Techniques for Speaking and Evaluating

#142

During the initial days of joining Toastmasters, I used to spend most of my time reading about speech topics, evaluation mechanisms, and speech organization techniques. This helped me develop confidence to give a speech of my own.

From what I gather, there are 3 high-level ways to organize a speech:

• Categorical - informative, compare-and-contrast, before-and-after
• Chronological – story, problem statement to approaches to solution to next steps
• Persuasive – motivational

One of the articles mentioned working backwards from the speech content, by starting at the end. Ask yourself what you would like your audience to remember or how you'd want them to react after listening to your speech. 

Would you want them to be inspired to take action, make a change in their own lives, or help others? Once you draft your speech from the ending, you'll realize the introduction writes itself.

Coming to evaluation, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind when evaluating someone. I believe these recommendations can be extrapolated to other aspects of life as well, be it a relationship or at work.

• Start your sentences using "I believe", or "I suggest" rather than the imperative "You must"
• Employ the sandwich technique wherein you start out with the positives, enlist areas of improvement, and wrap it up with a summarized version of the good parts
• During the summation at the end, include both a call back and a call-to-action, and suggest to the speaker "I hope you consider this in your next speech"
• Be a coach, not a judge
• Focus on
• Content
• Organization
• Delivery
• Empathize with your speaker