In every Toastmasters meeting there are 3 key roles who are at the center of conducting the main session. We shall see one by one what we learned about them in our last meeting.:
Toastmaster of the evening
The person taking up on this role is responsible for conducting the overall Toastmasters sessions. He calls on Table Topic Master, Wordmasters, Speech Evaluator, Timer, and Ah counter to explain their responsibilities. People who work for table topic masters as an expert learn how to conduct meetings effectively. That’s because toastmaster of the evening has to be very precise and meticulous in what he speaks about. He also needs to fill in the gaps by adding more explanation to the roles and responsibilities of other evaluators in case someone misses out on anything.
Table topic master
In this role the person conducts the impromptu speeches event. We learned from DTM Mazhar that ideally a table topic should have all the table topics written on small paper slips. When you are in this role, you open up the table topic slips, read the topic to yourself only. He\she should through the element of surprise call anyone from the members on stage and then read out the topic. The key aspect is the element of surprise here. The table topic speaker should be given minimum time to compose oneself and speak on the topic.
Typically a table topic speaker is given a time limit from 1-2 minutes to make his impromptu speech. A tip for the table topic speaker courtesy Toastmasters
1.Start with something like, “this is a wonderful topic” or “Interesting topic, and I have been thinking about this”
2.Face the audience, take the challenge and inside your mind repeat the question again and again.
3.Compose your thoughts into three sections, beginning, body, end and then start speaking
As a general recommendation it is advised by Toastmasters not to hold any object in ones hand while speaking. It maybe distracting, because people could be paying more attention to the object that a speaker holds than the speaker. Some people like holding a pen, a paper or sometimes a mic etc. Toastmasters recommend against it.
General Evaluator
General evaluator is responsible for evaluating the overall meeting, and the quality of the prepared speeches. His role constitutes evaluating :
- The speech evaluators. Every Toastmaster who makes a prepared speech is responsible for assigning some other member as an evaluator. This is a requirement as part of completing each speech project.
- The Wordmaster.
- The Grammarian.
After completing the above, he should give an overall evaluation report. However all the evaluations are done in front of the audience. The purpose of evaluation should not be to pick on weaknesses of others. The evaluation should be constructive and must help the person under evaluation to improve with the next meeting.
In Toastmasters terms these roles are also known as the BIG 3.
