r/Toastmasters

How does area, division, district collect information for themselves to improve?

I"ll admit this is a bit of me just venting - but then I started realizing that its one of the tools mentioned for clubs to use, but in my area, division, and district there doesnt seem to be any sort of feedback mechanism for them to determine how they should improve.

I'm wondering what metrics they use for determining how they are doing?

I know i'm being naive. I know that from top down they only seem to care about:

a. number of new members

b. number of new clubs ( and maybe number of clubs folded)

c. put on the events they were required to do ( contests, conference etc. )

does anyone who has been area, division, district director care to speak to this? ( am I completely wrong about this? is there a feedback mechanism that I have maybe been deleting out of my email?)

Is there a moments of truth for area/division/district? I think it might be very useful for the presidents or other officers to get together as a group and share their feedback. For most leaders outside of toastmasters this sort of feedback is invaluable because they may not be aware of the problems. or how widespread they might be

and its not just a bellyache session. And this IS actually a source of novel solutions sometimes!! (and as someone who is not in a leadership position: when I see acknowledgement of the feedback later on and what they are doing about it -> it makes me feel heard which goes a long way towards making me feel like I'm still part of the team and my issues matter. (my employer is 2000+ employees and this sort of thing is done at each level of leadership; sometimes its a survey but I noticed they make actual face to face sessions available to everyone - and they address it)

when things are difficult and there aren't easy solutions even that last bit I wrote can help me feel less discouraged and can sometimes also help with motivation to carry on.

when will it be updated for the new term? it's july 5 and still the old term

eta: thanks everyone. i'll just be patient

Dear Toastmasters,

I have been a Secretary and VPE for an in-person club.
As a secretary I spend anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour to religiously prepare the meeting minutes or MoM of our meeting every week straight up for 6 months. No doubt that, this helped my summarizing skills but I hardly did give any speech those 6 months.

Similarly, when as VPE, since we are a community club, I used Canva where we had templates. Yet, it took me 10-15 minutes to edit each field, change position and at times do the changes and re-publish in the last moment due to change in role players. The work felt overwhelming as the agenda preparation was also not very mobile friendly, etc.

To solve this, I came up with a tool that my club has been using for an year now to do these in minutes and not hours. Recently, the meeting minutes tool didn't work and the frustration expressed by the secretary validated the pain and I thought this must be the case for the broader fraternity as well. The secretary still have to summarize which is a muscle toastmaster helps to build but the redundant data is not needed. Similarly agenda can be quickly created by just editing the fields instead of doing aligning work etc. I think reducing the admin grunt work will help officers focus on actual toastmasters skills - communication, leadership and networking.

I would love to see if there are any VPEs / Secretaries / Ex-comm officers has a similar pain and if a free tool would help them.

apologies. I know this gets brought up every year this time of year.

why are they so long?!

district made the first one in person ( there are supposed to be more) . I'm not sure who they expected to show up at 8:30am on a saturday. in the summer.

Is there a list of the ones happening online currently?(I saw the stickied post from last year)

Hey r/SpeakBetter! I’m Reece, the founder of Progress Playground. I’ve spent the last few years coaching over 400,000 followers across social media on the mechanics of speech, articulation, verbal fluence, the psychology of confidence, etc. I’ve coached folks from young professionals, to executive senior leadership and have held many workshops in person helping companies and teams get better at communication.

I've worked with high-level execs at notable companies such as Google, Rothschild, BP, multiple seven- and eight-figure entrepreneurs, schools all around the UK, and have done media training for footballers. But, my proudest achievement is helping many regain their confidence; going from socially inept to hosting large seminars and talks. 

People often think that I was naturally gifted at speaking but like most folks I had similar troubles in the beginning such as speaking anxiety and trouble speaking with confidence. My career was stuck in a place where I was not moving up and I started working on my communication skills, articulating my thoughts better, and practicing speeches. I eventually started filming and documenting this process and many folks since then have reached out for private coaching to the point that I had to start turning folks down. 

I’m a firm believer that great communication isn’t a personality trait, it’s a physical skill. Just like going to the gym, you need daily practice to see results. My coaching focuses on actionable techniques for articulation, structured speaking, and pronunciation to help you sound more intentional and concise. Those that I’ve seen managed to master this skill have become more successful when it comes to career, social skills, dating, etc.

I’ll be here answering questions about how to bridge the gap between being "technically great" and being "promoted" through better communication and anything else!

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/progress.playground/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@progress.playground

https://preview.redd.it/smmlk2wpj1bh1.jpg?width=2316&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=406197ad54cea827bfbc394f77bc0c04ab9148ce

Is Distinguished Toastmasters a title that people are chasing and, in the process, has it lost its purpose and meaning?

Edit: Thanks everyone for responding.

Hi,

I'm trying to find information about Triple Crown from within TMI website, but haven't been able to find out the details on criterias, how the award is given, etc.

