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Hello! I'm Raphaela.
Thanks for visiting Toastmasters International,
where more than 4 million people have gained the confidence to communicate
and lead in any circumstance.
They've done this by becoming a member of a Toastmasters club.
Toastmasters has a network of more than thirteen thousand clubs around the
world to choose from,
and although the format is not exactly the same in all of these clubs,
one thing is consistent:
members give speeches,
they take on meeting roles,
and they have a great time learning.
If you're interested in seeing what a typical club meeting is like,
please join me at my club;
the "Bright and Early Toastmasters."
Your timing is perfect. The meeting is just about to begin.
During a club meeting a few members volunteer to take on meeting roles
such as Toastmaster of the day,
Timer,
Grammarian or Evaluator.
Some members give speeches.
Club meetings are free to visit and when you do, you have a chance to find out
about the communication and leadership skills
members developed every time they participate. Alright, welcome everyone.
Welcome to the "Bright and Early" Toastmasters club.
I call this meeting to order.
Nicolas is our club president.
He starts every meeting by welcoming us and introducing the Toastmaster of the day.
I’d like to introduce Jay, our Toastmaster.
The Toastmaster of the day is the chair of the meeting.
Jay’s job as today’s Toastmaster is to introduced speakers and keep the meeting
rolling along.
It's great practice for leading meetings.
Jay starts the meeting by introducing the people who will fill the meeting roles.
The purpose of the meeting roles is to help members improve their skills
in both communication and leadership
by providing feedback and evaluation.
And now I’d like to introduce our Ah-Counter: Deborah.
Many clubs use an Ah-Counter at meetings.
This person helps Toastmasters keep track of filler words they use while speaking.
At the end of each meeting the Ah-Counter reports how many Ah’s, Um’s and other
filler words each speaker used.
This helps members become more aware of unintended words or sounds they make
when they speak.
And now I'd like to introduce our Grammarian: Danielle.
Hi, everybody! The Grammarian’s job is to listen to the way members speak and
provide feedback that helps them build their language skills.
I also introduce a word for practice and today's word
is industrious,
which means to work energetically and devotedly. So somebody who’s very hardworking
is industrious.
If you can, use this in your speeches today!
With the Grammarian’s help
every member can stretch his or her vocabulary,
and if a member says something with flair, the Grammarian calls attention to it.
Not all clubs have an Ah-Counter,
sometimes the Grammarian does that job, too.
And now I would like to introduce Seth, our Timer.
Today Seth is our Timer.
The timer helps to keep the meeting on schedule and times each speech.
The timer uses 2 important tools:
a stopwatch and timing lights.
With the stopwatch he’ll measure how long someone speaks down to the second,
and using the green, amber and red timing lights he alerts speakers to how long
they have spoken and how much time they have left,
because an important part of speaking and leading is using your time well.
Next Jay introduces Shyanne, the General Evaluator for this meeting.
Hello everyone, I’m Shyanne.
As the General Evaluator today I’m going to report on the overall
flow of the meeting and then I’ll provide feedback on how we can improve our club meetings overall.
In her role as General Evaluator Shyanne takes notes throughout the meeting
and reports back to everyone giving specific feedback on how well the
meeting flowed
and also on how future meetings might be improved.
For example. Did each member who had a role prepare ahead of time?
Did they perform their duties correctly?
Shyanne will be sure to point out what worked and what didn’t.
In every club meeting there at least two members who will present a speech.
These speakers don’t just stand up and start talking.
They use the guidelines in the Competent Communication - or CC - manual
or the Advanced Communication Series ACS manuals to fully prepare their
presentations and achieve the objectives for each speech.
The CC manual speeches usually last five to seven minutes,
ACS manual projects speeches are five to seven minutes or longer, depending
upon the assignments.
Every speaker who has prepared a speech in advance enjoys one of Toastmasters
greatest benefits:
Evaluation.
Think of it as having a friend watch you practice a speech and then give you
helpful feedback.
The speaker usually meets with the evaluator before the meeting and asks to be watched for
some aspects of the talk.
Hi everyone. Leslie is working on project number four,
on How to say it.
Today Leslie will give a prepared speech and David is set to evaluate it.
First he announces her goals and what she asked him to consider while he watches
her give her speech.
Let's welcome Leslie up to share her secrets of Texas Hold’em.
Now Leslie gives her speech. She has chosen to present project number four in the
Competent Communication manual:
How to say it. Hi, everyone.
