Record It!

I’ve been conducting workshops on leadership development, soft skills improvement, project management, change management, strategic planning … and the list goes on … for 20 plus years. When I first started out, I found it invaluable to record my training sessions so that I could watch later and see just how awful I was.  And as I recorded more and more, I found that I actually improved … somewhat significantly. During my career, I have also spent a ton of time conducting presentation skills workshops.  Thoroughly enjoy that work.  Contrary to what you might think, the focus is not so much on speaking.  That’s why it’s called presentation skills and not public speaking. It’s really about your presence in front of a group.  What sort of energy are you sending?  How do you look?  Does what you say make sense?  Are you engaging?  Do you demonstrate passion and enthusiasm?  There are so many dynamics that I’ve always felt the need to record and re-watch and encouraged my participants to do the same.  Interesting note, when I first started do this work, we recorded on VHS.

There are so many platforms out there to conduct your virtual meetings and workshops and they all have one thing in common.  They all have the record feature.  So hit it!

And the voice in the back of your head is saying, “I can’t record because my team members will adjust their behavior if they know we are recording.”  First of all, you may have trust issues … happy to talk offline on that.  So if it is a concern, try this, “Thank you for joining the meeting (blah blah blah).  I want you all to know that I am recording this session and that I will be the only person watching the playback. I’m doing this because I recognize that working in the virtual environment is new to me and requires a different set of skills. I am doing this in the hope that I can become a better leader.” Or something like that. Go ahead record it ... you will be surprised.