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These Top 10 Lists have been compiled for fun and information from a variety of Toastmaster resources.
- A holiday party where one of your members hosts the party, and invites Toastmasters from other nearby clubs, as well as dignitaries nearby.
- Have a golf tournament
- A Christmas party
- A progressive dinner
- Have a joint meeting
- A "toasting" contest at a joint meeting between two clubs. Each club had designated several contestants and pre-selected the topics / themes to be used, and each contestant in turn gave a toast which was judged. The club with the most points won the contest.
- Have a demo meeting in a local mall, or other place during TM week
- A speaker/evaluator exchange, each club sends at least a speaker and evaluator to the other club's meeting. The speaker is evaluated by a member of the other club while the evaluator evaluates a member of the other club.
- At contest time, use judges from the surrounding clubs
- Have a banner raid.
There's 13 in this list because they are all good ideas.
1. Involvement - keep in contact with all club members and guests - use the phone- discuss their aims and goals. Plan to accommodate their needs. Monitor/mentor progress towards achievement of goals
2. Arrange social functions to draw the club together - barbeques, dinners, pizza evenings etc
3. Programme members well in advance for the various club meeting
roles and speeches
4. Programme members well in advance to ensure club and member educational, leadership and management goals are achieved
5. Ensure that evaluations are friendly, useful, meaningful and constructive with practical feedback
6. Make sure everyone speaks at each meeting and always give guests an opportunity to participate
7. Give members an appreciation of the overall organisation and where they and the club "fit in"
8. Appreciate and recognise members' achievements
9. Look after "long-term" members and utilise the experience and skills they can provide
10. Follow up on guests before the next meeting
11. Have regular workshops to give, and to renew, skills
12. Ensure meetings have a friendly atmosphere - first impressions do count!
13. Challenge members to always do better - but know how far to go!
- Read it the day you receive it
- Give it away to a friend to read
- Give it away as a gift
- Use it for researching your next speech
- Use it as a resource for educationals
- Leave it in public places for others to read
- Write an article for publishing, then keep the published copy
- Find Toastmasters contact information in it
- Refer to it often for inspiration
- File it for future reference
- Always give a manual speech
- Evaluate other speakers often
- Mentor a new member
- Participate in table topics often
- Give an educational speech
- Assist with a speechcraft course
- Enter speech contests
- Chair a club meeting
- Introduce a speaker
- Visit another club as a guest speaker
- Be a speech contest judge
- Attend Area Speech Contests
- Become a club officer
- Organise a membership campaign
- Attend a Division or District convention
- Contribute an item to the club newsletter
- Be an evaluation contest test speaker
- Promote Toastmasters at your workplace
- Participate in an inter-club debate
- Sponsor or mentor a new club
- You get to meet and know new people eager to learn public speaking skills
- You get a larger audience for speechcrafters to deliver speeches to
- Existing members can practice evaluation skills with new members to evaluate
- Exciting fast-paced meetings with a variety of new speakers and topics to listen to
- Opportunity for existing members to give educationals and gain CL and ATM-Silver credits
- Gain chairmanship skills by chairing speechcraft sessions
- Existing members can get involved in a variety of new tasks - organising, leading, mentoring, evaluating
- Speechcraft Coordinator gains credit for ATM-Gold
- Speechcraft mentors gain credit for ATM-Gold
- Club gains new members by signing all speechcrafters up for 6 months membership
1. Goal setting
It's a great exercise in goal-setting. The Competent Communicator Manual (also known as the Basic Manual) has 10 speech assignments, which you need to complete in order to achieve your Competent Communicator Award. You can set yourself smaller goals e.g. a speech in the next month, and reaching these smaller goals will help you to realize the larger goal of your Competent Communicator (CC). From that comes the satisfaction that you have achieved what you set out to do. It also helps keep you young!
2. Accomplishment
There's a sense of accomplishment in achieving something that gives you a great boost to your self esteem. Your fellow Toastmasters in your club will congratulate you on reaching Competent Communicator, you'll get a nice certificate suitable for framing from Toastmasters International (and the first 2 advanced manuals for free), and your club may give you a badge or other recognition. You also need to complete at least 6 speeches to be eligible to compete in the International Speech Contest.
3. Recognition
You get to put the letters "CC" after your name. If you've earned a degree or a professional qualification of some sort, you know the sense of pride that adding those letters to your name gives you. As well, your peers recognize the work and effort that went in to getting those letters. If you leave before getting your Competent Communicator Award, there will always be that sense of unfinished business about you. However you can always rejoin Toastmasters to complete the award when time or circumstances permit.
