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Transcript

Evaluate To Motivate By Zac Lyons DTM

Drawing from personal experiences, Mr. Lyons highlights the emotional component of feedback and its importance in fostering confidence.

HiFi Speakers’, Zac Lyons, explores the art of providing constructive feedback in speech evaluations, emphasizing its role in motivating speakers. Mr. Lyons outlines three principles for effective evaluation: specificity, behavioral focus, and emotional resonance, advocating for clear, actionable insights rather than vague remarks. He stresses the need to separate individual character from delivery, promoting a supportive environment for growth.

TRANSCRIPT

How many of you have had a manager, a boss, or a spouse pull you aside and say, “I'd like to give you some feedback.” I dread those words. Why? Because they always precede some criticism. Something I did wrong. Something I should have done, but didn't know I needed to do. Something I was expected to do, but had no idea that I was supposed to do that.

It's 2010. My colleague and I have just finished a two hour presentation in a room full of important people at a client, large tech company up in Seattle. We're eating lunch with our manager, and he says to me, “Zac, I'd like to give you some feedback.”

A lump forms in my throat. He says, “I don't know what it is, but you just don't exude confidence when you present, unlike your colleague here.”

What am I supposed to do with that?

I joined Toastmasters to get better at public speaking primarily because of that interaction.

What I discovered is that one of the most difficult and challenging roles in our meeting is giving feedback to people, especially speech evaluations. Why? Because giving feedback is about motivating, encouraging them, wanting them to get better instead of tearing them down, as my manager did to me.

Most people, frankly, just suck at giving feedback.

I don't know if you've noticed that in your life. I think it's just primarily because they have not practiced a skill. There's not a lot of places that you can practice giving feedback to people. But also, I don't think they're aware — or maybe even don't care — how it makes that other person feel when they give that feedback.

They just lack empathy.

So, today I want to share with you three things that I think are critical in giving feedback generally, but specifically in a speech evaluation.

First, you want to express how that speech made you feel. Whether you've been in Toastmasters for a day, a week, a month, 10 years, I guarantee you, you're still human. You still have emotions and feelings. When someone gets up here, like Daryl, and expresses himself, you have a reaction to that.

How did that speech make you feel? What did you like? What didn't you like? I could say, for example, “Le Ann, last week when you gave your speech, when you suggested that the best support someone can give to someone else who's just gone through a major loss is to say, “I'm with you. I'm not going anywhere. We're going to get through this together.”

That gave me goosebumps.

Two, be specific. Most people, like my manager, please don't do what he did and give some vague advice that's unactionable. What do you do when someone says, “You're just not confident?”

Drill into specific things that they said, that they did, whether it was eye contact, movement, gestures, pauses, and talk about how that made you feel, how you reacted to that.

I could say, for example, “Andrew, last week, you gave your speech about your teacher, August J. Schultz, the third — very specific — and how he massively impacted you. I was thinking well, “Who in my life has had such a major, massive impact on me?”

That might be a piece of feedback I could give.

Third, focus on what you heard or saw. Behavioral change is about focusing on the behavior and giving feedback on the behavior, not on the person. Instead of saying, “You lack confidence,” focus on what they said or did specifically. For example, Bruce, “When you read from your notes without making eye contact, you lose my attention.”

Just kidding. Bruce doesn't do that.

Just to make this all easier a few tricks that I've learned along the way, that I've been doing for some time now, hat I think are important to learn and do. It will help you accelerate your journey to becoming a better evaluator.

First, of course, course listen to the speech. I know that seems obvious. But, sometimes your brain goes elsewhere while you're listening. It may help you as well to take notes. What I like to do is take my page and divide it in half length-wise. Then, on the left side, I write down all the things that I really like about what they said or did. On the right side, I write down all the things that I think could be improved or maybe suggestions for improvement. Then pick just three things that you really like, one or maybe two things that you think could be improved.

Think of an interesting catch, a hook, when you come up, because giving an evaluation is in itself a speech. It's an impromptu speech. So have a hook, talk about those three things you like, the one or two things that could be improved, and then conclude by recapping your key points and ending, definitely ending on a positive note.

But the goal is to be specific, express how you feel, and focus on what you heard or saw.

So, just like giving speeches up here, as Daryl just talked about, will make you a better public speaker, giving speech evaluations will help you become better at giving feedback.

And the art is doing it in a way that motivates, that it gets people to want to keep getting up here, to want to keep improving, which, as it turns out, is a skill that all of us could stand to improve.



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