Toastmasters, founded in 1924, is an international organization that teaches people public speaking and leadership skills. During meetings, members give and evaluate speeches, and the speeches are either longer, prepared speeches, about five to ten minutes long, or short speeches, generally one to three minutes long, made up on the spot, inspired by a question or prompt. There are clubs all over the world, and clubs can be public, open to anyone, or they can be closed corporate clubs, meaning the club is only open to employees of the organization.
My workplace has a corporate club, and I joined in November 2015, curious about Toastmasters. I'm not afraid of public speaking, and I love telling stories (as is evident from my Yelp reviews), so Toastmasters was the perfect creative outlet for me. At the time I joined, we had a thriving club, but over time, the club has died off, as people left the organization, lost interest, or got overwhelmed with their workload. Despite our dwindling membership (unfortunately we couldn't recruit members of the public), we continued on, and I was elected President in 2017.
While each club has their own rules and style, Toastmasters has a certain format and protocol that clubs are supposed to follow. For example, there are executive members that are elected every year (President, VP of Membership, Sergeant at Arms, just to name a few), with specific job duties; there's a certain format to be followed during a meeting, complete with an agenda and people taking on certain roles, such as chair, evaluator, timer (the speeches are timed), and a grammarian, who records the number of times someone says "um" and "ah" and other fillers; and there are speech projects you work on to get certificates and designations (I'm a "Competent Communicator"). In addition, Toastmasters holds speech contests (I've been in a few), provides training for club officers, and more. There are also dues payable to Toastmasters every six months.
At first, Toastmasters was fun, and I improved my speaking and leadership skills, made friends, and got to know my co-workers better; it was great! But after nearly four years, it's no longer fun. Toastmasters spams members with emails (as President, I get more emails than regular members), harasses them to go to club officer training, and pressures clubs to hold open houses and events to recruit members and such. The thing is, as a closed corporate club, we CAN'T easily recruit members, as we are not open to the public, and Toastmasters always wants clubs to hold events in March, during fiscal year end, the busiest time of year for our workplace, or in the middle of summer, when many people are on vacation. They just don't understand that THEIR schedule conflicts with that of the corporate world and are not willing to be flexible on things, or that our members, who hold club meetings during work time, do not want to go to some bullshit training after work or on a Saturday morning. (Also, they only tell you about the training less than a week before, not giving you enough notice to make plans to go.)
I've met other Toastmasters members at contests and events*, and for some members, Toastmasters is their LIFE -- they go to several meetings a week, go to several training sessions a year, organize and participate in tons of contests, go to the very expensive conferences, etc. That's fine, that's their jam, but it's not mine, and they can't seem to comprehend that not all members are as into it as they are, or have a life outside of Toastmasters, and they just push and push.
So after being in Toastmasters for nearly four years, two as President of our club, I decided not to renew my membership. Perhaps I may re-join later, but I've gotten what I needed out of it, I'm busy with life outside of Toastmasters (work, school, my recent marriage, other interests and hobbies), and their cult-like pushiness has soured my experience. If I were rating Toastmasters when I first joined, I would have given them at least four stars, but it's definitely now a two star experience for me.
*I met KAV through Toastmasters. Read my review about "World Financial Group" for the background on KAV. read more
