6 Ways to Improve Your Communication by Thinking Like a Magician

For 12 years, I led something of a double life.

By day, I worked in internal communications, mostly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. Outside work, I was a professional magician.

For a long time, I saw the two as completely separate. Eventually, I realised they had much more in common than I had thought.

Whether I was developing a communications strategy or performing magic, I was trying to achieve essentially the same thing: engage people, make them think or feel differently, and leave a lasting positive impression.

In some ways, magic taught me more about communication than any textbook or training course. Those lessons shaped the way I think about communication skills, particularly when it comes to engaging busy audiences and making ideas memorable.

As a magician, I regularly approach complete strangers, build rapport within seconds, persuade them to participate in something they weren’t expecting and try to create an experience they will remember. I also get immediate feedback. Sometimes I can hear people discussing my performance while I’m still standing there.

That is a powerful incentive to keep learning and improving.

Looking at communications through the eyes of a magician helped me find new ways to make ideas clearer, more engaging and more memorable.

Over time, I developed a simple framework built around six principles:

E — Effect
M — Method
O — Observe
T — Tell a Tale
E — Entertain
S — Simplicity

Together, the six principles spell EMOTES — a deliberate choice. To emote is to express or evoke emotion, and that is at the heart of both effective communication and great magic.

Here are the six principles and what communicators can learn from thinking like a magician.

E — Effect

The first question should always be: what are you trying to achieve?

This sounds obvious, but both magicians and communicators can be guilty of starting with the method instead.

For a magician, discovering how a trick works can be exciting. You learn about sleight of hand, gimmicks, technology and clever techniques. But none of that matters to the audience. What matters is what they see, hear and feel.

A magician should therefore begin by imagining the experience they want to create. What will happen? What will the audience experience? How will they feel at the end?

Only then should they work out how to make it happen.

The same principle applies to communications.

It is easy to jump straight to the channels: We’ll send an email. Let’s arrange a town hall. We could make a video.

But those are methods, not objectives.

Before deciding what you are going to communicate or how you are going to communicate it, ask:

What do I want people to think, feel or do differently as a result?

Once you know the effect you want to create, the rest of the strategy becomes much clearer.

M — Method

The method is the hidden mechanism that makes a magic trick work. It might involve sleight of hand, psychology, technology, mathematics or a combination of techniques.

For a communicator, the method might be an email, presentation, video, intranet article, town hall, social media post or face-to-face conversation.

The method matters. But it is still a means to an end.

The right method depends on three things: the setting, the audience and the goal.

A magician performing close-up magic at a drinks reception needs a very different approach from one performing on a theatre stage. A trick that works beautifully in someone’s hands might not work on television.

Communicators face the same challenge.

A complex change programme might require detailed written information for one audience, while a short video or face-to-face conversation could be more effective for another.

The important thing is not to fall in love with the channel.

Start with the effect you want, understand your audience and environment, and then choose the method that gives you the best chance of achieving it.

Otherwise, you’re like a magician who has forgotten that there are people behind him who can see the rabbit tucked down his trousers.

The effect is lost — and you look ridiculous.

O — Observe

A good magician is constantly observing the audience.

Are people engaged? Are they laughing? Are they confused? Is someone’s attention wandering?

The magician is processing what has just happened while simultaneously deciding what to do next.

It is one of the most demanding aspects of performing because you have to respond to the audience while maintaining the impression that everything is completely under control.

But observation is essential.

If you aren’t paying attention to how your audience is responding, how do you know whether your communication is working?

When I perform, I sometimes have a friend in the audience specifically to listen to what people say afterwards. I’ve even been known to disappear into a toilet cubicle after performing so I can hear people’s unfiltered reactions.

It’s an excellent way to get honest feedback.

Sometimes it’s very encouraging.

Sometimes it’s painfully honest.

Both are useful.

I’m not suggesting that communicators should hide in toilet cubicles. But getting close to your audience matters.

Surveys and feedback forms have their place, but they don’t always tell you what people really think. Listen to the conversations people have when they don’t realise you’re listening. Watch what they do, not just what they say.

The best communicators don’t simply deliver messages.

They observe, learn and adapt.

T — Tell a Tale

Stories make information memorable.

