Behavior #3 – Learn the speaker’s objectives

From The Art of Effective Evaluation, an examination of the 10 behaviors of an Effective Evaluator.

If you don’t know the speaker’s objective, how can you pass judgement on their performance?  One of my favorite examples of this is an advanced manual project that requires the speaker to not use voices to act out the story.  If the evaluator doesn’t read the project and the objectives, the would not know of this limitation.

The latest you need to familiarize yourself with the objectives is at the meeting.  Much more preferable to do so beforehand.  There’s plenty of resources available either on the web, in your own library, or other Toastmasters, for you to be able to read the project ahead of the meeting.  Once you have read the project, think about how you would approach it.  With that in mind, ask the speaker some questions about their approach and thought process.  This will give you invaluable background for your evaluation.

Discuss with the speaker their goals for the speech.  Also see if you can have the speaker reflect on recent evaluations to see how they can incorporate that feedback into this speech.  After all, the feedback on the previous speeches was made to benefit the speaker.  This refresher can be a real boost to the self-improvement of the speaker.