How To Run A Meeting, GREETING, And Announce Timing And Disqualification

GREETING

The formal greeting would be used in large clubs and any large meetings and any special occasion. (Used in most large clubs and international contests.)

 If you have a small group who all know each other you might wish to be less formal. To avoid constant repetition of the greeting, you can then shorten the greetings except for the first speaker or two at the start of the evening. 

FAREWELL

Many people say as a speaker you do not thank the audience because you in speaking have done them a favour and the Toastmaster of the evening should be thanking each speaker. 

To say Mr Toastmaster at the end tells everybody in the audience you have finished and warns the Toastmaster to jump to their feet.

Length of Greetings
If your meeting is short of time, abbreviate the greetings. Don't say, 'let's move on'. Just move on.

Humorous Contests
To improve the atmosphere at a contest where contestants may be nervous, you can use the warm up character. In addition, or instead, the contest chair, instead of merely reading the rules, should joke all the way through, or at least end with a joke.

 TIMING

The timer should take the opportunity to make his potentially dull introduction to timing both informative and fun. If he does not do so, the Toastmasters of the meeting can thank the timer for whatever he did (such as demonstrating traffic lights or coloured cards; then add an explanation as to why timing is necessary:

1 In real life outside meetings when people have to leave to catch trains, allow time for the next speaker before the venue is closed (especially if you are paying for the hire of the room by the hour!)

In one Toastmasters meeting, in Harrow, a London suburb, we were running over time, so a ballet class of excited, chatty little girls kept trying to come to change into their togs.

On another occasion a first time speaker ran over time. The other two speakers who had hoped to win ribbons with their debut speech found no ribbons were allotted. I was one of the other speakers, as well as the mentor of the speaker who ran over time. I'd spent ages helping him with his speech, but neglected to impress on him the importance of time.

At a club party the pre-dinner drinks and introductions were allowed to run over time. Therefore the toastmaster, being told to cut out a section, cut out my grammarian role, so my once a year chance to practise performing in front of an audience, shine in front of the Area, and my husband, was cut from the programme. I was not pleased.

CONTEST TIMING

In a contest the timing should not be announced to the judges before they have judged. Reasons: 

1 You may have a dispute about the timing so you don’t want judges influenced because the person they thought was over time might not be over time. The timing might be changed to allow for an interruption, a fully timing device, or many other reasons such as another speaker making a movement which counts as part of the speech time.

2 It’s a distraction. While they are worrying about the time, they don’t have time in their short judging time to decide the order of winners.

3 The timers’ job is to time; the judges’ job is to judge. The judge should not be asking the timers whether somebody was over time. This would cause embarrassment and disappointment to the speaker who went over time and could result in an argument in an important high level contest. You don’t want to have the judges later arguing with the timers. The timers’ and chief judges and contest chair and so on have the final say.

CLUB TIMING

4 However, at a club, usually the timing is given to warn the contestants that they have gone over time and are likely to be disqualified if they ever enter a contest. This is done before voting because if you have three contestants and one is over time there is not vote.

To be nice, the president may allow voting every if a speaker is over time, firstly to be kind to the speaker, second so that the other two speakers still have a chance of getting a ribbon. As a timer, I ask the president to decide.

The bell is rung after 30 seconds over time at a club contest, not at an area contest. (See rule book.)

I hope this helps.

Angela Lansbury, author and speaker.
Author of
Quick Quotations for speakers
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