Discover expert video editing tips from our CEO group call! Learn basics, advanced techniques, SEO strategies, and how to enhance videos with B-roll, captions, and music. Elevate your video content and streamline your editing process effectively.

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CEO Group Call - Video Editing Tips

Video content is a powerful tool in today’s digital landscape. Whether you’re a CEO looking to elevate your brand or a professional aiming to engage your audience, mastering video editing is key. In this CEO Group Call session, we explored essential video editing strategies to help you create high-quality, impactful videos. Here’s a breakdown of the key takeaways.

1. Understanding the System

Before diving into editing, familiarize yourself with the tools and software available. Selecting the right system tailored to your skill level and project requirements is the first step to success.

2. The Importance of SEO and Content Distribution

Video content should be optimized for search engines to maximize reach. Implement keywords in video titles, descriptions, and tags. Leverage distribution platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and social media to amplify your content.

3. Why Videos Matter

Videos are highly engaging, offering a way to connect with your audience visually and emotionally. They are versatile, from educational content to promotional materials, making them a cornerstone of modern communication.

4. Video Editing Basics

Start with fundamental techniques, such as trimming clips, adjusting brightness and contrast, and ensuring smooth transitions. These basics establish a polished and professional look for your videos.

5. Advanced Editing Techniques

Enhance your videos with features like motion graphics, color grading, and special effects. Advanced tools can elevate your content, setting it apart from competitors.

6. Adding B-Roll and Background Music

B-roll footage enriches your video by providing visual context and breaking monotony. Background music adds emotion and energy but should complement the tone of your message without overpowering it.

7. Using Captions Effectively

Captions improve accessibility and boost viewer retention, particularly for audiences watching without sound. Invest in accurate captioning to enhance user experience and searchability.

8. Hiring Video Editors

If video editing isn’t your forte, consider hiring a professional. Skilled editors can save time and ensure your content meets high-quality standards. Outsourcing lets you focus on strategy while leaving the technical aspects to experts.

Mastering video editing is a game-changer for businesses and individuals alike. Whether you’re starting with basics or diving into advanced techniques, attention to detail is crucial. Focus on SEO, storytelling, and audience engagement to maximize your video’s impact. Ready to create outstanding video content? Start editing today!

Want to take your video editing skills to the next level? Stay tuned for more CEO insights and actionable strategies in upcoming sessions. Subscribe now!

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to Video Editing

00:13 Understanding the System

00:37 The Importance of SEO and Content Distribution

02:45 Why Videos Matter

05:01 Video Editing Basics

14:42 Advanced Editing Techniques

20:37 Adding B-Roll and Background Music

25:47 Using Captions Effectively

28:57 Hiring Video Editors

36:28 Conclusion and Final Tips

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Okay, so video editing. Again, we look at the system, then we look into why videos, and then we look into video editing tips, which is the main topic. System. I have realized that some people are still not, um, seeing the whole benefit of the whole system. And then it's not, not, not part of, of, of the people that are in the call right now.

It's again, the whole system makes the difference. So understanding that your brand. is represented in your hub and your whole content structure is inside of your hub will make the difference. Because then we are building an SEO engine, which is search engine optimization. Plus we are preparing us having digital assets that can be read by artificial intelligence, large language models.

And only then we're distributing it out into the internet. So it's very, very important to understand that's a systematic way. So when we look at [00:01:00] videos, we're, we're recording videos, we're putting them into a block format, which is video, audio, text. And then we have as well, like a blog post and, and transcript inside of.

The block inside of your website. And only then we're distributing it to all the different social medias, which is then converting into leads for our businesses and as well speaking engagements. So that's the whole flow of the content. So when we talk about, and the reason for doing it that way is because you want SEO to pick up the content on your hub, as opposed to content on LinkedIn.

The, the tricky thing is that SEO is not picking up the content on LinkedIn properly. Right. So if you, if you have Google, Google is not sharing every, like LinkedIn is not sharing all the SEO with Google as an example. So there might be something findable, but not like not every single post will be findable on LinkedIn.

[00:02:00] On Google, as an example, like you're Googling Jason and Nathan, and then I'm, I'm looking into what are, what is your, what is your most interesting post? I can't find that on Google. I need to log into LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and go in that direction. Yeah. So, and if LinkedIn is deciding tomorrow not to share it anymore, then it's gone.

