Watch Yourself!

These words ‘Watch Yourself’ have been said to me with many differing motives.

As a child, my parents would use them to warn me of impending doom (most often in the form of an oncoming trolley as I walked obliviously down a supermarket aisle with my head in a book).

As a youth, my more street-smart friends would use them to remind me just how little alcohol I was capable of consuming on a night out.

And as an adult, my wife will use it to remind me in no uncertain terms who the boss is!

The only time I tend to use it is when other trainers ask me for feedback.

I genuinely believe that recording your own delivery before reviewing it with a critical eye is the best way a face to face trainer can improve.

We all know that feedback aids development, but it’s too easy for feedback from others to be dismissed as biased or simplistic. Feedback from others also irks the rebellious teenager in us all; why should I change just because you say so?

But the messages created by our own senses are much harder to ignore. We look deeper into our own performance because we understand the initial intent behind the encoding of our tuition, whereas others have to decode that first in their own terms before analysing the evidence in front of them and trying to make sense of it.

We can also be more honest with ourselves than others feel might be right or professional. One of my colleagues had been boring learners for months, but his observers had tried to cushion the message in HR-friendly terms. He had been told he needed to ‘show more energy’ and ‘bring more life’ to his delivery: comments he found easy to dismiss.

But when we recorded one of his sessions and asked him to review the recording, he saw it all for himself and phrased the feedback perfectly: “I’m sending everyone to sleep!”

And the minute he saw it for himself, he wanted to change. That’s the real prize with self-critical feedback: change can be made instantly. The trainer not only accepts the feedback more quickly, they show a greater intent to change and they can do so instinctively.

The trainer discussed above made short term and long term efforts to change. He immediately brought in engagement tools such as quizzes and magic tricks that either challenged his groups more or kept their attention when the training content started weighing them down. In the long term he learned more about how to tailor his style to learners who craved a more-extrovert style of training. Now he’s one of the most enjoyable people to learn from I know.

So take the plunge and record your own delivery. And more importantly, watch yourself!