Self-Criticism

"One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood.  The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide" - Charles Horton Cooley


I have a colleague at work that delivers presentations with me to various organizations within our company.  When we first started to work together we had a great time brainstorming, creating the presentation, and talking about how the presentation went.  It was fun to be able to rip the presentation apart with the goal of getting better.


Over the past 18 months we have started a bit of a death spiral.  We recently did a presentation and afterwards felt that it was our worst ever.  All the critical comments gushed forth like a river.  We had too much material, we went over by five minutes, we were not interactive enough and the killer, we used some text that you couldn't read in the back of the room.  We felt horrible, and it really affected the ride home.


I have talked to some folks that were in the audience about the presentation and they said it was great and they learned a lot.  Now, the first thing you have to do is to dig into their comments a bit to make sure that they aren't just telling you what you want to hear.  The individuals said that unlike some other groups we were prepared, we have some good visuals, we told stories and most of all had some energy in front of the room.  They felt that many of the groups that followed failed on some or all of these points.


The lesson to me is that once a certain level is reached, we shouldn't be so critical.  Yes, there will always be tweaks that can help, but after a certain level, all that is left is tweaks.  Spend more time focusing on the audience and what they can take away from your message