Many people have probably heard of Toastmasters, but few probably know what the organization is all about. Toastmasters' focus is on communication: helping people be better communicators and speakers, in their personal and professional life. People join (and stay) for a variety of reasons. Most to become better speakers or communicators, others to improve their skills in English or other languages, some may want to become professional speakers. Those who are good speakers become better speakers. They stay because the organization is all about continuous improvement of our communication and leadership skills. You never stop learning. And, yes, I am a member of Toastmasters.
The organization was formed more than 80 years ago, and
since then has spread around the world.
Anyone can join Toastmasters, so long as they are 18 years of age. That is the only requirement. The heart of Toastmasters is the Toastmasters
Club. This is where things really
work. There are a variety of Toastmasters
Clubs, so one should take a look at local clubs to find the one that works
best. There are morning clubs, noon-time
clubs, afternoon clubs, and evening clubs.
Most meet for an hour, but some clubs may have meetings that run up to
two hours. Most clubs are weekly, but some are twice a month, a rare few are once a month. Some clubs may be corporate
clubs, chartered to a company, and may restrict their membership to employees
of that company. There are also
specialty clubs of various sorts. Some
are “advanced” clubs that restrict membership to those who have completed the
basic education awards (more on this shortly).
There are also clubs with a particular focus: bilingual, humor,
leadership, a foreign language, or the like.
Some Toastmasters may be members of several clubs, as different clubs
met different needs.
As noted, leadership is ALSO a big part of
Toastmasters. This is because
Toastmasters is lead by its members.
Clubs are lead by the elected club officers. Above the club are other elected and
appointed members, all Toastmasters members themselves.
In Toastmasters one works on a variety of
educational awards. And members are
encouraged to do so. The education program
has two branches: a communication track and a leadership track. When one joins Toastmasters, you start work
on the two basic awards: the Competent Communicator (CC) and the Competent
Leader (CL) awards. The CC award has you
completing 10 speeches. Each speech
project builds on the other, as you learn and practice your skills. You learn to organize your speech, use vocal
variety, make use of gestures, and more.
With the CL award, you get engaged in your club doing 10 projects that
involved taking on meeting roles such as a speech evaluator or the toastmaster
of the day or the like.
Once these two awards are completed, one then moves in to
the advanced awards. On the
communication side, Toastmasters has 15 advanced manuals, each with 5 speech
projects. The manuals are on subjects
like storytelling, technical presentations, informational speeches,
discussions, and the like. There are 3
advanced communicator awards: bronze, silver, and gold. Each requires completing 2 advanced manuals
along with other work. The leadership
track has 2 advanced leadership awards. The first has you
being a club officer and do other work within your club, and the second has you
doing work outside your club as a district officer, helping other club, and
leading a project. Completing the top
communication and leadership awards gives you the top Toastmaster award of
Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).
There are other Toastmaster programs that members can make
use of. There are three series of short,
prepared presentations that can be given. These are the Better Speaker, Leadership
Excellence, and Successful Club series.
Each has a dozen or so presentations.
The Better Speaker series includes items like organizing your speech,
coming up with topics, impromptu speaking and the like. The Leadership Excellence has leadership
topics such as the vision, goal setting and planning, motivation and more. And the Successful Club has topics on
improving the clubs such as evaluations, mentoring, meeting roles and more.
Toastmasters has additional, longer seminars that can be
presented to members and non-members alike.
These are under the Success/Communication and Success/Leadership series. The completion of these other programs
mentioned are required to met the above education awards. The Success/Communication program has workshops on how to listen effectively, be a better evaluator, improving your thinking skills, and more. The Success/Leadership program has workshops on how to have productive meetings, how to be an effective leader, develop leadership skills, and more.
I find it interesting that some groups, we deride the
idea of adults earning awards, but in Toastmasters that is a big part of what
we do. When you join, you are encouraged
to earn your CC and CL awards within the year, if possible. And once you complete those, you are
encouraged to take this further to earn your DTM. And once you’ve earned your DTM, you can
continue to earn the awards and get a second (or third) DTM. Further, as in some other organizations, we have group quality awards
at various levels, called the
“distinguished” program. Members earning educational awards
is a BIG part of meeting distinguished goals, both for our clubs and for other
levels.
