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Toastmasters International

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Toastmasters International Official Logo
Toastmasters International Official Logo

Toastmasters International (TI) is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. Through its member clubs, Toastmasters International helps men and women learn the arts of speaking, listening, and thinking.

The organization grew out of a single club, St. Petesburg, FL. Smedley Club Number 1, which would become the first Toastmasters club, was founded by Ralph C. Smedley on October 22 1924, at the YMCA in Santa Ana, California, United States. Toastmasters International was incorporated under California law on December 19 1932.

Membership

In 2008, there are more than 226,000 members and over 11,500 clubs located across the United States and in 92 other countries. Toastmasters members belong to local clubs, which generally have between six and 40 members, with 20 members being a typical size. The local clubs meet on a regular basis for members to practice various skills useful in public speaking, including giving speeches, speaking extemporaneously, listening, and providing each other with feedback and evaluation. Some clubs meet monthly, some meet twice a month, and some meet weekly.

Membership is open to all people ages 18 and above wishing to improve their communications skills. In certain rare cases, where previous links to TI can be found, people under 18 are allowed to participate, even though they are not allowed to join officially until their 18th birthday. Any speeches toward an official award completed before their 18th birthday are accepted retroactively.

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 "closed clubs" or "in-house clubs") organized within businesses restrict membership to people in the organization; this is the only restriction on membership permitted by the international organization. From time to time, advanced clubs form and it is preferable that one has completed a certain number of speeches (e.g. 10) before joining these clubs.

Gavel Clubs (Toastmasters-sponsored groups for teenagers or other groups who may be ineligible for membership in Toastmasters International) 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 Toastmasters titles such as CC, CL, AC, etc., will be awarded, the benefit received from a Gavel Club is essentially the same as that of a Toastmasters Club. TI also has a Youth Leadership program, which is an eight-session program that introduces school-aged children to the art of public speaking. These Youth Leadership programs are conducted by members of Toastmaster Clubs in the local area. They allow active members who put in effort to gain confidence and expertise in the art of public speaking.

Educational program

A Toastmasters club adopts a "learn-by-doing" philosophy, wherein each member learns at a pace suitable to their developmental needs.

The Toastmasters Competent Communicator and Competent Leadership Manuals are the heart of the TI educational program. These manuals were last updated in 2006 when the single Communication and Leadership Manual was split into two manuals. The Competent Communicator Manual 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 with information on how he or she can improve his or her presentation skills for the next speech. Upon completion of the Competent Communicator Manual, a Toastmaster is entitled to the designation Competent Communicator, and may add the initials CC to his or her name. Previously a similar designation was called Competent Toastmaster and the abbreviation used was CTM. The Competent Leadership Manual is used in a similar fashion. The member works through ten leadership projects, working on leadership skills such as giving feedback, critical thinking, team building and others. Most of these leadership projects consist of multiple assignments accomplished at meetings over a period of time.

When giving a speech at Toastmasters meetings, a member is expected to speak within a prescribed time limit. For most basic 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 or 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. The benefits of learning how to give feedback within Toastmasters are many. Through feedback, a person develops many skills, some of which include: effective listening, how to motivate, encourage and support other members, develop and present a short evaluation without preparation and of course their own communication skills. Language is an important element of effective evaluation and so too is the structure. The structure of a Toastmaster Evaluation might be referred to as the 'feedback sandwich" the "PIP" praise, improve praise or the "CRC" commend, recommend, commend method.

The distinctive feature of Toastmasters is the continual evaluation. Each activity at a club is evaluated: speeches are evaluated both orally 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 achieving their CC, 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 Communicator, abbreviated AC. There are three degrees of AC called the Bronze, Silver and Gold level - thus a person may be called ACB, ACS or ACG. (There used to be one that was simply known as ATM, which stands for 'Able Toastmaster,' and others known as ATM-B, ATM-S, and ATM-G which stands for Advanced Toastmaster Bronze, Advanced Toastmaster Silver and Advanced Toastmaster Gold, but these titles are being phased out.) A person who has achieved the ACG award, together with the Advanced Leader Silver 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 projects and are often targeted at members who have already achieved their CC.

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 staff of about 60 paid personnel at the World Headquarters). Even the board of directors is composed of volunteers who still hold membership in a local club, and are not paid.

TI has developed a series of procedures and materials for training its members and officers in basic leadership skills. Many districts hold training sessions for officers, known as Toastmasters Leadership Institute (originally called Toastmasters University), twice a year for club officers and for any other members who wish 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 complete all ten projects in the "Competent Leadership" manual receive a Competent Leader (CL) award. Typically, this can be accomplished by attending about 20 club meetings. Members are encouraged to work on the projects in the Competent Leader manual, whether they are serving as club officers or not.

Members who meet the requirements including serving a term (6 months or 1 year) as club officer, working on the Distinguished Club Plan, giving two Successful Club Series and/or Leadership Excellence modules, and completing their Competent Leader and Competent Communicator educational levels, receive the Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB) 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 Silver (ALS) 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.

