Practice Team Building In Your Club

Your Toastmasters club offers the opportunity to develop and practice team-building skills. The following roles involve team building: Toastmaster, General Evaluator, Club Membership Campaign, Contest Chairman, Club Public Relations Campaign Chairman, Club Speech Contest Chairman, Club Special Event Chairman, Club Newsletter Editor, and Club Webmaster.

From Project 10 "Team Building" of the Competent Leadership Manual.

The General Evaluator's Role

The general evaluator evaluates everything that takes place throughout the club meeting, commenting on areas that need improvement, things that went well, and improvements that could be made at the next meeting. The general evaluator leads a team of people, including speech evaluators, the timer, grammarian, and other people as determined by the club. You want to use team-building skills to help the members filling these roles to work together.

After taking control of the lectern, you want to acknowledge the leader who introduced you, the audience and guests.

• Explain the purpose of evaluations, “Distinguished Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and welcome guests, evaluation is meant to be a positive experience designed to help people overcome weak habits and add power to existing successful skills. The evaluators' highest goal is to benefit the speaker so that he or she wants to speak again; with insight on what might be improved upon next time.”
• What items do evaluators look for in a speech? The manual guides the evaluator to the relevant points for the speech project the speaker is working to accomplish.
• Critical listening, preparing an almost impromptu response with focus on objectives and effective communication is the task of the evaluator. It is through evaluations that members, and the club itself, can improve skills.
• Introduce and thank each evaluator. (Do not praise, comment on, judge, or influence the audience on the evaluations, the club will vote for the “best.”)
• Ask for the Timer's report on the Evaluators. Call for a vote for "Best" Evaluator.
• Call for the "Ah" Counter's report and then the Grammarian's report. (Call on the Grammarian last, giving as much opportunity for members to use the Word of the Day as possible.)
• Give a 2-3 minute Evaluation of the overall meeting. (During the meeting, note the timing, any glitches, exemplary behavior, atmosphere, decorum and general flow.)

Return meeting control to the Toastmaster, “Please join me in welcoming back to the lectern our Toastmaster.”

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