How to Improve Self Awareness in Presentation Training

Do you ever think to yourself, “I got this!” before going into a job interview, or final exam, or presentation. Then, you find out that the employer did not like you, or you failed that test, or the sale team was totally confused by your pitch. This process of is part of self awareness and self deception. And it can effect the way you see yourself as a presenter, and how others see you as a presenter.

How to Improve Self Awareness in Presentation Training

Self awareness is defined as, “an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality.” This ability comes into play in a lot of our roles, from our career to our relationships. People who have high self-awareness tend to be very comfortable in their own skill, like to take control of the situation and come across to others as confident. People with low self-awareness tend to not recognize how their personalities come across to others, and may be idle or blame others in a crisis situation.

This is where self deception comes in. Research published in the New England Journal of Higher Education says, “without self-awareness skills, thinking can be distorted by self-deception.”  Someone with self-deception could potentially misinterpret information and then spread the wrong information to others. Self-deception blocks a person’s ability to accept feedback and apply it to their lives. This is turn can lead to poor leadership.

The Research

The Harvard Business Review put self awareness to the test. They tested how accurate self-awareness was to team effectiveness. Individuals who were less self-aware (meaning there was a large gap between their own behavioral contributions and the assessments of their team members) lead to their teams substantially suffering. The teams with these less self-aware individuals made poor decisions, were less engaged with coordination and showed less conflict management.

On the other hand, teams with “over-raters,” or people who think they are contributing more than their team members thought they were, saw low success rates as well. Overall, the teams who were more self aware saw better decision quality, coordination and conflict management than the teams who were not.

This concept is important for presenters because you spend so much time speaking in front of others. How you think you appear may be different from the reality. There are some way you can change this.

Ask for Feedback Often

On top of practicing for your presentation, ask for some feedback and take notes. Ask your audience about your tone of voice, your body language, your confidence and more. Take their comments seriously and apply their recommendations to your presentation practice. This will help you in the long run with engaging your audience and appearing more natural on stage.

Take the Badge Assessment

Personality assessments help us learn more about our natural personality traits and our strengths and weaknesses. We have fine tuned this for presenters with Badge. By answering a few short questions, our results can help you discover how to be the best presenter.

Learning more about yourself and taking note of other people’s feedback can help you avoid self deception. By living fully in reality, we can take the extra steps to stop fooling ourselves and be better, fully aware presenters.

Related Posts:

How the Badge Assessment Made Me a Better Presenter

Why Your Team Needs Badge Presentation Training

Why Presenters Lack Self-Awareness [Infographic]

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