Early January Is Demo Skills Assessment Time!

The start of the New Year… what a terrific time to perform an assessment of your own or your team’s demo skills!  Doing an assessment now establishes a baseline for measuring change and improvement during the course of the year – and it only takes about 10 minutes per assessment.

For Yourself:  Do an assessment of yourself.  Have your manager do an assessment of you.  Have your peers do assessments of their perceptions of your skills.  Then compare…

For Your Team:  Do the same process, essentially – have each team member do an assessment of their own skills; do assessments yourself of each member’s skills; and consider having peers do assessments of one another.

In addition to establishing a baseline for the year, gaps that are uncovered between individuals, peers and managers can be quite illuminating and represent opportunities for discussion, coaching, mentoring or other skills development possibilities ([warning:  shameless self-promotion alert!]  e.g., Great Demo! Workshops, Master Classes, Coaching, etc.).

When should you do your next assessment?  I’m glad you asked that question…  Next year?  Far too long between assessments to be of sufficient value.  Twice per year?  Still too infrequent.  I’d recommend re-assessing skills every 2, 3, or 4 months and setting small, incremental goals for improvement accordingly (by the way, there is nothing sacred about quarters for skills development – sometimes picking an interval that is NOT tied to quarters can be much more effective!).

Where can you find a good demo skills assessment template to use (or to use as a starting point)?  Feel free to send me an email at PCohan@SecondDerivative.com and I’ll send you ready-to-use (also new and improved!) demo skills assessments for individuals and/or for teams.  You are welcome to use these directly or edit as desired.