If it's on your own hub, on your own website, on LinkedIn's, uh, on LinkedIn's, on LinkedIn's Algorithm is always a little bit sensitive anyway. Exactly. Okay. So that's, that's the whole that makes perfect sense. And I think that's owning your data and the availability in the internet. Yeah. That's, that's what this is and getting more important when we look into AI.

So why videos? Number one thing, when we talk about speaking and when we talk about converting business leads that go towards your direction is showcasing [00:03:00] you as a speaker. That's the obvious version. When you have videos, you can talk into a camera and then people will understand that you can talk as well, most probably on stage.

The next part is establishing us as thought leaders for our field. It's, it's just with the rise of AI, there's a lot of possibilities where you can write blog posts or text versions as much as you like. And there has like zero of that can be you. I know it's already possible to be able to do that with videos as well, but it's harder at least today.

So it's as more, you can position yourself as a thought leader, um, through videos, it's way easier to do it. And we have those of you, you are in the free community with the 600 people that have seen that. Like there are a couple of people who are sharing their examples on what they're reaching with videos.

It's quite impressive after just a couple of days. Can I ask a short [00:04:00] question? Yes. Um, isn't it a problem like AI or we will do it with the help of AI to write the content. I mean in the future AI will understand, Oh, this is AI written or do we write it or do we rewrite it or how we do it. No, that's exactly the, that's what I mean.

If it's not originated by you, that is not your content. But if you're, if you're creating videos. Yeah. And then we use a transcript from our own words and then it's like a new piece of content, even if it's inspired from AI. Exactly. So you're create, you're creating originate original content that's then in the end, learning learned by AI going forward.

But the basic version right now, if we talk about speaking and so on, then that goes into videos. [00:05:00] So I will go through this topics only just to get us started when it comes to video. And I thought I will, instead of me showing you slideshows, I will just show you how I do this in a very simple way. And I'm using Descript just to make it simple for those who are not into, I can do the same with a video editing software, but then it's even harder.

So I give you the most simple version. So what we look into is framing the video, doing the first cut version, the rough cut, and then we go into transitioning, b roll, and captions. These are kind of the most important things. I'll quickly stop sharing. And just when you're doing it, do you just back, do you just, I guess now you've got people doing it for you, right?

But, um, if you're doing it yourself, do you just batch them up and do, okay, I'm going to do all my videos, then I'm going to edit all my videos, then I'm going to do, um, uh, finish it. Or do you then, what's the, what's the most efficient way do you find? [00:06:00] So what I, I did is I, I work with one VD from A to Z. So I do the video, but while I do the video, I'm then processing it from A to Z.

So I'm even programming the social media post when I did it myself, like everything with one video and then take the next. Okay. That's why you just, you just found that more efficient. It's, it's more because it's quite time consuming if you do A to Z. And if you don't do it, then you have work, like you work, let's say five hours and you only have videos, but no content out.

That's at least what I've seen for myself. Okay. So it's okay. I got it. So it's like, at least get, get things closed and then move on. Exactly. So then it's at least programmed and it goes out. And worst case, if you, if you, let's say if, if you get sick tomorrow, then at least that post goes out, goes out. If you [00:07:00] don't do anything and nothing goes out.

Yeah. So I do like Felix is on his walking desk.

So I will so this is descript it's just one of the many softwares now I've uploaded the test version just that we save the upload time. So I I dropped this No, yeah, I dropped this video as a test. So it's a normal video Can you see it properly?

Yeah. So it's, it's a normal video as you see, like the background and everything is still available. So the first thing that I'm doing now is I'm framing it. So I'm saying it, I want to have a TikTok version. And I give it the TikTok layout. And because the video is 16 by nine, I'm now moving it. That's like drag and drop, at least in this software, I'm [00:08:00] moving it to the top.

And then I'm just making it fit into, into the screen. So now I still have. Um, like we discussed last time video recording, like too much space above my head. So what I'm doing is I'm now zooming further in, and now I have a little bit space above my head. And then now I'm, I'm double clicking and moving myself into the middle.

So that's the first thing I always do. So now I know because I'm not moving around in this type of video. I know that it is working from me being in the center of, of the video. So that's, that's the, that's the framing part. The next part is the rough cut, starting with the end and, and the beginning important.