I have a few secrets about Texas Hold’em. I play a lot, and I’ve learned that mostly it’s gentlemen
on the table. So when
a female is coming in, like myself, they don’t think I know how to play. Her objective is to select the right words
and build the best sentences to communicate clearly, accurately
and vividly.
After Leslie’s speech club members take a moment to jot their feedback on an
evaluation form, that they will give directly to Leslie.
She’ll use that feedback along with David's evaluation to improve her speeches
is in the future. Areas of study and practice include: organizing your thoughts,
getting to the point,
delegating, mentoring,
controlling your voice,
working with visual aids,
getting comfortable with gestures and more.
Nicolas is giving a prepared speech, too. He is working towards an advanced
communication goal.
The title of the speech is: How my dog found me.
Thank you, Jay.
Oh...
Talk about a subject that they really touches my heart
because not only is this a story about how my dog found me
but it's how I found my wife.
In addition to prepared speeches we always set aside a few minutes for
Table Topics.
This is often the most challenging and the most fun part of our meetings.
And now I’d like to introduce Joyce, our Topics Master.
Situations come up in everyone's life, where they have to think fast and say just
the right thing.
It might be a job interview, a sales meeting or dinner conversation.
We use Table Topics to practice and hone the skill of impromptu speaking.
The Table Topics Master prepares questions before the meeting, and participants are
given one to two minutes to deliver their response.
Joyce is our Table Topics Master today. She always has great questions.
Hey Lewis,
would you like to come up and tell us about some time you were really scared? Sure!
Hi everybody.
Mister Toastmaster, and fellow Toastmasters and honored guests; I’ve never been scared a day in my life.
Now it’s time for David to offer his evaluation of Leslie’s speech.
Based on his conversation with Leslie before the meeting
he focuses on the area she was working on.
Did she use her hands to gesture well?
Did she control her voice throughout the speech?
What did she do especially well, and what are some ideas for improvement?
Leslie, you did a great job today with the speech, you had
very strong eye contact ...
After everyone has given their prepared and impromptu speeches
the members vote on who they think did best job that day.
In Toastmasters members learn how to evaluate meetings and improve their team effort.
To do this the meeting functionary roles and the General
Evaluator provide feedback to the club, so members can learn what worked and
what needed improvement.
Toastmasters always want to improve what they do and this includes their meetings.
We pass our ballots forward to the ballot counter.
Seth lets everyone know if they stayed within their targeted times for their
planned and impromptu speeches.
This helps members learn how to manage time while speaking. In Table Topics everyone
stayed within their time limit, and for our speakers: Leslie, you took four minutes and
35 seconds
and Nick, you took five minutes and 42 seconds Great job, everyone!
At this point the Ah-Counter, Deborah
reports on the number of Ah’s and Um’s that were said with people gave speeches today.
Keeping track this way really helps speakers learn how to control their use
of filler words, use pauses, and focus on their message. All in all, we’ve done a
very good job today in not using
our filler words.
I do wanna just make a little note for Lewis’ story
you used “and so”
so it just sort-of connected all your sentences and was one giant run-on
sentence. But everything else was great. Yeah, really good.
As Grammarian, Danielle reports on how well everyone did with their words choices.
She tells us which speakers remembered to use the word of the day, if one of the
table topics participants used a nice turn of phrase to describe something
and if anyone used a word or sentence incorrectly. I’m please to report that
everyone who use our word of the day used it correctly,
and Nicholas was industrious in his phrasing using words like precocious and
industrious to describe his dog,
and Leslie educated us as well as entertained us telling us about her
industrious career as a poker player. Great job, everybody.
And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for:
Ben (???), our Sergeant at Arms presents ribbons for best speaker
evaluator and table topics participant.
Hi everyone. Ballots are in, and counted.
Best evaluator for today is David.
And the ribbon for best Table Topics goes to
Lewis
And last but not least the ribbon for best speaker goes to … Leslie.
Whether you win an award or not, you gain something from each meeting
Everyone joins Toastmasters
with a personal goal.
Maybe it’s a goal to become a more confident presenter,
or learn how to run a meeting,
or think on your feet ...
Whatever it is, you can achieve your goal if you participate.
So what's your goal?
Terrific meeting, you guys!
Thank you for having me as your Toastmaster.
Let’s bring Nicolas our club president back up to close out our meeting.
I hereby bring the Bright and Early Toastmasters meeting to a close,
I’ll see you all next week.
To learn more about how you can become the speaker or leader you want to be
visit the member experience section of the website
or to find a Toastmasters club meeting near you
click on the Find button
at www.toastmasters.org
Thanks for joining me today.