Be careful of asking audiences questions. Especially ambiguous question. The audience won’t always give you the answer you’re looking for and sometimes will give answers that are deliberately difficult.
Don’t ask the audience if they liked it. Or anything else for that matter. Certainly don’t ask for another round of applause. In fact, in 2-3 minutes don’t ask the audience anything unless the manual specifically requires it as you have just enough time to do what you need to do but not enough time to waste grandstanding. Even then, the manual probably should be changed in my opinion…
Too many evaluators use their evaluation as a chance to grab the limelight. Instead, focus on the speaker and let the quality of your evaluation draw to you the attention that you deserve.
Skip restating the speech. We’ve already heard it once – if we slept through it the first time, we might well sleep through your evaluation of it too!
Focus. Say what’s most important first. Be specific. Have only a few points – maybe three strengths and three points for improvement. Use your critical thinking to identify what’s most important and leave the rest to the written evaluation. Your audience won’t remember a long list anyway.
Make no apologies. When you give points for improvement, you are doing a service to the speaker and the audience – there’s no need for apologies or comments like “there’s always room for improvement…”
To me, there are just three parts to being an evaluator:
- Highlight (strenghts)
- Helpout (show areas for improvement)
- Handover (to the Toastmaster or General Evaluator – that means you shut up and sit down)
Being a good evaluator is not that complicated really…
One more thing: Speak in the third person.
Speak to the audience, not to the speaker – address your comments as “Mension had a strong, commanding voice and a dynamic, entertaining presence” (which Mension, the Immediate Past President of Lighthouse Toastmasters does of course!) rather than making it into a public conversation with the speaker.
Once you’ve delivered your evaluation you can give personal comments to the speaker, but save them until later. The oral evaluation is a speech in its own right – a speech should be delivered in the third person.
(Check Evaluate to Motivate for the formal Toastmasters training of course but really you just have to think about how strange it is to say “you” in a speech when you’re just talking to the speaker, you could probably work it out yourself.)
It’s been several times that I heard some experts in Toastmasters coaching us that we have to ” Speak in the first person rather than in the third person when we do evaluations.” Indeed, there are some experts who prefer speaking in the third person. There are some who prefer speaking in the first person. Maybe there’s not a standard answer to this question.
Thanks Delphy – many people get the first person/ third person wrong. It’s easy to do… English is a confusing language.
I’m more interested in how I believe things would be better. To me, it doesn’t make sense to address the evaluation to the speaker – unless you’re having a conversation directly to the speaker. As the meeting is to invest a few minutes in the evaluation, that time should be spent on something that is generally applicable rather than just being personal comments.
BTW if you look in “Evaluate to Motivate” I think you’ll find that there is a standard answer.