what to do with toastmasters members in the middle of their CC when pathways launches

The Toastmasters official party line is that members should complete the CC that they are in the middle of. However, my club has a lot of members that go at a “leisurely” pace. It’s not realistic to tell someone:

  1. No – “You’ve only given a few speeches so you should just start Pathways and lose them”
  2. No – “You should invest even more time in the old program to complete your CC”

I’ve created a mapping of CC speeches to Pathways speeches. It actually maps decently. (Note: I don’t have access to Pathways Level 3 yet, so that mapping is speculation)

Here I list what I’d recommend you do with members who are early in their CC and slowly going in order. The full mapping table is at the end of this Pathways presentation. This is useful for people who complete their CC speeches out of order. Or to see specifically which projects to map.

</table.

# speeches completed Advice
0 Check if they have a CL to file in the next month or so. If not, start Pathways now!
1 Have the member enroll in Pathways now and mark the Icebreaker as complete. An evaluator may need to enter the evaluation on the new form, but the speech doesn’t change.
2-3 Have the member enroll in Pathways now. Mark the Icebreaker as complete. Read the Evaluation and Feedback project. One or two of the speeches required are already done so the member has a big head start on this project. An evaluator may need to enter the evaluation on the new form, but the speech doesn’t change.
4 See advice for 2-3 speeches completed. Keep the speech 4 evaluation in case it helps for level 3. But even if it doesn’t , “losing” credit for one speech is worth enrolling in Pathways straight away.
5 See advice for 4 speeches completed. Be sure to save the speech 5 evaluation for level 2 as it maps perfectly!
6-8 While some of these projects do map to Pathways, the member is over half done with the CC. So it makes sense to talk to the member about timing, benefits of getting a CC, intent to continue in Toastmasters, etc.
9-10 Almost done with the CC! Complete it before enrolling in Pathways!

starting pathways level 2 before level 1 is approved

See my main Presentation Mastery Pathways page for some context. You become eligible to start Toastmasters Pathways Level 2 after you submit level 1 and your VPE (Vice President Education) submits/approves. I”m the first person from this club to complete level 1 so my VPE doesn’t yet know how to submit. Yet I had a meeting speaking opportunity before that. What to do? What to do?

Getting a level 2 (or any level) evaluation sheet

Level 2 is three speeches. You can download the evaluation sheet for all three easily.

  1. Go to the Base Camp home page
  2. Click “Speech Evaluations” (the rightmost option)
  3. Choose the project you are interested in and click Launch

This opens a PDF with the sheet your speech evaluator needs. Some of them you could do most of with just this information. For example, Intro to Toastmasters Mentoring is to give a speech about being a mentee. It is also supposed to include how Toastmasters envisions mentoring. For that, you need the full project. Googling for “pdf introduction to toastmasters mentoring” showed me that a club has uploaded the full project. This was useful in learning what the rest of the project was.

I imagine that Toastmasters doesn’t want people to upload the whole PDFs. But given this project is in all level 2 paths, it is a great start. The PDF for Understanding your Communication Style is also online and in many paths.

The actual project for Intro to Toastmasters Mentoring

After reading about the difference between mentoring and coaching (which is interesting), you give a speech that largely includes a story about when you were mentored. I’m currently leading a SpeechCraft program so I gave a speech on how mentoring helped come up with speech ideas.

Submitting

I uploaded the PDF of my evaluation from this speech. I can’t mark it off in Base Camp until my Level 1 is approved. Also read how I completed level 2 before level 1 was approved.