When you look into other video editors, that's how you see often the video editing. The easiest is [00:09:00] when you, when you use a usual video editor. That is not text based. You use the audio version to cut as an example. So what, what I would do with that, I would just go to the end and now move this bar to the end.

So that is ending up with my, my words. So what do you do with the text based version? You, you just. Double click on the dots here and do the same thing by deleting that. So now the beginning and the end is cut. So I know we are now one minute and, and one second and four hundreds. So we need to be below one minute.

That's, that's key part. So what I now do, I just listen to it. Um, I might need to stop sharing and share again so that you can hear it. And the one minute is because, um, it's because of TikTok or, um, Yeah. It's because of the short form content, [00:10:00] like some of the, um, are already working with two minutes, but one minute is working across platforms.

That's why I keep it still to one minute. If you, if you do, it's the same structure. If you do like longer form YouTube videos, like two minutes, three minutes, whatever. It's still the same process. I'm just using 60 seconds because that's the short form context content. So what I'm doing now, I'm just looking if the hook is perfect.

So when I'm looking at the first part, it's always the hook. Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal brand? So if we just keep that, this is now below four seconds. If you remember last time, when we talked about video recording, the hook needs to be below five seconds. three to five seconds.

So I have recorded it already. So, so well in this case that I don't need [00:11:00] to cut anything. So I'm just keeping, keeping the hook. distributor or are you building your own personal brand? There are a lot of strategies in social media these days. One of the strategies that I believe in is building a thought leadership brand for yourself.

So in this case, until now, I don't need to cut anything. So for me, the flow is okay. I don't have any. any ums in it. I don't have anything that I don't like. And that means you're creating your own content. You're not distributing other people's content. The others. So here I took a breath. So there's a little bit longer break, which you see, if you look at the, at the version below here, what we try to keep when we, when we edit videos, what we try to do is keep the attention.

That means everything that is fluff can be cut out. So with this in the rough cut, what I'm doing is I'm just removing the break. So me breathe, [00:12:00] like take, take inhaling. So other people's content, the others, they are just forwarding links and sharing what are in this software, the, the cut version, like the, the jump here is done automatically.

So you don't need to do too much. If you go into other softwares, you need to cut the jump cut in different ways. , they're just forward. So you see that there is a little bit of transition of me, the others, but it's still okay. So nothing I would bother right now. Right, right. Now, others, they are just forwarding links and sharing what other people are doing, and that's nice for the people that are building their thought leadership, because you are distributing their links, you're distributing their thoughts at.

So I'm not going through the whole video. So the whole thing about is now cutting the, the gaps out, cutting words out that I don't want to, or a sentence that I said double. [00:13:00] So for example, because I know this here's, here's a little gap. So if we just jump to that, the way of thinking.

Understand who we are and how we are going to enable other people to do things and the way of thinking of who and the way of thinking of ourselves. So, that, that was doubled. So, what I just, just do is I take always the last version because I know That the second version is always better and just delete this in this case, like you can cut it out in the other, uh, softwares here.

I'm just clicking delete. And then it's automatically able to do things and the way of thinking of ourselves. And if we are able to, so what we can do here again, if, if we're super, super detailed, we can move this again closer so that we're [00:14:00] cutting the gaps out. Okay. Where I'm just taking too much time and then we listen to the way of thinking of ourselves And if we are able to do that our thought leadership will rise and through that we will win So that's the rough cut starting with the end starting with the the beginning and the end cutting the the air out and then looking through the video so that we have Uh, a clean video.

So now what we see here as well, we are now at 56 seconds. So which is below the 60 seconds, which I want to have. So we have now done the frame and the first, first cut. Now we go into transitions. This is now a little bit more advanced, but still, I would say basics. In the, in this software, what you do is you're creating like pages.

It's not called pages, but see it as pages where you can [00:15:00] have the video look different inside of this pages. So, so what I want to have now, I want to have after the initial book, I want to have a break. or something happening. So I'm now creating the dash here so that you see it's now two pages, which I can design differently.

In this case, what I'm doing is I'm, I'm now creating already something in the first couple of seconds. Oh, he's not needed. That's three seconds. Building your own personal brand.

