Befriend a Guest at a Club Meeting

I am working toward my Competent Leadership recognition.  In the Competent Leadership manual, Project 7, “Developing Your Facilitation Skills”, requires evaluation of my performance of two of four facilitation roles.  I have been Toastmaster, General Evaluator and Topicmaster several times each, so I thought I would try the remaining activity, “Befriend a Guest at a Club Meeting.”

I think the most difficult problem with befriending a guest is that it is difficult to schedule.  Someone in need of befriending must attend the meeting.  Prospective new members are the likeliest candidates for befriending, and we don’t see them every meeting.  We don’t know when prospects will show up, so a would-be befriender like me may be scheduled, already, to play a role at the meeting.  The rules say that only one activity per meeting may go toward the CL requirements.  I was scheduled to be Toastmaster of the Evening, when I learned that two guests were interested in attending the next club meeting.  I decided to have a fellow Toastmaster evaluate my Befriending for Project 7, while I acted as Toastmaster merely for the valuable experience, not to meet a CL requirement, such as for Projects 4, 5, 7, 8, or 10.

The evaluator for “Befriend a Guest” has four questions to answer:

1. How effective was the leader in welcoming the guest, introducing himself or herself, and introducing the guest to other members?
2. Did the leader adequately explain the different parts of the meeting, the various meeting roles members assume and the purposes of each to aid in the guest’s understanding?
3. What could the leader have done differently to make the guest feel welcome and/or to better understand the Toastmasters program?
4. What did the leader do well that facilitated the guest’s understanding of the Toastmasters program and/or make the guest feel welcome?

I knew the guests and the members at the meeting, so the tough thing about introductions was remembering to do them.  (Certain social graces are not second nature  to me.)  Two days before the meeting I made a short list of significant facts about the guests and members, so I could say pertinent things during the introduction.

I had dinner with the guests two days before the meeting, so I explained the parts of the meeting to them at that time.  This isn’t always possible.  Since I was Toastmaster of the Evening, I wanted to get this out of the way.  Upon reflection, I don’t recommend that the TME should befriend a guest, because I won’t be sitting beside the guests during the entire meeting, which would allow them to whisper their questions and comments into my ear and allow me to whisper back to them.   I mentioned that the President would introduce them, and that the Topicmaster would have an opportunity to make an impromptu speech.  “About what?” one guest asked.  “We won’t know until the Topicmaster asks.

Not satisfied to befriend two guests, I arranged to collect a third about two hours before the meeting.  Ordinarily, the drive to the meeting would take two hours, but the meeting was on December 23, and the traffic was an unsavory combination of evening rush hour and people fleeing the city to visit family in the country.   The trip to the meeting took more than two hours, and we arrived after the President had called the meeting to order and welcomed guests, after the pledge, inspirational thought, word, and joke.  We arrived in time for table topics, prepared speeches, evaluations, and timing.  

If I were more capable of changing plans on the fly, when the President introduced me as TME, I could have introduced my three guests to the other four Toastmasters there.  We ran this meeting with only five Toastmasters.  Most of us performed double roles, and one of my guests served as Timer.    

The meeting went well.  The guests all participated in Table Topics.  One guest–my ten-year-old–got through the speech without saying “ah” or “um”.   My other guests were my older children, home for Christmas. 

I decided to befriend someone else another day, rather than try to claim credit for an effort that wasn’t all it could be.  As good an experience as this was for my children, I want to see how good it can for a guest when more things go according to plan and I can sit by my guests through the meeting.

Officer Training 12/21/09

If you look on the Toastmasters International website for the page about officer training, it’s there.  If you haven’t found it, but are interested, click here.   As the page says, “The following presentations must be used as the core training of every district’s training presentations for club officers…”  If you are between training sessions, you may benefit by reading the documents, which contain standards, best practices, good ideas, etc. for President, VP-Education, VP-Membership, VP-Public Relations, Secretary, Treasurer, and Sergeant-at-Arms.

