• Talk with the Vice President of Education (VPE) to get your Icebreaker scheduled
• See if the VPE can assign you a mentor

Goals for Part 2

1. Learn more about the club structure
2. Take on different meeting roles
3. Write and give your first speech, “The Icebreaker”

The Club Structure

As a new member, there is a lot of information thrown at you in the first few weeks. Toastmasters meetings are not like normal business meetings and at first the structure can seem quite off and disorientating. However, as you progress through the program, you will see that the club is structured with a purpose, and that is to help members grow as effective speakers in leaders.

As you read through the back of the competent communicator manual, you will get a better understanding of the overall agenda of the meeting, the parts that fill our the agenda, and the roles within the parts that help members succeed in speaking and leading.

The Executive Council, consisting of the President, Vice Presidents, Treasurer, Secretary, and Sergeant at Arms are responsible for maintaining the structure and flow of the meeting. This includes the set up of the meeting space, the opening, business meeting, educational speeches, table topics, and evaluation. Each section of the meeting has different goals and people assigned to roles are responsible for leading those sections.

Meeting Roles

If you break the meeting down into primary sections: Set up, opening, business, speeches, table topics, and evaluations – there are different roles within these primary sections for structure and execution.

In the clubs I am involved in, the sections are run by the following roles:

Set Up – Sergeant at Arms
Opening and Business – President
Speeches – Toastmaster
Table Topics – Table Topic Mager
Evaluations – General Evaluator

To be successful in Toastmasters, I encourage you to take on as many of the roles as possible within the first few meetings. Doing that will help you better understand the structure of the meetings and will serve you to become more comfortable in front of your club.

The Icebreaker

Ah the Icebreaker, that glorious first speech that so many new members run from. There is really not much to say about the icebreaker. It is tough, but it really takes just getting up there and doing it.

For me, I mind mapped my first speech and got up there and gave it. I said “um” 12 times, but after that the numbers of “ums” dropped to 6, then 2, and then none within the first few speeches. Today, I now slap myself if I say filler words.

You can do it. Whether you are a new or returning Toastmaster, the Icebreaker is nothing to fear. It is a lot of fun and once you get good at speaking, you can actually make a lot of money just standing in front of people speaking.

Conclusion

It is my hope that I have encouraged you to really get the most out of Toastmasters as possible. To do that, please get out the materials you have received from Toastmasters and figure out:

1. The structure of the club
2. What the various meeting roles are
3. Getting your Icebreaker done

I look forward to sharing more information about how to succeed in Toastmasters with you in the future.

Fellow toastmasters and guests, how often is the timing messed up at your meeting? Do you know when to start the timing? Do you know now to use the Timer role as your greatest membership growth tool? You don’t? Well let me tell you…

When timing speeches, Table Topics and evaluations, I like to follow the contest rules. Toastmaster International has established that for contests, timing starts when the contestant is making an effort to communicate with the audience – verbally or not!

This is an important point, because many people will start to make faces, gestures, or interact with the audience in some way. Many people are confused by this rule and it can be interpreted in many ways so let’s look at an example. I gave a demonstration speech to a new club near my office. At the beginning of the speech I started to sniff around the lectern like something smelled funny. I then recoiled in disgust, waved my hand like I was fanning a smell and said, “Toastmasters stinks!”

If that had been a contest speech, then timing would begin the moment I started to sniff around the lectern. I was communicating with the audience that there was a smell coming up from the lectern so that was the starting point. Please note that this does not include when you are shaking hands with the person in control of the lectern or the moment or two you need to get posed before the audience, but when you move to communicate, I am starting the time.

So what does timing have to do with membership? If you watch the next meetings you are attending, guests tend to gravitate towards the back. Because of the layout of most meetings, they usually happen to sit next to the timer. Then what happens? They ask the timer what they are doing or the timer takes some initiative and tells them. Throughout the meeting you can always catch them looking at the time.

As you are filling roles for the next meeting, what happens? “Hey Guest, do you want to be the timer at our next meeting?”, says the VP of Education.

“Sure”, says the guest.

Before you know it, you have another happy member.

Thanks for visiting,

Chris