I’ve been to Victoria, British Columbia six times over the past decade — first to consult with a company, then to speak at a university, and then four years in a row to attend a remarkable conference hosted by Canadian entrepreneur and investor Andrew Wilkinson.
Victoria is a beautiful city filled with excellent restaurants and wonderful people. It has a picturesque seafront, a wonderful walking district, and it’s magically illuminated at night.
As I walked the streets last week, I wondered why I hadn’t brought Elysha to this place yet.
This most recent conference was at least as good as the previous ones. I made some interesting new friends who I suspect will influence my life in deeply positive ways, learned many new things, and engaged in conversations with musicians, magicians, comedians, entrepreneurs, authors, and a game and puzzle maker that I will remember for a long time.
But the moment that struck me most was this:
During the final day of the conference, our host, Andrew Wilkinson, described one of my sessions that he attended. He noticed that at one point, while I was teaching a storytelling strategy to a roomful of people, I felt myself losing my audience a bit.
For whatever reason, engagement was waning. Attention was drifting. I was quickly becoming less impactful.
Almost immediately, I pivoted to a story to re-engage them. The story not only recaptured their attention and re-engaged them in my session, but it made some of the people in the room cry.
The rest of the workshop was smooth sailing.
As a teacher and speaker, this is something I do all the time.
While many speakers (and even some teachers) view their job as delivering their message and content — usually via a speech or a lesson — the real job of a speaker or teacher is to deliver their message and content while simultaneously and relentlessly monitoring audience engagement to determine if adjustments are needed.
This doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.
If you’re standing onstage, simply broadcasting to your audience, unwavering in your plan and approach, you are likely failing a good percentage of the time. Regardless of the size of the audience, the particularities of the venue, and the time limit imposed, the job of a teacher, speaker, storyteller, comedian, musician, or any other entertainer is to observe, react, adjust, and pivot to their audience at all times.
It’s the most important thing we do.
More important than our words or our message.
In the classroom, most teachers do this almost second by second. You can’t teach children or even adults if you’re constantly adjusting to their wants and needs.
The stage should be no different.
This is the difference between someone who has two feet firmly planted on the stage and someone who has one foot on the stage and one foot in the audience.
The surprising thing for me that day in Victoria was that Andrew saw this pivot happen in real time.
He somehow managed to peek behind the curtain.
He spotted the machinery at work.
He witnessed my pivot to a story, and he understood why I did so at that particular moment.
It was both impressive and unsettling.
Impressive because few people are able to glean that insight in the midst of a performance, and unsettling because I prefer to keep my curtain closed and the machinery hidden away in a back room. I want my pivots, adjustments, and reactions to seem like part of the plan and preordained.
Andrew figured out my magic trick. He spotted the ace up my sleeve.
Impressive. Also, hopefully, rare.
I’d prefer that no one ever see the rabbit in my hat.
