My Second Hosting Experience: Taylor’s Rapid Fire Episode 2

A Second Hosting Experience = Hidden Talent Unlocked!

In late 2018, I once again became the host for Taylor’s University’s Rapid Fire. I accepted the opportunity, because I wanted to improve my performance from my previous time of being the host. Knowing that the previous time was also my first, I knew I had a lot of room for improvement, and that was what I was aiming for this time around. My intention was to keep doing what I did right, and to improve what I lacked then. Now looking back, I realise; being invited back to have my second hosting experience meant I was doing something right. This was a great confidence boost for me as it gave me reason to believe that I may have a knack for hosting.

Non-Verbal Communication

This round, I learnt to pick up body language from potential participants. While walking with a very visible cameraman following me around as I looked for students to interview, I developed the ability to discern between those who were comfortable and uncomfortable with getting interviewed. If they were not, their body would show it, whether implicitly or explicitly. Examples include walking or looking away (implicit), head shaking left and right (explicit), or some variation. Contrarily, if they were comfortable, they wouldn’t show any of these signs. Whenever I found these people, I deduced they either didn’t mind getting interviewed or were comfortable enough to reject me. Unlocking this ability to read body language allowed me to better filter my participants.

This eye carried over for during the Hosting as well. Whenever participants displayed seemingly listless responses to questions, this would alert me to ensure that the energy stays up. I would try shifting to questions that they were more energetic in responding to, increasing my own energy, or improvising some viable solution that I saw fit.

Technical (Linguistic) Skill: How you phrase your question matters (again)

My main area of improvement this round was my technical skill. There were times where I had asked my question too broadly, and thus got overly broad answers. My supervisor had to refine the words I used in order to reap specific desired answers. This taught me the power of phrasing. Simple adjustments to questions can seriously alter the responses to it.

An extension to this would also be to carefully craft the follow up questions to steer the conversation towards desired domains of conversation most useful for the content.

However, the true test of skill is balancing between the technical craftsmanship of language used and choosing the questions that energise the interviewee.

Enjoyed this reflection? Check out my Hosting portfolio to see what else I’ve learned!

Credits
Written by Danniel Iskandar
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