How Toastmasters Helps You Conquer Fear

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, published Social Intelligence in 2006.  In my paperback edition, on pp. 77-81, in “Reeingineering the Low Road,” he discusses stage fright, such as that which David Guy experienced.  In Guy’s case, it was a learned fear, which is partly a result of “circuitry centering on the amygdala”.    “At the cellular level, LeDoux explains, retriving a memory means it will be ‘reconsolidated,’ slightly alterned chemically by a new protein synthesis that will help store it anew after being updated.” (p. 78)

Training can reduce these learned fears.  “Treatments sometimes actually expose the person to whatever primes their fear.  Exposure sessions begin with getting the person relaxed, often through a few minutes of slow abdominal breathing.  Then the person confronts the threatening situation, in a careful gradation culminating in the very worst version.” (p. 79)

For example, “One New York City traffic officer confided that she had flown into a rage at a motorist who called her a ‘low-life bitch.’  So in her exposure therapy that phrase we repeated to her, first in a flat tone, then with increasing emotional intensity, and finally with added obscene gestures.  The exposure succeeds when, no matter how obnoxious the repeated phrase, she can stay relaxed–and presumably when back on the street she can calmly write a traffic ticket despite insults.”  (p. 79)

If that worked for her, I guess we can learn to participate in table topics or deliver a prepared speech without having a heart attack.  I think that one part of the Toastmaster program is putting people repeatedly in stressful situations that once gave people anxiety.  Think of a typical Toastmasters meeting.  Isn’t one meeting similar to another?  Isn’t one Grammarian’s report similar to another.  If we act as Grammarian once, twice, three times, and nothing horrible happens, might we relax a bit?  In other words, Toastmasters face repeated tsouris (yiddish slang for troubles or woe), leading to a diminishing feeling of  agita (from Italian, and meaning acid indigestion, anxiety).

Golemon addresses a related issue in “Just Scary Enough” on pp. 184-186.  “As Richard Davidson explains, ‘We can learn to be resilient by being exposed to a threat or stress at a level that allows us to manage it.’  If we are exposed to too little stress, nothing will be learned; too much, and the wrong lesson might become embedded in the neural circuitry for fear.  One sign that a scary movie is too overwhelming for a child can be seen in how quickly he recovers physiologically.  If his brain (and body) stay stuck in the fear-arousal mode for a distressingly prolonged period, then what’s being rehearsed is not resilience but the failure to recover.”

“But when the ‘threats’ a child confronts are within an optimal range–where the brain temporarily mounts a full fear response but then returns to calm–we can assume that a different neural sequence has unfolded. ” (p. 184)

Ideally, during a Toastmasters meeting we keep the threat at a proper level, which allows speakers to learn a controlled response.

Club Meeting Roles

Maybe, you wanted to confirm the duties of your assigned role at your next Toastmasters club  meeting.  Below is (a) a brief explanation of each of several roles and (b) a link to a page on the Toastmasters International website that defines and discusses the role:

