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This is "Toastmasters FAQ 1 of 5 -- What is Toastmasters International?"
From: Joel Furr DTM jfurr@acpub.duke.edu
Other FAQ's in this series are...
"Toastmasters FAQ 2 of 5 -- Membership"
"Toastmasters FAQ 3 of 5 -- Educational Advancement"
"Toastmasters FAQ 4 of 5 -- Leadership and Organization"
"Toastmasters FAQ 5 of 5 -- Speech Contests"
The complete FAQ's (1-5) are periodically posted at alt.org.toastmasters, alt.answers, misc.answers, news.answers, and misc.education
1. What is Toastmasters?
Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational corporation headquartered
in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Its mission is to improve communication
and leadership skills of its members and in general. Mainly, this works
out to 'improving public speaking skills' but there is also a potent leadership
and management aspect to the organization if you aspire to reach that level.
2. Is this just a group for people in the USA
or for people who speak English?
No. The organization includes approximately 180,000 members in 54 countries,
including Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico,
New Zealand, the Philip-pines, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom,
and the United States of America. Toastmasters International publishes
a complete set of materials in English and basic materials in French, Spanish,
and Japanese. As translators make themselves available, more materials
are translated.
3. How is Toastmasters organized?
All Toastmasters members belong to one or more clubs. Clubs consist of
at least eight members and may have forty or more. The recommended size
for a club is twenty or more. Clubs exist in communities around the world,
especially in North America, and it's a rare locality in the United States
that doesn't have at least one Toastmasters club within thirty minutes'
driving time. There are, at present, over 8,000 clubs around the world,
and most of them are in the United States. There are many sorts of clubs:
community clubs, military clubs, company clubs, prison clubs, collegiate
clubs, and so on. At this time, the majority of the *new* clubs being chartered
are 'company clubs', i.e. clubs chartered at and meeting at businesses
and organizations, in m any cases open only to employees or members of
those organizations. Never fear, however; there are thousands of community
clubs already in existence as well.
4. Where can I find a club?
If you'd like to visit a club meeting, simply telephone Toastmasters International
World Headquarters at (714) 858-8255 and ask for the locations of the clubs
near you. Alternately, drop a postcard to TI WHQ, P.O. Box 9052, Mission
Viejo CA 92690 and ask for the local clubs' listings. You may be VERY surprised
by how many clubs there are in your area. Quite a few clubs don't get around
to advertising in the newspaper. Complete listings for all clubs in the
world can be found at http://www.toastmasters .org/index.html
If you cannot access the World Wide Web, send email to tminfo@toastmasters.org
and ask; be sure to include your postal address so the information can
be mailed to you.
5. Do I have to ask permission before attending
a meeting of a club in my area?
Usually no. If you're visiting a community club, it might not be a bad
idea to let them know you're coming so they can tell you any details like
what time members arrive to eat and what time members who don't come to
eat arrive, but community clubs are almost always open to all and they'll
be delighted to have you come to the meeting. Clubs that meet at companies
and organizations, on military bases, or in prisons are often, but not
always, restricted to members or employees of the sponsoring body. The
se clubs are happy to have guests but you sometimes need to call ahead
to get through security or to find out specifically where the club meets.
Unlike some other organizations, where one must have a sponsoring member
who invites you to the meeting and in troduces you to the group, Toastmasters
welcomes all guests. If the club is open to membership from the community,
you will usually be offered a membership application at the end of the
meeting.
6. Is Toastmasters a social or drinking organization
in some regard?
The name "Toastmasters" is a holdover from the founding of
the organization, when one of the main types of public speaking a member
of society would engage in was after-dinner speaking, a.k.a. toastmastering.
It is rare that formal drinking an d toasts take place, and these are usually
at major banquets or conferences. In general, though, you'll find two types
of clubs: those that have a meal with their meetings and those that don't.
Clubs that have a meal with their meeting may charge their members for
the meals in advance and pay the restaurant in one lump sum or may have
members order off the menu. Since breakfast and lunch clubs are popular
with the business community, you can often kill two birds with one stone
by joining Toastmasters: educating yourself and having a meal with business
associates. You'll also find some clubs that get meeting space by having
dinner before their meetings -- and half the members wait until dinner
is over to arrive. There's infinite variety to it all. This is one good
reason to call in advance. Many clubs do *not* have meals with their meetings,
though. Quite a few clubs meet after dinnertime in a public meeting room
at a bank or library or at a church, have their meeting, and go home.
