John Hayns – The MAGIC Formula
Move Attune Give Inspire Connect
I was delighted to be invited as a guest on Amy Rowlinson’s wonderful podcast Focus on WHY. Amy is a fantastic interviewer and has a real knack of going deep quickly with her guests.
I was already a fan of the podcast, listening en-route to many a magic and juggling gig. Being a guest encouraged me to spend time reflecting on what drives me.
Find Focus on WHY on your favourite podcast platform, or listen here:
The MAGIC formula:
Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting
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I have been working as a close-up magician for the last 25 years. I have entertained at thousands of events – hundreds of tables at weddings, corporate parties and significant birthdays.
At the same time, in the other half of my life, I have led and been a member of several teams. Recently, I have been interviewing many other team leaders about their experiences and challenges. Many thanks if you are one of them!
I have observed that many of the challenges facing a close-up magician approaching a table of guests are very similar to those facing team leaders. I have also realised that the MAGIC formula may be applied in both situations.
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We have been around our imaginary wedding table and met all the characters. We have seen each personality’s unique challenges and how a magician might react in each case.
In the next few posts, I would like to make some general observations from working with the table as a whole to gain some valuable insights for team leaders.
—
An interesting thing happens when I approach a wedding table as a magician. I have to suppress my urges. That might sound a little alarming, but let me explain.
My instinct, when confronted by this diverse group of challenging personalities, is to bolster my self-worth and beef up my fragile ego. I feel the need to compete with Silverback Tarquin, Competitive Analyst Clint and Joker Jake. I want to get one-up on them. I long to look cool to Bored Ben the teenager and convert Timid Tina into a magic fan so that everyone likes me and I feel completely accepted.
If you are a team leader and are being particularly honest with yourself, those urges may seem a little familiar when it comes to your interactions with your team.
However, if we give in to these impulses we will not be serving our team in the best possible way. We always have a choice about how to react to any situation and we don’t have to follow our initial gut reactions.
But how do we make that choice, and how should we react instead?
I have realised that I instinctively think that interactions with others are a zero-sum game in terms of status and self-worth. ie, that if they are lifted up, I am inevitably diminished. It’s survival of the fittest, and I need to be fittest. I am not sure where this Darwinian mindset has come from, but I have learned that, in most cases, it is a fallacy.
Instead, I have observed that putting others first does not mean that you won’t be first as well. The vast majority of the time, it just doesn’t work like that in relationships. The only exception might be if you are unfortunate enough to be dealing with a narcissist. However, in most cases, if you lift someone else up, you will end up being lifted as well. You are not going to lose out.
I watched a fascinating video about Bill Clinton on Tim Ferriss’ website. Whatever you think of his politics, his ability to focus eye contact on people and make them feel like the most important person in the room is legendary. And that ends up with both of them being lifted up.
Once we can acknowledge that social or work interactions are not automatically win-lose competitions, we can override the instinctive fight/ flight response. Our self-worth and our standing in the eyes of others will not be diminished if we concentrate on elevating others.
Increasingly I am coming to understand that our self-worth comes from our sense of who we are, rather than what do. And working out who we are is probably not best done in the middle of leading a team meeting or performing magic! Better to do it through reading, meditation, prayer, discussion and other reflective practices.
Can you take some time out to reflect on your interactions with your team? Are you instinctively viewing them as competitive situations?
Can you overcome your urges?
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I am writing a book about using The MAGIC Formula to manage yourself, particularly if you work from home.
If you are a freelancer, self-employed, or work from home in another capacity, I would love to talk to you.
If you would like to help, please get in touch:
https://www.work-life-magic.com/contact/
The MAGIC formula:
Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting
—
I have been working as a close-up magician for the last 25 years. I have entertained at thousands of events – hundreds of tables at weddings, corporate parties and significant birthdays.
At the same time, in the other half of my life, I have led and been a member of several teams. Recently, I have been interviewing many other team leaders about their experiences and challenges. Many thanks if you are one of them!
I have observed that many of the challenges facing a close-up magician approaching a table of guests are very similar to those facing team leaders. I have also realised that the MAGIC formula may be applied in both situations.
—
We have been around our imaginary wedding table and met all the characters. We have seen each personality’s unique challenges and how a magician might react in each case.
In the next few posts, I would like to make some general observations from working with the table as a whole to gain some valuable insights for team leaders.
As a magician, the first lesson for me is that it is all about the audience. They are the most important, I am there to serve them, and I need to do all I can to lift them up.
Likewise, as team leaders, our most important job is to serve our teams.
How might we do this?
Working through the MAGIC formula:
Move: I need to make my audience feel something. Most of the time, it will be most beneficial to stimulate positive feelings. As a performer, I want them to feel amazed, intrigued, excited and mystified, but I also want them to feel comfortable and relaxed. I might need some help from an audience member at some point, in which case I want them to feel confident in me and brave enough to take the risk of taking part.
Very occasionally, I might want to make the audience feel uncomfortable as part of the dramatic flow of a routine, e.g., by making them think that I have screwed up a trick and leaving an awkward silence. But I only want to do this if I know the situation will be temporary and quickly resolved and that the feeling of discomfort will only serve to heighten the effect that follows.
It is similar when leading a team. As a leader, you want your team members to feel comfortable and confident working with you and with each other. You want them to be energised, confident and excited. Occasionally you might want to throw in a bit of discomfort as a motivator, as long as you can also show that there is a way out by you all working together and triumphing somehow.
Attune: Magic at tables works best when you correctly judge the mood and characters of the table and tailor your presentation and routine to seamlessly start from that point.
