The Power of Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is our biggest secret at ThinkMagic. It's how we are able to get into the minds of our audience. If you're planning your next meeting, take our secret to heart - involve your audience in an experience and your message will never be forgotten.
Consider what the 16th century mathematician, Blaise Pascal, wrote: "People remember most what they discover on their own." Read it again. Ironically, you might forget it since you didn't come up with it.
We forget so many of the wonderful truisms we hear. But we will always remember not to touch a burning stove or stick our tongue to a frozen pipe - the things we learn from experience as children.
If you embrace Pascal's statement fully, it will help you reconsider how you present your main message to your audience. It doesn't matter if you want to communicate the concept of change, leadership, perseverance, or innovation. What matters is how your audience perceives your message, how they experience it, what they remember and, of course, what they do with it.
If you want them to pay attention, it's easy: fire off some fire-works and do a couple of back-flips on stage. That'll get them to sit-up. If you want to impress your audience, tell them everything you know. Put up 100 colorful PowerPoint slides and bombard their brains with awesome information. That'll keep their eyes open - at least for a little while.
But if you want your audience to listen and retain your message, then you have to get them to discover that message on their own. That means not feeding them information from a silver spoon, not giving them the answers right away. Sometimes it means not even telling them what the questions are in the first place.
Now of course you don't want to just let their minds roam off-course. That's why you have to think like a magician. As a talented conjuror would do, you have to create for the audience an illusion of free choice.
You know what your message is and you know the thought-process that went into discovering it. Now take them there with you. Let them discover the same problems and thoughts you had. Let them embrace the solutions they think are their own. So while they think their minds are making their own leaps and bounds - in reality they are following the exact path of experience and discovery that you want them to take!
To the audience, it's as if you are just along for the ride - the guide that's along their side. To you, they are active participants in a learning experience that you have planned, structured, and executed without any fancy sleight-of-hand. It's like convincing the boss that the good idea you had is really his idea. He's much more likely to go with it then!
If you lead your audience through a form of Experiential Learning - they won't just thank you for it today. They'll thank you ten years from now.
How does ThinkMagic utilize Experiential Learning?
At ThinkMagic we discovered that one of the core strengths of our presentations is in our audience's ability to recall the information we talked about for many months and years afterwards. This is, of course, due in huge part to the fun and interactive nature of the magic. Because magic calls for undivided attention and the full awareness of each individual's mind, and because it is immediately recognized by the brain as something completely different from anything it has experienced before - the information that is presented alongside the magic etches itself firmly into the neural pathways of the brain. While the message may not be new to the listener, it is perceived as such by the brain. And, with a bit of practice, it is much more likely to be retained. That's our little secret. Now it's yours.
ThinkMagic has created and innovated unique "Experiential Learning Presentations" for businesses nationwide. We don't just talk about perception; we transform the way you see the world.