Club meetings and meeting roles

Every Toastmasters 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 or TME for Toastmaster of the Evening).

There are three basic parts to the Toastmasters meeting: the prepared speeches, table topics, and evaluations. In the prepared speaking portion of the meeting, two, three, or sometimes four Toastmasters will give a prepared presentation or speech before the group. Speeches are usually designed to meet the requirements of one of the projects in the communication manuals. "Table topics" is an extemporaneous speaking exercise where the speaker speaks "off the cuff"; that is, the speaker responds to a question or topic that is not known beforehand. The Table Topicsmaster presents the topic, calls on an individual, and then that individual has 1 to 2 minutes to respond.

The evaluation session is where feedback is provided to all members, including the speakers. The evaluation session is headed by a General Evaluator, who calls on individual speech evaluators to give a 2- to 3-minute evaluation of an earlier presentation. After the evaluators have finished giving their evaluations, the General Evaluator calls for the helper reports:

  • There is a Grammarian who notes mispronunciations and mistakes in grammar, or word repetition (e.g. "I did ... I did"), sometimes called "double clutching." In some clubs, the Grammarian will also point out positive uses of language, including nice turns of phrase, clever formulations, and especially poetic or otherwise exceptional uses of language.
  • An Ah-Counter keeps track of audible pauses such as "ah," "er," "um," "well," and "you know". These are also called 'embolalia', which are naturally-occurring pauses or fillers in the flow of a speech. In some clubs, the role of the Grammarian and the Ah-Counter will be combined.
  • The meeting's Timer reports how much time each speaker, table topics responder, and evaluator took to give his or her presentation. Then the General Evaluator gives his or her overall evaluation of the meeting and makes recommendations of ways to improve future meetings. Some clubs have Table Topics Evaluators who evaluate members' responses to the table topics; for those that do not, the General Evaluator frequently fills that role. In addition, some advanced clubs 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, depending on the club. For example, there may be an Invocator who gives an invocation or inspirational opener; a Humor Master, Jokemaster, 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 members use the word of the day in their presentations); a Listener who asks questions after the presentations to make sure everyone was listening; and/or an Award Presenter, who presents awards at the end of the meeting. Some clubs also have an Educational Presentation in which a speaker presents an educational aspect of Toastmasters. In many clubs, 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 traveling trophy to take with him or her until the next meeting, when he or she will have to present it to the next winner. There may also be a Vote Counter, who collects the attendants' votes for Table Topic Speaker, (Rehearsed) Speaker, Evaluator, and Program Manager. The Vote Counter may also collect written evaluations to be given to the persons who gave rehearsed speeches. German Clubs have introduced the Pub Master which is responsible to reserve a table and lead the way to a restaurant or pub for an informal meeting after the toastmaster session.

The order of the program varies from club to club and country to country. Many noon-time clubs and other clubs that are constrained by time do their prepared speeches first, followed by Table Topics, followed by evaluations. This is the standard program for clubs in South Africa. Dinner clubs in the United States tend to do Table Topics first, and then everyone sits back and relaxes for the after-dinner prepared speeches. Alternately, some clubs that are very time-conscious do prepared speeches first, then evaluations, saving Table Topics for last.

Contests

Toastmasters Clubs have two main contests per year. The International Speech and Evaluation contest, and the Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest. Individual clubs may run their own additional contests such as the "Tall Tales" or "Rookies" contests.

Competitions allow members to practice their communication skills under demanding conditions, view the efforts of skilled members of other clubs, and provide entertainment during business meetings or dinner functions. The winner of the four main club contest proceeds to the next level of competition being 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" or the "Motivational 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 annual International Conference.[1]. Competitors from Toastmasters Clubs from all over the world enter this contest.

In the International Speech Contest, the contestant selects the subject and type of speech to give and is judged on the overall presentation using a point system for various categories of skills. In a Humorous Speech Contest the speeches are judged using a different set of categories that includes how well humor was used. In a Tall Tales Contest, judging is based on speaking skills and use of exaggeration for humorous effect. In an Evaluation Contest, a model speaker (sometimes called a test speaker or a target speaker) gives a speech, and then all of the contestants evaluate the same speech. In the Table Topics Contest, each contestant is led into the room one at a time and presented with a question they have not previously been informed of and are judged on how well they respond; each contestant is given the same question.

Contest speeches are timed; any contestant who goes under-time or over-time is disqualified (the time limits for the Humorous and International Speech contests are 5 to 7 minutes; for table topics, the time limits are 1 to 2 minutes; for evaluation contests, the time limits are 2 to 3 minutes).

Judges evaluate contestants with a rating system on a wide range of criteria based on the speech type. These rating scores are summed into a single score. The score is used to define a ranking of the top-three candidates. A Borda count is used to determine the winner from the rankings.

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