I was holding the trophy when he got to me.
Second place. I hate second place trophies. Nobody builds a shelf for them. I’d worked on that speech for weeks, rehearsed it in the truck, rehearsed it in the kitchen, ran it for people who’d tell me the truth, and I walked into that contest expecting to win. Then they read the names in the wrong order and handed me a piece of wood with a little plate on it, and I walked off the stage trying to figure out what had just happened.
I got maybe ten steps.
A man I’d never met stepped in front of me, put a hand out, and said, “Let’s talk about what you could’ve done better.”
Here’s the part I’ve had to be honest with myself about since. He wasn’t wrong to think I needed that conversation. I did. Walking off that stage, the only thing in my head was how did he beat me? I truly didn’t understand. The other speaker was good. I thought I was better. Call it pride or call it competitiveness, whichever fits. I wasn’t mad about losing so much as confused by it, and confusion is worse. Somebody was going to have to explain it to me.
It just wasn’t going to be him.
I’ve given more evaluations in Toastmasters than I can count, and taken more than I’d like to admit.
Feedback is the whole point of the place. Every speech gets one. There’s a person whose job that night is to stand up after you sit down and tell you, in front of everyone, what worked and what didn’t. That sounds brutal from the outside. It isn’t, and the reason it isn’t is the room.
You know the evaluator. You’ve watched them bomb a speech in March. They watched you lose your place in April. You’ve eaten bad cookies together during the break. By the time they stand up to talk about your delivery, you decided months ago whether they get to. The evaluation lands because everything around it was built first.
And when you want feedback from somebody outside the club, you go find them. You pick the person. You ask.
What almost never happens is a stranger walking up cold with a diagnosis.
So when that man opened with what I could’ve done better, I wasn’t hearing an evaluator. I was hearing somebody who’d watched a contest, formed some opinions, and decided my ten seconds off the stage was the right moment to deliver them.
He may have been dead on. I’ll never know.
I said something polite and kept walking, which is about the best I had in me.
I think about that when I’m the one in the audience.
I’ve sat through a lot of speeches from people I don’t know and I’ve had plenty of thoughts about them. What I say afterward, if I say anything, is this: I really enjoyed your speech — if you ever want to talk about it, I’d be glad to.
Then I let it sit.
Most of the time they smile and say thanks and that’s the end of it. Every so often somebody finds me a week later and asks what I saw. Those conversations are good, and they’re good because they asked.
The other contestant beat me.
It took me a while to be able to say that without the word “probably” in front of it. The explanation came eventually, from a couple of people who’d known me for years, who’d heard early versions of that speech and could tell me exactly where it had gone soft.
They were right. He was better that night, and the reasons weren’t mysterious at all once the right people said them out loud.
The trophy’s in a drawer.
David Willis 