• The Toastmaster is the master of ceremonies and introduces all speakers, except for himself and the General Evaluator’s helpers.
• At the start of a meeting, often, someone may give either the Invocation or the Thought of the Day. (2-3 minutes)
• The Pledge leader leads those attending the club meeting in the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag. (1-2 minutes)
• The Jokester tells a brief joke–not (ordinarily) a shaggy dog story.  (1-2 minutes)
• The Humor Tipster discusses, with illustrations, an aspect of humor. (10 minutes)
• Each Meeting Speaker delivers a speech, whether a “manual speech” from the  Competent Communicator manual or an Advanced Communication manual.  (5-7 minutes for CC manual speeches 2-9.  More or less for other manual speeches.)
• The Topicsmaster delivers a series of brief and stimulating prompts, then calls on a member or guest to respond after each prompt.  (Time flexible to meet overall meeting length.)
• Each Table Topics Speaker gives a brief response to a prompt from the Topicsmasters (q.v.).
• The General Evaluator introduces the evaluation team–including the Evaluators, Grammarian, Ah-Counter, and Timer, all of which see–and evaluates briefly all aspects of the meeting.
• Each Evaluator gives a prepared speaker a completed evaluation form from the relevant manual, and delivers a brief, oral evaluation during the evaluation portion of the club meeting. (2-3 minutes)
• The Grammarian recognizes excellent and improper use of grammar during the meeting.  If the meeting has a WordMaster, the Grammarian recognizes those who use the Word of the Day properly. (2-3 minues)
• The Humerator evaluators the instances of humor in a meeting and suggests where a member might have used humor.  (2-4 minutes)
• The Ah-Counter counts extraneous and distracting words and mere sounds that anyone at the meeting uses, usually as “crutch” and “pause filler” words.  These faults include long silences that are not a beneficial part of sentence structure; repeats, such as “I, I” and “This means, this means”; extraneous sounds, such as ah, er, and um. (2-3 minutes)
• The Timer measures the time of each speaker and compares it to the allotted time.  (1-2 minutes)

You can follow the links, above, or you  can go to http://www.toastmasters.org/Members/MemberExperience/MeetingRoles.aspx and follow the links from there to the same pages.  Of course, I don’t mean to discourage you from looking elsewhere on this site for my comments on the roles of Ah-Counter, Evaluator, General Evaluator, Grammarian, and Speaker.

• The Ah-Counter counts distracting vocalizations (including “ahs”, “ums”, clicks, sighs, and lip smacks) and extraneous words (such as conjunctions and initial “So’s”).

Evaluation, According to our Area Governor

Our area governor spoke to our Toastmasters  club about evaluation.  His main point was the SHARE technique: See-Hear-Appreciate-Recommendations-Encourage.  Good ideas.

• What did you See?  General appearance, movement, gestures, etc.   He discouraged pacing and encouraged walking to a spot and speaking to the nearby audience, then walking across the room to another spot and speaking to the audience, there.
• What did you Hear?  Volume, speed, tone, projection.
• What did you Appreciate?  What did you like?  What improved from the last time this speaker spoke?
• What do you Recommend?  How could this speaker improve.  Be careful not to crush this budding speaker.  A novice might benefit from 1-2 recommendations on his Icebreaker.  A moderately experienced speaker might tolerate 2-3 recommendations.  An experienced speaker might be able to tolerate 3-4 recommendations.
• How can you Encourage this speaker?  I’m looking forward to …

My evaluation of the governor’s talk, using the SHARE method

I saw that he used gestures in a natural way that did not detract from his speech, and he demonstrated proper movement around the room.  He emphasized that pacing back and forth is not the way to go.  Instead, one should walk over to one part of the audience and speak to it, then walk to another part of the audience and speak to it.  That reminds me of the advice not to use the “window wiper” style of eye contact, but to look at one person for a paragraph, then look at someone else for the next paragraph.  Also, may I suggest that if one has two teleprompters, then one should not look back and forth from one to the other, as if watching a tennis match.

I heard his powerful, but pleasant voice.  As he mentioned, people don’t have a problem hearing him, and he emphasizes points with his volume.

I appreciated the many good ideas the area governor had, such as the SHARE method.  I liked the way he tried to show he was one of  us by speaking about his fear of evaluation as a new Toastmaster, but he spent about five of his 8-10 minutes proving his ethos, so I would recommend that he tighten that part of his speech, next time he delivers it.  I suppose that I shouldn’t mention good ideas in an evaluation, since Toastmasters mostly trains us to deliver, less to produce goods worth delivering.

I would recommend that he pay closer attention to his time allotment and focus his talk.  He had said that he would speak 8-10 minutes, but at ten minutes pointed out that he was area governor, which he seemed to imply was a license to meander around his topic.   I think that a senior Toastmaster has a responsibility to demonstrate respect for the audience by staying within the prescribed time limits.

