The Smedley Rule

Over one hundred fourteen million people cried or cheered while watching Super Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks.  The average ticket price per seat  was $4,600 making it the most expensive in Super Bowl history. 

Few people are old enough to remember when the NFL almost went bankrupt in the early 1960’s.  Several franchises were on the verge of financial collapse, few games were aired on television and most NFL stadiums were half empty.

Super Bowl I, between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs was played in January of 1967.  It was held at the Los Angeles Coliseum with over 33,000 unsold tickets as fans were outraged at the $12  ticket price.   

During the 1960’s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle revitalized the NFL with policies of revenue sharing, league negotiation of television contracts and the player drafts in an attempt to create competitive parity among all teams.

As a result of the competitive parity, some people used the term the “Rozelle Rule” in regard to an old adage that “On any given Sunday, any NFL team can beat can other NFL team.” 

This rule applies to Toastmasters.  We’ll call it “The “Smedley Rule” in honor of Ralph Smedley who founded Toatmaters.

The Smedley Rule: at any given Toastmasters meeting, you will either, and, or learn something new, meet someone new,  laugh, cry, or be amazed  at the speeches and if you’re lucky, your life or someone else’s life will change for the better. 

No matter how tired or weary I might be, whenever I leave a Toastmaster meeting, I am fully energized. 

Get Up and Grow! How Effective Evaluation Changed My Life

You know, public speaking and fiction writing share a common thread.  Sure, they’re both platforms you can use to share a message, tell a story, drive a point home, inspire your audience. . . but beyond that, they are also two of the most terrifying, nail-biting experiences you could possibly put yourself through.  Sharing your pen-scratches and speaking on stage are particularly gripping, heart-palpitating  experiences because when you share your work, you’re sharing. . . well, a piece of you!  That’s no easy feat.

So how do we go from being a terrified heap to a cool, calm, collected speaker?  The old adage of “practice, practice, practice” certainly rings true.  But I’d like to take a minute to look at the other side of the coin—when you are an evaluator.  As an evaluator, you have the special task of helping a speaker to grow by providing effective, quality feedback. 

This is nothing to sneeze at.  A good, honest evaluation can help a shaky speaker grow by leaps and bounds.  A bad one can send them running for the hills.

Last month I completed an online course hosted by the Houston Spectrum Writer’s Guild called “Imagination Boot Camp.”  This is a 10 day program in which you’re tasked with writing 1,000 words per day—and you e-mail your messy, first-draft work to the organizer each night by 12:01 a.m.  No edits.  At the end of the course you participate in a one-on-one phone session to discuss what you have written.

So here’s a snippet of the text I produced on Day 3.

“A busy man who traveled often, the doctor was sheltered from the knowledge that Laurel had been missing since her wedding day.  The story was huge amongst the locals.  Some called Laurel a runaway bride, suffering from cold feet.  Others spun a more sinister tale of kidnap.  One of the shopkeepers swears she saw the infamous Lieutenant Corcoran lurking near Laurel’s bedroom window at dawn.  It was well known that he was wanted for treason, and kidnapping a soon-to-be member of the wealthy Brighton family seemed a good way to negotiate with law enforcement.”

I showed this piece to a number of people, and I received feedback on it—or, as we call it in Toastmasters, evaluation.  Two types of feedback stood out to me—because these are things we want to avoid when we are in the evaluator role in Toastmasters.

 The Whitewash:

“It’s good.”

How many of us have received this as feedback?  You wait with baited breath for more—but it never comes.  I used to enjoy whitewashes.  I viewed them as positive affirmation that I was on the right track and doing a good job.  But over time, as I heard those same two words over and over, I grew frustrated with them. 

I wasn’t learning anything.   This evaluation means nothing to me.  It’s just a generalized statement that says “you opened your mouth and said words, and I acknowledge that I heard them.” 

Let’s talk about another type of evaluation:

The Two-by-Four to the Face:  

“It’s not that bad, but you need to make Lieutenant Corcoran less stupid.  You shouldn’t make him kidnap a girl on her wedding day.”

