President's Tip of the Week

Critical Thinking Techniques, Part 5
(8/25/09)

Here is the final installment in our series on critical thinking techniques. If you’d like to read the complete article, visit the author’s site . I encourage you to add in your own questions and discover your own applications to improving evaluations.

14. “Consider the opposition. Listen to other viewpoints in their own words. Seriously consider their most persuasive arguments. Don’t dismiss them.”
Obviously this technique has lots of value when exploring ideas on your own, but most speeches do have some kind of point to make, whether it is controversial or not. Did the speaker’s stories and statements have an impact on you? Which thought or story did you find the most convincing? Did any not add value to the speech? Did the speaker go off on tangents or say things contradictory to the speech point?

15. “Recognize cultural assumptions. People from different times and cultures thought much differently than you.”
There are obviously many considerations to take with this technique, but I am going to spin this into a more broad Toastmasters application. Speakers should not forget who their audience is. If a speaker chooses a topic that is wholly inappropriate for a mixed audience, such as ours, it would behoove us as evaluators to let him or her know. If you are uncomfortable with the topic and others around you seem to be as well, go ahead and mention that in your evaluation, but be sure to briefly justify your statement, then move on. “I don’t believe this was the most appropriate topic for this audience because… Rather than commenting further about that, I’m going to provide some feedback on your presentation in general.”

16. “Be fair, not selfish. Each person’s most basic bias is for themselves.”
Once again, I’d like to encourage you to use your evaluation time to provide feedback on the speech, rather than taking time to talk about yourself. The time you spend talking about yourself during an evaluation is time taken away from the speaker’s experience.

There are a lot of techniques to work with here. The goal is to make using them a habit. Incorporate them one or two at a time, focus on them for a while, then add in more. Together we can strive to be like the first-time evaluator Liz mentioned and give the best evaluations someone else has ever seen.