I often stress to clients that the only way to get dramatically better as a speaker or media presenter is to critique a video of your speech or media interview, preferably right after it happened. Everyone thinks this is a good idea, and yet I estimate that fewer than 1% of my clients or the general population of people who speak actually do this.
“Why?” I ask.
“It takes time,” I am told.
Well, ya, but so what? It’s worth it if you want to improve and stay in top form.
Paul McGuinness has been manager of the band U2 since 1978. He told the New York Times (June 12, 2005) that one of their secrets to success is the following:
“You’ll never see the band emerge from the dressing room until at least half an hour after each show, and it’s not because they’re taking showers. We’ve developed a practice over the years where every night the five of us sit down and deconstruct the show.”
Wow, think about that. Here is a band made up of wildly successful, incredibly rich superstars who have millions of fans telling them they are wonderful in every way. Yet how do they spend 30 minutes after every show? Criticizing and critiquing every aspect of their performance.
That’s how you get good. That’s how you stay good.
If it works for musical performance it also works for speaking performances.
And it’s not like these rock stars had nothing better to do with their time. They are, after all, Rock Stars. In their early single years, doing a critique after the show meant turning away all of the groupies. Now that lead singer Bono is a major political figure in his own right, the time they take to critique their own performance presumably means Bono doesn’t get to return the US Treasury Secretary’s calls as quickly.
So don’t tell me you don’t have time to critique your won speeches; I’m not buying that argument anymore.
