3 mistakes I made as an Evaluator

1.    Never speak on behalf of the audience

 

Evaluators often come up with following statements:

 

-          Audience understanding of your speech was crystal clear

-          Audience would have liked your speech if you added some humour in your speech

-          Audience would have heard your speech clearly if were a bit louder

As an evaluator, one’s evaluations should always be centered around YOUR opinion about the speech and not the audience opinion.

2.    Inducing irrelevant Humour

Making people laugh is an art and everybody tries their hand at it whenever they get stage time. I believe it is ok to try humour in a Prepared Speech (or) Table topics but definitely not during Evaluations especially if the humour is not connected to the speaker’s speech.

3.    Usage of Acronym

Evaluators tend to use ACRONYM to evaluate speeches. I’m listing below some of acronyms that I have come across:

-          C C C (Concept, Clarity, Conclusion)

-          T O P I C (Topic Selection, Organization of speech, Pause, Interest of audience, Conclusion)

I’m a big fan of such evaluations since the use of acronym helps the evaluator to highlight the various aspects of the speech that was done well and areas that need improvement.

However I see some evaluators forcibly use acronyms in their evaluations resulting in non-value addition to the speaker.

Hence it is advisable not to force push any acronyms into the evaluations.

So the next time you evaluate a speech, kindly avoid the above mistakes I made to make the speaker’s toastmasters journey fruitful.