The Secret to Helping a Speaker Grow

Effective evaluations are all down to the recommendations that you give. Your suggestions to your speaker will be the main driving force that helps your evaluatees grow as speakers and become effective communicators.

Tips for Recommendations

1. Be prepared. Talk to the speaker before the presentation, they will be able to tell you the areas that they want to work on and the areas that they’ve had difficulty with in the past, make sure to look out for these during the speech and find ways to to help the speaker become stronger in those aspects of their presentation.
2. Focus on how the speaker can get better. For every area of improvement, have a recommendation. And don’t just look at the weak areas of a presentation, also look at the speaker’s strengths, are there areas that could go from good to great and what steps are needed to make that happen?
3. Be specific. Give detailed instructions on what needs to be done to make the speech stronger and be sure to explain why taking these actions will make the speech better, it adds a lot of value to the speaker if you explain why.
4. Always give recommendations. You can’t help a speaker improve if you don’t give them recommendations. That can be difficult because you may not want to upset the speaker or because the speaker is very good. Do not worry about upsetting a speaker, they want to improve and they want you to help them. As for good speakers, no speaker is THAT good, there’s always something that can get better, be really picky, if there’s 15 seconds of the presentation that didn’t work for you then concentrate on that.

How Many Recommendations?

Sometimes the effectiveness of an evaluation comes down to the number of recommendations that you give. Naturally the amount of feedback depends on each speaker but a good guide is:

Icebreakers:	1 recommendation
2nd – 5th Speech:	2 recommendations
6th – 10th Speech:	2-3 recommendations

For advanced speakers they will want to know how they can push their speaking to new heights so focus more on recommendations than strengths and give as many suggestions as you can.

Above all else remember the most important rule of all: Always give recommendations!

 

This post is part of our series of tips to help you become a better evaluator. To learn more about evaluating, check out these posts:

• Plan and Prepare Your Evaluation
• Organise Your Evaluation
• Use Your Evaluation To Inspire
• The Secret to Effective Evaluations
• Crafting an Evaluation that Educates the Whole Audience

 

image: Hash Milan (Flickr)

Merry Christmas From Cogito!

Merry Christmas to all our members and also to all the people who have visited us in the last year, it’s been a great year filled with speeches, workshops and laughs and thank you for making it happen..

Next year it’s only going to get better, as well as the usual speeches, table topics and evaluations we’ll have the club International Speech and Evaluation contest in March, we’ll hosting the area contesrs in April and the Tall Tales contest in June

There will be no meeting next Tuesday and we’ll see you back in the new year at the Lantern Centre on Tuesday January 10th .

 

image: Kevin Dooley(Flickr)

Improve Your Presentations with the Ten TED Commandments

For anyone interested in speaking and listening to interesting speakers, TED is always a great place to visit. Each TED speaker is given the “TED Commandments” to help them create a talk to suit a typical TED audience.

These commandments are useful not just for TED speakers but for anyone who has to stand up and speak in front of an audience. They’re filled with guidelines that, if followed, will make your speech entertaining and interesting for the audience while at the same time allowing you the chance to enjoy yourself.

The TED Commandments are:

1. Dream Big. Strive to create the best talk you have ever given. Reveal something never seen before. Do something the audience will remember forever. Share an idea that could change the world.
2. Show Us The Real You. Share your passions, your dreams … and also your fears. Be vulnerable. Speak of failure as well as success.
3. Make The Complex Plain. Don’t try to dazzle intellectually. Don’t speak in abstractions. Explain! Give examples. Tell stories. Be specific.
4. Connect With People’s Emotions. Make us laugh! Make us cry!
5. Don’t Flaunt Your Ego. Don’t boast. It’s the surest way to switch everyone off.
6. No Selling From The Stage! Unless we have specifically asked you to, do not talk about your company or organization. And don’t even think about pitching your products or services or asking for funding from stage.
7. Feel free to comment on other speakers’ talks, to praise or to criticize. Controversy energizes! Enthusiastic endorsement is powerful!
8. Don’t Read Your Talk. Notes are fine. But if the choice is between reading or rambling, then read!
9. End Your Talk On Time. Doing otherwise is to steal time from the people that follow you. We won’t allow it.
10. Rehearse your talk in front of a trusted friend … for timing, for clarity, for impact.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• 3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech
• The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation
• The Key to Reducing Your Presenting Nerves
•  How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation
• The Key To a Great Presentation: Knowing Your Audience
• Four Ways to Calm Your Presentation Anxiety

 

image: Steve Jurvetson (Flickr)

Learn How to Engage Your Audience with Passion

One of the key ways to get an audience interested in your idea or topic is to show your passion for it.

