, but either way, you're going to find your way to an exit point from that river, so you may as well go with the current instead of fighting against it.”

Meghan Stromberg: One of the things I'm hearing as a possibility, or my brain is that I'm thinking about as you're talking is practicing some of these skills with your own team, whether you're a leader of the team or, I mean, if you're a leader, you're also a member. Regardless of what your role is, I can see what we think of as failing small and failing fast, or stumbling over your words and collecting yourself. One can really show authenticity. If you trust them enough to be a little bit vulnerable in front of them, which is what you're doing with a fellow improvisational partner, then you are probably a trustworthy person, but also you're just building that as a team. Is that something that comes into play, or am I totally off base?

Phil Green: No, you're absolutely right. Vulnerability is key to improv, and I guess if I had an action item, if you are someone in that leadership situation, or you're not, go take an improv class. Cities across America have scenes. I'm so lucky to be so close to Chicago, that's the home of improv, but everywhere has somewhere, and if it doesn't, there are books, there are podcasts, there are videos. I am happy to be a resource to anyone with questions of, “Where do I find this to get started?” It doesn't have to be all the planners are going to go and take an acting class now, but do I think there's opportunity in the workplace to build some active listening skills? 100% there is. To me, there is nothing more freeing and fulfilling than knowing that you have the space to be your fully authentic self in the workplace.

Meghan Stromberg: I love that you've said that. It's something very much in the news right now. On the one hand, there's a greater acceptance of this idea of bringing your whole self to work, but it's also for a lot of people, kind of a scary time to do that, or at least an uncertain time to do that. Any thoughts on where we are right now when it comes to that?

Phil Green: An improv class is probably not going to change the political reality that a lot of folks face when it comes to authenticity. At that point, I think it's more of a personal journey along that confidence-building route and understanding that there are going to be policy-level decisions that are going to make it very hard for some folks to be their authentic selves in the workplace, but can you still let your personality shine? Can you still find those opportunities to relate to people that we may seem like we fundamentally disagree with on a lot of levels? Absolutely. A lot of times I'm in situations with people who they'll approach it and assume that we're coming at it from two completely different places. And I'm thinking specifically here of those folks that we all know who I work in local government and the folks with a natural, well-earned distrust of government, and I find that 9 times out of 10, if I'm really listening to what those concerns are, we're probably in agreement on more things than we're not in agreement on.

Meghan Stromberg: I think you're probably right, just this idea too among people. As a species, we have so much more in common than we do from our visible or political or whatever our differences are. 99.9% of us is exactly the same. I have kind of a last question, and I'm wondering where have you had a more difficult audience? Has it been up on stage or in some sort of planning situation?

Phil Green: I'm usually less concerned about an improv show ending in a lawsuit than I am a public hearing.

Meghan Stromberg: Right.

Phil Green: I'll say that much, for sure. It's all very interesting because what I find is the nerves don't go away. People will see a very confident speaker; they'll see a confident improviser up there taking risks, but I'll tell you, it's powered by nerves. The difference is, you learn to harness that energy as opposed to letting it be preventative. Improv is whatever I say it is in that moment. Planning, there's probably a commissioner that's still expecting an answer from me somewhere out there, so planning is always going to be harder because it has real-world consequences, and also, there's typically not an open bar at a public hearing like there is at an improv show.

Meghan Stromberg: Talk about out-of-the-box thinking, though: can we do something about this?

Phil Green: Planners that are listening to this, if you have that, please let me know. I will come and work for you.

Meghan Stromberg: Or we'll just come to the meetings and participate.

Phil Green: Done.

Meghan Stromberg: We'll just call it participating.

Phil Green: Participate, yes.

Meghan Stromberg: Yes. Active participation.

Phil Green: Yes.

Meghan Stromberg: Phil, this has been such a great conversation, and I'm still thinking about that session that you did at the Illinois conference. It stuck with me. Hopefully, you'll do another one. I know that conference is coming up in the fall. One of the games we played was where we build a sentence or a story where each of us is contributing a word. In that case, we were in a really big circle, so it got pretty interesting. Can you remind us how that game works?

Phil Green: Yeah. One word at a time. We will tell a story one word at a time, and I'll tell you what I tell everybody who does this game. The most important thing is the last word you heard. Otherwise, you're swimming upstream, trying to get back to something 10 words before. If you want to give it a go, we can.

Meghan Stromberg: Oh, that sounds fun. Let's do that. So.

Phil Green: This.

Meghan Stromberg: Has.

Phil Green: Been.

Meghan Stromberg: Potentially.

Phil Green: The.

Meghan Stromberg: Most.

Phil Green: Wonderful.

Meghan Stromberg: Yet.

Phil Green: Concerning.

Meghan Stromberg: Conversation.

Phil Green: That.

Meghan Stromberg: Our.

Phil Green: Podcast.

Meghan Stromberg: Listeners.

Phil Green: Will.

Meghan Stromberg: Ever.

Phil Green: Ever.

Meghan Stromberg: Ever.

Phil Green: Ever.

Meghan Stromberg: Hear.

Phil Green: In.

Meghan Stromberg: This.

Phil Green: Week.

Meghan Stromberg: Bravo.

Phil Green: Thanks, Meghan.

Meghan Stromberg: Did you see what happened there? I got a little nervous about continuing it, so I just shut it off. End scene.

Phil Green: End scene. Brava. Bravo. That's like my favorite thing. I call it the Family Guy joke. It's when a joke goes on too long to be funny, but then it goes on just a little bit longer, and it's funny again; Chef's kiss in the comedy world.

Meghan Stromberg: Wonderful. Well, this has been so fun, and I've actually learned a lot about active listening, improv, awareness, fence permits, Big Fence.

Phil Green: They're coming.

Meghan Stromberg: Yeah, they're coming. So look out and just be aware. Be aware.

Phil Green: Just listen to each other. Make a connection.

Meghan Stromberg: Make a connection. Thanks so much, Phil.

Phil Green: Thank you.

Meghan Stromberg: Thanks for listening to another episode of People Behind the Plans, an APA podcast. If you want to hear more great conversations with experts from across the planning landscape, subscribe to APA podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. And if you like what you're hearing, rate us on iTunes. You can find People Behind the Plans on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our entire library of episodes at planning.org/podcast.