4. Achievement
You will have covered, in the 10 Basic Manual speeches, the basics of public speaking. Each assignment focuses on a different element of public speaking, such as Vocabulary, Organization, Use of Voice, Gestures, etc. These are the basic skills that are needed for any kind of effective public speaking. These are the skills that you joined Toastmasters for in the first place, and the confidence that you know what you are doing.
5. Role model
You'll become an inspiration and role model to the newer members in your club. They will see that you have achieved your first goal, and they will be motivated to follow your lead, and want to know how you did it.
6. Employer recognition
One of the most undervalued aspects of the award recognition is the letter from Toastmasters International to your employer. Many members have reported positive comments from their employer and it being a benefit to their career. For those who are self-employed or between jobs, you can get Toastmasters International to send you this letter addressed "To Whom It May Concern". That way you can have it in your files for when it might prove useful in the future when discussing a prospective job or contract.
7. Evaluation
Learning how to accept a critical review with suggestions for improvement. After completing each speech assignment and reviewing the evaluator's comments, you will have some valuable ideas on how to change or improve your delivery for your next speech, thus accumulating a range of opinions and experience on your performance as a public speaker. You can use these evaluations in your everyday life, at work, at home, in the community. You'll start to mentally evaluate every speaker you come across, thereby improving your own speech and evaluation skills.
8. Timing
Learning how to organise your thoughts and deliver your message within time limits. Many business and public meetings require comments to be made within specified time limits. By knowing how much material you can get through in a 5-7 minute time frame is an extremely valuable skill and you'll learn how to say what is needed effectively and keep to the point.
9. Research
To improve your research skills by seeking out, analysing and filtering the vast quantity of information available when researching speeches. You'll use all sorts of sources of information: websites, dictionaries, articles, books, journals, posters, pamphlets, audio and visual tapes. You'll learn how to bring the essential points together in a logical easy to remember sequence to inform, entertain, inspire or persuade your audience.
10. Leadership
Another great reason for completing your Competent Communicator Award is that when if you are seeking higher office in Toastmasters, such as President, Area Governor, or as a contest judge, or a business or community role, having completed the Competent Communicator Award will give you valuable insight and experience which you will need to perform those roles effectively.
(ideas from posts on the Toastmasters newsgroup)
- Since I wasn't perfect the last time, I try to do better next time.
- If we don't practise the basics, old, bad habits creep back in.
- It helps me keep my skills sharp and hone them just a bit more.
- A basic manual project can let me focus on one area of public speaking that advanced manual projects often don't allow.
- It shortens the turnaround time on speech projects. Often, advanced manual projects require quite a bit more work to develop than C&L manual speeches.
- C&L manual projects are great for bench-testing techniques and approaches that I will later use in other projects - often advanced manual projects such as using Powerpoint and other programmes with a datashow projector.
- I'm able to do "theme CCs" where every speech is on the same theme.
- When I get an idea for a speech, I want to give that speech. I can always find a project in the basic manual that fits whatever speech idea I have.
- I can spread the wealth, giving the CCs to a different one of my clubs each time.
- I can develop ideas from other speeches I've heard into my own presentations.
There are plenty of opportunities for Toastmasters who have just completed their first Competent Communicator Award to continue with their membership and progress through the Educational and Leadership programme.
Here's the top ten things Advanced Communicators can do while continuing membership:
- Coordinate a speechcraft course
- Present Educationals for Advanced Communicator awards
- Become a Club or District office holder
- Mentor new members
- Create and utilise a personal development plan
- Participate in club speaking contests
- Become a judge for club and area contests
- Attend Division Conferences and District Conventions
- Organise Toastmasters Week activities
- Assist the TLI Officers to present workshops
and finally number 11 - start another CC manual (see above for more ideas)
It's also important to:
- introduce members to the advanced manuals at speech 5 and promote advanced manuals as they near completion of their CC
- encourage them to go "beyond the club" in their endeavours, and seek speaking opportunities in other areas
- encourage familiarity with what the Toastmasters program is all about and its composition
- promote the benefits of the advanced program using the Area Governors and other experienced Toastmasters
- have them read and complete the back page of CC manual where the program checklist is printed
- have social events to which all club members are invited - dinner/coffee
A question for you:
Do you know who has achieved the most Competent Toastmaster (or Competent Communicator) Awards? Was it 10, 20, 30 ... ??? Email webmaster@toastmasters.org.nz
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Top 10 Lists
Do you have a Top 10 List of your own such as the Top 10 things I have learnt as a speaker, evaluator, a club officer, a Speechcrafter. Send your Top 10 List to webmaster@toastmasters.org.nz for publishing on this page. |
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