Evaluation And Feedback Project Speech

Objectives Of The “Evaluation And Feedback” Project

“Evaluation And Feedback” is the fourth level 1 pathway project. This is a 3-in-1 project where the toastmaster has to do the following:

• Present a prepared speech, referred to as the 1st Speech
• Present a second prepared speech incorporating the suggestions given to him/her by his/her evaluator for his/her previous speech (the 1st speech). This prepared speech is referred to as the 2nd Speech. The 2nd Speech can be the same as the 1st Speech or a totally different speech so long as it takes into consideration the feedback given by the evaluator in the 1st Speech.
• Take up the role of an evaluator and give feedback to another toastmaster’s prepared speech.

Evaluation And Feedback – Daniel Sun’s Pathway Project

Speaker: Daniel Sun, CC

Pathway: Engaging Humour

Level 1, Project 4, Evaluation And Feedback

Title: Cold Reading

Date of 1st Speech: 16 November 2023

Date of 2nd Speech: 21 March 2024

Inspiration Behind This Project

Most of my prepared speeches are trimmed down by more than 70% of my originally prepared content during speech delivery. This speech is an extension and a more intensive look into a particular area and technique used in magic tricks.

In my speech entitled, “Magician or Conman?” I touched briefly on the use of “verbal manipulation”. Verbal manipulation is greatly used in magic tricks and especially so in Mentalism, a particular field of magic. Magic tricks can be divided into many fields, such as “Card Magic”, “Stage Magic”, “Street Magic”, etc.

In the field “Mentalism”, the magician presents himself as a psychic who can read the mind of his audience.

This technique is also employed by conmen. Cold Reading is a technique where a supposedly psychic pretends to read the mind of his target.

The techniques presented in this speech is taken from a magic book entitled, “Cold Reading”.

1st Speech

Speech Opening (1st Speech)

(Behave like a psychic reading the mind of the audience.)

I sense that some of you here are facing certain challenges. 

Are you having some problem with your finances? Is there anyone having some money problem? No?

Ah, but you do not know how the problem may affect your health and perhaps your relationships too.

Club Presidents, Distinguished Toastmasters, fellow toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen. 

I have just given a demonstration of what is known as cold reading.

Conmen and Cult Leaders

Have you ever encountered one or more fortune tellers, gurus or psychics who attempted to tell you of your past, present and perhaps even your future?

Many of these people are just small-time conmen while a few who have played their cards well, they managed to build their reputations amongst many. Some have amassed a great fortune for themselves and secured a high social status among the elites. Some even succeeded in becoming cult leaders. Some are even venerated as deities after they have passed on.

Verbal Manipulation

I would like to bring to your remembrance my previous speech (Engaging Humour Pathway Level 1 Project 3: Introduction To Vocal Variety And Body Language Project Speech entitled, “Magician or Conman?”) about the use of verbal manipulation in deception. The key is to be vague in whatever you say. Let the words you speak be subjectable to any interpretations. 

Today I will elaborate a little deeper into the use of verbal manipulation in cold reading. 

One, let your target interpret those vague words of yours for you. This is called fishing for information. When your target has voluntarily provided personal information to you, all you have to do is to affirm the information. Let the target do more of the talking and you do the affirming.

If they reply, “no” to you, you will try to turn those “no” into “maybe”, and eventually turn “maybe” into “yes”. Get them to keep saying yes and you would have succeeded. Congratulations! You have won yourself a convert.

Demonstration

I once heard a narration. The fortune teller said, “I perceived that you once suffered a certain loss.” The target replied, “no.” The fortune teller then said, “Why don’t you think a little deeper. It could be very long ago, say during your childhood and you have forgotten about it. Perhaps it is a pain that you want to suppress and so you have forgotten.”

After some pondering, the target said, “I think my parents once said that I had a sibling who died as an infant.”

Ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. The target has just volunteered personal information and gave affirmation to the fortune teller.

Health, Wealth, Relationship

At the beginning of my speech, I mentioned three broad categories in my demonstration where most, if not all human concerns fall under. They are:

1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Relationship

For health, there is an inner health, which can be your mental and emotional health. Outer health is largely perceived as physical health. All these are related to “spiritual health”. 

Perhaps some of you may ask, “What is spiritual health?” Ah! We can enter into a long discussion for that alone. For those who either have a religion or believe in spiritual things, you will have your personal definition of what spiritual health is.   

