Home Men's Health Women's Health Family Health Health Professionals Health Topics Wellness Shop Contact Us

Related Topics Helpful Products

Don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
Read Don's blog!

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Down With Evaluations, Up With Elections At Wellness and Other Conferences

Saturday October 29, 2005

Conference goers (and especially speakers) are well acquainted with the ritual of evaluations. For the attendees, evaluation forms are a nuisance, for the most part. Just when audience members are preparing to bolt from the room for donuts and coffee, cigarettes and drugs, some nerdy official (volunteer) will stride pompously to the lectern and say: Oh no you don't! Where do you think you're going? Well, think again, you brats! You just sit right where you are. I'll tell you when you can leave--and it won't be until you have filled out an evaluation on our speaker!
 
Right? 
 
For the speakers, the evaluation process is barbarous and humiliating--and as for its justification, it's no more than a bare-faced scam, a form of professional rape, an intellectual beauty contest, a misguided ratings game that invites negativity, bad vibes and general nastiness, all of which are already far too prevalent in society. Evaluations result too often in lowered self-esteem, poor posture, hemorrhoids and failure in life, among other setbacks for harried speakers. Isn't there a better, more humane and caring way?
 
Of course! Why else would I be going on like this? 
 
The Wellness alternative to evaluations is to have wellness elections. The idea of wellness elections would be to put a spotlight on and celebrate winners, speakers who knock your socks off, bring tears to your eyes, incite masses of rapt listeners to live marvelously forevermore and who, in short, inspire waves of admirers to rush the rostrum crying "Master, Master!" or utterances to that effect. 
 
A new wellness evaluation based on elections would be affirmative instead of the
negative-inducing ratings currently in use. Let us encourage conference participants to celebrate eagles instead of shooting turkeys, to glorify (and encourage) positive performances rather than immolating the pitiful wretches who already endured horrifying stage deaths. Indeed, let us praise the best rather than excoriate the worst. Finally, and most important of all, let us do what must be done to leave conference goers with feelings of warmth and love based on affirmations of excellence, not feelings of cold-blooded wrath occasioned by feeding frenzies of negativity.
 
I hope this convinced you that evaluations as presently constituted are a Chernobyl of wellness, a meltdown of epic proportion, a harbinger of doom for speakers and gloom for participants. Something must be done about the matter--and done soon.  
 
Makes sense, eh? (Sure it's overstated, but this is a "Don's Report" and visitors have come to expect wretched excess. Ultimate truths, after all, are not pretty.)
 
"How can the evaluation process at annual conferences be improved via wellness-like elections?," you're probably wondering.
 
By doing two things differently from the way "things" are done now. One is to change the standard evaluation form to an election form; the other is to distribute the revised evaluation forms not after each session as is the norm but at the end of each day, at a special time that is well-publicized and where large numbers of conference goers are likely to be assembled. (At the annual National Wellness Conference, this might be done during the dinner hour each evening). Let there be an awards ceremony based on an election at the end of each day, and another at the conclusion of the conference, with varied categories that honor excellence (and ignore mediocrity or worse). 
 
Think of the improvements a shift from evaluations to elections will permit. For starters, certain speakers will anticipate receiving their due from the crowd, visualizing the warm glow of adulation as their names are read and they come forward to take a bow and receive a prize, make a statement or whatever. Since the best speakers will look forward to a chance to be feted for their words, sponsors won't have to pay them so much. (A necessity for those poor toads who expect ungoverned animosity from an audience.) Lower speakers' fees mean lower conference registration charges. Also, it will be fun for individual participants who will enjoy the suspense waiting to learn if their favorite speakers are elected for honors. Yet, the highest value will be the effect of the election on speakers who do NOT get picked. Instead of being criticized and vilified anonymously, they are politely ignored and yet are witness to the joys and perks of excellence. The latter will, naturally, spark lots of practice. The proposed election process motivates, the current setup at NWC does not. 
 
If you would like to see an election process replace the present evaluation procedure, don't write your Congressman. Tell your favorite wellness conference organizer. 
 
Wait! There is a mortal flaw in my proposal. What's more, I am unable to decipher an escape from the quandary in which I find myself inextricably intertwinked and intertwixed. 
 
The flaw came to me in a dream--or rather a nightmare--and I've hardly been able to sleep since. The dream started so well: My "election rather than evaluation" scheme was ardently embraced by millions of SeekWellness visitors, by nearly all world leaders and, most important, by the ruling junta at Stevens Point, WI. At the National Wellness Conference, during the first day in which my brilliant system was in effect, the results of the first-ever wellness election were announced. As over 1000 wellness fans rose and extended a standing, tears-of-joy ovation, who strode forward to bask in the glory of love and compassion but Leo "The Big Gush" Buscaglia! Winner by a landslide! Oh, #$?~@!!!, sometimes it seems there really is no justice.
 
The flaw in my scheme that I discovered via my nightmare is this: What if the audience has a massive case of collective bad taste? What if my wellite friends ACTUALLY LIKE effusive displays of affection or enthusiasm from a speaker who emits a copious and egregiously excessive free flow of, of, well, of GUSH?! 
 
But, then, this IS a democracy. What the people want, the people get. 
 
By the way, have you heard my new lecture, "Hugs For Wellness?" Domain: purpose
Subdomain: humor

Search other reports in the Don Ardell report archive.

	Custom Search

Read about our
Featured Products

my shopping cart