So I just give you examples. So now we have, Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal? So if we just want to highlight your own personal brand, we just zoom that in a little bit. Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal brand? [00:16:00] There are a lot of strategies in social media.

So with, with this shift in perspective, we are directly keeping the people dragged into the content. So that's, that's, that's a key part of keeping people watching a video is not having yourself, if you, if you compare this to here, like I'm always in the same focus, I'm always in the same zoom in. Yeah. If, if I'm just switching the zoom in, that's the, the, the easiest version to create a video that is, um, more watched.

You create zooms. You're building your own personal brand. So it's just zooming you're in further and zooming yourself further out. So, that's the easiest way in, in getting, dragging attention towards. And that's, that's what you do every now and then during the video so that you automatically just by keeping the video raw without anything extra, you have already a more engaging video.

So it's the first [00:17:00] simple, simple, simple thing. Then when we look into transition, transition is from this slide to this slide. So this software has the functionality that you can do. I think it was in scenes. Now you will see that I haven't done that too often.

I think it's in scenes. Yes, here. So I'm now going on scenes. So I've selected the first page and I say a transition and I want to have a transition going out of that first page. And I do a cross zoom. That's one of the transitions, which you will see when we are going into the other one. So now I'm pressing start.

And when we, when we get to building your, then it starts the transition distributor. Are you building your own personal brand? So it's so quick. You almost don't see it. Are you building your own [00:18:00] personal brand? Did you see? So it's, it's like over overlapping the videos with each other. So that's called transitions.

You can do this going into a scene or going out, out of a scene.

So very simple again, first, you, you, you just take the whole video and then you zoom in and zoom out so that that is clear, and then if you want on top, you just create transitions like this, where things are happening. And you are kind of, you can hide cuts. So if we just go to this cut here. I cut out the, the air in the middle where I was breathing.

So we go. The others. So you see me jumping a little bit because it's, it's a cut. The others. Did you see that? So what I can do now, I can just say, okay, we start a new page or a new scene in this case. And what we do with this scene, we're selecting this one, we go [00:19:00] here again to scene and then say, okay, let's do a transition.

And we make it coming in with, let's say, just, um, crossfade. So when we are now starting to play the video again, you're not distributing other people's content. The others So that, that was again, a different transition than just a jump cut transition. And there are like tons of different transitions and some feel well, like if we just use the star strive thingy, that's more obvious.

The others, they are just not distributing other people's content. The others. Yeah. It's not properly showing here. I don't know why. Most probably too fast. So you can, you can have it in. Four sec, four milliseconds and so on. So you can fine tune all the different things. The key part is you want to keep the people watching.

[00:20:00] The most tricky thing we have with videos is that people don't have attention these days anymore. Even if you tell a nice story, you need to get them at least over a minute. to keep on watching. If you, if you think about long term videos, if they are hooked with the topic and they're interested in the topic, they will watch it.

It doesn't matter how good the video is, but if you are talking about like short form videos, you need to bring them really to a level that they're interested in, in staying as long as possible. So we have transitions. And now we go into B roll. B roll is videos of our photos on top of the first video. So if we look, look in the bottom here, this is the original video that's called A Roll.

So that's the, the, the normal video. And then if we put something on top visually here on top, [00:21:00] then that's called B Roll. So what we have here is we have different layers. We'll just give you an example where we look into elements.

No, we use stock footage. So this is stock footage that is in, in this software already embedded. So you have video stock footage. You have, um, gifts, other gifts, backgrounds, and so on. So what do we do is now we're just creating one here in the middle so that we say, when we, when we, when we talk about your own personal, there are a lot of strategies in social media these days.

So we talk about strategies in social media. So what we are now doing is social. We type in social media and then we will see social media content. And if we just go into, I'm going to show all we can hear, see what the videos are. [00:22:00] So let's use this because that's moving fast. We are just dragging this here.

So now it's, it's, it's activating that inside of the video, which is now moving this on top, as you see on, on the video in the middle. So now the video here is on top of me. And because it's like drag and drop, what you can do is now you can just zoom that completely in front of me. And now when we are playing, we're, we're, we can see it.

Are you building your own personal brand? There are a lot of strategies in social media these days. One of the strategies that I believe that's, that's called B roll. We can, we can layer things on top. Let's do another one, just, just an example that's a little longer. If we, if we move this palms and beach.

