4. How Do You Improve Your Meetings?

First and foremost, use the RDG Meetings course. This extensive program will guide you through every role as well as how to put meetings together. 

That said, here are some highlights from that program for making your meetings less stressful. 

  • Have meeting role cheat sheets available. These are available in the meetings course resources, as well as how to make them. They will help newer members remember the important points of filling their roles. 
  • Always have a sign up sheet, preferably printed out for the meeting.
  • Make it clear who in your club is responsible for putting the meeting together. One method is that the VPE or education committee assigns Toastmasters ahead of time. They also collect sign ups for future meetings at the current meeting, and confirm next meeting's roles during club business. From there, the Toastmaster for the next meeting is responsible for filling the remainder of the roles and other meeting planning tasks.
  • The Toastmaster should use the member site (Easy Speak is recommended) to contact and keep tabs on who plans on attending as well as what roles are and are not filled. 
  • Last minute substitutions are something you will have to do now and again, but aim to minimize and eliminate them as much as possible. If a Toastmaster cannot attend, the usual expectation is that they swap their day with another member.