7. What happens at a meeting?
The format varies slightly from club to club, but the basics include:
Meetings last anywhere from one hour (especially at lunch or breakfast) to three hours (if the club meets infrequently or has long-winded speakers). The Hafa Adai Toastmasters meetings run 1.5 hours
8. What's a "prepared speech?"
When you join Toastmasters (see the "Membership" FAQ) you receive
a basic speaking manual with ten speech projects. Each project calls on
you to prepare a speech on a subject of your own choosing but using certain
speaking principles. Each manual project lists the objectives for that
speech and includes a written checklist for your evaluator to use when
evaluating the speech. Thus, if you're scheduled to speak at a meeting,
you generally pull out your manual a week or two in advance and put together
a speech on whatever you like but paying attention to your goals and objectives
for that speech. Then, when you go to the meeting, you hand your manual
to your evaluator and that person makes written comments on the checklist
while you speak. At the end of the meeting, that person (your evaluator)
will rise to give oral commentary as well. The purpose of the extensive
preparation and commentary is to show you what you're doing well, what
you need to work on, and driving these lessons home so you're constantly
improving.
9. What speech projects are there for me to work
on?
In the basic ("Communication and Leadership" manual), there are
ten speech projects:
As you can see, all ten projects above are wide-open for you to choose whatever topic you like. Even if you pick a controversial subject, most Toastmasters audiences will evaluate you on how well you presented your subject, not on whether they agreed with you or not. For further information about the speaking program, see the "Educational Advancement FAQ."
10. What is "Table Topics?"
Table Topics is fun! It's also terrifying. Basically, it calls on you,
the guest or member, to present a one to two minute impromptu speech on
a subject not known to you until the moment you get up to speak! A member
of the club assigned to be Topicsmaster will prepare a few impromptu topics
and call on members (or guests, if they've given assent in advance to being
called on) to stand up and speak on the topic. Topics might include current
events (e.g. "What would you do about Haitian boat people if you were
President?") or philosophy ("If you had no shoes and met a man
who had no feet, how would you feel?") or the wacky ("Reach into
this bag. Pull an item out. Tell us about it.").
11. What is Evaluation?
The Evaluation program is the third of the three main parts to the
meeting. All prepared speakers, as noted above, should have their speaking
manuals with them and should have passed them on to the evaluators beforehand.
During the speech, and after, each person's evaluator should make written
notes and furthermore, plan what to say during the two to three minute
oral evaluation. Evaluation is tough to do well because it requires an
evaluator to do more than say "here's what you did wrong." A
good evaluator will say "here's what you did well, and here's why
doing that was good, and here are some things you might want to work on
for your next speech, and here's how you might work on them." It's
important to remember that the evaluator is just one point of view, although
one that has focused in on your speech closely. Other members of the audience
can and should give you written or spoken comments on aspects of your speech
they feel important.
12. What's all this emphasis on time limits?
As noted above, speeches have time limits, Table Topics have time limits
(1-2 minutes, usually) and evaluations have time limits (2-3 minutes, usually).
This is in order to drive home the point that a good speaker makes effective
use of the time allotted and does not keep going and going and going until
the audience is bored. In the real world, quite often there are practical
limits on how long a meeting can or should go; by setting time limits on
speeches and presentations, participants learn brevity and time management
and the club meeting itself can be expected to end on schedule. Time limits
are rarely enforced to the letter. In only a few situations will you find
yourself cut off if you go too long, and that's up to the individual club.