Thing here.

I just moved it, just dragged it over [00:23:00] and then we, we make it bigger here. You see it a little better building a thought leadership brand for yourself. And that means you're creating your own content. You're not distributing. So you can do this with your own videos. You can do it with other videos. You can do it with photos.

You can do whatever you want when it comes to B roll. Um, it's very, very easy in this software. You just drag and drop. You can do as well, audio on top, um, which gives background music and so on. Maybe let's do background music. Just a quick one. What I always do is I'm now selecting the whole video and say, okay, I want to have background music for the whole video.

Um, And normally I'm searching for something that fits, but let's just take, see, what is this?

So let, let, let's assume this is [00:24:00] perfect. We just move it again on top of the whole video. And in, in, in below, you see the B roll here is on top. So we have now the green one is the audio. Then we have the two pictures or the two videos on top. So now we have

Obviously way too loud. So you need to make sure that it is like proper, um,

proper audio settings, which I need to find now. Yeah, I think it's this. So what we do, we, we just move it into way minus. And then we will hear. Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal brand? So now there are a lot of what you do with audio in this, this videos, you, you move it so much into the background that you almost can't hear it [00:25:00] because it's just giving ambient.

Are you building your own personal brand? There are a lot of strategies in social media these days. One of the strategies that I saw in this building. That's b roll. So we put photos, videos, and audio on top. And it's as easy as drag and drop, at least with this software. And there are other softwares that are similar.

If you look at the bottom here, we have all of this small cuts. This software is smoothening all of this out. If you work with other softwares, then you need to, to work on every of this cuts to make it, make it nice. I just have decided I will do the most easy version. So I'm using this software when I'm doing videos myself.

Last thing is, is caption. So, which is you want to have in LinkedIn, very important or in other video platforms as well. When you look at social media, a lot of [00:26:00] people have their phones on, um, silent. So nobody, um, can hear what you're saying. So if we, if you're having a talking head video, then you want people to be able to read What you're saying.

So what you're doing here is again, very simple. You, you Mark everything and then. You add a layer and then you look for captions. Now we just had the overlay of captions as you see here in the middle. So now it's just distributor. Are you building your own personal brand because this is built on text. So the whole, whole, um, Software is built on text.

You see exactly the text that you see on the light on the left side on, on, in, on top of the distributor, or are you building your own personal brand? There are a lot of strategies in social media these days. One of the strategies that I, and obviously you can, can have like hundreds of different design versions of this, they have [00:27:00] here like different.

You can have type writing and then it looks different as, or it's adding that as a separate version. You can have thousands of different versions. You can design it yourself. Like you can use, um, this to say, okay, the green one should be blue. And then you just select blue and then it's blue. So. Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal brand?

Only in the first part. So it's just layering things on top of each other, as you can see here. So this is still the caption that I just added on top. This is as well. I can just delete it and then we have only the one left Are you a distributor or are you building your own personal brand? There are a lot of strategy.

So that's the basics we went over Framing which is the size of the [00:28:00] video if we go back to landscape, that's the normal video size Now we go to portrait which is Instagram size. Then we start With the first cut, which is the rough cut, we take the beginning and the end, and then we watch the whole video and take out everything that is too much.

Words that we don't like, um, gaps that where we are breathing, things where we are saying something wrong. And then we start over with transitioning, which was the zoom in, zoom out, and then the transition from one scene to the other. And then we are adding B roll on top. And last thing is we're adding the text on top, which is captions

questions.

I know that's, um, YouTube. You do, uh, sometimes video [00:29:00] yourself under which circumstances you don't hire someone to do the video editing. It really depends. Like sometimes when, when I was lazy and, and forgot, forgot to record enough videos and then the videos editors needed to, to like two weeks or like with, with, with my team right now, we have different video editors.

Sometimes they need three days. But when I, when I was lazy or I forgot to record enough videos and I don't have enough in the pipeline, then I need to quickly record and edit myself. But normally like right now, I'm at, I'm, I'm not really editing my videos. They're like the, the, the things that go on social media right now is all edited by people Know what they're doing not me because I have taught this myself.

Like I am NOT a video editor That's why I'm saying is for beginners. They was probably would be laughing about me still I have to say it's still [00:30:00] working Like don't worry too much about that. You need to have it. Perfect It's better to have videos out that just have captions on top and our cut end and finish is okay Then no videos definitely.

