3. The General Evaluator & After Action Reports

One of the biggest missed opportunities in clubs is the General Evaluator's report. Often the GE sees their role only as introducing others, but their report can be a great source of feedback for the meeting. The GE should report on the evaluators, but also the meeting as a whole. More on the GE role is available in the RDG Meetings course.

One framework that can work for the GE report is the TEECO format:

  • Timely: Was the meeting run on time? Will it (likely) end on time? 
  • Educational: Were the presentations Pathways projects (or otherwise moving the club and member towards DCP goals)? Did the meeting theme get members to think and reflect? Was the word of the day good?
  • Entertaining: Were the meeting theme and table topics interesting? What interesting moments happened?
  • Challenging: Were the word of the day and table topics stretching the skills of the members? Were speeches making people think? Did evaluators give actionable feedback?
  • Organized: Was the meeting well planned? Was there a lot of "shuffle" (last minute substitutions, doubling up) that could have been avoided? Did members confirm their attendance or absence on your member site (Easy Speak, preferably)? Did the meeting have good flow?

Having this meeting report can help all members be more successful in future, and it can also spot patterns where your club consistently succeeds or fails so they can be addressed. An after-action report can also help. This report can be done by the secretary as meeting minutes, and include the highlights of the meeting. This includes:

  • How many members and guests attended
  • The word of the day
  • A brief synopsis of the speech topics
  • The theme of the day
  • The GE's commentary
  • Club business highlights 

Sending this out within 48 hours of the meeting's completion to all members has helped bring back members who haven't been in attendance, so it's a good practice. If your club uses Easy Speak, storing a copy on your club's discussion forum is also good (creating a thread for the year's reports and replying to it with new ones will keep the forum clean).