For others, you or I can define spiritual health in various ways as we discuss along the way. Remember, let words spoken be subjectable to any interpretations and let your target interpret them for you.  

For wealth, there is also an inner wealth and an outer wealth. Outer wealth can be interpreted as money explicitly. Money is related to careers and business, which in turn leads on to networking. Networking is about relationships. Ah … see how one thing lead to another and they are all connected?

I believe you know that inner wealth can mean happiness, stability, emotional health. Now I am connecting wealth with health. You can move from one subject to another easily.

If your target says that he does not have problem with health, you can talk about wealth and how it can affect his health.

Do Your Research

Now what if you encounter that someone who will sternly say no to everything you say?

There will be such people out there and they are many. So in whatever you do if you want to succeed, you must know certain situations and people to avoid. 

In the early days of my teaching careers, I had colleagues who told me that they charge a high fee for private tuition and they advertised, “A-grade guaranteed!” I asked these colleagues how could they make such guarantees? They replied me, “Offer to give the first tuition free and from that first session, assess the student’s ability. If he/she has no potential, do not continue. This is an example of doing your homework and thus, knowing who to avoid.

Not too long ago, there was a man called the “White Dragon King”, in Chinese, 白龙王. He was honoured and respected by many Chinese celebrities, mafia and tycoons. However, there were people that he totally refuse to meet, for example, Carina Lau despite the fact that Carina Lau’s husband, Tony Leung, was very close to him, 白龙王. He said that Carina Lau would never believe anything he would say and so it was pointless to meet her. I am not judging here whether is he a conman but however, if you want to be successful, you need to do your research.

Research into the background, events and personalities of your target.

Knowing your target’s background will make you sound like a psychic. You will also need to know whether your target is someone who is sceptical, doubting and refusing to suggestions made. These are people you have to avoid. They will challenge you and make you look really bad.

Conclusion Of First Speech

Behind every performance, be it a magic show, a concert performance, the performers have put in much effort in preparation for that moment. Research and rehearsing is part of that effort. The performer did not just step up to the stage and do his/her thing by impromptu. If you try to do an impromptu, you will fall flat on your face.

Back to you, Toastmaster of the Evening.

Feedback From Evaluator On The 1st Speech

• Establish further the importance of why we need to know about cold reading (e.g. in the midst of the rising cases of scams).

• Highlight the impact of cold reading further by asking the audience questions and show how their “No” turn into “Yes”.

• Share some tips with the audience so that we can better watch out the signs and not become susceptible to “cold reading”.

Modification I Made To My 1st Speech In Preparation Of The 2nd Speech

Personally, I find feedback that requires me to increase the scope of my content impractical. Recently, I too receive feedback from the audience on my Club Contest Speech 2024 entitled, “I Learn, I Grow, I Evolve”, that I should also tell the audience what if I have not grown and evolved.

The content to all my speeches have already been trimmed by more than 70% from my original drafts. During the delivery of my speech, the content was further reduced to meet the 7-minute speech duration. If I were to include more content to my speech, I would have exceeded the time limit by more than 10 minutes.

Thus, for my 2nd speech, I made a drastic change to my original content and its structure. Besides “Cold Reading”, I also mentioned “Communicating With Spirits”, another method used by so-called psychic in divination. I related some personal and family incidents to back up my claim, which took up a great portion of my speech. This would orientate my speech towards warning against scams.

As a result, I had to reduced and simplified much of my original content from my 1st Speech.

I also gave a demonstration with an example on how I moved from the concern with health to wealth and then to relationship and then bring everything back to health.

I did not take into the consideration of the feedback on sharing some tips on how to watch out the signs of cold reading because if the audience has already understood my content on how cold reading operates, they should be able to tell when they encounter one.

2nd Speech

Speech Opening (2nd Speech)

Club President, District Officers, Distinguished Toastmasters and fellow toastmasters.

How many of you would like to have your fortune read by a fortune teller? 

I used to like people to tell me about my future. During my reservist training, I came to know a person, named Sam, who can read people’s personalities and offer advice to almost every man in the battalion. He was very friendly and offered words of wisdom to everyone he met. He was unofficially the battalion counsellor. He offered advices to the cooks, the drivers, from the private soldiers, right up to the Staff Officers, short of the Commanding Officer.

We developed quite a close relationship and I consulted him much about my future. However, let me tell you one important thing. They can tell you almost anything about your past, your personality but not a single thing about your future.

