Get Evaluations to Grow

You’re speaking, so you know what you’re saying. But, do you know what your audience is hearing?

Or perhaps you’re writing. Do you know what your audience is reading?

I know many speakers who’ve been surprised when they discovered the distance between the message they sent and the message the audience received. That’s not really unexpected. After all, we really can’t gauge how our content or delivery comes across to others unless we’ve had the evaluations of others.

For example, I’ve learned from speaking evaluations that I’m often too serious, and that I should lighten up. That’s not something that was obvious to me, but after several formal and informal evaluations, I now recognize the truth of that observation.

In the same way, I’ve learned to reduce the amount of content in my speeches. When I’m writing a speech, I now know I’m not writing a book. By that, I mean the listener can take in much less than a reader, and it’s up to the speaker to make the content fit. That, too, I learned from the evaluations of others.

If you can get someone to evaluate...