When you stand up and speak with real passion, your audience will hear see and feel your passion, your passion will intrigue them, they will want to know why you’re so excited about this topic and they’ll feel that if you’re excited then maybe they should be too. Passion is the best way to connect with your audience

The opposite is also true. Think back to when you were in university or college, think of that one lecturer who always sounded bored when they gave their lectures. Were you interested in the class or were you just as bored as he was? If’s not just passion that we feed off . If the lecturer finds their subject boring then there’s nothing to keep us engaged so we stop listening which results in a whole group of people who don’t care and can’t wait for the class to end.

Have you got an got an idea that you’re passionate about but don’t know how to present it to an audience? Do you want to learn how to present with more passion?

Come along to one of our meetings and see how we can help you show your audience the passion you have for your topic.

We meet at 7.30pm  on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays in the Lantern Centre on Synge St (off Camden St), see you there.

Click here for more information.

image: PopTech (Flickr)

17 Great Ways to Improve Your Presentations

Not only do we have encouraging, empowering and fun meetings we also share some of the best articles on speaking and presenting on our Facebook page.

To see what you’ve been missing, here is a selection of some the articles we found over the last few months:

Speaking Nerves

• How to shake off pre-speaking nervousness
• 5 Tips on How to Become an Incredible Public Speaker
• How to cure stage fright: The science behind public speaking

 

Public Speaking

• 6 Master Public Speakers and How They Can Help You Give a Killer Presentation
• 16 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Presentation Skills From 16 Powerful TED Talks
• The key to presenting data in presentations
• 9 Out-of-the-Box Routines to Shine As a Speaker
• 7 brilliant ways to start a presentation
• 16 of the Best Motivational Speeches of All Time
• How to Give an Awesome Toast

 

Speech Writing

• How to Write an Amazing Speech for Any Occasion
• Use This Six-Part Outline to Write the Perfect Speech
• 6 Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech

 

Storytelling

• Storytelling tips from an award-winning film director
• 3 storytelling secrets for public speaking
• Story structure – the hidden framework that hangs your story together
• The 22 Rules to Perfect Storytelling, According to Pixar

Follow us on Facebook to stay up to date with Cogito Toastmasters Dublin and see more great tips on public speaking and presentations.

Conquer Your Fear with Toasmasters

Does the idea of standing up and speaking in front of a group of people terrify you?

Yeah, me too.

So it’s only fitting that the theme of our next meeting is “Conquer Your Fear” because that’s what Toastmasters is about, it’s about creating a comfortable environment where you can learn to deal with your speaking nerves and gain the confidence to present in front of an audience.

To help you conquer your fear of speaking and presenting, Jean-Marie will give an educational called “Controlling Your Fear”, not only that but we’ll have our usual impromptu speaking section as well as speeches from Carmen, Miao and Michael.

Cogito Toastmasters Dublin

Time: 7.30pm

Date: Tuesday 11th October

Place: The Lantern Centre, Synge St, Dublin 8

(with free parking)

For more details of our meeting click here.

Image: Symphony of Love/Kate Ter Haar

Evaluation Tip: Plan and Prepare Your Evaluation

When you take on the role of being an evaluator at a Toastmasters meeting, your main objective should be to inspire your speaker to become a better communicator.

The key to doing this effectively is preparation.

The more you prepare, the better you will be able to help the speaker improve.

While most toastmasters can give a “good enough” evaluation if they talk to a speaker five minutes before a club meeting, it is when we take the opportunity to put in more preparation time that we find that have the ability to deliver a great evaluation that is tailor-made for our speaker’s goals and needs.

There are 4 steps to perfect preparation:

1.  Read the project description so that you are clear about the objectives for the speech.  Do this every time. Even if you’ve evaluated the project many times, read the objective again, remember this is not for you but to help you give the best feedback to your speaker.

2. Contact the speaker. If you can, try to do this about a week before the meeting. Find out more about them and their own personal speaking objectives because we don’t join toastmasters to complete manuals, we join to improve ourselves or to gain confidence. The more you can cater for these personal goals the better you will be able to help the speaker. Here are some sample questions you could ask:

Are there any areas from previous projects that they want to work on?
Do they have any personal objectives for that project?
What are their long term improvement goals?
What type of feedback would they appreciate?

3. Using the manual objectives and the speaker’s personal objectives, make a checklist of areas to watch out for during the speech.

4. The day before and also just before the meeting, touch base with the speaker so that you’re up to date with their progress and are aware of any issues that have been overcome or new issues encountered by the speaker.

