Toastmasters: How We as an Organization Could Improve the Experience

Over the last few days, I have posted five times about Toastmasters. There’s a reason all of a sudden I’m writing about something I’ve participated in for almost two years. I’m finishing with this one to explain my “why” and also give some ideas of how Toastmasters could possibly improve its already effective program.

Toastmasters has an adult learning program called “Pathways.” There are a number of differently themed pathways. The first one is Presentation Mastery. Others include visionary leadership, persuasion, mentoring, group facilitation, and many more. Each pathway involves five levels and each level involves 2-5 projects, most of which are or conclude with speeches.

For example, for the lesson “Dealing with Difficult Audiences,” members of the club play the roles of talkative, disruptive, or argumentative listeners while the pathway learner delivers a twelve-minute talk and has to deal with or pacify the disrupters.

Needless to say, the pathways are not a walk in the park, but more of a strenuous hike up Lookout Mountain. And right now I’m on level 4 of the first pathway and have chosen from a list of projects. I chose “Blogging” and the project involves five blog posts about Toastmasters and a speech about them.  Thus, the last few days of posts.

I believe in Toastmasters’ mission  and enjoy my experience. Unfortunately, I started in the second week of January 2020, and we all know what happened two months later. For almost a year all the presentations were virtual, which, while it is a technological miracle, is less than idea (really less than ideal) when it comes to public speaking. As in, you can’t see the audience. You can’t hear them laugh or respond. You feel like you are talking into the cybervoid.

The first way we can improve is to get as far away from that mode of mediated communication as possible, as quickly as possibly. The only exception is business meetings!

However, I have a bigger concern, and it relates to my first post in this series on finding topics.

We need to shift the focus from the speaker to the audience. We need to shift the focus from expressive communication to rhetorical communication, that is, messages designed to change the audience in some way: improve their knowledge and skill base, challenge them to consider alternate ways of thinking or behaving, inspire them to aspirational goals. 

I’m not saying we fail at this in Toastmasters. I simply want us to consider whether many of the speeches are more about the speaker than the audience. In the real world, the latter is the case or the expectation. 

Another concern is that in some clubs there is too much emphasis on contests. While some newcomers would be attracted to that option, most would not and might decide TM is not for them. Also, even though we want newcomers to speak and not just come to meetings and watch--they won't benefit much from that--we must be sure that first, they don't feel pressured too early, and second, that they don't feel that the "old-timers" are too good and they won't measure up. 

Finally, Toastmasters has a lot of layers and moving pieces. My head becomes stuffed to overflowing when I think about the club level, the area level, the district level, the region level —and I’m still inside the three states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia—and all the officers and policies at each level. And I’m an officer! The head of a newcomer must spin. However, it is an international organization, so all these layers is probably necessary. With such a hierarchy, politics are needed, leaders and bureaucracy must exist. The average Joe member really isn’t motivated about the structure. They just want to enjoy the meetings and get some input. I think there is a disconnect somewhere.