Toastmasters International

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Toastmasters International ("TI") is a worldwide nonprofit educational organization for the purpose of helping its members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. TI's mission is to foster self-confidence and growth of the individual members.

The club that would eventually grow into the first Toastmasters club, Smedley club Number 1, and ultimately TI, was founded on October 22, 1924, at the YMCA in Santa Ana, California, United States, by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley. Toastmasters International was incorporated under California law on December 19, 1932.

As of 2005, there were more than 200,000 members in over 10,000 clubs in every state of the United States and in approximately 90 other countries. Members of TI belong to local clubs consisting of from 6 to more than 40 members, but around 20 members are normal. They meet on a regular basis to practice various skills useful in public speaking, including giving speeches, speaking extemporaneously, and listening, and then provide each other with feedback and evaluation. Some clubs meet monthly, some meet twice a month, and some meet weekly.

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Membership

Membership is open to all people over the age of 18 wishing to improve their communications skills. TI has a policy of non-discrimination (including based on ethnicity, nationality and gender). Although TI was initially formed as a male-only organization, membership was opened to women in August 1973. Certain clubs (referred to as a "Closed Club" or "In-house Club") organized within businesses restrict membership to people in the organization; this is the only restriction on membership permitted by the international organization.

For teens below the age of 18, Gavel Clubs may be set up upon request at schools and institutions to provide them with the Toastmasters experience. Other than the mix of membership and that no official TM titles such as CTM, CL, etc., will be awarded, the benefit received from a Gavel Club is essentially the same as that of a Toastmasters Club. Both allow active members who put in effort to gain confidence and finesse in the art of public speaking.

Educational Program

A Toastmasters club is a "learn-by-doing" workshop. A typical club has 20 to 40 members, who meet weekly or biweekly for an hour or two to learn and practice public speaking techniques.

The Toastmasters Communication and Leadership Manual is the heart of the TI educational program. The manual, last updated in 2003, consists of ten speech projects, each building upon the other in skills and difficulty. For each project, the member will prepare and deliver a speech in front of the group. After the member has given the presentation, it will be evaluated by another Toastmaster. This near-immediate feedback provides the member information on how he can improve his presentation skills for the next speech. Upon completion of the Communication and Leadership Manual, a Toastmaster is entitled to the designation Competent Toastmaster, and may add the initials CTM to his/her name.

When giving a speech at Toastmasters meetings, a member is expected to speak within a prescribed time limit. For most C&L manual speeches, this limit is 5 to 7 minutes. For advanced program speeches, the limit can vary, with the maximum usually at 10 minutes; some of the advanced speech projects can be up to 30 minutes. There are often Question and Answers sessions involved for some of the advanced manuals. At the conclusion of the speeches, other members will evaluate the speeches. The intent is to provide a positive experience for the speaker, encouraging him/her to build on the skills already learned and to improve other speaking and listening skills. This also creates opportunity for members to provide constructive feedback to help one another improve. In addition to providing the speaker with feedback the evaluator learns important skills in quickly preparing a presentation and listening skills. One thing to note is that the evaluators evaluate the speech and not the speaker. This is a subtle but important difference.

The distinctive feature of Toastmasters is the continual evaluation. Each activity at a club is evaluated: speeches are evaluated both at the meeting and in the member's manual. In some clubs, even the evaluators are themselves evaluated at the end of the meeting by a "General Evaluator", also a club member.


After getting their CTM, the Toastmaster then can go on to more advanced projects. There are 15 advanced manuals in the Toastmasters program, each consisting of five projects. These include projects on sales presentations, speaking to inform, speeches by management, interpretative reading, speaking on television, entertaining dinner speaking, communicating with news media, interpersonal communication, and others. Completing two of these advanced manuals, and fulfilling some other requirements, will earn the Toastmaster concerned the title of 'Advanced Toastmaster,' abbreviated ATM. There are three degrees of ATM called the Bronze, Silver and Gold level - thus a person may be called ATM-B, ATM-S or ATM-G. (There used to be one that is simply known as ATM which stands for 'Able Toastmaster', but this title has already been phased out.) A person who has achieved the ATM-G award, together with the Advanced Leader award described below, can apply to receive the title of "Distinguished Toastmaster" (DTM), Toastmasters' highest award. Certain clubs, known as "Advanced Clubs", are established to allow experienced members work on advanced or time consuming skills and are often targeted at members who have already achieved their CTM.

Leadership Training

Toastmasters also teaches leadership skills. This is motivated in part by the fact that TI is staffed completely by volunteers (except for a small staff of paid personnel at the World HeadQuarters). Even the Board of Directors is composed of volunteers who still hold membership in a local club, and who do not get paid.

