In my first few years in Toastmasters I had seen Speak-a-thon meetings and all-Table Topics meetings. In a Speak-a-thon, all the time is dedicated to prepared speeches; Table Topics were skipped and speech evaluations were handled one-on-one between speaker and evaluator outside the meeting time. In an all-Table Topics meeting, there are no prepared speeches or evaluations, only Table Topics.
The thought came to me that there should be an equivalent special meeting for evaluations. This is the format I developed:
- 3 prepared speeches
- No Table Topics
- 3 evaluations, one for each of the prepared speeches
- 3 evaluations of the evaluations, one for each of the prepared speech evaluations
For criteria of the evaluations of the evaluations, the
Evaluation Contest judge ballot can be used. Since the more experienced evaluators are typically doing these, they often can provide many other insights or ideas as well. Certainly they should all emphasize the importance of productive suggestions and positive encouragement.
In general, the prepared speech evaluators should be less experienced evaluators and the evaluation evaluators would be more experienced evaluators.
All of my clubs have found this format to be so valuable that they have continued to use it a couple times a year. Try it!