Fifteen minutes into his 8-10 minute talk, he said, “At least, you aren’t clapping to get me off stage.”  I like to think he was cleverly setting up his dramatic departure.  Immediately, our past president began clapping and the rest of the club soon followed.  That was a valuable idea, a kind of evaluation, and a tool for ending a speech that has gone on too long, and he presented the idea in a fascinating way.

I encourage him to cut and polish that speech and give it to the other clubs in his area, because we can all learn a lot from that talk about evaluation.

Editorial Comment

As GE I have given in to this temptation to speak too long.  As VPE I put my GE comments on the schedule for three minutes.  My excellent timer gave me the red light at three minutes, but I had so many excellent comments to come that I spoke on a few more minutes.  My explanation is that the GE delivers an impromptu talk, and it’s difficult to prioritize to find the three minutes of most important comments.  That is not an excuse. I have to work on keeping my GE comments succinct.  My current thought is that I should order my comments by value, and when my time is up I should return control to the TME.

The governor and I are not the only windy persons in the world.   In my experience, TMEs and club presidents tend to think that they may speak at length–and this is true, even when they complain that the meetings that the VPE designed by agenda ran on too long!  At another meeting at another club a senior Toastmaster, who had chided me mildly and publicly that one of my prepared talks had gone 30 seconds over time, delivered a five-minute educational talk that ran ten to 15 minutes.   All of us need to respect our audiences more than that.

Mentoring

If you are a new Toastmaster–or simply a Toastmaster who believes that a more experienced Toastmaster may have useful information about Toastmasters–get a mentor. If you have been in Toastmasters for a while and want to help a less experienced Toastmaster, become a mentor. If the preceding makes sense to you, then contact your club’s Vice President Education, and either request a mentor or volunteer to be a mentor.  Whether or not you are sold on the value of mentoring, please read the following.

If you are a new Toastmaster, you joined, because you wanted Toastmasters to help you achieve personal goals.  Almost certainly, those goals have something to do with speaking.  You may or may not realize that speaking is (almost) always a means to an end, and the end is leadership.  (Maybe, leadership is a means to an end–income and wealth, power and prestige, and so on–but my point is, that we want to speak better, so that we may lead.)

Suppose you want simply to be able to speak confidently in meetings at work or school.  Why?  You  want the group to think you have a brain in your head and that your thoughts have value, and when they think that … you are a leader, a “thought leader”.  Major firms spend huge amounts of money to convince people that their employees are thought leaders.  Titular and actual leaders of all organizations tend to have power, prestige, and high pay.

That’s the short version of my argument that you joined Toastmasters to learn to speak better, so you can leader better, which will be good for you, whether you lead in your family, school, business, or romantic relationship.

How do you get the biggest boost in the right direction from Toastmasters?  You don’t know.  Of course, you don’t know everything that Toastmasters can and can’t do for you.  Nor do you know the best way to get all the best from Toastmasters and avoid the rest.

How do you discover what you don’t know?  A good mentor–a Toastmaster with more experience with Toastmasters and more time to accumulate knowledge–probably has answers to some of your questions and solutions to some of your problems, and probably knows questions and problems that you have not yet discovered.

What the mentor can do for you is called mentoring, the process by which a mentor  transfers knowledge and provides support–usually, related to professional development and by face-to-face communication–to a mentee (a less experienced person or knowledgeable person). (This is a partial paraphrase of a quote from Bozemen-Feeney, 2007, in Wikipedia‘s article about “Mentorship”.)  For college undergraduates, the academic adviser is a mentor, providing guidance through the maze of course requirements and opportunities, and for a pledge to a fraternity, the “big brother” is a mentor.  In the world of work, a master plumber is a mentor for an apprentice plumber.