It is by following these 4 steps that you will be able to craft an evaluation that will focus on the needs of the speaker and give them the best chance to grow as a speaker and communicator.

I know that this sounds like a lot of work for a simple evaluation but let me ask you a question:

If you were the speaker, which would you prefer?

An evaluator who just glances over the project or someone who takes the time to prepare?

 

This post is part of our series of tips to help you become a better evaluator. To learn more about evaluating, check out these posts:

• Organise Your Evaluation
• Use Your Evaluation To Inspire
• The Secret to Effective Evaluations
• Crafting an Evaluation that Educates the Whole Audience
• The Secret to Helping a Speaker Grow

 

Image: Samuel Mann (Flickr)

What We Can Learn About Presenting From TED Talks

Let’s try an experiment.

1. Go to TED.com
2. Choose one of the many talks on the homepage.
3. Watch it.
4. If you find yourself losing interest, select one of the six videos in the “Related Talks” section and go to step 3.
5. Once you’re finished the video, select one of the six videos in the “Related Talks” section and go to step 3.

Keep doing this for a 30 minutes or an hour. And then answer the following questions:

 

How many videos did you watch from beginning to end?
If you’re anything like me then you wouldn’t have watched all of them to the end. When I tried this I spent several hours looking at TED videos and of the 30 or 40 that I watched, I probably only finished 4 or 5 of them.

 

What made you switch to the next one?
It’s easy to say that it was because the subject wasn’t interesting but that is rarely the case because we all know speakers who can make even the driest and dullest topics sizzle and sparkle.

The real answer is that you lost interest for a number of reasons, including:

• It didn’t grab your attention at the start
• The opening grabbed your attention but the rest of it didn’t live up to the promise of the opening
• The speaker treated it as a lecture not as a conversation
• It wasn’t accessible, the speaker used technical terms and language that you didn’t understand.
• The speaker spoke in a dull monotonous tone

Look at some of the videos you didn’t finish again and try to identify what it was that made you want to change to a different video.

This is the first lesson that we can learn from TED: how not to present

Sometimes it can be difficult to recognise that we make these mistakes as well. To find out either ask a colleague or friend to give you feedback or else record your presentation and watch it back.

 

What made you want to finish some videos?

Look at the videos again:

• How did the speaker grab your attention?
• What methods did they use to keep you interested?
• Did they speak in a language that you understood?
• Did their passion and excitement for the topic intrigue and excite you?

This is our second lesson: learning from success.

 

Next time you’re writing a speech or presentation, look at how your favourite TED speakers present and try to use some of their methods to engage your audience.

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• 3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech
• The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation
• The Key to Reducing Your Presenting Nerves
•  How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation
• The Key To a Great Presentation: Knowing Your Audience
• Four Ways to Calm Your Presentation Anxiety

 

First published at Geek Speaking
Image: Steve Jurvetson (Flickr)

Making Dreams Come True

What are your goals? What are your ambitions?

Our next meeting is all about goal setting, bring your ideas, your ambitions and your dreams, and in the meeting Michelle will show you how to set clear goals and how to plan to achieve them.

Not only that but John will be giving his second speech and Kevin and Jean-Marie will be practising their speeches for the Area Humorous Speech contest..

The meeting begins at 7.30pm in the Lantern Centre so come along and maybe we can help you reach your goal of becoming a better speaker and presenter.

For more details of our meeting click here.

Cogito Toastmasters Dublin
Image: Symphony of Love/John Haro

And the Winners Are…

There was magic and laughter in the air last Tuesday as five very creative and funny people took the stage and entertained us in both the humorous speech and table topics contests, making it very difficult for our judges to choose a winner…

Humorous Speech

In our humorous speech contest, we had three funny speaker battle it out for the speaking crown: Miao gave lessons to all the men in the audience about the difference between men and women, Jean-Marie showed us how to deal with our fears and Kevin demonstrated his talent for procrastinating especially when it comes to speech-writing.

And the winners were:
1st Place: Kevin
2nd Place: Jean-Marie
3rd Place: Miao

Kevin and Jean-Marie will go on to represent the club at the Area 7 Humorous Speech Contest on October 7th

 

Table Topics Contest

In the Table Topics contest the contestants were challenged to explain the situation where “A man is lying dead, face down in the desert. There’s a match in his hand. What happened?” and they delivered wonderous imaginative stories to solve the mysterious situation.

And the winners were:
1st Place: John
2nd Place: Kevin
3rd Place: Jean-Marie

John and Kevin will go on to represent the Cogito Toastmasters Dublin at the Area 7 Table Topics Contest on October 7th.

Winning speakers John, Jean-Marie and Kevin with Club President Dermot