The work world is changing.  Communication is even more important now as so many of us adapt to remote work, or remotely searching for employment.  Imagine an hour a week where you could work on your communication and leadership skills.  One where you were surrounded by other individuals looking to grow, looking to help others do so?

From toastmasters.org:

Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs.

I could write pages about the benefits from joining and attending meetings, but you might benefit more from reading about what might happen in a typical meeting.  I’m going to use the club I belong to, The DayBreakers, as an example.

Originally I joined the club because it met at 7:30am and was only a few miles from my home.  You can find clubs that meet during lunch, in evenings or even on weekends.  A big plus for me was the friendliness and comradery I could feel as soon as I walked in the room.  Of course things have changed now.  LIke most clubs, we meet virtually over zoom.  In some ways makes giving a speech easier.  Many of our members were not familiar with zoom, but others offered help.  And yes, we did lose a few members who just weren’t comfortable with the change.

The meeting begins with the club President calling it to order, introducing any new guests.  For each meeting someone has volunteered in advance to be the Toastmaster for the meeting.  This is the person that opens the meeting and introduces the other roles.  A sort of MC if you will.  All of the roles mentioned here, beyond the President, rotate every week with different volunteers.  All with no pressure.

The next topic is the Thought of the Day.  A member presents a compelling thought, often an inspiration anchor for the group.   This week ours was a quote from James A. Michener.

“The master in the ART of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.

He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”

~ James A. Michener

The attendees will have opportunities later to thread this into their part of the meeting.  This is followed by our Word of the Day.  This is another opportunity for members and guests to work something into their part of the meeting.  The word this week was farrago.

The next parts of the meeting give opportunities to leverage the Thought and Word of the Day.  This sort of thinking on your feet helps when communicating with others.  Recalling some fact or statement from earlier in the conversation to thread in makes for more connection.

Normally we have one or two prepared speeches.  These run from 5 to 10 minutes depending on the Pathway that member is on.  This is followed by 2 minutes for members to write down feedback for the speaker.  I’ll cover Pathways in another article, but just know that you have nearly a dozen to pick from.  Topics like Dynamic Leadership and Effective Coaching are among your choices.  For this meeting there were no prepared speeches.

Almost all meetings then have a section called “Table Topics”.  These are impromptu 1 to 2 minutes speeches on a topic announced right before the speaker speaks.  Besides the prepared speeches, this is the time to try and work in the Thought or Word of the Day.

Since there were no prepared speeches we had time for two rounds of Table Topics.  Everyone had an opportunity to craft something to share with the other members.  The Table Topics Master was actually leveraging ideas from the Table Topics game.  The two topics for our meeting were:

• Do you tend to live in the past, present or future?

• What’s your favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner?

Names were drawn at random, and this is always something you can decline.  Rarely have I heard someone do so, especially with how easy going the group is.  Ours is a very supportive and friendly group.

Next comes the part of the meeting where I get the most growth and learning from.  There is a General Evaluator that introduces the other roles that have been taking notes during the meeting.  There would typically be an evaluator for each prepared speech.  They have a template that they have filled out based on the step this speech is in the chosen Pathway.  Even if you didn’t give a speech you’ll find great pointers given here.

The General Evaluator then introduces the Timer.  They’ve been keeping track of time spent on each prepared speech or Table Topic.  They were also behind the scenes holding up colored cards too let the speaker know where they were in relationship to the time goal.  As an example, they would hold up Green at 1 minute, Yellow at 90 seconds and Red at 2 minutes for each Table Topics speaker.  Being able to smoothly and clearly fit what you want to communicate into a set time limit also benefits us all in life.

The last role to come into play is the Grammarian.  This is often the person that supplied the Word of the Day.  They’ve been keeping track of good use of imagery, as well as filler words.   They run through their list of each person and provide a tally of the ahs, ums, so’s etc..  This is an area where many of us can use help.  These fillers weaken your message and impair your communications.  Always done in a positive way, often there are comments on how much a newer member has improved.  They’ve also been keeping track of how often members have worked the Word of the Day into their part of the meeting.

After all of this, the General Evaluator concludes with a general evaluation of the meeting as a whole.  This is then followed by any comments the President has.  The Toastmaster then closes the meeting.  An amazing amount of content in just an hour of your week.

I hope that this quick overview has you thinking more of the opportunity to join a Toastmasters club.  You have time, or can make time.  And having another group to safely socialize with is an emotional plus too.

What are you waiting for?  Go find a club!  And if you are already in one, share the link here.