By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
“If you are an actor and your task is to carry a glass of water across the stage, you must carry it in an interesting way. If the glass of water is a major plot point, then you nevertheless should carry it in a way that is interesting but not so interesting as to pull focus. The audience doesn’t pay money to see reality. They paid money to see a heightened reality.
~Frank Corsaro
My friend, Cash Tilton, is an actor who shared this quote.
Expressing himself as an actor would, he points out that even trivial things can be made interesting to an audience.
Seemingly unimportant signals that are, in fact, important should be shown in ways that are still interesting but don’t call attention to themselves.
After all, that critical detail to the story can be sprung out in the last scene of the final act and surprise the audience.
These are two great lessons for business and leadership.
Even an ordinary meeting can be made interesting with a little bit of thought.
If they are one robotically, you will lose the audience. Your staff will be disengaged.
That isn’t on them. That’s on you as an actor to provide an engaging performance.
For you as a leader, manager, VP, director, or business owner, slipping in a small detail amongst many and noticing who on your team recognizes it. They may be the ones with the insightfulness and potential for more.
As an actor, your job is to engage the audience.
It doesn’t matter whether you do a magic trick in the middle of a scene, tell a joke, or ask individual people for opinions.
Your job is to make trivial things interesting so that you get the best from your people.
If you’re talking about a client, who would ever have expected that the box a product arrived in would make as big a splash as it does.
But when you receive your iPhone in its perfect box, open it, and discover the phone perfectly packed within it, the unimportant has been made important to you.
Every detail that seems trivial can be made to have meaning.
It’s your choice.
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2021
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS job search coaching and career advice globally because he makes job search and succeeding in your career easier.
