A speaker shares how an improvisation principle—make your partner look brilliant—saved a keynote presentation in San Diego. By shifting focus from his ego to supporting his co-presenter, he discovered that deferring and facilitating others often produces better results than trying to control the outcome.
Good morning, everyone. Here is your moment of yes for Wednesday, August 28th, I think. Yeah, Wednesday, August 28th, from San Diego. There's worse places to be in the world than San Diego. So happy to be here. This week, had the opportunity to use the improv mantra, my goal is to make my partner look genius. So— was out here doing an event, ended up kind of co-presenting for a keynote event. And after going through kind of rehearsal and things like that, I discovered, I was like, okay, this isn't necessarily what I was expecting. And so what came to me is like, all right, it's not what you were expecting, but how can I weave in here And be a good teammate? How can I weave in here and be a good partner where the talk is elevated to where it needs to be and we just, you know, we make it work so that, you know, it's the best presentation possible? And I'm realizing in order for this to be the best presentation possible, I'm going to have to find a way to squeeze in and defer and facilitate a little bit, even if maybe my initial perception was different. And so I kept going back to the improv mantra, hey, my job is to make my partner look brilliant, right? My goal is to make my partner look brilliant. And once I got into that mindset, once I got into that focus, the actual presentation was flawless. It was seamless. Like, we worked together perfectly. We balanced each other well. And the feedback, the feedback from the audience was great. But what I noticed was there was a little bit of an initial, you know, like, you know, ego shot of like, oh, okay, I thought this was going to be different. And then instead of staying there, like, you know, the thought is fine, but instead of staying there, shifting into, all right, okay, like, you know, it's not about me. Who cares? It's about, it's about the final product. So being able to notice, make that shift, and then go into What can I do to make my partner look brilliant? And then shifting that focus shifted my performance. So yeah, we all get plenty of opportunities throughout the day to go, oh shoot, wait a second, maybe this isn't entirely about me. How can I shift my perspective? Yeah. Is that showing up for you at all today? Any opportunity to bring that humility? I don't know. Hope so. That's your moment of yes for today. Have an awesome day, everybody.
