What would you do if you were singing and dancing in front of tens of thousands of people, and a part of the stage set that plays a key role in the choreography you’ve been planning for years suddenly stopped working?
Freak out is a perfectly acceptable answer. Unless your name is Taylor Swift.
During the Oct. 27 performance of her Eras Tour in New Orleans, the reflective riser box she normally stands and rides around on while singing “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” suddenly stopped moving. The moment with the malfunctioning “TayRoomba” (fan’s nickname for the box) was captured by @brittanyconk17
the sheer talent and quick thinking of taylor and her dancers to navigate the tayroomba malfunctioning at such a pivotal moment in the show is just unbelievable — they didn’t miss a beat and figured it out so seamlessly ?? pic.twitter.com/Dzrde3hAF6
— brittany (taylor’s version) ✨? (@brittanyconk17) October 28, 2024
Notice the flub? If you are not a devoted Swiftee, probably not. And that’s what makes this such a powerful lesson in dealing with unexpected stress. Swift barely seemed to pause and continued with the song, tweaking the normal choreography on the spot with her backup dancers.
Related: Why Does Taylor Swift Keep Stopping Her Shows Mid-Song? It’s Actually a Great Lesson in Leadership.
This wasn’t been the first time Swift needed to deal with an unexpected problem during her elaborate stage shows, and it illustrates many great lessons for entrepreneurs. You might not be performing at the Superdome any time soon, but chances are you are going to need to present something for your business or your job. Here are some keys to handling mistakes when things don’t go your way.
- Just keep moving: No one besides you knows precisely how this was all supposed to go. Just move past the glitch and 9 out of 10 times the people on the other side of your presentation won’t even notice that the graph you were hoping to show just disappeared.
- Practice breeds confidence: When you know exactly what you want to do and can recite your plan backward and forward, that knowledge gives you all of the confidence to improvise while staying on point.
- Embrace the moment: Glitches can happen to anyone, being able to laugh it off not only humanizes you but it lets your audience see how you react to hardships without losing your cool.
Related: Taylor Swift Police Escort in London Has Taxpayers Outraged