In the same way, as a team leader, you will find it much easier if you can attune to the character and mood of your team members, both individually and as a group.
When performing magic, I have to work with the audience I have, not the audience I wish I had. As a team leader, I have to work with the team I have, not the team I wish I had. If you get it right, your actual team may eventually become very similar to your ideal team.
Give: One of the founders of The Magic Circle, David Devant, once coined the phrase “All done by kindness”. This saying is much loved by magicians and a great mantra for life and leadership in general.
When performing at a wedding table, I need to provide an experience that the guests could not have had without me being there. My role is to give them something that will stick in their memories with good feelings, maybe cause them to think a little differently about magicians, their lives and their fellow humans. This might sound a little grand for a magic performance, but I have had enough chats with audience members to know that it is possible. At the very least, I can aim to give everyone a positive and enjoyable time.
How and what can you give to your team members as a team leader? I would suggest, for starters, encouragement, fun, opportunities to learn and grow, information and your time.
Inspire: I want to leave my audience with a slightly different view of the world, one that will cause them to act differently, if only slightly. Maybe this will simply be in their reaction to future magic performances? Perhaps it will be in their thinking about how the human mind works or how different people see things in different ways? Maybe they will want to go and learn some magic tricks themselves?
How can you inspire your team? What do you want them to want to do as a result of interacting with you? It is worth considering that you will inspire them to act in one way or another no matter what you do! This might be positive or negative. It is more likely to be positive if you are intentional about it. Spend some time thinking about how you would like to be inspiring your team and how you might be able to go about it in your actions, encouragement and general dealings with them.
Connect: The more successfully I can connect with an audience and individual audience members, the better the resulting performance will be. It is exactly the same with team members. Time spent one-to-one with team members or in building relationships with the whole group will never be wasted.
How can you serve your team?
How can you lift them up?
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Help Please!
I am writing a book about using The MAGIC Formula to manage yourself, particularly if you work from home.
If you are a freelancer, self-employed, or work from home in another capacity, I would love to talk to you.
If you would like to help, please get in touch: https://www.work-life-magic.com/contact/
The MAGIC formula:
Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting
—
I have been working as a close-up magician for the last 25 years. I have entertained at thousands of events – hundreds of tables at weddings, corporate parties and significant birthdays.
At the same time, in the other half of my life, I have led and been a member of several teams. Recently, I have been interviewing many other team leaders about their experiences and challenges. Many thanks if you are one of them!
I have observed that many of the challenges facing a close-up magician approaching a table of guests are very similar to those facing team leaders. I have also realised that the MAGIC formula may be applied in both situations.
—
The last person to meet at this wedding guests table is 17-year old Taramasalata. She is sitting next to her dad, Tarquin the Silverback, who has been ostentatiously boasting about his wealth and rich-person-type activities. Tara (for short) has been talking about how she has been learning to drive in her new Range Rover on the family’s second field and how it was such a hassle because they had to move the pony.
With my comprehensive school chip on my shoulder, I have a strong urge to slap her around the face and tell her to get a life, meet the real world, and wake up and smell the coffee. Who does she think she is?! She wouldn’t have all this if it wasn’t for an accident of birth and daddy’s money. How can she be so crashingly insensitive to the rest of those around the table?
OK, maybe I have painted an extreme caricature of an entitled teen. However, I am reasonably confident that those feelings of incredulity mingled with slight resentment are familiar to many people to some extent.
Do you have someone on your team who raises even a fraction of these emotions in you? You feel that they are only there because they are related to the boss, whereas you had to work your way up or get the job on your own merits? They come out with the most inane rubbish and have no real grasp on the real world. And, what is worse, you are stuck with having to manage them because they have ended up on your team!
What do you do?
Is it even possible to Move, Attune, Give, Inspire and Connect in this situation?
Well, I think it is. It is not easy, but it is possible.
In life, in general, the only thing we can really control is our response to a situation. We can’t change what is going on in someone else’s head, and we rarely have much influence over most events in the world. But we can change our reactions.
Take Tara at the wedding table. My initial reaction is that I feel resentment and want to write her off. Not a great start if I am there to entertain!Neither is it a great start for you if you are there to manage a team member.
So, what can I do to manage my reactions in this instance?
Move: What emotion do I want Tara to feel during and after my performance? I need to resist my desire for her to feel humiliation; I actually want her to feel wonder and a sense of experiencing something special with the rest of the table.
Attune: How can I understand Tara more? She clearly comes from a different world to me, but how would I be behaving if I had the same start in life and the same life experience? I have to acknowledge that she is not actively trying to be obnoxious and intimidating as she flicks her perfectly styled hair…
Give: What do I want to give Tara? I have to remember that I am there to serve, as is a team leader. How can I be generous to her?
Inspire: How do I want her to behave or think due to my performance? Well, I would like her to experience being part of an audience with the other guests, and as a result, not feel like she is so very different from them after all.
Connect: My initial reaction is that Tara is from a different planet to me. But is that really true? Within a couple of icebreaking questions, I can probably discover some points of connection, places we have both visited, or activities we have both tried.
As a magician, I have to go through this process very quickly, in a matter of minutes. As a team leader, you will have a bit longer. But the principle is the same. Your real challenge is to start with yourself, to take control of your own reactions and allow yourself to view yourself as the servant of your irritating team member.
Do you have a Taramasalata on your team?
Identify the emotions they stir up in you and reflect on how you could modify your internal reactions.
—
I am writing a book about using The MAGIC Formula to manage yourself, particularly if you work from home.
If you are a freelancer, self-employed, or work from home in another capacity, I would love to talk to you.
If you are able to help, please get in touch: https://www.work-life-magic.com/contact/