If you're a Toastmasters regular, you will know how important evaluation is to develop your public speaking skills. To ensure you continually grow and learn from experience, consistently evaluating your performance is key, as constructive feedback is essential for improvement.
Often an evaluation can feel uncomfortable, and both the speaker and the evaluator can even feel a little awkward about the process. However, the benefits of meaningful, tangible, and actionable insight about your speech should far outweigh any discomfort.
At Toastmasters we live by the motto, 'if it is a speech, we evaluate it' and everyone receives some feedback to support their growth journey. As a public speaking group, the Toastmasters learning pathway facilitates a safe environment for people to test, trial and challenge themselves to improve their oratory skills in front of an audience, and evaluations are an essential part of this education. In fact, we would go as far as to say evaluations are critical to the function of Toastmasters.
If you genuinely want to improve your public speaking and leadership skills, you must learn how to deliver and receive supportive and encouraging evaluations.
Evaluations are incredibly powerful and give you the opportunity to uplift, enrich and empower your peers. If you're watching a speech, you have the chance to be an evaluator and to give someone recognition and feedback to help them on their speaking journey. Whether you deliver the feedback verbally or via written suggestions / a report, you need to take the opportunity seriously and reflect not just on the content of the speech, but all the key characteristics that make up a powerful performance.
These include:
In some cases at Toastmasters, a speaker may ask for feedback on a specific area, such as utilisation of presentation slides or comment on descriptive language. However it's also important you comment on a variety of the characteristics to provide a complete evaluation on the strengths and the areas for improvement.
Evaluations are about supporting the speaker to positively look forward to progressing onto their next speaking endeavour. At Toastmasters, we utilise evaluation forms to award and comment on each speaker based on their project criteria, however here are some useful tips that apply to all evaluations.
Although we are often our harshest critic, it's important as a speaker to reflect on your performance and receive feedback with an open mind. At Toastmasters, all members of the club have the opportunity to offer supportive comments, alongside a formal evaluation. This gives you the chance to reflect on individual preferences and to build a plan for progression that supports your own individual goals.
At Toastmasters we're strong believers in continual growth and there are always new ways to challenge ourselves. Our learning does not just come from our own evaluations, but in conducting evaluations for others and by listening. As a species we learn a lot from the events and actions of those around us, and seek podcasts, books and training to support our growth. Listening is just one of those tools and at Toastmasters there is a lot to learn from others as witnesses to their public speaking journey.
As effective communicators and leaders we need constructive feedback, evaluations and experiences that continue to enrich and enhance as we strive for personal and professional growth. The key to being a great public speaker is in the art of mastering evaluation.
If you are interested in joining us at Strictly Speaking Harrogate to see evaluating in practice, get in contact today!
Jessica Dodds
President at Strictly Speaking Harrogate Toastmasters (2020-2021)