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Toastmaster - Roles and Responsibilities

 

Per the definition of the role by Toastmasters International:  The Toastmaster is a meeting's director and host. A member typically will not be assigned this role until they are thoroughly familiar with the club and its procedures. As Toastmaster, you:

 

  • Acquire a meeting agenda from your Vice President Education.

  • Work with the General Evaluator to ensure all club participants know their roles and responsibilities.

  • Introduce speakers during the club meeting, including their speech topic, project title, objectives, delivery time, etc. during your introduction.

  • Ensure smooth transitions between speakers during the club meeting.

Bring the following to the meeting:

 

 

Before the meeting:

  • Follow up with all the speakers and make sure that the speech title and the description are updated in Easy-Speak.  Please refer to the Easy-Speak 101 document for how to do this in Easy-Speak.

  • The Toastmaster needs to the speech introduction to introduce your speech to the audience.  Make it short and brief.  The speaker can use the introduction to set up the ground for the speech.  Audience can know about the speech and the speaker can create the curiosity even before the speech!  So. it will be advantageous for the speaker if they write it well.  Communicate this message to the speaker while requesting for the information.  Example of speech title and description below for reference:

    • Title : What goes around comes around

      Introduction: "In everyday life, we meet lots of people.  Some needs our help.  Also, we might be in need of their help.  There is a saying that "Be kind to everyone you meet, you never know what battles people are fighting".  We get so bogged down by many things in our life that we do not take a moment to think about others.  Today, Biju will tell you the story of Brian.  He is poor.  But, he never complains about it and always there to help others.  Because, it makes him happy.  Please welcome <Name>, <Education Level>, "What goes around comes around".  "What goes around comes around", <Name>. 

  • Follow up with the Table Topics Master to finalize the theme for the week and update Easy-Speak with the theme.  Refer to the Easy-Speak 101 document for how to do this in Easy-Speak.

  • Based on the theme selected, follow up with the Grammarian and finalize the 'Word of the Day'/update in Easy-Speak.

  • If anybody declined any of the roles,  identify a new club member for the role and follow-up to make sure that the role is accepted by them.

  • Take print out of the agenda from Easy-Speak.  It is recommended to take the print on Tuesday afternoon so that any last minute changes are still reflected in the printed agenda.

  • Take print out of the speech title and description for all the prepared speeches from Easy-Speak.

 

During the meeting:

 

  • Make sure that all the club members who accepted the role are available at the meeting.  If not, coordinate re-assigning roles as deemed necessary.

  • Position yourself in such a way that you will be able to go back forth to the center stage without any difficulty.

  • Make sure that all the roles are completing their tasks on time.  Maintaining the time is one of your main responsibility. 

  • Try to keep your initial introduction/monologue to the minimum and get onto the club business (i.e. introducing helpers).

  • Introduce the theme to the audience.

  • For the benefit of the guests, explain a high-level overview of the various sections in the meeting and what they can expect from the meeting.

  • Announce any changes in agenda.

  • During the prepared speech section of the meeting:

    • Introduce evaluators and request them to explain the objective for the speech.

    • Introduce the speaker.  Use the speech title and description as mentioned in the 'Before the meeting' section above to introduce the speaker.

    • Use adequate fillers during the break between speeches.

    • Call for Timer Report to verify who qualified for voting.

    • Call for best speaker vote.

  • Hand over the meeting to Table Topics Master.  Once the table topics section is completed, you will be called back to the stage to introduce the general evaluator.

  • Introduce the general evaluator and hand over the meeting to him/her.

 

After the meeting:

 

Perform the below duties (if VP of Education is unable to do it):

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  • Once the meeting is completed, close the meeting by entering all the awards submitted in Easy-Speak.  

  • If any role assignments were changed during the meeting (e.g. if the grammarian was handled by another person than in agenda), change the assignment on the speech before closing.  This helps the club in maintaining accurate information and also helps the individual club member to maintain the correct history of their participation in the club meetings.

 

Note: If there are any edits, share your inputs to VP of Education.

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