Yes. I have done this the first years myself But definitely for captions. Yeah. So when, when you post this on social media, always add captions, the reach will get definitely higher because people, all these social medias can already now create captions internally, but it's, it's, it's still not looking nice.

So when you have bigger captions on top, because you can make it bigger, smaller and different colors, then it's just more attractive for people to read it.

Other questions. Was it too fast? What have you, I think it's fine. It's just the, um, so have [00:31:00] you used, um, Um, iMovie on the Mac, I guess it's not as good, but, um, It's the same, it's the same structure. So I, I have used iMovie and I'm using, I've bought Final Cut Pro on the Mac. Um, in the end it's, they're all the same.

What they are different is that they're, they're only working with the bottom part. Like you have the, the timeline view. I can show if you want. Uh,

I think we, we did a rough cut with a video lately, which I did to, just to showcase to one of my clients trying to open final cut. Ah,

super slow.

Yeah. In, in, in the end. In, in the end it's exactly the same thing. It's just that you work with the timeline. Mm-hmm . So this one, the, uh, so this, the script [00:32:00] is, um, targeted at, um, um, basically social, social media type stuff. No, you can do professional videos with it. It just feels like the way it's done with the text, especially is quite, um, it's made mainly for podcasts and talking head videos, not like videos where you don't talk, but you don't have any, any speech in it,

but it still works. Like you can cut other videos with it as well. It's, it's just, um, it's, it's just built for that. And I think that even have a free subscription. Like no subscription, like free tier where you can do X amount of videos per month. Like I even don't know. Yeah. Oh, let me give it a go. Let me quickly show you, I mean, this is not a proper overview, but if we just take, we did the rough cut with [00:33:00] one of, one of my clients, um, where we just did this, like me with her on the screen where we say, okay, this video, we want to have this on top.

And then we just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut with transitions on top. But yeah, there's video stuff missing. But in the end, that's how it looks. And then you just drop things on top below. So it's still drag and drop, but you need to do every, every like this transition, you need to do yourself. Like you need to, then it takes way longer to get to know the tool properly.

I mean, I have done all my first, I don't know, hundreds of podcasts this way. They are all video. So that's why I had a steep learning curve, but it took me half a year to be able to do good videos. Whereas the other one is more like PowerPoint. If you can do PowerPoint and text documents, then it's easy.[00:34:00] 

That's why I moved to that one, to be honest, because it just saves time.

Oh, thank you. That's good. I think that's my, that's my job for this week is get some, get some stuff up so I can get them go live in January. Or you hire video editors that, that do it for whatever, 15 to 20 Euro per video depends. There are, I think Seraphine has even cheaper people.

No, but it's, it's really all about the, the benefit of. Of understanding to do it yourself. You know what you want. So when you hire it to someone else, you know exactly what you expect. What I usually do, like I go to an Upwork, uh, I, I make a contract and I say like, look, I search a video editor for three to five year a dollar per video.

It's short, it's cross [00:35:00] channel, um, includes some memes or something. Um, and then we'll maybe five to 10 people. I also write to them, like when the profile is fitting in my needs. And when they have some experience and some revenue already, so they have experience and then I I say look, here's the folder make me free test readers one or whatever.

I will pay you like 10 or whatever dollar And then they do it and like I have now people they're doing it for three to five Dollars and I say like hey, it's the money worth it. Even sometimes there's a video acting like I don't know what Sometimes I say, please make it better. Otherwise I say like, okay, I take another one.

And just say like, I take, I pay three to 5. And some say, no, it's 15. Okay, no problem. Then take another one. Yeah. What I found out for myself, just, just to, to share my experiences, every, everything below 15 Euro is, [00:36:00] is, is often not the quality I want for myself. And for my clients, anyhow, like that's more 20 to 30 a video, but it's really, it really depends.

You starting point is you can do everything yourself. And when it's converting into clients, then you can invest the money in, in, into video editors, like buy back your time, or you have an assistant that can do it. I need, I need to run, but thanks. That was really useful. Thanks. Thank you guys. If you ever have time, uh, Jens recommended me the book, Buy Back Your Time.

