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The Roles There are several roles and activities that a member can take part in at Lodo Toastmasters. They are broadly divided into two categories: Required Roles, which must be filled for a complete meeting, and Optional Roles, which allow a member to hone a particular skill and add flavour to a meeting. Below is a look at all of the roles that are currently available, along with a brief description of what is involved. Toastmaster The Toastmaster is the master of ceremonies for the evening. This is the most crucial role for a meeting as a meeting cannot proceed with one. This person is responsible for recruiting other participants where necessary (with the help of the Vice-President of Education) and for preparing the agenda. A successful Toastmaster will also announce a theme for the evening, giving the club sufficient notice as to prepare to incorporate the theme in their presentations and will prepare a selection of cohesive interludes to introduce the presenters
Prepared Speaker This is the segment where Toastmasters gets most of their experience and is often considered the bulk of the Toastmasters experience. Here members deliver a prepared speech based on one of the skills contained in one of the Toastmasters International manuals. For this reason the prepared speeches are often referred to as "manual" speeches. The initial Toastmasters manual is called the Communication and Leadership manual. It contains ten speeches which cover a broad area of public speaking aspects. Experienced Toastmasters deliver presentations from one of the advanced manuals. Each advanced manual contains five speeches and concentrates on a particular type of public speaking. For more information visit the Toastmasters International website.
Speech Evaluation Virtually everything in Toastmasters is evaluated and for no role is that more important than for the prepared, or manual, speeches. The speech evaluator presents their perceptions of the speech within the guidelines presented in the official Toastmasters manuals. Evaluations are a combination of positive attributes of the speaker as well as recommendations to highlight areas that the speaker should concentrate on to improve. There would be little or no purpose in giving a speech if there was no evaluation of it. Even professional performers gauge their presentations from feedback in the form of accolades and reviews. Evaluations are not only for the speaker but also for the audience. By highlighting a speaker's strong points other people often are inspired with suggestions which could help them in their own performance.
Table Topics Table Topics is a special impromptu speaking portion of the meeting. The Table Topics Master is responsible for providing a selection of topics for speakers to speak on. The speakers have viturally no time to prepare before delivering their speech. It is designed to train Toastmasters to speak with confidence when put "on-the-spot" as happens so frequently in the real world. This skill is deemed so important as to be one of the required features of any Toastmasters meeting and is one of the most highly coveted contests in the Toastmasters organization.
Master Evaluator The Master Evaluator is responsible for a general, overall evaluation of the meeting and of each of those segments which have not been evaluated. The Master Evaluator is usually allocated three to five minutes to present the master evaluation, but can request as much as ten if they want to do a detailed evaluation. Ideally only segments that the Master Evaluator doesn't evaluate is the prepared speeches as these have already been evaluated. However, the Master Evaluator should evaluate the speech evaluators. The Master Evaluator should follow the Speech Evaluator's Tips as well as the tips for Effective Evaluations Timer Everything in Toastmasters runs to a time. The role of the timer is to keep track of the times that each speaker speaks for and to provide warnings, in the form of the timing lights, so that the speaker has some indication of how much time they have left. Every segment has a specific time limit allocated to it. These times are usually expressed as X to Y minutes, meaning that the speaker should speak for at least X minutes and for no more than Y minutes. For example, a standard manual speech is 5 to 7 minutes long, meaning it should be no less than 5 minutes and no more than 7 minutes. The green light is turned on at the lower limit, the red light is turned on at the upper limit and the orange light is turned on halfway between the lower and upper limits. In our manual speech example, the green light would appear at 5 minutes (the lower limit), the orange light would appear at 6 minutes (halfway between the lower and upper limits) and the red light would appear at 7 minutes (the upper limit). A table topic is 1 to 2 minutes - green light at 1 minute, orange light at 1 minute and 30 seconds and red light at 2 minutes. At the end of every meeting the Timer should also report on the times taken for the benefit of those present.
