Why Self-Critiquing Leads To Mastery
Yes, I recognize that it’s a lot easier to simply record your presentation or report and send it to us for review, rather than taking the time to first do your self-critique. However, this really defeats the purpose, and quite frankly, minimizes the impact of our feedback.
Whether training to become a speaker, a pitcher, a tennis player, a musician or a racecar driver, your mastery will only come from constantly evaluating yourself – this means to self-critique following every performance. Once you sit down with your coach, he or she can ask, “What went right? What went wrong?” If you are putting your time in, you’d better have some correct responses or you just may lose a good coach. Your coach’s job is to continue helping you refine those things that you are unaware of.
Every Monday evening at 7:30 pm, my piano coach, Fernando, arrives for my lesson. I usually begin playing a piece we worked on over the last couple of weeks, from start to finish. Following, I am to evaluate my overall improvement, where I continue to struggle, at what section I am a bit confused, where I have excelled and what I believe I need to work on. From here, he assesses my critique and then focus in on what I need to work on and what I didn’t find. He feels no need to spend time on issues I am already fully aware of and know what I need to be doing to improve.
Your directors and coaches are working hard to help you master your abilities to communicate effectively, and this starts with you first taking sufficient time to evaluate yourself. When you do this self-critique, please have the integrity and respect to fill out the form we provide in detail, not a simple, “no or yes”. These forms have been updated and are available for immediate use.
When you can self-correct yourself on the fly, you know you a beginning to really know your stuff. This is invaluable and will lead you, the student, to become the teacher.
Here is the updated Critique Form:
Critique Form