You might be wondering, what is going on with the title "Dealing with Judgement". The theme for our recent chapter meeting was on Evaluation. What is so special about evaluation? Henry Cloud mentioned "The natural response to evaluation is to feel judged. We have to mature to a place where we respond to it with gratitude, and love feedback." When we receive evaluation, or feedback, do we become defensive and ignore other's opinion? Or do we welcome them to improve ourselves?
The chapter meeting was called to order at 7.15pm. Christina opened it up with an ice-breaker + table-topic spun together to get everyone comfortable. Within the first five minutes we had a variety of topics we spoke about! After which, our Club President, Vincent Chua, proceeded on with his opening address.
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| The full team in action! |
That night, we had three speakers - Suroj on Project 3 (Get to the Point), Andy on Project 7 (Research your Topic) and Wai Kay on Project 9 (Persuade with Power) for their Competent Communicator (CC) Manual.
The first speaker, Suroj's topic was called "Drinking Water", and he highlighted both the numerous health benefits of water as well as the "dangers" of certain waters due to the chemicals they possessed.
The second speaker Andy speech was called "AquaMan" and he shared about the numerous benefits of drinking more water and keeping ourselves hydrated through a "sales-pitch"! Water again?!Talk about coincidence!
Last but not least, our final speaker Wai Kay spoke about breaking bad habits, and specifically gaming addiction. I'm sure in this technological era, we know many people, perhaps our children or even ourselves, who are struggling with gaming addiction. And I'm sure each and every one of us have our own bad habits and vices- whether it is something seemingly trivial such as biting fingernails, or maybe even something perhaps more detrimental such as alcohol or smoking.
We broke off for a refreshment break before coming back for the evaluation session on the prepared speeches. As mentioned at the start of this post and as most Toastmasters would know, the evaluation session is a short feedback session given by other speakers and this is done in order to raise the speaking standards of the speaker. Toastmaster Wen Zhong gave an evaluation to Suroj, our Area Director, Celine Goh, to Andy and lastly Toastmaster Irene to Wai Kay.
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| Toastmaster Wen Zhong! |
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| Area Director - Celine |
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| Visting Toastmaster- Irene |
Unlike the usual chapter meeting, that night we had a
special 20-minute evaluation training session conducted by one of our senior mentors and trainer, Christina Tan. She shared with us many pointers on how to evaluate other speakers and things to look out for - Such as how the speaker grabbed the audience attention, the use of pause filters, the use of props, and many other things! It was not easy for Christina to conduct such a long session on her own so we truly thank her for her efforts! There were so many learning points!
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| Christina giving up this special workshop |
You might be wondering, why evaluate? To be a better speaker, do I really need to learn how to evaluate others? By evaluating others, we look out for things and through the process, we learn not to commit the same mistakes. "The best way to learn something is to teach it", and that is the idea behind evaluation. In addition, the skills of evaluation/feedback can be applied to other things outside of public speaking, such as at work (with your boss or colleagues"), at home (with your children or your spouse). The skills picked up at Toastmasters can be applied to various areas of our lives.
Following the workshop, Christina shared that
just for our club, each member has our own individualised progress report so that each and every one of our members will be able to track our own progress. For example, on the progress report sheet the mistakes for the speaker will be written down and thus the speaker will be able to track it and strive not to repeat the same mistake.
Our chapter meeting for that evening ended with visiting Toastmaster Cindy, giving us a general evaluation on how our meeting proceeded and thus how to improve future chapter meetings. And oh yes, I almost forgot...
The award for best speaker for that evening went to Andy and the best elevator for that evening went to our area director, Celine.
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| Very Big Thumbs Up! |
With that, we ended another fruitful and eventful night.
The second speaker Andy speech was called "AquaMan" and he shared about the numerous benefits of drinking more water and keeping ourselves hydrated through a "sales-pitch"! Water again?!Talk about coincidence!
Last but not least, our final speaker Wai Kay spoke about breaking bad habits, and specifically gaming addiction. I'm sure in this technological era, we know many people, perhaps our children or even ourselves, who are struggling with gaming addiction. And I'm sure each and every one of us have our own bad habits and vices- whether it is something seemingly trivial such as biting fingernails, or maybe even something perhaps more detrimental such as alcohol or smoking.
We broke off for a refreshment break before coming back for the evaluation session on the prepared speeches. As mentioned at the start of this post and as most Toastmasters would know, the evaluation session is a short feedback session given by other speakers and this is done in order to raise the speaking standards of the speaker. Toastmaster Wen Zhong gave an evaluation to Suroj, our Area Director, Celine Goh, to Andy and lastly Toastmaster Irene to Wai Kay.
Following the workshop, Christina shared that just for our club, each member has our own individualised progress report so that each and every one of our members will be able to track our own progress. For example, on the progress report sheet the mistakes for the speaker will be written down and thus the speaker will be able to track it and strive not to repeat the same mistake.
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