President's Tip of the Week

I Have Been Inspired By Wayne
(7/1/08)

Wayne shared with me recently that he saves all the written evaluation sheets he receives after giving a speech. When he is working on his next project, he reviews those written evaluation sheets to get an idea about what he should work on in addition to the project’s goals.

Wayne says that although he enjoys reading the complimentary feedback, it only gives him a temporary warm fuzzy feeling. He is more interested in pulling out and focusing on evaluation sheets that give him specific suggestions for improvement. Recently, Wayne decided to pull out the warm fuzzy sheets so that he is left with only those evaluation sheets that provide him with useful information.

I learned 2 things from Wayne.

First, it's worth saving your evaluation sheets and reviewing them regularly. I have no doubt that the growth we have seen in Wayne's speaking ability has a great deal to do with his focus on the specific feedback he received on those sheets.

Second, I learned that it's worth investing the minute of silence to give someone a useful piece of information. This is great practice for giving your oral evaluations as well. It can be frustrating, though, because a minute is such a short amount of time for the length of our evaluation sheets. Don't feel as if you have to put something in every space. Lately, I have been trying to put one positive thing and one challenge on my sheets. If the rest of the sheet stays blank, so be it. My discussion with Wayne confirmed for me that this is a useful approach.