TI has developed a series of training procedures for its officers as well as material for training members in basic leadership skills. Many districts hold training sessions for officers, Toastmasters Leadership Institute (originally called Toastmasters University), twice a year for club officers, and any other member who wishes to attend. Members also develop and practice leadership skills using the High Performance Leadership Program and serving as leaders at various organizational levels.

Members who meet requirements including serving a term (6 months or 1 year) as club officer, working on the Disinguished Club Plan, giving two Successful Club Series modules, and earning their CTM, receive the Competent Leader (CL) award. Members who then choose to serve the organization as District or higher-level officers, and who complete certain other requirements, would then be qualified to receive the Advanced Leader (AL) award.

The business portion of a meeting gives members the opportunity to learn parliamentary procedure and meeting etiquette that can be important in business and political settings.

The Toastmaster Meeting

Every Toastmaster club meets on a regular basis, at least 12 times a year. Each club meets for an hour, sometimes up to two hours, depending on the club. Each meeting has a structured format, with various members participating in the different roles in the meetings. The meeting is run by a Toastmaster Of the Day (TMOD). There are three basic parts to the Toastmaster meeting: the prepared speeches, Table Topics, and Evaluations. In the prepared speaking portion of the meeting, two, three, or sometimes even four Toastmasters will give a prepared presentation or speech in front of the group. Each speech will meet the requirements of one of the projects in either the basic manual or advanced manuals. Table Topics is extemporaneous speaking, where the speaker speaks "off the cuff". The speaker responds to a question or topic that is not known beforehand. The Table Topic Master presents the topic, calls on an individual, and then the individual called on has from 1 to 2 minutes to respond.

The evaluation session is where feedback is provided, not just to the speakers, but to all members. The evaluation session is headed by a General Evaluator or a Master Evaluator. This General Evaluator then calls on the individual speech evaluators, who will then give a 2 to 3 minute evaluation of the presentation that a speaker gave earlier in the meeting. After the evaluators give their evaluations, the General Evaluator calls for the helper reports. There is a Grammarian, who notes mis-pronunciations and mistakes in grammar, or word repeats (such as "I did ....I did"), sometimes called 'double clutching'; an Ah Counter, who counts audible pauses such as 'ah', 'er', 'um, 'well', and 'you know'; and the Timer gives the report as to how much time each speaker, table topics responder, and evaluator actually took to give their presentation. Then the General Evaluator gives their overall evaluation of the meeting as a whole, and recommendations on how it can be improved for future meetings. A few clubs also have Table Topics Evaluators, who evaluate the responses that members gave to the table topics; for those that don't, the General Evaluator frequently fills that role. Some advanced clubs also have a 'round robin' evaluation for the speakers; after the evaluator gives an evaluation recorded in the member's manual, the other members around the room are asked for additional comments on the presentation.

There are sometimes other roles in the program, including an Invocator who gives an invocation or inspirational opener; a HumorMaster, Joke Master, or Raconteur who tells a funny story or jokes; a Wordmaster or Lexicologist who presents a 'word of the day', to help the members increase their vocabulary (with the intention that the 'word of the day' is to be used by the members in their presentations during the meeting); a Listener, who listens to the presentations and asks questions afterward to see if everyone was listening to what was said. Some clubs also have an Educational Presentation, where the speaker gives a presentation on an educational aspect of Toastmasters. In many clubs, the members vote for the Best Speaker, Best Table Topics Speaker, and Best Evaluator of the meeting. This "Best [whatever]" usually gets a ribbon to keep or a travelling trophy to take with them until the next meeting, where they have to present it to the next winner.

The order of the program varies from club to club and country to country. Many noon time clubs, particularly those that meet at businesses and those who are time constrained, do the prepared speeches first and then Table Topics. Almost all dinner clubs in the US do Table Topics first, then everybody sits back and relaxes for the after-dinner prepared speeches. Some clubs are very time constrained, so they do the Prepared Speeches, then the Evaluations, and save Table Topics for last. In South Africa clubs usually do the speeches first, then Table Topics and leave the evaluations for last.

Contests

TI holds contests twice a year. These allow members to practice their communications skills under demanding conditions, view the efforts of skilled members of other clubs, and provide entertainment during business meetings or dinner functions. There are five different types of contest that can be held: Humorous Speech Contest, Table Topics Contest, Tall Tales Contest, Evaluation Contest, and the International Speech Contest. Each club conducts these contests. The winner of each club contest goes to an Area Contest; the winner of the Area Contest goes on to the Division Contest; the winner of the Division Contest goes on to the District Contest. Most contests stop at the District level; the one exception is the International Speech Contest.

The "International Speech Contest," (sometimes erroneously called the "Serious speech contest" to distinguish it from the "humorous speech contest") selects a single winner for the entire worldwide membership of Toastmasters. Winners of this contest are crowned the "World Champion of Public Speaking" at the International Conference which is held each year, usually the third week in August, in various cities around the world.

External links

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