The Toastmasters Competent Leadership manual contains Project 9 Mentoring (pp. 54-58), which also provides a general introduction to mentoring, as well as ideas for applying the general concepts in the context of a Toastmasters club.  To summarize the text of Project 9:

• Mentoring reduces turnover, develops talent, and develops leaders.
• An effective mentors is available, patient, sensitive, respectful, respected, flexible, knowledgeable, confident, good listener, and concerned about others.
• A mentor nourishes the mentee by oppering opportunities for skill development, helping the mentee recognize areas needing work, providing helpful advice, being a role model, and encouraging people to think for themselves.
• Project 9 requires the Competent Leader candidate to mentor a new member, mentor an existing member, or serve as a guidance committee member for someone who is working on a High Performance Leadership program project.   The “Evaluation Guide for Mentoring” offers evaluation criteria for each of these mentoring roles.

Toastmasters International recognizes that mentoring is important.  The manual, When You Are the Vice President Education, states the the VPE should “Assign a Mentor for Each New Member” (p. 17).  Here is how  the manual describes the mentor’s duties:

“At the first meeting:

1. Sit with the new member …
2. Orient the new member …
3. Explain how to sign up [asap for the Icebreaker speech] …
4. Help with the Icebreaker …

“By the second meeting, a mentor should:

1. Make the new member aware of resources …
2. Provide positive feedback …
3. Explain responsibilities …
4. Help with speeches and other assignments …

“Eventually, mentors should:

1. Tell how you’ve benefited from the Toastmaster program. …
2. Invite the new membe to other events …
3. Acknowledge progress …
4. Exp;lain officers’ duties …
5. Explain speech contests …
6. Describe the TI organization …

“Mentors should take the initiative to contact the new member and always be poswitive, friendly and helpful.

“The Club Mentor Program Kit (Item 1163) …” and other materials may help the mentor do his job.

According to the “New Member Mentor Request Form”, “The Mentoring module in the Successful  Club Series (available from World Headquarters, Iitem 296), can help you organize a strong, effecting mentoring program in your club.“

The Competent Leadership manual (p. 75) describes briefly the roles of “Mentor for a New Member” (and provides a list of available resources) and “Mentor for an Existing Member”.

Officer Duties

If you are a new officer, you have many ways to learn how to do the job.  The most available information is in your Competent Communication manual (pp. 69-71) and Competent Leader manual (pp. 83-85).

Your district will offer you opportunities for officer training.   You may even feel that the district is pushing its product, but in my experience you can learn much from your break-out session with other officers, many of whom will have experience that they will share.

The Toastmasters International website has a page that directs you to information about Club Officer Roles, namely, President, VP Education, VP Membership, VP Public Relations, Secretary, Treasurer, and Sergeant-at-Arms.  The link for each of these offices  provides access to at least one online document about that club officer role.  That online document contains a list of “Tools for Success”–i.e.., items for sale.  For example, the page for VP Education includes a link to a 42-page document about the VPE’s duties.   Pages 27-28 of this manual contain a list of “Tools for Success” for a VPE, such as pins, manuals, and wall charts.

Evaluating Table Topics

The first principle of evaluation is like the first principle of medicine: “First, do no harm.”  One technique for doing this is “catch the speaker doing something right” and praise it.  If an impromptu speaker does something effective, it would be a shame to ignore it and fail to reinforce it.

According to Wikipedia, sometimes a club has a Table Topics Evaluator, and sometimes the General Evaluator evaluates Table Topics.  Implicitly, and in my experience, many clubs do not evaluate Table Topics.  The Table Topicsmaster could do or lead the evaluation of Table  Topics.

I think the “comment sandwich” (the CRC method from my blog) is a good idea.  The evaluator might say, “Joe, my favorite part of your table topic speech was that your answer showed that you listened carefully to the question, because your answer was right on point.  Next time, you might want to think about stepping in front of the lectern, particularly since you won’t have any notes.  Your voice sounded confident, which I found convincing.  Nice job.”

