I recently had the pleasure to interview Rich Hopkins, a 2-time competitor in the World Championship of Public Speaking (WCPS), about evaluations.

In addition to finishing 3rd in the 2006 WCPS, Rich has been a 5 time District Evaluation Contest Finalist, winning 3 of those 5 times.  He has been a Toastmaster for over 10 years and has expanded significantly on Toastmaster evaluation theory as a professional speaker and presentations coach.

Visit Rich’s blog to see his current progress towards making it a 3rd time to the WCPS and also follow Rich on Twitter.

Starting Monday on this blog and continuing until Friday, Rich will answer  questions on evaluations including:

• How to describe evaluations to someone that has never been to a Toastmasters meeting.
• How to get more comfortable evaluating speakers.
• How to improve your evaluation skills.
• How evaluations relate to being a professional speech coach.

An excellent article that asks whether you are criticising or evaluating.

The information here is practical for the upcoming Toastmasters Evaluation Contest too.

Question 13: How do you go about being spot on in finding one key area to focus on for improvement?

This is an interesting question as I don’t know that I am necessarily spot on in the areas I focus on.

Experience plays its part although I think that confidence plays a big part too.  When you suggestion areas for improvement with confidence, that confidence is passed on to the speaker and the audience.  When you make suggestions without confidence, you can make the best suggestions in the world, but the speaker will likely ignore them.

I also don’t usually suggest just one area for improvement.  As my skill improves, I make more and more suggestions for improvement in such a way that they don’t even come across as such.  We learn the simple sandwich technique early on, 2 pieces of bread surrounding 1 layer of meat.  The true power comes from multi-level sandwiches where there are many more thinner pieces of bread with meat layers that are not so obvious.

So, don’t worry too much about finding the one key area.  Make suggestions you are comfortable with.  Do it with confidence.

Question 12: There are often so many comments that could be offered during an evaluation, how do you select the comments to share during the oral evaluation?

It is definitely a good problem to have when you have more material than you can share for the oral evaluation.  The reason it is a good problem is that you get to pick and choose what to include.  Picking and choosing will help you formulate a more cohesive evaluation.

As an example, assume the speaker could improve in the following ways:

• Slow down rate of speech
• Add more pauses
• Maintain eye contact longer
• Tell more personal stories
• Stop clasping hands
• Move around more
• Have their conclusion tie into their beginning
• Use the rule of three more

In general, I would recommend an evaluator focus on just 3 areas.  These 3 areas could be all vocal variety, all physical related, all structure related.  The choice is simpler if the speech objectives intersect with some areas for improvement.  If they don’t, or you are performing an evaluation for a contest, then see if you can pick areas for improvement that tie in with the speech.  For instance, if the speech is about social networking, you could talk about how to build a connection with your audience through longer eye contact, slower rate of speech, and less clasping of hands.

Build your repertoire of areas speakers can improve so that you have choices when it comes to delivering your evaluations.

Question 11: What did you do to improve your ability to give kind, yet meaningful evaluations?

To improve my ability to give kind, yet meaningful evaluations, I pay attention to every evaluation I hear.  How did they structure their evaluation?  How did they phrase the feedback?  How meaningful was the evaluation?

When you really look at other evaluators in a critical way, you start to notice patterns.  Great evaluators use “I” statements instead of “you” statements.  Great evaluators also don’t appear to be self-concious when giving areas for improvement.  The feedback comes from a place of confidence.  Finally, great evaluators are doing the evaluation for the speaker rather than to show-off how great an evaluator they are.

Pay attention to each and every evaluator.  Attend other club meetings to get variation.  Districts often have evaluation workshops where you can learn a lot and also ask questions.  Attend evaluation contests and see if you can determine why some participants placed and others didn’t.