Already other people were recommending it to me, but like Jens was the tipping point and I hear that I, this week I hired, oh no, last week I hired a personal assistant and I'm so happy about it. It saves me like more than one hour every day. It's more than worth it. It is. Thank you Jens. Good. [00:37:00] Shall we, I quickly stop recording.

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Transcript:

Personal development masterclass. One of the topics that's dear to my heart, because of what I have seen over the last 15 years is that personal development is quite seldom in organizations. It's not really taken, uh, in a proper way, at least in my eyes. So that's why I'm really keen on sharing this today.

So we have two. main perspectives. One or two topics for today. One is personal development talk versus performance evaluation. And then we do a deep dive into how I'm doing personal development talks. And then we do questions in the end. Personal development. So we have one part, which is the personal development talk, and then we have the performance evaluation.

And a lot of organizations, focus on performance evaluation. And the difference between those two is that the performance evaluation, the main part they are focusing on, or the main source of that is the company. So the company is on the top. And from there, it goes into, the individuals and the different tasks that need to be done to accomplish what's happening in the company, what is required to do to be done in the company.

And the individual that is doing the task is the last point. And then inside of the performance evaluation, you're looking backward. So you look, how did this person perform in the past? The development talk is the opposite. So the most important part of the. Development talk is the future. Where does the person want to be in the future?

And it has nothing to do with the outcome of the company or where the company wants to be. The goal of this is, and why, why do this personal development talk? I believe that if we are developing people in organizations beyond what the organization needs, they will contribute more to the company. They will contribute better.

So the goal of what I'm doing with development talks is finding out what the people desire and going deeper into that. And we will have a look at that in the next couple of slides. And then look, what are the different tasks of the organizations that fit the person and what the person wants to be. And then you marry these two things.

And then it works as well from a performance evaluation perspective. So that's my perspective on development talk and performance evaluation. Let's go into personal development talk a couple of, I think it's almost two years ago or something. I've developed this in as, as a worksheet. So if anyone is interested in getting this worksheet as a PDF.

Happy to share that. So, the starting point of a development talk is really a setup of the atmosphere and the place. So you are going to do a development talk with another person. So you are the manager and the, the other person is like reporting to you and then you're meeting up. So what you need to make sure of is that you have, an appropriate place.

The best case is always doing this outside of the office environment in a. In a place where people feel well, the atmosphere is super important. The time of the day is important, not doing it on Friday afternoon, for example, when people want to go on the weekend, of course, you need to be aware of your relationship with the other person, depending on how deep your relationship is.

You of course have then a perspective on how deep you can go. And how much that is. And then what is important as well is that you put the note-taking responsibility to the person that is inside the room or is working with you. So me as a leader, I always give the note taking responsibility for the other person because then you see what they understand and what they get out of that.

And then I always do as well. A version in front of us so that people understand this. So printing out this worksheet as an example, if you do that in a physical space, then you print it out and then you go into the development talk. And the starting point of the development talk goes really wide.

Looking into what's the personal vision like. I always ask these as open questions without showing them the worksheet in the beginning. Who do you want to be? And that's very, very, very wide. Like, who do you want to be? What does it mean? Some people who have never had a conversation like this, struggle with this.

So they start with, yeah, I want to be a manager. I want to be something specific. So they go very, very, very specific and they don't really look into the future. So the first round of this, I just, Help them to find out who they want to be and they write down, they write down a manager. I want to be a good father.

I want to be whatever they come up with. And then I go to the next question and I show them the next question, not before. So why do you want to be that person? So then they're reflecting on the answers they have given and then they go back and refine who they want to go to be. And that's an interesting process because what.

You as the manager that is holding this development talk are doing, you're literally shutting up and just asking open questions to tell me more. How, how does that feel? What does that look like? What would that look like in the future? So you only ask open ended question when that gets the person talking and reflecting.

So if you're saying this, what does it mean? So, and then they're explaining, explaining, and they go in a loop between who am I going to be? And why do I want to be that person? So until they have clarity, and the first loop is always. The starting point where they don't know what's going to come, then who am I going to be?

They come up with high-level topics and then they go, Why do I want to be that person? Then they go back to Who am I going to be? And then they go deeper. And I always then give them a perspective. Okay, think about five years, 10 years from now, who do you want to be? And then they go more particular in all of these things.

