Care to Remember
Mar 17, 2023How do you memorize all those lines? That’s the most common question I received from family and friends during my acting career. Immediately after coming from the set, walking off the stage, finishing filming a show, it was so interesting to me this was the first question on everyone’s mind. I didn’t always have a proper answer until I gave the question some serious reflection.
What I realized was…when I genuinely cared about the part I was portraying and was truly connected to the script, I had no trouble remembering my lines. When I made it less about me and more about understanding the heart of the character, honoring the role, and serving the story, the words naturally came to me and my focus, direction, and incentive was crystal clear.
In Game On terms, INCENTIVE means, as presenters, we do our best to facilitate, share, and engage with purpose. To bring this concept to life we “set our GPS” towards the needs of the audience. This simple “care to remember” roadmap has been a nice guide for me during this journey, and I hope you find it helpful on your path as a presenter:
1. Care to remember…to keep it practical and simple.
2. Care to remember…to make it make sense to the audience’s needs.
3. Care to remember…to serve the audience before you serve yourself.
I haven’t always followed this direction. At times I’ve cared more about the audience’s approval, desperately wanting to be remembered (and liked) for everything I said. It’s a natural default, albeit a human and flawed placed to be. But with growth and maturity, I’ve tried valiantly and imperfectly to suppress the dopamine/serotonin rush, get out of my own way, and accept that impact is more important than approval. That mindset, that approach, that GPS has become my incentive.
When we think of the word incentive as it relates to work, business meetings, presentations, and in our day-to-day interactions as leaders, teachers, parents, coaches, it’s natural to think about what we want and what we will get out of it. Understandably, we may sometimes default to our needs, which begs the question, “what’s in it for me?”. Yet, it’s an honest question and the answer, with a slight shift in our perspective, can be a healthy gateway to serving others with authority, humility, meaning, and purpose.
What’s in it for us is an opportunity to care about our audience and remember it’s about serving others. What’s in it for us is to surrender to our ego and pride and get out of our own way. What’s in it for us is the privilege to shift the focus off the presentation, the applause, the survey results, and shift our entire lens onto to the needs of the audience.
So, before we review that presentation a few more times, make a couple final tweaks to that lengthy PowerPoint, try to memorize all those lines, don’t forget the most important incentive…to surrender to ourselves and serve the audience. And in that journey. let’s guide our audience to that place where they care and remember, because we took some serious time, put in the effort, and made it our incentive to care to remember…others first.
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