Googling only given me info from a non TMI websites.

Do any of toastmaster members in here happened to know if the page about this from TMI website do exist?

Thanks in advance.

So many of you have been amazingly gracious with your thoughts and suggestions!

I have some ideas for our site and want to test out my thinking with suggestions, etc.

Does your club maybe maintain multiples? I have heard of clubs that do use FTH as well as ES and the toastmost Wordpress as well.

on "paper" our club looks like it has 12 members. but in reality we have 4. a number of people left because of other obligations. etc etc. the many times we have asked for a club coach we are turned away( i think the numbers are from last year? or they're somehow different than what I see)

TL;DR : is there a point to trying to keep this thing afloat? how do we run meetings? has anyone ever seen a club come back from dropping down to numbers like this?

last week we had a meeting with 3 members and 4 guests!! ( about an hour before the meeting one of our club officers resigned. and another member said they were sick)

and it was about as rough as expected.

I've been asking anyone who would listen from leadership about getting help. (i've been asking for help since last year october)

they said:

-hold an open house

-contact lapsed members. followup with guests. go find speakers from other clubs.

I don't think an open house is going to fix this. we have guests showing up. we aren't able to convert them into members because our meetings are often appearing to be of low quality. I've tried all the other suggestions. (multiple times)

when I try to contact leadership theres alot of "go talk to this other person" and the area and division director are new and i cant get an email returned from them. we had a national holiday today, so I'm hoping that maybe not getting a response because both of them were maybe on vacation or something?)

I completely get that everyones volunteering and this is not anyones main gig - I'm not judging anyone.

I have an idea to create a regional alliance with a number of clubs so that our members can attend other meetings and help with filling out meetings to make them look bigger and of higher quality, This is something that has worked at toastmasters in the past ( i havent seen it personally but I read it about it online ) Has anyone seen something like this work ?

part of me just wants to call it and walk away. but another part of me is telling mysel fto rise to the challenge more. but I know I would have to sacrifice A LOT to try to put the regional alliance idea together on my own ( without help )

for speechcraft, can one toastmaster offer it by themselves? or would i need a full team of toastmasters to offer it to the attendees.

how do you do speechcraft in a corporate environment? i can't invite people in for security and it's during business hours.

so would i be able to fulfill all the roles, or do i really need a team? in a normal meeting, i can definitely multi-task, and i can explain roles quickly to people, if need be. i can easily adjust a role so that a guest can do it.

what's at stake ... if i need a full team, then i can't do speechcraft for my company. i'd have to think of something else. if i can do it myself, then i'd think of suggesting it.

what does it take to start a corporate club? when you're a part of that corporate world?

and how do you present the idea? do you have to come up with a business plan?

I am travelling this week between China and South Africa, so I missed the deadline to purchase another Pathways at $20 before the increase. How can I still purchase at the old price from someone else?

Use this monthly thread to share information about your club. Feel free to share each month.

Hi there. As my title says, I'm nervous about joining Toastmasters but know I have to do it for myself. What kind of things go on in a typical meeting? What should I expect? Is there any improve speeches (my worst few lol). TIA! ​

I have send emails and messages but how to reach out for virtual sessions as I am very much interested in the sessions.

I am days out from officially being president.

For the last several years, I have watched, listened and documented

I have a list of hoped for goals and some options to see if we can achieve those

I have reached out personally to several of my new EC members (and I do already know them all) about some hoped for items and what helps them

I recognize while I am hoping for collegiality and teaming and collaboration, I am personally not the bestest at achieving that. In my work world I avoided the manager role like the pox as it is herding cats on catnip and wanted no part of that. so here I am with my term about to start.

• please share anything you found worked
• anything you found DID not work
• initiatives you enjoyed
• how you kept things on track
• I mean anything.

my personal thought is we all work better when we all work together (okay yah cliche I know)

I think the material has improved, but I don't have 3-4 hours on a Saturday (or weeknight) to sit on Zoom and go through material I already know. I just want to do my hour and call it a day!

I've been in Toastmasters for 10 years and am actively working on my DTM project. Maybe it's time to stop being an officer in 2027 and just do speeches?

I'm an incoming VP for Membership. What's your advise or anything that I would need to know. For context, we're Presidents Distinguished Club for 20 years and just last week, we've met the goals for Smedley Distinguished Club.

Any insights, tips, or pointers is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I submitted my request for level approval about a month ago. Nobody has acted on it. I'm a club officer, and I didn't see it in Basecamp, but I'm assuming it's because I can't approve my own level. Which I wasn't trying to do. I brought it up to our current president, who delegated (so I'm told) to another officer. I've never actually met this other person.

My question is: with the completion of this level, I would have earned a triple crown and completed my education plan from last year. Would I still be able to claim it this year if they drag their feet until after the new year? Because if I completed the work this year, I want credit for it this year.