Humans have always used stories to explain the world, pass knowledge between generations and make sense of complex ideas. Yet business communications can still rely heavily on bullet points, graphs and corporate jargon.

Magicians can make the same mistake.

Imagine a magician asking you to choose a playing card, shuffling it back into the deck and then finding it.

It’s a perfectly competent magic trick.

But you’ve probably seen something similar before.

Now imagine the magician explaining that the technique they’re using was developed by card cheats to win fortunes in casinos. Perhaps they tell you about a casino where they once performed. Maybe the cards they’re using came from a casino that banned them.

Suddenly, the trick has context.

There is a story. There is a reason to care. And you’ve learnt something about the person performing it.

The same applies to corporate communications.

Instead of simply telling people what is happening, explain why it matters. Give people context. Show them the people affected. Explain where you’ve come from and where you’re going.

Facts inform.

Stories make people care.

E — Entertain

A magician’s job is, at least in part, to entertain.

But communication doesn’t have to be dull simply because the subject is serious.

Entertainment doesn’t mean turning every corporate presentation into a comedy show. It means recognising that people’s attention is valuable and that engaging content is more likely to be remembered.

You can make communications more engaging through stories, humour, surprising facts, compelling visuals, video, interaction or simply by finding a more interesting way to present an idea.

There is another lesson from magic here: involve your audience.

One of the challenges for a magician is that we’re deliberately fooling people. If the audience feels that something is being done to them, the experience can become frustrating.

The best magic makes people feel like participants.

They make choices. They handle objects. They influence what happens.

The same is true of communication.

People are more engaged when they feel part of something rather than simply being talked at.

S — Simplicity

Some of the greatest magic tricks are remarkably simple.

David Copperfield has performed spectacular illusions, including making the Statue of Liberty disappear and walking through the Great Wall of China. Yet some of the effects audiences remember most fondly can be much smaller and simpler.

There is a useful principle in magic: a good trick can often be described in a single sentence.

The problem is that magicians sometimes think that more magic must mean a bigger reaction.

A card appears. It changes colour. It shrinks. It becomes a silk. It catches fire. A dove appears.

There may be plenty happening, but the audience can lose sight of the effect.

The same thing happens with communications.

When people are already overwhelmed with information, adding more information doesn’t necessarily make a message more effective.

Sometimes the answer is to remove things.

I learnt this through a simple coin trick.

I perform an effect in which a copper coin and a silver coin invisibly change places between my hands and the spectator’s hand. It is visual and, in theory, very clear.

But for a while, it wasn’t getting the reaction I expected.

I eventually realised that people were forgetting which coin had started where.

The problem wasn’t the magic.

It was the communication.

A fellow magician suggested an incredibly simple solution: make the audience focus on just one coin. They see the silver coin transform into the copper coin, and the rest of the effect becomes obvious.

I tried it.

The reactions improved dramatically.

The lesson was simple: people don’t necessarily need more information. They often need less.

When people are busy, distracted and overwhelmed, the clearest ideas are the ones most likely to cut through.

Final Thoughts

For much of my early career in internal communications, I didn’t tell colleagues that I was a magician.

I had encountered people who saw having an outside passion as evidence that I wasn’t fully committed to my day job. At the time, I accepted the idea that these were two separate parts of my life.

Eventually, I realised that I had been looking at things the wrong way.

My experience as a magician was giving me a different perspective on communication. It taught me about attention, observation, storytelling, simplicity, audience participation and — perhaps most importantly — the importance of creating an experience rather than simply delivering information.

Those lessons continue to influence how I think about magic today.

Whether I’m performing at a corporate event or communicating with an audience in another context, the fundamental challenge is remarkably similar:

How do you make people pay attention, make them feel something and give them something they will remember?

You don’t have to be a magician to think like one.

Sometimes the best way to improve what you’re doing is to look at it through an entirely different lens.

And perhaps that is the biggest lesson I’ve taken from having two seemingly unrelated careers: bringing different experiences together can create ideas that neither could produce on their own.

Read the Full Presentation

This article is an edited version of my original presentation, which explores the six principles in greater detail.

Read the full presentation (PDF)

About James

James Pritchard is a London corporate magician and former internal communications professional with more than a decade of experience in financial services and corporate communications. He is a member of The Magic Circle and specialises in creating engaging, memorable experiences for corporate events and audiences.

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