And then we go, we don't close this, we keep it, we put it aside. And then we go to the next sheet, which is a personal development map. So I want them again to reflect on certain questions. And it doesn't matter in the order, I just take them clockwise right now. But it's really going and answering the specific questions.

What do I want to learn? So you're asking this, the person that is in front of you. So what do you want to learn to be that person? So linking it back to that person of the future. And then you're asking, what do you want to improve? And then they come up with things. So it's, it's like writing down the, all the different topics and then what do I want to leave behind?

And then they come back with topics that they want to leave behind. Another question is what excites you? Yeah. And then going deeper into this, who is important to them? And then what is important to them? And when you have done this circle, you go around it and they were deeper in this topic.

What quite often happens then if you ask them, so how, if we go back to the other one, is that still the same thing you want to be? Because they have now clarified what they want to be. and answer the question, they go back to this one and then clarify, no, no, no, I want to be this, I want to be this. What I always ask them, in this part is to paint a picture.

So when, when we have finished with this one, I go back to this one. And say, from a personal vision perspective, imagine a picture and describe the picture that you see on the wall. And then they describe to me who they want to be and who they are going to strive to be inside of a picture and explain everything that is around them.

I've had, for example, a person that told me where they are going to live, what, how it feels, um, in this picture, where the kids in this picture, where the wife or husband and, and going really into details and then linking this to. A job perspective as well, because in the end, we are at least this part is in a job environment.

So they are linking that to the job environment of who they're going to be working with as well. So these two are super powerful. And then you go into the next step, which is a goal perspective. So it starts with the staircase. So in the top right corner, we have what is the goal. And the starting point is really, um, defining that goal.

So if you want to be this person in five years, what is the goal for the next year for you to be very specific? And of course, you can do smart goal setting and all of that, but it's in the end, What does feel right for that person? What is the development goal they want to reach in one year from now?

And then they formulate that goal. And then you go to the bottom of this page where you look into where do you stand today on a scale from one to 10. So they're rating themselves on how close are they to that goal. If they're close, then they're at 10 or 9. If they're far away, then they're at 1. And what always happens is they're somewhere in between, obviously.

So when they have rated that, then you look into what are the things that get you closer to that goal, meaning moving your scale from 5 to 10. And that's what they are writing down above the stairs. So, above the stairs are the things that are getting them closer to their goal. And then they're defining this in bullet points and formulating that out.

And [you do that obviously all in a conversation. You ask the person who is doing the development talk, you are asking them questions to get them moving. You're asking them clarifying questions about the topics that are put, into the sheet. And then the next part is, what are the things that getting you further away from that goal?

So downstairs, if you think at it from a staircase perspective, and then they're writing these things down and then they have a clear picture of a goal staircase where they, they know they want, where they want to be linking that to the vision that's five years from now and the goal picture, and then they rate themselves.

And have then clear understanding of that are the things I need to do to get to my goal and that are the things I should not be doing. And then the last step of the development talk is getting specific. So now we zoom into one year and actionable goals that help them or tasks that get them towards the one-year perspective.

So what are the things they're going to do? When are they going to do this? What do they need to make happen to be able to do this? What are the things they need help with and how I'm, how they going to measure them? So it's a very, very simple setup where they write down literally the different steps that help them to get there.

And they're putting measurable goals towards the goal. And this is roughly. I would say one and a half hours, even if we go through this right now in a theoretical setting in, let's say 15 minutes in a real conversation, in a coaching style, where you ask the manager or coach the other person to find out what they are desiring and where they want to be.

It takes roughly one and a half hours if you do that well, sometimes it's faster depending on the relationship as well. The fascinating thing with this is it has zero to do with the company you work in and one hundred percent to do with who they want to be. And as well as zero to do with you as their manager, if you're their manager, like your perspective, your opinion on anything of that.

Um, just to give you a couple of examples, I've had people that told me that they want to be. building their own company in the next five years and they worked in the company and I was their manager they told me because they trusted me that they wanted to build their own company and we built a plan for how they were going to build their own company and I've had situations where people told me that they want to get married in the next five years and then we built a plan to get them towards marriage getting married and looked into how that does that work with the career perspective same with kids and all the other things so this is a development tool you That I use with everyone that is working with me over time because I believe that as further we as managers and organizations help people to develop as better it is.