This one can deflate someone.  It always catches me by surprise.  Believe me, I’ve learned to develop a very thick skin over time, but the two-by-four always gives me pause.  At first blush it may seem like there is real information here—a helpful suggestion for improvement.  But you dissect it—it’s like a pair of pants with those fake pockets—there’s nothing there.  “Make your character less stupid.”  How?  And what does that even mean?  This isn’t useful to me, because there’s no takeaway; it’s just a flimsy, generalized statement—similar to the whitewash.    

If you can’t do anything with it, it isn’t valuable feedback.

So what does an effective evaluation look like?  What better way to explain than to show you?  At the end of my bootcamping experience I got on the phone with someone who gave me one of the best evaluations I’ve received in my life. 

The lightbulb turned on—he helped me reach that “aha!” moment that has taken me to the next level.  Broken down into four parts, here’s how it went:

INTRODUCTION:  PROMOTION OF SELF-ESTEEM

 

“Daniela, your tendency toward scene work and strong dialogue skills make you a natural for novel writing. It’s like you decided to be a tightrope walker one day, and you already have good balance and are comfortable with heights.”

 

BODY:  AREA OF IMPROVEMENT

 

“You recognize description is not your strong suit. I see some overwriting, overtelling in your work.  You want your readers to be active participants in your story.  Without descriptive elements, they become passive observers.”

BODY:  HOW TO IMPROVE THIS

“Practice using your whole body when you write. Visualize a scene in your head—is it day? Night? Raining? Cold?  Hot? What do you hear?  What do you see to your left?  Don’t pick up a pen to write until you can clearly see the scene in your head.”

CONCLUSION:  POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

 

“The most important thing is to keep going.  Keep up the regular practice.  You have a strong vision and the self-discipline to write every day.  That’s huge.”

All in all—the perfect evaluation.  Honest, positive feedback that gave me something to work toward.  But evaluation doesn’t end there.  As a speaker, you aren’t doing yourself justice if you sit down and let it roll off your back.  If we truly want to grow, we must challenge ourselves to take our evaluator’s words to heart—and act! 

Immediately after boot camp I picked up a book on descriptive writing.  I read it.  I practiced visualizing things before I wrote.  And finally, last week, I sat down and rewrote the scene I’d originally drafted in boot camp—from scratch. No edits.  It looks very different now.

The doctor rounded the corner, picking up his pace as he walked through rows of identical tents.  Two women clad in eclectic colors glanced in his direction.  They perched close together, shaded by a dusty awning, furious whispers firing back and forth between them.  Amidst their pointed hisses the doctor’s ears picked up one audible word:  “Laurel.”

 

He slowed his pace, craning his neck slightly as he hovered past their shop.  He felt somewhat embarrassed to be eavesdropping, but he itched to know.  Why were these women discussing his patient?   They were much older than Laurel—clearly not friends of hers.  And he’d never seen them at the inn before.  The few clips of conversation he was able to decipher sent his heart careening to his knees.

 

"Wedding...missing.."

“Kidnapped…”

“…yes, Corcoran.”

Thursday Night Lights - "Balance Between Family and Work"

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Jeff Morrical, CC

Our Toastmaster for this meeting, Jeff Morrical,CC, chose the theme of this meeting "Balance Between Family and Work". This is always an intriguing conundrum. This theme was successfully woven in throughout the meeting by our members and guests.

Our President, Debbie Gregori, DTM opened the meeting with her usual reminder to our members to be certain that they were evaluated in their CL manuals for the contributions they would make during the meeting.

"Get Up And Grow" is her chosen theme. A subtitle may be "The Job Isn't Finished Until The Paperwork Is Done!!"

New Business:

None. How bout that?

Old Business :

Peter Gregori, CC Sergeant-At-Arms reminded our members that we are abandoning Yahoo Groups as our conduit for group communications and migrating the Katy Toastmaster membership to the free website http://katy.toastmastersclubs.org/.

Jim Harrington, DTM gave us all some very significant information regarding the upcoming District 56 Fall Conference that will take place on Saturday, November 8, 2014.  On the District 56 Website the start time is listed as 7:00 AM.  What they meant to say is that registration begins at 7:00 AM. The activities will commence at 8:30 AM.

Theme and Explanation of Duties

Balance Between Family and Work

Jeff started the meeting with an anecdote about his new status as a newlywed, self employed and working from home. It seems his wife grew weary of his interruptions and breaks throughout the day and locked the door. Jeff did not say which door.

