How we evaluate and provide feedback is crucial to get the best from people with Marc Haine

evaluate our evaluations as it were to figure out because part of that evaluations is a skill. I have to start off by asking you if you have ever received an evaluation that absolutely ripped you apart. Like, I mean, just absolutely decimated you. Welcome everybody! And thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about evaluations. I'm really quite excited because evaluations are those one things that when they're done right can empower people to fly. Or they can bury people so they never ever want to do anything ever again. And I have been on the receiving end of both those kinds of evaluations. I know, for example, I know Carol had received an evaluation years ago that almost set her out the door. The evaluation was personal. It was destructive. It made her feel like she wasn't worthy of being a Toastmaster. I know professionally when I was working for a casino that I received a performance evaluation that absolutely decimated everything that I thought and believed. I went through the context of my evaluation based on the performance, based on what I've been told that people want from me, my bosses want from me, and so on. And so, I couldn't understand that when I had a really great year, I couldn't understand why it was that I got an evaluation that wasn't fantastic. And when I questioned it, they looked at me and they said, well, we can't give you 5 on everything because nobody's perfect. And when I did everything within the organization to make the organization better and all the ratings were to make the organization better, make it profitable and so on, when Profits go up, when expenses go down, when staff are happier. But then they turned around and said, well, we can't give you 5 on 5 because it's not right. Nobody's— we can't go to head office and say you're perfect. Which I can understand. But ultimately, there's a reason why we do evaluations. And the bottom line is when we do evaluations, it's to help other people get better. It is not to score brownie points with the boss. It's not to make yourself look better than the other person. And ultimately, when it's done right, it helps them build confidence. It helps them know that they are being perceived well. And it helps them also counter when their own self-perception is false. A lot of times, especially in Toastmasters, when new people stand up and they start speaking, they will turn around and say, oh, I looked so nervous. I felt so nervous. I didn't do well. And then, when they get the evaluation, people said, well, you didn't look nervous. You seem to be really cool. And right away, they justify and they go, well, you know, I definitely felt nervous. Which is funny because When we give the feedback, the idea behind the feedback is that we want to make it so that they benefit to find, to kind of support their self-confidence. And we want them to understand where they scored and where maybe they can improve on. The difficult thing with evaluations, especially when it's outside of Toastmasters, the difficult thing with Evaluations is that they have to be timely and they have to be specific. Gone are the days where the boss pats you on the back as you're walking out the door and say, great job, John. Thanks so much. And thinks that that's a quality evaluation. Nowadays, people expect more feedback. In order to grow, people need really relative, specific information to figure out what exactly did you appreciate about my day today. And they don't want to wait months to figure it out. They don't want to wait 3 months for their evaluation, or 6 years, or God forbid, the dreaded annual evaluation. They want it as soon as they possibly can. That means when John does something great, we have to point it out and say, John, hey, you did a fantastic job today. Thank you so much. I could not believe how well you handled that difficult customer. That was absolutely phenomenal. Thank you so much. That is a quality level feedback that takes the person and puts the person first and makes sure that they understand what it was that they performed well. Now, why is this important? This is important for many different reasons. One, first and foremost, I believe that behaviors evolve. And when people know that they've done something that made a difference, or they know that somebody noticed that they did something, right away they will repeat that behavior. I have a magical phrase that I said, what gets rewarded and recognized gets repeated. So, when we have a behavior that people do really well, it's really important that we point out what they did well because then they'll keep on doing it. And ultimately, When we have objectives, it's important that we are able to give the feedback that is necessary to them so that they can improve if there is indeed a reason for approval. So, within Toastmasters, we have this whole idea of tell and sell. The idea here is that we want to be able to be very specific in how we provide feedback. We want the listener to understand what resonated with us, what we found difficult, and so on. So, we have different types of steps to evaluation. But the important thing is we have to be authentic in our praise. To turn around and say, hey, your speech was really good. And then, they question and say, well, what about my speech was good? Oh well, you stood up in front of the lectern really well and you had great presence there. Okay, but what about my speech was good? Well, it was, you know what? You were articulate. Oh, okay. Why would you say that? Well, because you— right? Those are kind of disingenuous kinds of evaluations. They're not specific to the needs of the interviewee, as it were, or the evaluatee, as it were. And we have to be able to sincerely say what we appreciated about the What resonated with us? What did you say that made it worthwhile and worth our time to sit here and listen to you? We have to recognize. We have to use words that let the people know that it was your perception of things. So, we say things like, what I saw was... and what I heard was... And of course, the almighty, what I felt. Felt was. You know, there's a quote that says, nobody cares what you do and nobody cares what you say. They only care about how you make them feel. And so, when we do evaluations, we want people to feel positive about what it is they did well. They want to be positive about