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Successful Club. . .

Feedbackers–Better Speaking
through Evaluations

By James Wantz, DTM

If the way to being a great public speaker is to get good evaluations, then a
club that focuses exclusively on evaluations would be the ideal way to help
anyone become a better speaker. This is the driving principle behind the advanced monthly
club, Feedbackers Toastmasters. Since its inception, Feedbackers has focused on giving speakers
the most beneficial evaluations they can hope for. District contestants, political hopefuls, and
public servants have all come to Feedbackers to get help refining their presentations.

We provide every speaker with four evaluations that
focus on specific areas of improvement such as manual
objectives, organization, message, sincerity, body
language, stage usage, vocal variety, and anything else
the speaker wants evaluated. With a 5-7 minute speech
the cumulative evaluations (each 2-3 minutes) typically
take up double that time. Now that’s an evaluation!

But Feedbackers is not all about helping speakers, we
guide and teach our members to give evaluations that make a difference. Since most of the
speakers at Feedbackers are guests from outside the club, our members get lots of time to focus
on evaluation techniques. Each evaluator is given an evaluation by the General Evaluator who,
unlike most clubs, does not focus on the functioning of the meeting. The GE provides specific
ways each evaluator can improve their technique.

There is a saying – you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar. We believe this to be
true and encourage all evaluations to focus on the positive areas of improvement rather than
on what was wrong. Anyone can point out a failure, but it takes a deft hand and a keen eye to
provide a struggling speaker with specific ways to improve a part of their speech that didn’t
work as well as it could.

This focus on positive and constructive evaluations has been a winning formula for
Feedbackers. We currently have three District 7 Evaluation Contest winners as members. We also
regularly have a member in the finals at every evaluation contest. We have also been President’s
Distinguished two out of the last three years – and that is an accomplishment for an advanced
club that only meets once a month!

We meet at 7:30pm on the second Wednesday of each month at the Beaverton Activities
Center on the corner of Hall and Allen in Beaverton. Everyone is welcome to come evaluate our
meetings for themselves!
James Wantz, DTM joined Toastmasters in 2008. He is a member of four clubs, and is serving as the club
president of Feedbackers and the VPE at Storymasters. He earned his DTM in 2014.

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