Most c lubs don't cut speakers off if they go overtime. It is common for
clubs to use a set of timing lights to warn the speakers of the advance
of time. All speeches and presentations have a time limit expressed as
an interval, e.g. 5 to 7 minutes. A gr een light would be shown at 5 minutes,
amber at 6, and red at 7. In Table Topics, the lights would go 1, 1.5,
and 2 minutes respectively. When the green light comes on, you've at least
spoken enough, though you need not finish right away, and when the y ellow
light comes on, you should begin wrapping up. If you're not done by the
time the red light comes on, you should finish as soon as possible without
mangling the ending of your speech. The only times you're actually *penalized*
for going over or und er time is in speaking competition; in speech contests
(see the "Contests FAQ") you must remain within the interval
or be disqualified. Some clubs hold an audience vote for "best speaker,"
"best topic speaker," and "best evaluator" during the
meeting an d it's a practice in some clubs to disqualify people who go
over or under time from these meeting awards. Check with the particular
club to see what they do.
13. Why all this structure to the meeting?
If meetings sound complicated, we're sorry. Meetings generally are not
complicated once you get used to the timing lights in the back and the
different roles members of the group play. Since the average club is expected
to have 20 or more members, you n eed a lot of roles for people to play
in order to involve everyone. And, since meeting assignments vary from
meeting to meeting, everyone gets practice doing everything over the course
of several meetings. One meeting, you'll be assigned to give a speec h;
the next, you might be timer; the next, you might be the Toastmaster of
the Meeting, running the whole show. It keeps you flexible and it keeps
you from having to prepare a speech EVERY meeting, which would get old
quickly.
14. I'm scared to death of speaking! Why should
I look into Toastmasters?
EVERYONE is afraid of speaking. In poll after poll, "public speaking"
comes up as more feared than "death." Public speaking is the
nation's #1 fear. You are no different. Even if you think you're really
good at speaking, there will come times when your heart stops and your
palms sweat and you freeze before an audience. Toastmasters can help with
that. Reme mber that EVERYONE in a Toastmasters club is there because at
some point they realized they needed help communicating and speaking before
audiences. Almost everyone will remember how wretched they felt when they
gave their first speech. You may be star tled to find out how supportive
a Toastmasters club really can be. [The author of this FAQ recruited a
friend to Toastmasters who was so overwrought and nervous that she sobbed
as if her heart was broken after her first speech. Ditto for the second.
So me tears after the third. Eventually she realized that we weren't going
to eat her alive and she came to enjoy it. By the time she earned her CTM,
she consistently won "best speaker" votes at our meetings.] If
you're aware how nervous you ar e but aren't convinced that you should
do anything about it, stop and think what skill is more important than
any other when it comes to getting and keeping a good job? Think you're
already an excellent speaker? People who think they're really good some
times come into Toastmasters and find out how unstructured and sloppy they
really are. Being comfortable doesn't mean that you're actually GOOD. Even
if you ARE good, you can always get better. Toastmasters can give you a
lot of skills and keep good sp eakers improving. If you still don't know
whether you'd like Toastmasters, why not visit a meeting? If you still
don't think it's your cup of tea, we'll still be happy you came by.
15. How is Toastmasters more beneficial than
other forms of speaking improvement?
College and high school courses in public speaking usually involve the
students sitting through dozens of lectures followed by one or two speaking
opportunities. When the speeches are over, you get a grade. Often, you
get graded on what you did wrong. This isn't a way to build reassurance
and motivation. Then too, you rarely get much of a chance to practice by
doing. You get up at the end of the semester, give your speech, and sit
down. Toastmasters is constant reinforcement and constant improvemen t.
You learn by doing, not by sitting there while someone lectures for hours.
For-profit courses such as Dale Carnegie can be very good for their participants.
They also cost a lot and when they're over, they're over. Toastmasters
costs $36 per year (plus club dues, if any) and it can last a lifetime.
16. Where should I go for further information?
See the Membership FAQ, the Educational Advancement FAQ, the Leadership
and Organization FAQ, and the Speech Contests FAQ. Ask questions in alt.org.toastmasters.
Write the poster of this FAQ. Call Toastmasters International at 1-714-858-8255.
Write To astmasters International at P.O. Box 9052, Mission Viejo, California,
92690-7052. 17. Can I send mail to Toastmasters officials via the Internet?
If you need to send email to department heads at TI World Head- quarters,
there addresses are as follows (although be warned that not every person
listed below regularly checks their email -- some are more accustomed to
the Internet than others. If it's important, send a letter through the
regular mail.)
Toastmasters is a great organization! Check it out!
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