Lane Cove Toastmasters
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Our Meetings
Meeting Aims_________________________________________________
Lane Cove Toastmasters club aims to provide an entertaining and informative session twice a month to support members, visitors and guests journey towards developing into a confident and competent public speaker. Each meeting strives to ensure all attendees have a chance to present at least three times.
We respect visitors decision to decline active participation in any section of the meeting and to request that they wish simply to observe proceedings.
Venue & Time____________________________________________________
Our meetings commence at 6.45pm and finish promptly at 8.15 pm.
Our meetings are currently held at a community centre called
LANE COVE SENIORS CENTRE
(Street Level Meeting Room)
180 Longueville Road Lane Cove
The Centre is opposite Lane Cove Library and Austin Street next to Centre House the Community Arts & Leisure Centre.
Meeting Costs: The club collects a small fee to defray the cost of hiring this magnificent venue
Members $4.00
First Time Visitors/Guests - No Charge
Typical Meeting Agenda__________________________________________________
Sgt at Arms Welcome (1-min)
Chair's Address (1-min)
President's Address (1-min)
Introductions (1-min all attendees, members, guests and visitors)
Joke/Pet Peeve (1 - 2 min)
Table Topics (1-min each)
Workshop (5 - 10 mins)
Prepared Speeches (Avg three speeches per meeting 5 - 7 mins each)
Um/Aagh Report (1 - 2 mins)
Listener/Grammarian Report (3 - 4 mins)
Timer's Report (1 - 2 mins)
General Evaluator's Report (3 - 5 mins)
Success Stories (2 - 3 min)
Forward Role Assignments (2 - 3 mins)
Guest Comments (2 - 3 mins)
Close (1-min)
Meeting Agenda Descriptions_____________________________________________
Each of the roles outlined below is undertaken by a member of the club - visitors and guests are welcome to volunteer to undertake any role.
Sgt-at-Arms Welcome - The role of our club's Sgt-at-Arms is to ensure members and guests are welcomed and seated ready for the start of the meeting promptly at 7pm.
Chair's Address - The Meeting's Chair person controls how the meeting is run. This involves welcoming members, visitors and guests, checking the agenda ensuring all people allocated a role are present, filling gaps with volunteers; introduces each person at the commencement of their assignment, ensures the meeting is running to time and finishes at 8.30pm.
President's Address - The Club's President gives a short welcome speech.
Introductions - Lead by the Chair each member and guest present is invited to stand and introduce themselves by name, Toastmasters position (e.g. guest, Executive role or as a Club Member) and make a short comment (45 seconds) on a nominated theme, for example "The best thing that happened to me today was..."
Joke/Pet Peeve - The Chair invites a member or guest to present a joke designed to energise us through laughter or present a Pet Peeve which is a short presentation on something that irritates them, e.g. Sydney traffic
Table Topics - is designed to give people practice in impromptu speaking. A Table Topics Master will prepare a list of questions or statements for members respond to in a 1-minute speech. Guests will be asked whether they wish to try (recommended). It is perfectly acceptable to decline and request to simply observe the proceedings.
Workshop - Workshops are presented by invited speakers and members around a topic relevant to public speaking, for example, Speech Preparation and Development, Generating Ideas using Mind Mapping, Evaluation Skills & Techniques, Presentation Skills, Using your Voice, etc. Members and guests are also invited to share useful tips and strategies they may have picked up in seminars and workshops they have attended outside Toastmasters, which serves to help them consolidate information and consolidate proficiencies in those skills.
Prepared Speeches - This is the highlight of most club meetings and is conducted by the Toastmaster. On joining Toastmasters each member will receive a Competent Communicator (CC) Manual comprising 10 speeches. Each speech aims to develop in the speaker a key presentation skill, for example 'Organise your Speech', 'Work with Words', 'Vocal Variety'. When members completes their CC manual they can select from a wide range of Advanced Manuals to continue their public speaking development. An Evaluator is assigned to each speaker, and uses the CC Manual's evaluation guide to provide comment on how well the speaker met the speech objectives, as well as their own personal response to the speech. All comments should provide supportive and constructive feedback to the speaker to help them improve their presentations.
