Completion requirements
When I started Toastmasters, there wasn't a lot of new member orientation materials available. You learned by watching others, and by being thrown into the deep end here and there. While a mentor helped with my first few speeches, I didn't get a lot of guidance on how to perform meeting roles.
For someone like me, that was fine, but for most people it's a recipe for failure and lost memberships. Some clubs are focused so much on acquiring members that they forget to get these new members trained so that they can feel informed, involved, included, and inspired. This course is designed to help get that orientation done.
4. What Can You Expect From This Course?
There are some tenets and values of RDG that I've tried to apply evenly to each of the courses, and they'll be used here too.
- Comprehensive. I've been in Toastmasters for over a decade and earned my DTM. I've seen what consistently makes for better members and have tried to capture that here.
- Battle-tested. I'll give you what's worked for me and others when it comes to making the most of your membership.
- Time-efficient. Toastmasters is meant to make you a better person out in the real world, not be a second job. Once you get through your start up period, you should only be spending about an hour to an hour and a half per week outside of your club meetings.
- Always improving, always learning. RDG members aren't perfect, they're just trying to get there. There may be some situations I haven't talked about yet in this course or that don't make sense. I encourage you to talk about it in the provided forums so everyone can learn.
If you take what's here and consistently apply it, I promise you that you'll be far ahead of most members who come in with just a wish that they "get a little bit better".
Let's begin.