2 Methods Used By Fortune Tellers

Fortune tellers, psychics or gurus, whatever they are, whoever they are, operate by 2 means:

1. Cold Reading
2. Communicating with spirits

How do I know? My mother used to visit many mediums, both Chinese mediums and Malay mediums. Whether they are in the north, south, east, west, or central of Singapore. Why? She hoped that they could help her bring her husband back home.

Even Sam, my friend, told everyone openly that he lived with a spirit, that he kept in a box at home. He even showed us that box when we visited his home during one of the night out during our in-cam–training.

Cold Reading

How does Cold Reading operate?

First, you must understand that all human concerns fall into 3 broad categories.

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationship

Health can be subdivided into 2 sub-categories: (1) Inner Health and (2) Outer Health.

Inner health refers to your mental health and emotional health. Outer health obviously refers to your physical health.

Wealth too can be subdivided into 2 sub-categories:

1. Inner Wealth and
2. Outer Wealth.

What is inner wealth? Are you happy? Are you emotionally stable?

Hey! Isn’t that what inner health just like what I had just mentioned? Can you see that we are looking at the same thing from different angle using different terms?

What is outer wealth then? Obviously it is about money. Money has to do with your job, your career, your business. Don’t you think that your promotion in your job depends on your relationship with your superiors and your fellow colleagues? How well you can prosper in your business depends on your relationship with your clients. Now isn’t that about the third category, relationship?

Do you now see that all these 3 categories are inter-connected and flow from one to the other?

If I say to you, “You have a health issue” and you replied, “No! I am very healthy”.

I would then say to you, “But you have a financial issue and that is going to affect your health.”

You might stubbornly challenged me and say, “No! I have lots of money.”

I would then say to you, “Don’t tell me that you do not have problems in your family. Do you quarrel with your wife? Do you worry about your children’s examination? One day your mistress is going to come to your home and knock on your door to confront your wife. When that day happen, your family will be in ruin. It will then affect your finances and ruin your health. It may not happen now but sooner or later, that is going to happen.”

Nobody can say that his life is perfect with no problems. I can challenge anyone in one of these 3 concerns in their life and jump from one concern to another in the area of health, wealth and relationship.

Fishing

This brings me to my next point. In cold reading, be as vague as you can in what you say. Let your target interpret what you say for himself. You are making him volunteer personal information to you. This is call fishing for information.

Cold reading is a technique based on verbal manipulation. In verbal manipulation, the things that you say are very general and very vague. Almost anything will qualify.

Whenever your target says no, you will respond with a but then, are you aware … do you see …you do not realise …. Turn the no into a maybe and turn the maybe into a yes. The moment your target says a “yes”, you respond with a “yes”. You are now in agreement.

In fishing for personal information, say something vague to your target and let him interpret for himself/herself what you are saying. If he responds by saying, “Do you mean this? I have this ….” or “Sometime back this happened to me …”

There you have it. Your target has just volunteered personal information to you. Just continue affirming with “Yes” to what your target says and lead him/her on.

My Experience With A Numerologist

Several years ago, I was introduced to a numerologist. He introduced himself to me how he is the best of the best. Asked me for my phone number my house unit number, my block number, my birth date.

He suddenly exclamed with gusto:

“哗！你有桃花运！” which meant in English, you are attractive to women. 

Guys, if you want to be attractive with women, you need not depend on your stars. You just need to be tall and hunky even if you look like a toad.

He said it with such gusto as if he was shocked with a revelation. He was trying to excite me and hoped that I would enquire more about that proclamation he made over me. Then I would have fallen for it. 

If I responded, “Oh! Is it? Tell me more about it.”

I would have fallen into his trap. He would start playing his card.

Or perhaps I responded in a more moderate way, “Ur … I am not sure, but there is this person …. Does that count? Is she attracted to me?”

Then he would have begin to reel me in bit by bit.

Instead I replied, “I never had a single girlfriend in my life.” Then he immediately covered his track by saying, “Oh! You missed your chance already. She ran away already. However, 9 years down the road, you will get another chance.” 

I would not be able to find him 9 years later to confront him.

Conclusion Of Second Speech

Ladies and gentlemen, stay away from cold readers and keep your money in your pocket.

What about those who operate by spirits?

Stay away from them. You will pay a steep price if you receive any blessings from them. 

Earlier on, I shared about my mother visiting many mediums. She died at the age of 54. My sister suffered greatly too in her life as my mother got her involved as well.

Do not mess around with spirits.

Back to you, toastmaster.