Um/Aagh Report - The Um/Aagh Counter will listen, record and report all speakers at the meeting who utter an 'Um', 'Aagh' or other fillers during their speeches. Many speakers are unaware how times they use these 'pause' fillers. This section is designed to heighten speaker's awareness, and has proven to dramatically reduce the frequency of their utterance. The person responsible for counting Ums/Aagh will present their report.
The Entertainer - This segment is usually held in the middle of the program to re-energize meeting participants - and for 3 minutes members are welcome to try something innovative, surprizing and above all ENTERTAINING - for example, puzzles, round robin, poetry reading, physical activities.
Listener/Grammarian Report - The Listener/Grammarians role is to record what people said during the meeting, and remind us in their report of unusual sayings, lovely use of language and use of grammatical devices, such as rhetorical questions. In addition this role can ask questions about what was said by speakers during the evening to check-in how actively those attending were listening.
Timer's Report - Everything at a Toastmaster's meeting is timed. This provides valuable feedback to speaker's evaluators and anyone performing a meeting role. The Timer will record and report how long each person spoke for in their section.
General Evaluator's Report - The role of the General Evaluator is to provide feedback how well the meeting was run, and how he/she felt every person conducting a segment performed. This role is designed to increase member's competency in performing any meeting role.
Success Stories - All members, guests and visitors are invited to contribute a story from the recent past where they used or observed good public speaking skills.
Forward Role Assignments - The Education Vice-President (VP) will request members volunteering for meeting roles and speeches for future meetings.
Visitor and Guest Comments - Visitors and guests are invited to comment on the meeting, what they enjoyed, what they they found interesting and challenging. If there were any areas of the meeting that you feel required improvement, for example you did understand instructions or felt uncomfortable - let us know! A healthy vibrant club welcomes feedback on how visitors felt on any aspect of their attendance in order to improve our individual and collective performances.
Role Descriptions _________________________________________________
Each of the roles outlined below is undertaken by a member of the club - visitors and guests are welcome to volunteer to undertake any role.
Sgt-at-Arms - This is a a club Executive role whose primary tasks are to
- assists with room set up
- greet guests and visitors
- gives a 5 or 2 minute warning of meeting commencement
- ensure members, guests and visitors are seated and comfortable
- opens the meeting with banging of the gavel
- gives a short 1-minute speech on a topic of their choosing which may involve assigning a Word for the evening (all speakers strive to use this word in their persentations
- hands the gavel and control of the meeting to the Chairperson
Chairperson - All members are encouraged to learn leadership skills by being a Chairperson responsible for ensuring the meeting runs smoothly. The Chairperson tasks includes
- accepts control of the meeting from the Sgt-at-Arms
- welcomes members, guests and visitors
- conducts introductions, asking meeting participants to introduce themselves by name, title and speak for about 45 seconds on the theme printed on the program
- reviews the agenda ensuring all people nominated for roles are present
- introduces each person conducting a meeting item, e.g. Joke Person, Table Topics Master, Toastmaster, Listener/Grammarian, Um/Aagh's Counter, etc
Joke - A member or guest has nominated to recite or read a joke, practicing pacing and pause to maximise impact.
Pet Peeve - A member has nominated to express dissatisfaction about something, which involves introducing the subject, explaining why it annoys them and if appropriate suggesting a solution.
Table Topics (TT) Master - The aim of Table Topics is to try and get all meeting attendees to speak for one minute on an unknown topic of your choosing. In addition to the topic, the TT Master may wish to set criteria for speaker responses such as: aim to speak for exactly one minute, give you speech a good ending, emphasize structure (beginning, middle and end), vocal variety, etc
- Prior to the meeting the TT Master will prepare approximately 20 topics. (see Resources page for hints)
- Make notes during meeting Introductions of all present at the meeting, and in particular visitor names for reference later when assigning topics
- After introduction by the Chair TT presents his/her from the front of the room
- Explains for the benefit of visitors the purpose of the session
- Introduces the TT Theme if they have one, or just how they came to create these topics
- States the topic, then nominates an experienced TM member to speak
- Lead the clapping as the nominated speaker moves to the lecturn
- Shake hands with the TT Speaker and move to the side of the room or a chair close by
- At the conclusion, once again lead the clapping and congratuate each TT speaker then state the next topic and so forth
- Invite each guest by name to participate in TT (understanding that some will decline the invitation), try not to miss any visitors out.