Jeff  presented us with an egregious lie about the General Evaluator, Walt Butler, while introducing him. Had he not given us a clue it may have been unforgivable. Walt? Caterpillar? Oh Deere.

Walt's Evaluation Team:

Grammarian: Michelle Perzan - her words of the day were STABLE and STABILITY.
Ballot Counter: Amy Duncan
Ah Counter: Floyd Spencer
Listen Master: Linda Goldberg, DTM
Timer: Vrushali Patil
Greeter: Bryan Clark

Prepared Speeches

Neha Sinha - CC Manual #4 How To Say It

Fear of Failure

Neha offered us insights into lessons learned through the process of competing in the "Humorous Speech Contest". She had taken first place at our club contest and the area contest. She competed in the Division N contest this past Saturday and won third place.

Neha had some keen insights into the subject that were fresh in her memory. Some of  her observations that are particularly noteworthy;

"success does not give the lessons that failure does." Neha Sinha referred to the two first place finishes and compared them to the results of the Division contest.

"success does not give the lessons that failure does." Neha Sinha

Neha took and gave us lessons from Thomas Edison. When asked about the many failures that led him to some of his inventions he replied that they were not failures but that he had "found 10,000 ways that do not work."

Debbie Gregori, DTM - Speaking to Inform #2

"I Am The Toastmaster !?"

Debbie, as a DTM, has fulfilled this role, that is of Toastmaster, often. What she offered tonight was something for the experienced members as well as the newer members who have never filled this role in a meeting.

She opened with the exclamation and played the role of a newbie. "Oh my gosh. I am the Toastmaster!!"

uh-oh ?

"Oh my gosh I am the Toastmaster ?????"

The guidelines for this role are sorely missed in the Competent Leader manual. Debbie pointed this out. The good news is there are other resources for someone seeking information on how to do it. 

There are two pages devoted to this role in the Competent Communication Manual. Besides these

she pointed out that Toastmasters International does have a wealth of information as she referred us to this page:

http://www.toastmasters.org/Members/MemberExperience/MeetingRoles/Toastmaster.aspx

And again on Katy Toastmasters website there is a checklist of sorts, built around a Meeting Agenda, that points out exactly when and where, during  a meeting, that a Toastmaster would speak. The file is named "Toastmaster_Check_List.xlsx.

http://katy.toastmastersclubs.org/downloads.html

Madame President let it be known that there are a host of resources available to us. Especially the people maybe sitting right next to us. Experienced Toastmasters. Our mentors. It was not said but she held true to her theme: Get Up and Grow.

Table Topics

Our Table Topics Master was the one and only Ni Bashir. Somehow shopping did not make it as one of the topics. She was well armed and prepared. That was a good thing since one speaker dropped out and we had additional time. (What is that?)

Participating were:

Wil Delgado - "If work allowed you more free time how would you spend it?" Wil, currently being pressed into 55 hours a week, would seek more time with his family.

Lalit Patel - Lalit expressed a desire to spend more time with family.

Jing Zhao - "it's good to be a little bit of a workaholic"

Heleane Stabeneau - Mused about the conniving of a controlling employer.

Jesika Nimmo - Our youngest member "What is most important?"  "My boyfriend !!"

Matt Nimmo

Craig Coussons (guest) Empty nest is not really empty.

Ed Shaw (guest)

Cynthia Westbrook - Empty nest? "it's a wonderful feeling when you get them off the payroll"

Evaluations and Awards

Walt Butler delivered a brief but concise evaluation of the meeting and was assited by his evaluation team. We did fairly well. Out meeting began and ended on time. Our Topics Master, Ni Bashir, was very well prepared. This author would point out some things that he could not have been aware of. The Reception team, or "Greeter", performed exceptionally well. A huge shout out to Bryan Clark and Floyd Spencer for making that happen.

The myriad members that make the Sergeant-At-Arms role so much easier. People that set up, pick up and clean up. He does not really see everyone that is doing something. It is all very much appreciated.

Cynthia Westbrook

Best Table Topics

Cynthia Westbrook owns this. The "Phrase That Pays" in this weeks Table Topics was:

"it's a wonderful feeling when you get them off the payroll"

By The Numbers

In Attendance: 27

Guests: 8