Insights
Performance Essentials
Great performances need three ingredients and a mindset. Tension, Discipline and Courage with the capacity to thinkGood.
Tension arises from the deisre to change something: to change the emotional state, the attitude or the behaviour of your target audience. You may want to change the world order. You may just want to make people smile. Tension is often regarded by nervous presenters as a distraction at best. At worst, debilitating and painful.
Our view is that tension is essential to creating the energy required to engage and move people.
It is through performance Disciplines that tension is held and channelled; released in words and gestures that engage the attention of you audience. coup teaches a wealth of performance disciplines that help you maintain your composure when under pressure, to use your voice and your body to communicate clearly and powerfully.
Courage is required to step into the unknown and choose to take the risks associated with powerful communication. Good communication is inherently risky. It doesn't "hedge it's bets" but rather commits to creating change and focusses the energy of the communicator on moving the audience, not on keeping the ego safe.
So, if you consider the interpersonal transactions that shape your life as performances, invite and accept the tension of being an active communicator, take every opportunity to learn and practice the disciplines that make you more effective and act without fear. Life's too short to meekly tap to the window. BANG ON THE DOOR, but do so with grace and intent.
If you think well of yourself and the people you are seeking to move, your performance will have more grace and faciliity than if you fall into the vicious circles of self-doubt and suspicion. ThinkGOOD.
authorDavid McCubbin
