6/28/20
The Toastmasters educational program hadn’t been upgraded for nearly 40 years: thus the creation of Pathways, the new educational online program designed to bring Toastmasters into the 21st century. It was created to introduce relevant topics such as like writing a blog, managing webinar, and creating a podcast.
Most clubs have embraced this new technology. Members sometimes struggle with the user interface, but most press on with help. In fact, our Vice President Education meets with a great deal of our members when they hit a snafu on Pathways. Sadly, Living Truth does not seem to have embraced Pathways that well. This club has 12 members and 4 new members. They have 6 legacy awards and no Pathways awards. Are the new members being trained in Pathways? The club president did mention that this summer maybe they could have a Pathways orientation at one of their club meetings. This is really doing a disservice to the new members. New members have no option; the only educational system they are allowed to use is Pathways. So do the new members have to wait until this summer to speak or begin their educational path? Has the club reached out for help from the district?
Their website was the bare minimum. They had a small picture in front but nothing eye catching. No "Meet Our Members" section. I was glad they started on time, but was surprised to hear at the end someone say “Tony would really be proud we started on time!”. Does that mean they usually don’t? They are slated to end at 8:30 and ended at 8:45.
This is an hour-and-a-half meeting and was surprised that they had on the agenda four long speeches. One was scheduled to be 20-30 minutes and another one for 10-15 minutes. However, maybe this fits into the time frame perfectly. The speeches were interesting and educational. Topics were “Giving Effective Feedback”, “Parliamentary Procedures” and “Handling Challenging Situations”. The other speaker left the meeting before it was her time to speak. The evaluators gave really good feedback. In Eugene’s evaluation he mentioned the speaker could have employed the facilitation technique IEEI (Inform, excite, empower, involve). I had to look it up to see what it meant)
One cool thing that I found out is this club recently received a trophy from the district for having all seven officers trained. Never heard of that before, but getting a trophy certainly can be a motivator. When we logged into the meeting 15 minutes before the meeting started, they were having an officer meeting with their Division Director. It was interesting to me. However, for non-Toastmasters visitors, I am not sure they would be interested in seeing how the sausage is made so the officers may want to consider having this meeting in a breakout room when it gets close to meeting time or have it at a different time.
As my husband and I travel to different clubs, we don’t mind participating in roles or not participating in roles. It doesn’t matter to us, however, I really hate it when I see members taking on double and triple role duties instead of asking help from fellow toastmasters from other clubs. At the start of the meeting, the president said they had empty roles to be filled and she was already Toastmaster of the Day and Timer but would be an evaluator if needed. Tamara was speaker and general evaluator. Steve and I piped in and offered to assist as needed. She politely thanked me but said we were guests and she didn't want to make a guest do it.
I appreciate her not burdening a guest, however, in Toastmasters I think it is perfectly acceptable since so many meetings are interchangeable in the format, plus how exciting it would be to learn a role a little differently from someone outside the club. But they didn’t ask us to help and we were perfectly content to be silent observers. (By the way, the timer forgot to put the timing cards up for most of the speakers, was it because she was overwhelmed having other roles also?)
There were some members that seemed more knowledgeable about zoom than others and that’s probably the same across the board with all toastmaster clubs. We were greeted well at the meeting and members laughed and seemed to get along well. They seemed like a very friendly group. Although it was a fun meeting, as with any club there are always areas for improvement.
In my limited observation as a visitor, I would suggest the club do consider the following:
- Dress up your website, make it enticing for viewers, that may be what causes people to attend or stay away.
- Be mindful of time-start and end on time if at all possible.
- Embrace Pathways (ask for help if needed).
- Instead of doubling up on roles, ask for help from visiting Toastmasters. If they are like me, they will feel honored to be asked, to be able to contribute.
Good luck Living Truth Center Toastmaster, may your club continue to thrive!
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