Over the weekend, we were doing some unpacking from our recent move and came across an old VHS tape from my student teaching days. Before my sales career, I was a high school teacher and as part of our teacher education program, we had to video record ourselves. It was a really interesting exercise. Unfortunately, I no longer have a VCR to be able to watch this, but I vividly remember my key take-a-way from watching myself teach. It was that for the entire 45 minutes I paced back and forth and back and forth in front of the classroom. It was very distracting to watch on tape; I can only imagine how distracting it was for the students to watch their teacher bounce around room like he was stuck in a game of ping pong.
As I thought about that, it really made me reflect on a little over a year ago when I joined Communispond. I had the opportunity to go through our Executive Presentation Skills program and as part of that program, you’re videotaped multiple times. And once again, as I reviewed my recording there, I had an “Aha!” moment. I realized I have what I would call “T-Rex arms.” That means that when I was doing my presentations, my elbows were stuck to the side of my body and I would gesture with just my forearms. My gestures were really tight and I wasn’t moving and taking advantage of the space I had available to me.
So, if you have presentations coming up or if you have presentations for work, I would really challenge you to videorecord yourself. You will learn a lot, be able to come up with a couple things you can tweak for your next presentation, and really make yourself become a more effective presenter.
I would love to hear from you in the comments section below if you videotaped yourself giving a speech or presentation. What was your “Aha!” moment? What did you notice that was distracting or taking away from your message?
