Illusions for a soft skills trainer

--amadeus--

I posted in the Derren Brown thread and that left me thinking...

I love illusion and magic and do a few small bits with my kids and thier friends. Disappearing coins, the 4 knaves, a chosen card sticking to the ceiling, simple stuff for 5 - 7 yr olds

But I am also a trainer and do some work in communications, stress management, assertivness and the like. I don't want the main courses to become gimmicky but I have started using a trick from the Derren Brown book to illustrate a particular point in the course. For those who don't know the book the trick is an old one - you ask someone to imagine a deck of cards and get them to choose red or black, then a suit and so on until the end up with a single card and (hey presto!) that's the card taped under thier chair.

It works really well as an example of the power of directed questioning and how by adopting a certain communication tactic we can influence the answers other people give and decisions they make. It also shows how important it is to know where you want a line of communication to go before you start it.

Can anyone else think of (simple!) tricks in the same vein that could be incorporated into a training session? Ideally things that don't involve sleight of hand but (mis)direction and words.

I know that reveals are banned in here so if you let me know the trick I'll google / buy the books (or lemmie into teh super sekrit private forum? )

Thanks!

oeb

--amadeus-- wrote: »

I posted in the Derren Brown thread and that left me thinking...

I love illusion and magic and do a few small bits with my kids and thier friends. Disappearing coins, the 4 knaves, a chosen card sticking to the ceiling, simple stuff for 5 - 7 yr olds

But I am also a trainer and do some work in communications, stress management, assertivness and the like. I don't want the main courses to become gimmicky but I have started using a trick from the Derren Brown book to illustrate a particular point in the course. For those who don't know the book the trick is an old one - you ask someone to imagine a deck of cards and get them to choose red or black, then a suit and so on until the end up with a single card and (hey presto!) that's the card taped under thier chair.

It works really well as an example of the power of directed questioning and how by adopting a certain communication tactic we can influence the answers other people give and decisions they make. It also shows how important it is to know where you want a line of communication to go before you start it.

Can anyone else think of (simple!) tricks in the same vein that could be incorporated into a training session? Ideally things that don't involve sleight of hand but (mis)direction and words.

I know that reveals are banned in here so if you let me know the trick I'll google / buy the books (or lemmie into teh super sekrit private forum? )

Thanks!

Hi amadeus, I said I would drop you a line here because no one has got back to you yet. Unfortuantly this stuff is more likely to fit with the whole mentalism side of things, which is not really my thing, but I may have a few suggestions for you.

Do as I do This is a simple trick, both the magician and the spectator select a card from their own deck. Cards are found to be the same.

Overkill, Paul Harris. This is in one of the 'Art of Astonishment' books. A card is selected from the deck of cards, the magician reveals that his selection was pre-determined in multiple supprising ways.

Any version of 'Out of this World', the magician goes through the deck face down, the spectator indicates weather he thinks the card is red or black, the magician puts the card into the appropriate pile. Afterwards the deck is spread to show that the spectator was correct, every single time! There is a version called 'Galaxy' which is pretty simple and is included in one of the 'Art of Astonishment' volumes.

All these tricks require some basic sleights, but are almost self working anyway. They can easilly be passed off as using misdirection, suggestion, etc though.