"EVALUATE- YOUR BODY SPEAKS!"

Our meeting on Thursday 18th May was attended by only 11 members, probably due to the sudden 'extreme cold' and the expected squall which arrived during the meeting. Carol stepped in at the last minute as Toastmaster and ran an excellent meeting, which was entertaining and educational. her flowery program certainly brightened up the day!!


First speaker was Stephanie, introduced by Patrick. Stephanie was completing Project Five from the Competent Communicator Manual 'Your Body Speaks'. This worked very well with Stephanie adopting the approach of looking at negative & positive types of body language to impact to your speech. She started by explaining what she was going to do, so we all knew where she was going and demonstrated the importance of the right body language at the right time! Well done Stephanie for adopting a slightly different approach to this assignment, which I believe worked out well. Patrick in his evaluation agreed and suggested that Stephanie needed perhaps to utilise voice variation a  little more (particularly as we had a lot of outside noise with the rain!) and also perhaps extenuate her body language for this assignment.

Next up Mike was completing the second of two Education session on the "Art of Effective Evaluation". Mike was well set up with a Power Point display to assist his session and also some handouts for the members to practise Evalutaion on Stephanie's speech. Time was against Mike, but he covered the "10 Key Behaviours of Effective Evaluators" well as listed below, these have also been sent out by Mike to each member with more detail. A good two sessions Mike that I am sure will assist our members to improve their Evaluations in the future, thus improving other member's speaking skills.
Mike has now completed his Advanced Communicator -Gold award, CONGRATULATIONS!!
The 10 Effective Behaviours of Effective Evaluators are;
1. Show that You care.
2. Suit your Evaluation to the Speech.
3.Learn the Speaker's Objectives.
4. Listen Actively.
5. Personalize your language.
6. Give Positive reinforcement.
7. Help the speaker to become motivated.
8.Evaluate the behaviour-not the person.
9. Nourish self-esteem.
10.Show the Speaker how to improve.

General business included a quick Convention Report from Wellington last weekend and next week's program, plus a presentation to Helen of a "Spirit of Success" certificate for completing the five speeches in an Advanced Manual - Interpretive Reading.

No Table Topics this week- sorry about that folks! time was against us.
Craig summed the meeting up as General Evaluator assisted by the Timekeeper Linda.

Next week back to something a little more 'normal' with the Toastmaster Sandy (first time!).
Already a number of apologies- so be there or be square!!