World Champion Evaluator evaluating like a champion

We are now well into the fall contest season for Toastmasters.  One of the fall contests is the Table Topics Contest.  A short speech on a topic you heard only moments ago.  Quite a challenge.

Well, it seems that not only is there a challenge in answering the question, there is also a challenge in coming up with a question.  There are great questions, and there are awful questions.

Bad questions

Some Table Topics Masters seem to believe that this is their opportunity to stump the speaker.  It appears that they believe the contest is about making it a hard topic.  Pitting topic against speaker.  This is not helpful.

After the contest is over, you will most likely remember the Table Topic Master rather than any of the contestants.

You will usually end up with answers that skate around the topic.  The winner most likely happened upon an answer that fit the question.  In other words, the winner will most likely win because they were lucky.

There are a number of characteristics of bad questions.  These will be the topic of a future post.

Great Questions

Some Table Topics Masters ask a simple question and get out of the way.  They know that the contest is not about them.  This pits the contestants against each other.  Which contestant can come up with the most compelling answer to the table topic from their experience?

After the contest is over, you will most likely not remember who the Table Topic Master was, but can recall most, if not all, of the contestants answers.

There are also a number of characteristics of great questions.  These too will be the topic of a future post.

If you have any great (or not so great) Table Topics questions that you would like to share, please add a comment to this post.

Posted under Toastmasters

When was the last time you challenged yourself when you give a speech evaluation?

The evaluation contest is just 6 short months away.  Now is the time to treat all of your evaluations as if they are contest evaluations.  No more taking the lazy way out!

Here are seven ways you can challenge yourself when evaluating a speech:

1. Limit yourself to 5 minutes after the speech for writing your notes.
2. Leave your written notes behind when delivering the evaluation.
3. Don’t take any notes at all and make sure to quote specific details in your evaluation.
4. Focus on a single aspect of the speech, such as gestures, and talk about that for the entire evaluation.
5. Give your evaluation to the entire room rather than to the speaker.
6. Create a theme for your evaluation based on the content of the speech you are evaluating.
7. Create your evaluation as a story rather than as a typical informative speech.

You will find that your speech evaluating abilities will improve immensely each time you challenge yourself.

Posted under Toastmasters