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Having Fun with the Toastmasters
Program
Have you ever wondered if there is an end to the ways in which the many
Toastmasters educational tools can be used? I have and I don’t believe
there is.
There are many things that keep me excited about Toastmasters but one of
these is the new and varied ways I have found to use and get the most from
our material.
This series of articles takes some of the great tools from our
Toastmasters educational and membership building bank and looks at new
ways to use them and keep the excitement and challenge in Toastmasters
alive.
Successful Club Series Module Moments of Truth.
This is the greatest tool for carrying out a club health check up and
diagnosis. TMI recommend that it be conducted either in one 1 hour
presentation or two half hour sessions. However with a little creativity
there are other ways of conducting this module. One of these is as the
basis for a whole meeting with members fulfilling a number of roles as
follows:
The Toastmaster of the meeting provides an overview of Moments of Truth
and the importance of checking club health – just as we do our own on a
regular basis. They facilitate the whole session/meeting and draw to a
close with promise of collated feedback being provided at the next
meeting.
The members should be divided into 2-3 groups. These groups are based on
the ‘6 club standards’ with each group being assigned 2-3 standards to
rate. I recommend that rather than rating the overall standard that
members individually rate each of the criteria listed under the main
standard on a scale of 0 to 5 (this allows different perceptions to be
identified eg 2 members could agree the Standard is reached but may see
that it is reached differently). They are then to work in their group to
come up with the group result of 2 things the club has been rated highly
on and 2 things the club could improve upon.
Group members are asked to identify 2 things they think could be done to
improve areas they had identified as needing attention.
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C&L Manual Speeches : 2-3 Toastmasters to each present a manual
speech using as their topic 2-3 of the club standards. They should working
in a group (above) that corresponds with at least one of the standards in
their speech. It is important that each speaker focuses on different
standards and this would need to be worked out in advance.
Table Topics : respondents would be selected evenly from each of
the groups and asked questions about what their group rated highly or what
were areas in which the club could raise its standards.
Evaluators : evaluate the speeches presented
Round Robin : each member could be asked to respond to the question
“What was the most important thing you learnt from this exercise)
By using this format the staples of a club meeting (manual speeches,
evaluation, impromptu speaking are incorporated and every member at the
meeting is involved in the ’Moments of Truth’. In addition the Toastmaster
of the Meeting can structure their role to complete one of the assignments
from the Advanced Manual ‘Discussion Leader and 2-3 members have the
opportunity to complete one of their C & L speeches. This is a way of
using one objective to achieve greater overall results.
Timing : this can be worked to accommodate your meeting time and
depending on the amount of time you wish to allocate to the rating of club
standards but would fit well with a 1 hour meeting. It could be worked to
fit the framework of clubs that have a longer meeting - if the club wanted
to go ahead and spend time working on how to improve in the
recommendations put forward. This could be an advanced manual assignment
for another member who would lead the discussion around this.
Acknowledgements go to Toastmaster Bruce George DTM from Inverell
Toastmasters for this suggestion.
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