A dilemma I hear very often when I work with top leaders is that “yeah it’s a great tool” or “I read this interesting article” but “I’m really busy right now, so I don’t know if I have time to practice…”

Reality is though – as Laura Vanderkam pointed out in a Ted Talk a couple of years ago, that we all have the same amount of time. The question is: How do we prioritize and spend it?

Most people who come to me want to become better speakers. They want to get the message across, manage Audience Interaction or mastering a third or fourth area of public speaking.

To “become a better speaker” is a big and complex thing, so my job is to break that goal down into mini milestones and establish good habits – such as practicing strategic eye contact, using The Power Circle to get to the point and remove unnecessary fillers.

The key to a great and free performance is great habits. And great habits come from intentionally practicing the little things over and over again… just like a trumpet player who every day in the beginning of his practice goes through different exercises to breath right, articulate well, challenge his technical level of playing and rythm. Practicing great habits is nescessary to make a great performance – so what habits do you want to create?

It’s magical and practical. It’s music and it’s business. It’s a meeting that makes teams play better together.

In the future, we will have more access to data and technology that take care of a lot of tasks humans execute today. Tech and a lot of logic move us forward as individuals, teams and businesses. That’s all good.

Magic makes long-lasting impact

But: We need to be able to combine all logic with magic to move people, businesses and stocks for real. Magic is needed to make true and long-lasting impact.  

Think about the last time you were impressed by something or someone… was that because it was a great Excel sheet or a pretty presentation? Probably not. It was most likely rather because the person, the performer behind the message, the show or the product did something meaningful, impressive and magical with the content.

From black dots to a touching performance

This value chain is very obvious for musicians. Music is actually just some black dots on a white piece of paper and some rhythm (math) added to that. For these black dots to become an impressive experience for an audience, a group of customers, the musicians needto do something about it. Interpret it, bring it to life. The dots are actually nothing in themselves, exactly like a business strategy is nothing in itself, no matter how right or great it might be.  

Musicians need to know their logic, their technical skills and instrument. Then they need to add magic, their personal touch and impact. Otherwise it will not be a touching performance.

That journey has to do with different things such as meaningfulness, emotional intelligence and creative thinking. In business life we need to do exactly the same: Add magic to logic.

Business magic will move you forward

Both in music and business a strong relationship between logic and magic is required if we want to change things for the better… so the question that you need to ask yourself in your leadership and teamwork is: What’s your magic in your message?