6: After the show!

You did it! You went on stage, and you got off again as well… Congratulations! Do you feel relieved, proud, and satisfied? Can you even remember the experience? Somehow, I only remember bits and pieces of being on stage, but not the whole experience. This is something I had since my first presentation.

Anyway, if you thought this was it, you are wrong. I strongly advise you to take a look at these last pieces as well. Everything you learned so far will not only help you on stage, but also in your daily live, where you communicate with people on a daily basis!

Learning starts here…

You learned a great deal already about preparing and giving a speech in public, but this is not where it stops. If this was one of the first times being on stage, you have learned a lot about yourself! You can now check back on what things you find important to improve on, but you also have the opportunity to ask your audience what they thought…

Receiving & requesting feedback

Immediately after getting of that stage, you are going to get feedback. This could be from the host, your coworkers, or people in your audience. Listen to them, make note of what they say. I am not saying you need to improve on everything they say but learn from it. If you get the same feedback from different people, positive or negative, you should have a serious look into this. If there is feedback that only one person gave, then it is safe to ignore it. This is probably a personal opinion which doesn’t align with the opinions of others anyway. In short, accept all the feedback you can get, but be picky when you are going to act based on this feedback. If for some reason you do not receive any feedback automatically, which I honestly doubt, you can always ask for it yourself.

Check out that video!

Another great way of learning is by watching back a video if one was made. Some of the events I spoke at, made videos, and uploaded these to YouTube. I always hate watching myself, but somehow, this is where I learn the most. When you have the option to watch a video of yourself, I really advice you to do so multiple times. The first time, just watch it. Look at it, see how you feel about it. Then watch it again but listen to what you say, and the filler words you use. Listen to your voice, the pitch, the pace, the volume and maybe even some nerves that are reflected in your voice? Watch it again and look at the body language, does it align with the story or is it confusing? Keep doing this until you can’t find anything new which you would like to improve on.

Slow & Steady improvements

I am a strong believer in small and continuous improvements, which means that I have a big list of things I could improve on, and I only take the top few to work on for next time. These I practice even without a presentation coming up. Remember what I said before, you didn’t walk at birth, you learned it along the way by taking small steps every day.

Where to go from here?

You might be wondering where to go from here? I would really like to invite you to scroll over the website and especially look at the articles in the "Power-Ups!" section. On top of this, just keep practicing, even without an invite you can always practice for yourself. Another option is to go out there and see if there are events where you can speak at, just to get more experience under your belt. If you feel like you are ready to take on a next challenge, you can always go and find those heavy weight trainers I spoke about in this training, like David JP Phillips!