A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a workshop of Toastmasters. During that morning I was able to get some wonderful suggestions on what to consider when evaluating someone else when they give a speech. Some of these comments can be applicable, when giving comments to someone’s fiction and someone storytelling. I hope these recommendations can be of use.
-Why do we evaluate: to help another person so he or she can become a better speaker.
-An evaluation is not about you. It’s about the speaker.
-Read the manual in advance of the speech, so you can see what the objectives are.
-You need to know what the speaker’s personal objectives are as well.
-Don’t get caught up in the speech you need to keep evaluating. When you tell a speaker that you got caught up so much in the speech so you didn’t have a chance to evaluate that is not a helpful evaluation.
-Evaporators should call the speaker during the week prior to their presentation.
-Ask what they want to accomplish in their speech. When you evaluate that speech, remember, they told you what they wanted to achieve, and see if they met their objectives.
-When you listen to a speech dissect it to give a clear positive and useful evaluation.
-An evaluation is constructive feedback that is useful to the speaker. Give specific, concrete feedback.
-Even, an evaluator should be well articulated; by stretching your vocabulary, your comments refresh the evaluation. Don’t resort to the same way of phrasing, say it differently. For example, that was a great speech. It’s just saying great. You might use such words as fantastic a very thought-provoking.
-When you give an example of something that didn’t work, you might want to provide something specific that didn’t work. Instead of a generic comment such as “you should rephrase some of your comments” point to specific comment and maybe suggest an alternative way to phrase it. Maybe indicate a specific hand motion by example.
-Identifiable is the best thing about the speech, if you can summarize the speech the speaker can tell if what you heard was what they intended.
-Recommended websites to learn how to evaluate well, sixminutes.org.
-The growth and development of people is the best accomplishment of leadership
-For the speaker, a speech may work best if you have only one objective.
These final comments were specific to Toastmasters, but still have wise counsel for storytellers and fiction writers. Think of the three monkeys see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil and hero. The following suggestions:
See:
Read the manual and questions.
Know what it is you’re evaluating.
Pay attention to what’s going on.
Hear:
Pay attention
Don’t get caught up in the speech
Don’t stop evaluating.
The most important isn’t always the most obvious.
Speak:
Speak for yourself not the audience
Don’t attack
Don’t discourage
Don’t offend or attack speakers point of view
Describe your own reaction I saw. I jumped. I hope. The only time to reference a speaker is by observation of someone’s reaction
Don’t grandstand doing so can be interpreted as China show up the speaker don’t talk about you.
In a separate meeting at Toastmasters, a member of the club gave some very wise counsel. He said each of us had a specific goal in mind when we joined Toastmasters. So while we’re attending Toastmasters. Give your speeches on the topics of things that interest you that originally motivated you to want to become a good indicator.
If you have additional suggestions on this topic, please feel free to share it in the comment section of this blog.
