President's Tip of the Week

Tips organized by date

Tips organized by topic

Evaluation Workshop
(4/29/09)

By Jodie Kay Petra, January 2001

Toastmasters skills benefit us far beyond Club activities alone. We can use our skills, for example, in our jobs. This includes our evaluation skills, one of the most important skills utilized by Toastmasters.

Evaluations benefit the speakers as well as the evaluators. The speakers can find methods for improvement, receive recognition and a boost in self esteem, and receive encouragement to improve. Evaluators are able to receive satisfaction from helping others, build self-understanding and leadership skills, as well as enhance listening and impromptu skills.

If we follow the adult learning module we realize how important evaluations are. We can take what we've learned during evaluations, practice it, and then improve on our next speeches.

Evaluations are assessments from our own perspective of another's behavior, or an opinion. It is the speaker's decision to accept this opinion. Evaluations also give us the opportunity to be a source of information.

Evaluations differ from judgments in that judges pick winners. An evaluator's job is to motivate the speaker to improve through encouragement, to facilitate improvement by making suggestions, and to counsel. The evaluator needs to point out the speaker's strengths as well as areas to improve, all while offering encouragement and calming nerves.

To improve evaluations, examining the criteria of an Evaluation Contest Judge's Ballot is helpful. Analytical quality is worth 40%, recommendations are 30%, technique is 15% and summation is 15%.

Tips to remember when giving evaluations include concentrating on the speaker's behavior and not the person, telling the speaker what you perceive the message was, phrase comments from a first person point of view (I saw..., I think..., I felt...), and evaluating the other audience members' reactions.

Different techniques of evaluation include the sandwich or Oreo method (strength, need improvement, strength), the metaphor method (your speech was like a bicycle ride...), and the anchor method (such as an acrostic). Remember to avoid whitewashing evaluations but rather give the speaker something to work with.