The low-down on what happens at every Liberty Village Toastmasters meeting, the roles and responsibilities that are available, and our mentorship program.
What is a Toastmasters Meeting Like?
Toastmasters is about more than just public-speaking. It is also about leadership and becoming more effective at running meetings of any kind. That is why Toastmaster meetings have structure and always have an agenda.
Members take turns assuming the various meeting roles – as a new member, we might ask you to be a Timekeeper or an Ah-counter. As you gain experience with the meeting structure, we’ll ask you to fill more responsible roles, like General Evaluator or Toastmaster. To learn more about how a meeting flows and what responsibilities are involved, keep reading…
Meeting Structure
Liberty Village Toastmasters meetings generally follow the following structure:
- Opening Remarks by Chairman
- Introduction of Guests
- Toastmaster’s Speech
- Introduction of the Evaluation Team
- Prepared Speeches
- Educational Speech
- Table Topics
- Evaluations
- Guest Comments
- Announcements
- Closing Remarks
- Drinks at Bar Wellington (Portland and Wellington)
Roles
The Club President serves as the Chairman of the meeting. The Chairman calls the meeting to order, leads club business sessions (when we have them), and adjourns the meeting.
In the opening remarks, the Chairman gets the meeting started on the right note and announces any changes to the agenda.
Introduction of Guests
Guests are important! Every member of the club was once a guest visiting the club to see just what it’s all about.
Although members will have introduced themselves to you and talked to you casually before the start of the meeting, we want to properly introduce you at the start of the meeting and properly welcome you as a club.
The Sergeant-At-Arms or an assistant will have asked you to fill in a guest information form before the start of the meeting, and will stand up to introduce you to the club. We’ll also ask you to say a few words about yourself – why you’re interested in Toastmasters, for example.
Toastmaster’s Speech
The Toastmaster is the MC (master of ceremonies) for the evening. The Toastmaster introduces speakers and keeps the meeting moving along smoothly, skillfully balancing the need to keep the meeting running on schedule with maintaining an upbeat and supportive atmosphere.
The Toastmaster delivers a short speech to put everyone in a carefully chosen frame of mind and introduces the theme for the evening.
Introduction of the Evaluation Team
Effective learning, genuine improvement and sustained personal development happens only when we receive feedback on how we’re doing. The evaluation team includes the following roles:
- The General Evaluator
- Speech Evaluators
- Timer
- Grammarian
- Ah-Counter
At this stage of the meeting, the Geneal Evaluator introduces the Timer, Grammarian and Ah-Counter and asks them to describe their roles and the purpose for each role.
Prepared Speeches
The prepared speeches represent the heart of the Toastmasters program. Toastmasters develop and refine their public speaking skills by working through a foundational manual with 10 speech projects, and then continue with advanced speech manuals of their own choosing.
Prepared speeches range from 4-6 minutes in length for IceBreakers to 10-14 minutes for advanced speeches.
They represent many hours of preparation and practice and may be touching or moving, inspirational or motivating, or even light-hearted and humorous.
Educational Speech
Educational speeches are not part of every meeting, but are presented every once in a while on topics that may help members to improve their speaking performance, or which may help club members to keep Liberty Village Toronto’s preimiere Toastmasters club.
Table Topics
Public speaking isn’t just about prepared speeches! At Toastmasters, we have Table Topics sessions to give members – and guests – the opportunity to speak on their feet. These impromptu, unprepared speeches are up to 2-minutes in length. Speakers are informed of their specific topic by the Table Topics Master just prior to speaking at the podium.
It’s a challenge, but Table Topics is also the time when speakers can be most creative, outlandish and even downright silly. (You’ll find at Liberty Village we like to combine learning with fun!)
Evaluations
The evaluation session is a time for feedback and motivation. Every prepared speaker has their speech evaluated by a fellow club member, who will encourage the speakers’ strengths and offer suggestions for improvement.
The evaluation session also includes feedback for the club! The general evaluator notes the strengths of the meeting as well as points for improvement in the future.
Evaluations are an integral part of Toastmasters’ ongoing development and improvement.
Guest Comments
Here’s a chance for guests to let us know what they think of the meeting! Some guests are happy to offer just a few phrases expressing their impressions. Others in the past have given structured short speeches, having taken in the Liberty Village atmosphere in a short time!
Whether you simply want to say a few words or more than just a few words, we welcome what you have to say!
Announcements
At the end of every meeting, club officers let members know what’s going on with club initiatives and the VP of education lets members know what roles they are scheduled to fill in upcoming meetings.
This is also a time for announcements related to members’ individual businesses, social events, and anything else that members would like to share with the whole club.
Our Mentorship Program
The Liberty Village Toastmasters Mentorship Program was initiated in the autumn of 2004, and has proven to be highly effective at helping new club members develop their speaking skills quickly. A mentor is a friendly, experienced Toastmaster who helps new members to start well and to obtain maximum benefit from their first few speeches.
Here’s how it works. The VP Education or Mentor Committee Chair will assign each new member a mentor by the first club meeting after a new member joins. The assigned Mentor will help the new member with their Ice-Breaker – the first prepared speech a Toastmaster presents to an audience – as well as the second and third speeches which help new members to develop structure and flow to their speeches. Mentors will also help Mentees with successfully taking on supporting roles in meetings as Timer, Grammarian and Ah-Counter.
Liberty Villagers who joined the club since the initiation of the Mentorship Program have found it to be very helpful. Veteran members of the club have noticed a much higher level of speaking skill with new members’ speeches and faster development of more advanced speaking skills.
The Mentorship Program at Liberty Village is a visible and tangible success, and has been incorporated as an ongoing and integral part of the Toastmasters experience for every new club member. You will find that Liberty Villagers are a helpful lot in general, and the Mentorship Program is our commitment to new members to ensure that they start well, start strong, and achieve their communication goals as quickly as possible.
If you would like to find out more about the Mentorship Program, please feel free to ask for more information during your visit to Liberty Village Toastmasters!