Um and Ah Counter In addition to ensuring that speakers speak confidently, at Toastmasters we like to concentrate on fluid and cohesive speech as well. For this reason the role of Um and Ah Counter is included (sometimes referred to as Gruntmaster in some clubs). The role of the Um and Ah Counter is to count "filler words" and gratuitous utterances made by a speaker. Often we fill blank spots in our speech with sounds like "um," "ah" and "er" which serve no purpose than to inform the listener that there is more to come. While this may have its uses in common speech it serves no purpose in formal speaking than to distract the audience from the message at hand and is, therefore, considered a bad thing. As we have no grammarian at Lodo Toastmasters, it also falls on the Um and Ah Counter to point out overused words, cliches and bizarre turns of phrase which may have an unusual meaning. The Um and Ah Counter may consider also mentioning words that are used out of turn or incorrectly.
Warm Up Not many clubs include the warm up session and we feel it is one of those special, personal features of Lodo Toastmasters which makes it unique. It is the only role on the agenda in which guests are strongly urged to participate in. There are several purposes for this session. The most immediately obvious to the guest is to introduce yourself to the other people in the room. However, even when there are only the most familiar members present during a meeting we still conduct a warm up as it also does as it's name suggests - warms speakers up to help ease them into their later task for the evening and also gives us practice for actual situations where we are required to introduce ourselves. The Warm Up Master is responsible for presenting the warm up topic on which the members will asked to comment on in their introductions and to conduct the warm up session.
Jokemaster According to the English actor Sir Donald Wolfit, dying is easy, comedy is hard. The jokemaster segment of Toastmasters is designed with two purposes in mind: firstly, it adds a frivolous touch to a meeting - starting it off with a humorous bent. For this reason the jokemaster is usually one of the first segments after the warm up. The other reason is that it allows members to practice their joke telling skills - this may not seem like a particularly important skill, but many a person has been shamed by telling a joke poorly and many others have received accolades for telling a joke well.
Arts Corner The Arts Corner is another agenda item that is almost unique to Lodo Toastmasters and is one of those special segments that can give a meeting all of its flavour. In its simplest form the Arts Corner is a free segment where a speaker can do whatever he/she pleases for three to five minutes. This segment was introduced to allow further scope within the Toastmasters experience. You can use this segment to act, recite, sing, dance, teach a skill, or to present a short speech that isn't from a Toastmasters manual.
Quizmaster The Quizmaster role is the only optional reporting roles at Lodo Toastmasters. The purpose is to ensure that the audience has been listening to the events of the evening - listening is an important skill in itself that we try to encourage and work on at Lodo Toastmasters. There are several different ways to conduct a quizmaster session. The most common is to simply ask questions about the evening's preceedings and wait for audience members to shout out their answers. Another method, recently made popular, is to divide the audience into teams and score the teams according to correct answers. Remember, however, that the session lasts only 1 to 3 minutes, so ensure that whatever you will be doing can fit into that time allotment.
Word of the Evening The Word of the Evening (or Word of the Day or Wordmaster) is an attempt to expand the vocabulary of the members of the club by providing a new word for them to use correctly and in context. The Wordmaster presenter should select a word to be used and furnish a definition. At the end of the evening the Um and Ah Counter or the Master Evaluator should report on the frequency and quality of the word's usage during the meeting.
Toast The Toast is a common Toastmasters segment for clubs which meet where imbibing is possible. This certainly includes Lodo Toastmasters which holds the accolade of being one of only two clubs in the Denver area which meets where alcoholic refreshment is available. A toast can be a toast to a particular person, place or thing. It can be modern or historical. It can be factual or fantasy. A toast, like most small segments, is one to three minutes long. Everything that occurs should fit into that time constraint - including the actual drinking.
Special Segment The available segments at Lodo Toastmasters are broad and far reaching. However, occasionally some presentations which you may wish to do do not fall into any of the preceeding categories. For this purpose we have the "special segment" and, while these are usually educational sessions given by executive members or long standing members, this is not exclusively so. If you have a special segment you would like to present then speak to the Vice-President of Education and the Toastmaster about it.
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