At the end of the Table Topics session the TT Master will formally hand control of the meeting back to the Chair. The Chair may indicate to the TT Master that they need to conclude the session so as to leave time for the remaining meeting items and the closing of the meeting on time.
Workshop Presenter - Members are invited to present 10 min workshops at meetings on courses they may have attended both for work or interests. Its a great way to consolidate information by informing/training others. Members are also invited to suggest workshop topics relevant to public speaking.
Toastmaster - The role of the Toastmaster is to accept control of the meeting from the Chair for Prepared Speeches segment of the meeting. They introduce each speaker and their evaluator before handing control of the meeting back to the Chair. Details of each speaker's speech is obtained in advance (see dot points in the section below, including whether they want the lecturn).
At the beginning of the segment, if visitors are present, the Toastmaster explains that when people join Toastmasters they are given a manual of 10 speeches, and that what they will be hearing now are members presentations from that manual.
The Toastmaster will announce
- speaker's name
- timing (e.g. 5-mins Green, 6mins Orange and 7 mins Red)
- announce the speech title
- invite the speaker to the lecturn
- lead the clapping
- shake the hand of the speaker, and sit down with the audience
Following the speech, the Toastmaster will congratulate the speaker, and then invite the next speaker to the lecturn.
When all speakers have finished, the Toastmaster will invite the assigned Evaluator to come forward to present their evaluation.
At the conclusion of both speakers and evaluators, the Toastmaster hands control of the meeting back to the Chair.
Speaker - On joining a Toastmasters club, new members are issued with a manual of 10 speeches. Each speech in the manual aims to hone speakers competencies in key areas of public speaking such as organising speeches, vocal variety, working with words, persuade with power, etc. Speakers should contact the Toastmaster for the meeting and provide the following information
- Speaker name
- Speech Title
- Manual Speech Number
- Timing Lights
If you want your Evaluator to comment on a specific aspect of your presentation, let them know in advance.
Evaluator - The role of the Evaluator is to provide personal feedback to a speaker on their speech. Evaluators should use the speech guidelines given in the manual, are also encouraged to provide personal feedback. Saying how they felt about the speaker's presentation is a great way to connect with the audience. Generally Evaluators use the Third Person, so rather than stating "Fred could have improved his speech by using an opening...", instead say, "Speakers can improve their presentations, by opening their speeches with a quote or story..."
Um/Aagh Counter - A count of Umms and Aaghs is tallied for each speaker by a counter. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Counter will report his/her findings to the meeting. Making sure to congratulate those speakers who have scored low. At Lane Cove Toastmasters a radical reduction of utterances across members was found once they became aware of how many in ums and aaghs (or variations on this theme like errrrrr) they made in various assignments.
Listener/Grammarian - This role can be either a Listener or a Grammarian or a combination of both. A Listener notices and records what was said during the meeting by any speaker. This may be reported back to members as a comment on effective use of language, or the Listener can ask questions like who said what during the meeting. The Grammarian comments how speakers use language to enhance their speeches, for example use of rhetorical questions.
Timer - A Timer uses a stopwatch and a set of lights to indicate timing to speakers - usually table topics (1 minute impromptu speeches) and prepared speeches (normally 5 - 7 minutes). Speaking to a specific time is just another discipline you learn in public speaking. If unsure, the Timer should take the initiative to interrupt meeting proceedings, and ask the person hosting a given meeting segment what their instructions are for timing lights - Green, Orange and Red .
Success Stories - Members are encouraged to share experiences where they have successfully used their public speaking skills - at work, during studies or assessments, at home, in private, business or community events.
General Evaluator - A General Evaluator provides feedback to everyone involved in the meeting, except the Speakers who have delivered manual speeches, because they have already been evaluated in detail (however feel free to provide comment on how much you enjoyed their speeches!) The General Evaluator comments on how well each meeting role was conducted and provide constructive feedback for improvement.