A Typical Club Meeting
What happens at a Toastmasters club meeting — prepared speeches, Table Topics, evaluations, and the roles members take.
Toastmasters clubs run their own meetings. There is no instructor: the members take the meeting roles themselves and work through the Toastmasters education programme, supported by the rest of the club. A meeting usually runs one to two hours.
Most meetings have three parts.
- Prepared speeches. Members who have signed up prepare, rehearse and present a speech, and discuss their goals with their evaluator beforehand.
- Table Topics. A Topicsmaster calls on members at random for a short impromptu answer, usually one to two minutes. It typically begins after the prepared speeches.
- Evaluations. Speakers receive spoken and written feedback — praise as well as constructive criticism — and a General Evaluator reviews everything that took place during the meeting.
Members take the meeting roles in rotation. A Toastmaster directs and hosts the meeting, a Topicsmaster runs Table Topics, evaluators give feedback on the speeches, a General Evaluator leads the evaluation team, and a timer monitors the time for each segment and each speaker.
Guests are welcome. You are not obliged to speak — you may simply observe — and you need not bring anything. Every club has its own culture, so meetings look a little different from one club to the next; visiting more than one is the way to find the club that fits.