their performance and know that they made a difference to their audience members. And so, as an evaluator, we have control of that. We're able to take that and then bring it to them So, it touches them in the heart as well. When we want to evaluate, there are 3 steps to any kind of evaluation. Part of it is you first have to understand what the objective of the task is. So, in our case, if we're evaluating a speech, we want to be able to evaluate. We want to be able to talk to the speaker and say, hey, what would you like to work on tonight? What kind of things would you like to improve on? Is there anything specific you'd like me to watch out for in your presentation so I can point it out to you later? Now, all sorts of things come to the forefront. I really appreciated my very first evaluation because my very first evaluation when I did my— was probably a life lesson more than it was even an evaluation because I did my icebreaker speech. I stood up and I did my 4 to 6 minute speech, which I think went over just a little bit 6 minutes. Where I took 10 minutes of content. I shoved it all into 6 minutes. I delivered my whole speech with 2 breaths. And my evaluator, who is Michael Hennig, thank you, Michael, said to me, my first point of improvement, Marc, it's okay to breathe. Life lesson, it's okay to breathe. But very positive because ultimately, it was something that I knew I stressed about. When I did my evaluation, when I sat down and got all lightheaded, I knew that he was probably right on the mark. However, since then, whenever I've had an evaluation, I go to the evaluator and I said, a couple of things I want to work on. I want to make absolutely sure that I'm making really good eye contact. I want to make sure that you feel that I am present, that I'm not distracted by what I think I'm going to say, or right? And so, I get together and we formulate a strategy on what we want to work on. Once we understand what the interviewer wants to work on, we are ready now to be of service to that speaker as their evaluator. And that's the important part is evaluation is not a question of doing a job. Evaluation is a question of being of service to the person that you're evaluating. So, it's really important. During the speech, it's really important that we pay attention. You really have to look like you're interested in what's being said. All too often, I see that we're so struck on, oh, I have to fill out all this paperwork and I need to do this, that we stop actually— stop looking and listening to the speaker who's right in front of us. So, it's really important that we pay attention. And that we show that we are interested. During the evaluation, this is the point where you can either lift people up or tear people down. And it's really important that you choose your words carefully. Using words like, I heard, I felt, one of the classiest ways of being able to make a recommendation is using the words, I wonder. I wonder if next time you stand up, if you can loosen your body up. As opposed to say, I saw that you were really tense and I think you should just loosen up. Right? When using the word I wonder, you turn an evaluation from a job into delivering kindness. The other thing I really caution people about when they do evaluations is avoid making it about you. Right? Oh, I remember when I used to do that. Yeah, I used to do that all the time. You know, when I— the very first time I got up and spoke, yeah. It's not about you. It's about them. You have to make the content in your evaluation strictly about them. What did you appreciate? What did you learn? How did you feel about it? And one of the things we absolutely have to avoid in every, every case of evaluations is using the word you should. Well, you know, you should have stood a little taller, or you should have done something with your hair, or you should have spoken slower. Right? It's really important that when we are evaluating, we are evaluating the We're not evaluating the person. This is not a personal attack. And that's important. Now, in Toastmasters, the other thing that in Toastmasters, we don't evaluate content in Toastmasters. If you want to create a speech that says, you want to do a 5 to 7 minute speech about how you love to walk your dog, that's entirely up to you. As long as You let your evaluator know, this is what I'm trying to accomplish with it. Every chance we take when we get up and speak in Toastmasters to give us the ability to practice the skill of public speaking. When we evaluate, we're there to promote self-esteem, not tear it down. It is absolutely essential That we are respectful every minute of every moment that we are up evaluating. One of the sure signs of being able to change your perception, change your mindset when it comes to evaluation. First of all, don't think it's about judging because it's not. It's being of service. If I agree to be your evaluator, I am taking on the Verbal contract or the mental contract that I am here to help make you better. I am here to be of service to you so you can reach your objectives. So you can drive forward and fulfill your dreams and aspirations. The reason why you joined Toastmasters when you did. I hope that makes sense. So, As we go through our presentations, I have to say, when you start up your evaluation, you want to connect everything to your initial impact. When you say, a lot of people say, oh, thank you so much. That was such a great speech. Those are empty words as opposed to, I listened carefully and your speech touched me. Then you can go through the evaluation process, and at the very end, you have to connect your conclusion of the evaluation to your opening statement. You should say why you felt that way. It's important that you summarize your key points just as a quick takeaway, and you have to encourage listeners to apply what they heard and what they learned. One of the things with evaluations, just like People will remember the very last thing you said. They will also remember how you made them feel. I hope that this gives you some clarity to evaluations. If you have any questions about evaluations, please drop me a line. I'd be more than happy to sit through with you and to go through and evaluate our evaluations. As it were, to figure out because part of that evaluations is a skill. So, thank you very much everybody. I'm so glad to have been able to do this for you today. And I hope you got lots out of it.