The Table Topicsmaster might ask for someone to mention his or her favorite part of the talk.  If no one chimes in quickly, tell the group what you liked best.  Then, ask, “Any ideas he could try, next time?”  If no one has one, I hope you’ll have one.  Then say, “And I liked …”  I’m not in favor of separating the Table Topic speech from the evaluation, but let your experience be your guide, over time.

The Victoria Quay Toastmasters of Fremantle, Australia have a page on “Evaluating Table Topics”.  This page suggests:

• Allot about one-third of the Table Topics period to evaluation, typically 30-45 seconds per speaker.
• Use the CRC method: commendation, recommendation, then commendation.
• Focus on organization, eye contact, and speaking position.  The talk should have an opening, main points, and a closing.  The audience prefers eye contact to hidden eyes.  The speaker should come out from behind the lectern, but definitely should not have a death grip on it.

Table Topics Judges’ Ballot

What better place to look for ideas on judging a Table Topics speech than the official Table Topics Judge’s Ballot from Toastmasters International, District 67 (Taiwan)?  I think it would make sense to use this ballot at a club’s Table Topics Speech Contest.  However, I think that using this ballot at every meeting would be too much of a good thing.  The ballot criteria are:

• 30% Speech development (i.e., organization: opening, body, close)
• 25% Effectiveness (power of persuasion (largely, ethos, pathos, & logos), as seen by evaluator, perhaps via audience)
• 15% Physical (position, bearing, gestures)
• 15% Voice (volume, vocal variety)
• 15% Language (good word choice)

Organization

Five-paragraph Essay as a Model

The official ballot looks for opening, body, and close. I think that an ideal impromptu should have a lot in common with a five-paragraph essay on the SAT writing portion or the AP English Language test.  These are on my mind, because I have a child that took them in the past year.  The essay should have an opening, middle, and close.  The opening should start with something catch, state the “thesis”, and describe the plan of the rest of the essay.  Each of the middle three paragraphs starts with a topic sentence that states a main point and continues with support for the paragraph’s point.  The closing paragraph may summarize the argument, and may end with a brilliant thought that applies or extends ideas in the essay.

Google “evaluate table topics”

What Is the Role of Evaluator?

The Competent Communication manual describes the role of Evaluator on pages 64-65.  The Evaluator may evaluate a speech in the CC manual or an advanced manual, or a Toastmaster’s performance of another job for the Competent Leadership manual.

The Competent Leadership manual describes the role of Evaluator on pages 67-68, and the CL manual contains four projects that involve evaluation of the performance of a Speech Evaluator.  You can find these projects quickly by looking at the Project Matrix on p. 76.

An Evaluator always completes a written report in a manual, always delivers an oral report for each speech evaluation, and may deliver an oral report of an evaluation of performance of leadership duties.

What Is the Role of the Grammarian?

The Competent Communication manual, p.68, discusses the role of the Grammarian.   The Competent Leadership manual, pp. 71-72, discusses the role of the Grammarian, and four projects include evaluation of the Grammarian’s performance.  In the CL manual the evaluation forms show criteria for good performance by a Grammarian.

The revelation for me was that a Grammarian’s role includes announcing the word of the day, as well as evaluating grammar during the meeting.  Proper announcement of the word of the day is spoken and written. The spoken and written forms of announcement should both include pronunciation, part of speech, definition, and usage in a sentence.  The written form should have proper spelling.

If the VPE or Toastmaster asks me to serve as Grammarian, when the General Evaluator introduces me, I’ll need to summarize the Grammarian’s role.  Here are my notes for that:

As Grammarian at our club meeting, I will

• listen to everyone’s word usage and grammar,
• write down improper word usage and grammar, including sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and malapropisms, and
• stand by my chair and deliver my Grammarian’s report, when the General Evaluator calls on me.