World Champion Evaluator evaluating like a champion

If you look back on 2008 and evaluate your role within it, what would you say about yourself?

If all you had was 3 minutes to sum it up, where would you focus your time?

What 3 things would you highlight?

Take this opportunity to evaluate your year, Toastmasters style.  Use the sandwich technique.  Be specific with your accomplishments and also areas for improvement.  Now, do the same thing looking BACK on 2009.  Use your imagination.  What would be an amazing accomplishment for next year?  Getting your dream job?  Getting your business off the ground?  Increasing sales?  Spending more time with your family?  Continuing your education?

Now that you have your 2 evaluations, email them to yourself using a service like Letter me later and schedule it for December 2009.

Posted under General

When you give an evaluation for a speech, do you find yourself struggling with just how to do it?  Maybe:

• The content didn’t resonate with you.
• The delivery was not effective.
• You don’t agree with information presented.
• The speaker didn’t seem prepared.
• The speaker is new and has much to work on.

There are many more reasons a speech may be hard to evaluate.  Each of these reasons can be overcome with a change in focus.  Note the focus in the following:

• I didn’t  like the content.
• The delivery didn’t work for me.
• I didn’t agree with the information.
• I thought the preparation was inadequate.
• I recognize that the speaker is new and has many areas to address.

The focus is clearly on the evaluator.  Lots of “I” statements.  Typically “I” statements are great.  In this case though, the evaluator is paralyzed by focusing on themselves.  An evaluation is primarily for the benefit of the speaker.  The evaluator needs to spend some time in the shoes of the speaker.  Next time you are an evaluator, challenge yourself to look at the speech from the speakers point of view:

• You clearly know a lot about this topic.  It can be a challenge to convey this to a lay-audience.
• What an interesting delivery style you chose.  I will see if I can incorporate it into one of my future speeches.
• The information you presented was a challenge for me.  I wonder whether there is another side you could present to balance the argument.
• I liked your raw approach to this speech.  Now that you have presented it, consider the following suggestions for some ways to polish it…
• This is an exciting time in your speaking progression.  There are so many roads to you can take.  I am going to highlight 3 roads you can take today to take the next step…

Assume that the speaker intended everything they did.  The speaker knows if they didn’t prepare fully or that they didn’t do as well as they are capable.  Help them see alternatives instead of highlighting their inadequacies.

Posted under Toastmasters

I want to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

Take this opportunity to send an email to someone that has made a difference in your life this year.  It doesn’t have to be life altering, just sincere.  I received such an email this past week and it really made me realize how little we let people know how much we appreciate them.

Posted under General

Check out the video below.  It is a presentation by Tim Wilson entitled “Speech Evaluation Made Easy.”  Tim describes very well how an evaluation is a balancing act between being nice and being Darth Vader!

Tim also explains the importance of the opening in an evaluation.  I wish he would have given more specific examples in this area to really challenge people to give compelling openings.

Posted under Toastmasters

To obtain an insightful understanding of protégés, mentors need to have a personal relationship with them. [...] This means that excellent mentors are accessible and available.  But they also need to exhibit the human skills of listening, caring, communicating openly, and giving constructive feedback.  To conclude, taking the time to truly know protégés is arguably the most important of the mentoring virtues.

- Elements of Mentoring by W. Brad Johnson & Charles R. Ridley.

Posted under Mentoring, Quote

Jennifer Anderson has an excellent article on how to develop your listening skills.  As I showed in an earlier post, it is hard to listen with your mouth open.

Jennifer asks us to listen to someone without talking for 30 minutes.  Then there are 7 questions to ask yourself about your experience.

Do you think you could listen to your clients better?  If so, try this exercise.

Posted under General

You need to start your speech with a joke.

The logic being that you will relax both yourself and your audience.  This may well be true, but there are some significant downsides.

Is the joke related to your topic?  If not, it will likely confuse the audience and take away from your message.

Are you good at telling jokes?  More to the point, are you good at telling jokes when you are nervous?  If not, what if the joke flops?  Rather than put everyone at ease, you just raised the stakes!

What if the joke flops?  What if it offends some people in the audience?  The benefit of putting everyone at ease is far outweighed by the potential for failure.

Don’t start your speech with a joke – leave the joke telling to the comedians

Posted under Speech Myth

Why should I have to say my phone number every time I order pizza?

Caller ID has been around for quite some time.  Why then was I surprised when the Sleep Country sales representative used it?  It saved me from having to tell him an account number or spell my name.  Using caller ID, the sales representative was able to cut through the logistics and concentrate on solving my problem.

Sure, automated systems have been using caller ID to route your requests for a long time.  It is the smaller businesses that I would like to see use this to streamline their interactions.

Think about your business.  How could you use caller ID to benefit your customer?

Posted under General

Do you find it difficult to give specific feedback to a single person when you are performing a table topics Evaluation?

Often table topics is the most feared aspect of a Toastmasters meeting.  The Table Topic Evaluator may feel like saying, “just answering the question at all was good enough”, when really they know a number of areas the speaker could improve.

One technique that is very useful in this situation is to use the another speaker as an example:

“I loved how you used gestures in your table topics.  They were both fluid and natural.  I didn’t see the other table topics speakers do that, so it stood out for me even more.  Your gestures today really made your topic come alive, especially when you were describing the hippopotamus!   Fellow Toastmasters, when you give a Table Topic speech, try to remember to use your gestures as you would in a regular speech.”

Posted under Toastmasters

Because boring doesn’t work.

Boredom gets in the way of understanding. What enables and encourages understanding, on the other hand, is style. Style engages the audience. It delights them. It speaks to them on a human level.

- Presentation Coach

When you give an evaluation, are you boring? Do you stick purely to the facts and deliver informative but dull feedback? Consider adding some color. Tell a story, add some humor, lighten up!

Posted under Public Speaking