I’ve mentioned many roles that a non-speaking toastmaster can take up during a Toastmasters meeting but the one role that fills me with dread is that of the Evaluator and tonight, that’s me, The Evaluator.
You see, you don’t just get up, give your speech and it’s all over. Every speaker is assigned an evaluator, the evaluator listens to your speech and then later on in the meeting they get up and they tell you what they think.
Scary, isn’t it?
But fear not, the Toastmasters is an “American” concept so evaluations are not quite as scary as they might have been. Evaluators must harness the power of positive feedback and only say nice things, no bad things at all, not even a little one which perhaps takes the fun out of it when you’re an evaluator. They favour the sandwich method, two nice things and in-between a slightly less nice comment, we in the business like to term it as a “point for improvement”.
Indeed, a point for improvement is a sneaky way of saying something bad but you can get away with it if you put a positive spin on it at the end, comments like “the speech was horrendous but perhaps next time you could give it at home”? (the inflection of a question also takes the edge off)
Tonight I get to evaluate not just any speech, to have the opportunity to send someone accidentally home in tears, no, tonight I get to evaluate an ice-breaker, someone’s first ever speech with toastmasters where a bad evaluation could result in them never ever speaking in public again!
So no pressure then!
Kirribilli 