Last week I evaluated an Ice Breaker speech. It used to be that I hated to evaluate Ice Breakers. I would always worry that there would be too many areas of improvement and not enough strengths.
I actually like evaluating Ice Breakers now. I relish the fact that I get to see a speaker for the first time and give them their first Toastmasters evaluation. I also challenge myself to really nail down the skills the speaker already has. It can be hard to find at times, but no harder than finding areas of improvement for a fantastic speaker.
The Ice Breaker this Tuesday was very good. Marv made excellent use of storytelling in his speech. His major area of improvement being to remove the reliance on notes so that the storytelling can come alive with gestures and movement.
It used to be that I would be very cautious evaluating an Ice Breaker. I didn’t want to scare them away. I would deliver something close to a whitewash. Possibly pointing out one superficial improvement.
Not any more. My goal is to give the speaker constructive criticism just as I would an experienced speaker.
Posted under Toastmasters
This post was written by john on April 8, 2009
